Chapter 6 . ‘Cuz the Bible Tells Me So Flipbook PDF

Troubles in Paradise-Downard 665 Chapter 6. ‘Cuz the Bible Tells Me So Biblical Inerrancy: A Madness to their Method ...

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Troubles in Paradise-Downard

Chapter 6. ‘Cuz the Bible Tells Me So Biblical Inerrancy: A Madness to their Method – p. 675 Kulturkampf Morality and Historical Revisionism – p. 688 Applied Biblical Morality: Heretic hunting and how to treat your slave – p. 703 Relatively Absolute Morality and the Ratchet of Progress – p. 723 There is a solid principle of warfare that recommends striking an opponent at their weakest point. It certainly worked for Napoleon at Austerlitz. But this approach can be terrible strategic policy in the long run, for it may lull you into thinking victory in individual battles can topple adversaries whose coalition strength promises to be overwhelming. Robert E. Lee (as skilled a tactical commander as ever there was) learned that the hard way, as the Confederate States of America were ground to a pulp by the likes of Grant and Sherman, slaughterhouse generals executing the broader and grimmer strategic vision of Abraham Lincoln. But the “little corporals” Napoleon and Hitler helped sink their respective empires also by succumbing to an even more dangerous malady than strategic myopia: believing their own propaganda. By the time the deadly game played out, both had come to think they were indeed the greatest military leaders of all time—infallible tactical sages who couldn’t possibly make stupid mistakes. Or accept the criticism of subordinates who dared remind them of it. And here is where the greatest peril lies for the imprudent ideologue, for reality is a most unforgiving taskmaster when it comes to patting one’s own back. Such martial follies offer two harsh lessons for the scientific pretensions of modern creationism. The first is tactical. Quite unlike Napoleon at Austerlitz, when engaged in scholarly battle, attacking your rival’s weak spot is positively bad advice. To be taken seriously, a challenger has to grapple with their opponents’ strong cases, not their weak ones. That’s because in science or history the area of conflict is the real world itself, where the facts will not change one millimeter based on anyone’s opinion of them. If the idea were to dislodge the evolutionary interpretation of natural history, it would be necessary to hit the tough terrain head on, from biogeography and homeobox genes to the reptile-mammal transition and bacterial endosymbiosis. Had the creationist worldview been as true as Creation Science or Intelligent Design think it is, there would have been no need for the legal assistance of Phillip Johnson, filing his philosophical restraining orders to keep “methodological naturalism” at least fifty feet away from the blood clotting sequence. Antievolutionists would have long ago adopted a practical empiricism, and hammered the grumpy Darwinists down to size with solid doses of evidence pouring from Christian science departments. The likes of Michael Behe and Jonathan Wells would have been building on an extant tradition of explanatory success, not trying to engineer a reputation by school board plebiscite or popular book review. And herein lies a most ironic symmetry, best seen in the recent polemics of Creationism Lite. When it comes to evolution, all the intervening evidential props that can’t be accounted for in the static typological framework are simply ignored. That leaves a lot of emptiness in between, of course—which Phillip Johnson then decries in a caricature of his own making: that Darwinists attempt to execute one daredevil Evel Knieval jump from peppered moth microevolution to Richard Dawkins macro-materialism. And it is that caricature where the symmetry kicks in, for it is the Intelligent Design argument that runs along just that disconnected a bridge … only running in the opposite direction. Michael Behe and William Dembski and Jonathan Wells pointedly refrain from venturing any theological insights about the Designer’s motives or purpose based on a close examination of the supposed design. This tactfully sidesteps the risk of arriving at theologically unacceptable conclusions—such as the vague deism so often espoused by physicists enamored of “anthropic” arguments.1 The purported signs of Intelligent Design are laid on the table only as the fingerprint of a clever God, not as something to be thought much about. Having identified the telltale miracle, the Intelligent Design advocate has no motivation for investigation (let alone explanation). It is

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Troubles in Paradise-Downard sufficient for them to accept the “irreducibly complex” nuggets as a prelude to getting on with what really captures their attention, the furtherance of whatever theology happens to be their wont. 2 But bobbing along in the swift current beneath the creationist cantilever is that grand Napoleonic hubris—the dogged inability to even imagine how one might be wrong—that hints at the second and more sweeping implication of the pitfalls of Theistic Realism. Any methodology faulty enough to misunderstand the facts of natural history as baldly as has been seen in the creationist literature is equally likely to get things just as off kilter in any area that falls into its sights. From the venerable Bermuda Triangle Defense, Gish’s Law and the “no cousins” rule … to Phillip Johnson’s slapdash of hollow generalities and “meaningless concessions” hemorrhaging from the Von Däniken Defense, antievolutionists have all the means at their disposal to get in a lot of further trouble. But while there is surely novelty in the details of their particular arguments, creationists have not pioneered some innovative new way of reasoning badly. Indeed, had they done so, it might have been far more difficult to venture ahead to see what can happen when such faulty methods are given free reign. 3 Taken as individual glitches, every category of mistake seen in the creationist literature turns up in some form in standard scholarship—a point I have taken pains to illustrate by calling attention to parallel goofs encountered on the evolutionary side. Phillip Johnson is hardly unique in misspelling a name or muddling a citation.4 Nor is it unknown for scientists to massage the evidence on occasion, mistakenly pouncing on the wrong point in the enthusiasm of debate, or letting a poorly-worded phrase or undocumented passage slip through to the publisher. 5 Scientists are also not immune to an egotism that can occasionally crimp the proper functioning of their brain stem.6 It is even possible for evolutionists like Niles Eldredge to casually retread the same material almost as often as has that professional recycler Hugh Ross. 7 Ah yes … to err is human. But to correct requires a sound method. And that brings us to what may be the most common source for error in reasoning: the tendency to rely uncritically on inaccurate secondary information. This class of mistake is all but inevitable in the real scholarly world, of course, given that it simply isn’t possible to have read everything. Once in a while even the most fastidious scholar will find they have rested a claim on a secondary source that let them down. That was seen back in chapter five with Chris McGowan and Arthur Strahler on primate dental development, where the background hadn’t held up in the meantime. But as these authors were normally very careful, I was all set to follow McGowan and Strahler down that mistaken garden path in an early chapter draft. That is, until one of my eagleeyed critical reviewers (with full expertise in hominid phylogeny) brought me up to speed on the current literature.8 That’s what critical reviewers are supposed to do. Fortunately that’s no blow to sound scholarship, where the whole point is to offer a solid argument. You don’t want any inaccurate information to clutter up your presentation. That’s hardly a problem for defending a valid science like evolution, though, since there are more than enough hard facts to go around. In that case, removing any gaffs that may surface along the way is just what you want to do, for it makes it easier to observe that substantive body of evidence. In this endeavor, the magician’s screen only gets in the way. Meanwhile, over in the antievolutionary theater … this sort of vetting doesn’t happen much. And ironically, for exactly the same reasons as above. If you diligently remove all the goofs in a creationist argument you don’t have any case left. And with all that deadweight weeded out, you are stuck with an awful lot of unsightly holes where discussion ought to have been (such as biogeography or those pesky therapsids). Hence a rather large number of magician screens are deployed (such as “evolution is just materialist religion”) that serve to distract the advocate and their audience from the embarrassment of noticing that they’re performing on an empty stage. This sort of thing is comparatively easy for creationists to pull off because for them the flaws of superficial scholarship and reasoning are on tap full time … and running simultaneously. It’s like a bunch of adolescents left on their own to ride the fastest coaster at an amusement park—nobody stays on the ground to look after the coats. When you get so caught up in the philosophical ride that you lose sight of that housekeeping drudgery, the result is predictable. It’s a

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brand of dizziness that tends to bend the scholarly antennae, so that you fail to engage in essential critical triage to keep your interpretations firmly grounded on the facts. And nobody illustrates this affliction better than Richard Milton … a veritable Poster Child for incompetent scholarship. This is not just because he has flubbed so obdurately. After all, Kent Hovind arguably has him beat in this department ten ways west of Sunday! But therein lies Milton’s value: unlike Dr. Dino, the editor of British Mensa has apparently no religious vestments to keep pressed. Thus relieved of that distracting Biblical attire, the “Full Milton” presents us with the antievolutionary methodology au naturel.9 It’s a revealing sight … and not a pretty one. Let’s start with a tripwire. Consider what sort of things ought to set the scholarly antennae waving in error-detection mode. One telltale sign that you might be dealing with an unsubstantiated root source comes from reading widely. If you are familiar with a broad variety of treatments, you are more likely to spot when the same “fact” gets mentioned by a lot of people— yet nobody ever seems to reference a primary source. For the skeptical mind, that is revealing. It’s precisely when everybody gets into that daisy chain rut, not thinking to check things out for themselves, that you have to wonder whether there was ever an original source there to begin with. And that’s reason enough for the scholarly mind to start picking nits. 10 One example I encountered many years ago concerned the popular notion about how frequently scientific fuddy-duddies dumped on notable technological breakthroughs. This was during my early college years, when I was just starting to acquire adequate research habits. As I began to read more extensively, I kept on seeing these stories repeated without reference, until I decided to pin them down on my own. That investigation established that some of these tales were indeed quite true. Simon Newcomb really did disparage the idea of powered flight just before the Wright Brothers were getting off the ground. 11 And a 1920 editorial writer at The New York Times did in fact attempt to educate rocket pioneer Robert Goddard about the absurdity of space travel, by smugly reminding him of something every school child supposedly knew: that rockets wouldn’t operate in a vacuum.12 But one of these famous chestnuts turned out to be far more problematic, if not a clunker. And this is where Milton comes in. The next book Milton wrote after the original edition of his anti-Darwinian screed was Forbidden Science, which ventured into the world of fringe phenomena (from “cold fusion” and Velikovsky to alternative medicine, Uri Geller and astrology). 13 His argument turned partly on how often mainstream opinion got things wrong. One example he offered was this: Professional scientists who pronounced powered flight impossible at the beginning of the century were still at it more than fifty years later. In September 1957, Britain’s Astronomer Royal, Sir Harold Spencer Jones, was asked by a journalist what he thought the prospects were for space travel. Jones told him: “Space travel is bunk.” Two weeks later, Sputnik I was launched into Earth orbit by the Russians.14 Here Milton had another “182-foot Brontosaurus” by the tail. For, as far as I have been able to determine, virtually everything about this account was wrong. It wasn’t Spencer Jones … who didn’t say, “Space travel is bunk” … and not in September 1957. The facts appear to be these: upon Spencer Jones’ retirement as Astronomer Royal, his successor was the Australian Sir Richard van der Riet Woolley. When Woolley arrived in January 1956 to take up his new post, there was a lot of talk about the imminence of space travel. Time magazine asked him about this, and reported his curt reply: “It’s utter bilge. I don’t think anybody will ever put enough money to do such a thing.” Woolley asked, “What good would it do us? If we spent the same amount of money on preparing first-class astronomical equipment we should learn much more about the universe.” As far as he was concerned, “It is all rather rot.”15 Thus the new Astronomer Royal had not declared space travel impossible. He simply thought it financially unlikely and scientifically unnecessary. That Woolley thoroughly underestimated the impetus of Cold War rivalry between the Russians and Americans eighteen months in advance, as

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well as the conceptual revolution that awaited the hard rocks conveyed from the moon over a dozen years later, hardly qualified as a serious lapse in scientific imagination.16 Given the mellowing perspective of history, Arthur C. Clarke was moved recently to appreciate how Woolley had got rather a bum rap for his 1956 comments. 17 Now of course a lot of writers had repeated this story over the years, all without ever tumbling onto the original Time interview with Woolley that appears to have inspired it. But the important thing is that Milton was one of those who hadn’t, even in the 1990s—and with a clue to the putative source right under his own nose to boot. 18 Moreover, Milton repeatedly drew on just as limited a range of dated material, probably things he’d read years earlier. For example, he defended Immanuel Velikovsky’s scientific credibility solely on the basis of the retinue offered in one favorable 1966 anthology, The Velikovsky Affair.19 Had Milton been scribbling this in 1974, he would at least have had the slim excuse of being at the zenith of the very brief and limited Velikovsky “revival.” But even by 1984 all the fuss had died down … so reading Milton pressing this issue in the mid-1990s was as anachronistic as being offered “breaking news” flashes on Watergate and SST funding. 20 What we are seeing here is a symptomatic fault of anemic scholarship. As playwright Wilson Mizner quipped long ago, while stealing from one author counts as “plagiarism” … stealing from many constitutes research. But there are gradations of iniquity here, and lines not to be crossed. Failure to show enough gumption to prefer primary to secondary sources can all too easily tempt the superficial scholar to the sin of omission. Phillip Johnson neatly illustrated this stem pathology in a June 18, 2001 “Weekly Wedge Update” for the Access Research Network, by taking to task Ohio State University evolutionary biologist Steve Rissing for a comment made in his June 10th “Biology and Society” column for the Columbus Dispatch. Rissing thought to illustrate the vitality of the scientific method by the example of the late Jack Sepkoski, who had contributed to a major new database that served to contradict Sepkoski’s own earlier research. Johnson noted how Rissing had relied on “a recent scientific paper that corrected earlier work by paleontologists that had indicated, following the Permian mass extinction of about 250 million years ago, the diversity of animals on Earth began a steady increase that continued until recently. The new paper suggested (tentatively) that this increase in diversity might not have happened.” What drew Johnson’s ire was Rissing’s “sneer at creationists” for their having made so much of the Cambrian Explosion … compounded by the “howler” of Rissing having confused the Cambrian Explosion with the Permian extinction. The problem was, Rissing had done no such thing. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper had explicitly dealt with two stretches of time, each covering about 150 million years. One was a sequence of post-Permian marine fossils from the late Jurassic on; the other was a similar sampling starting with the Ordovician (thus intersecting the initial Cambrian diversification). Rissing’s point concerned how the earlier impression of increasing diversity during those ranges appears to have been an artifact of collection and data analysis—not a paleontological fact. One might then legitimately wonder, as Rissing did, whether the seeming burst of phyletic diversity at the root of the Cambrian (whose splashiest fauna we know are preserved via exactly three Lagerstätten) might have been equally circumstantial. That was the context for Rissing’s opening comment that the Cambrian “explosion” may well have been “a dud.” How then had Johnson missed that Rissing had moved on to another subject? Well, the clue was his source: the hot link Johnson supplied to the “recent scientific paper” turned out not to be either the PNAS original or its commentary (even though both were available online at pnas.org). Rather it was to a May 22nd report on it by Carol Kaesuk Yoon in The New York Times. Yoon’s lead paragraph had been: “After the devastating mass extinction swept the planet 250 million years ago, the earth witnessed a nearly unabated increase in the variety of living organisms leading to unparalleled heights of diversity—or so paleontologists have long thought.”21 This stress in the newspaper summary may have led Johnson (whose Map of Time has not been heavily cluttered with data points) to think the primary source had dealt only with post-Permian marginalia, rather than with the broader sweep that included the Cambrian-Ordovician radiation.

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Troubles in Paradise-Downard All of which does put a certain harlequin cast to Johnson’s “Update” when he stressed the flawed character of newspaper reporting on evolution: My experience is that Darwinists tend to be very careless about what they say in such a context, and their colleagues rarely correct the blunders. One sees this nonchalant attitude towards evidence in the reactions of Darwinists to the exposure of textbook errors in Jonathan Wells’ book Icons of Evolution. They are indignant not at the long-standing presence of the errors, but at the exposure of the errors. As we’ll see next chapter, muffled source material plays an equally Byzantine role in Wells’ defense of his Icons of Evolution. But for now our lesson concerns the pitfalls of scholarly laziness, and how a reliance on parasitical citation can so trespass the boundaries of omission that it graduates into the still more serious sin of commission. If you don’t know much about a subject from firsthand experience, it is still possible to lull yourself into the illusion of erudition by relying on other people to do your homework for you. This can work tolerably well, provided you’ve been lifting from somebody who knew what they were talking about. That’s what Richard Milton did in Forbidden Science when he assembled an entire chapter parasitically from Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, quotes and all.22 But if you feign expertise in such a way, you run the risk of never acquiring the ability to winnow out faulty information, even when it stares you in the face. And with that, you’re just as likely to start sucking up arguments from people who haven’t a clue. That’s what Scott Huse appears to have done by expropriating Luther Sunderland’s creationist bibliography. 23 Or Milton again—ingenuously relying on Velikovsky partisans to tell him all about Velikovsky, or leaving to Henry Morris the grubby duty of compiling his dinosaur paleontology for him. 24 Such osmotic “research” can also appear in the form of a shiny veneer applied to Christian apologetics, as Susan Harding commented: “Preachers are not bound by intellectual property rights, and among them piracy is not a vice, it is a virtue. They may borrow aggressively from one another, appropriating exegeses, illustrations, stories, quotations, logics, style, tone, gestures, and even entire sermons without citation.”25 If you then couple such practices with Phillip Johnson’s aversion to Methodological Naturalism as a unifying analytical principle, you can find all sorts of science topics where it might be applied … and not only on the preferred field of Darwin-bashing so congenial to Johnson’s conservative Presbyterianism. Consider this revealing example from Milton’s Forbidden Science: It can be alleged for example, apparently with some justification, that I have rather gullibly accepted at face value the findings of researchers in very controversial and suspect areas of research, such as extra-sensory perception and psychokinesis, while not raising a finger to point at the undoubted charlatans and con-artists who inhabit the shadowy world in which there is money to be made out of people’s willingness to believe impossible things. Why have I defended the tests on Uri Geller, while omitting to point out that several serious researchers (including Geller’s own supporters) have expressed doubts about his performances, and that there is some evidence that he may have cheated on occasions (though not in the laboratory results reported here)?26 A dandy question … which Milton went on to circumvent as merely an ad hominem appeal, which he would ignore so as not to distract from those hard “laboratory results.” 27 But this begged the very methodological issue in dispute: whether the researchers had in fact been up to the task of preventing fraud.28 As with Velikovsky or Morris’ dinosaurs, Milton relied on investigators like Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff (then at the Stanford Research Institute) to assure him of their stringent protocols, and downplayed skeptical critics like James Randi who nominated Targ & Puthoff as “The Laurel and Hardy of Psi.”29 Then, exactly as he had with sedimentation rates,

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Troubles in Paradise-Downard Milton rode his spiraling certainties until he forgot even his own unspecified hint at “some evidence” of trickery, concluding: “In the case of Geller, there is no concrete evidence of fraud, merely suspicion.”30 Quite a mouthful here, given that Geller had on one occasion literally been caught on film pulling a fast one—and, again, Milton could in principle have known about it. 31 Add to that the historical circumstance that, in the intervening decades, Geller had not been going out of his way to establish his phenomenal abilities under circumstances tailored to rule out conjuring tricks. This returns us to the issue raised by Cremo & Thompson last chapter, where all evidence would be accorded “equal” treatment regardless of context. Instead of raking over past controversies, wouldn’t it be easier just to conduct new studies and thus claim all the glory fair and square? Indeed, were Geller legitimate, the easiest million dollars to make in the world would be to take the Amazing Randi up on his offer and accomplish his stunts right under the skeptics’ noses, under rigorous trick-proof procedures. But that hasn’t happened. 32 Stalking Milton’s attitude is the same refusal to play the theory game that hobbles Phillip Johnson’s side of the anti-Darwinian crusade. Milton runs parallel to Johnson in refusing to allow theoretical constraints a critical role in assessing the viability of empirical observations.33 It’s the attitude represented by physics declaring “perpetual motion” impossible on principle, meaning anyone claiming to have successfully accomplished such a thing must either be a fraud or an idiot. Part of this scientific reaction stems from a dogmatic streak adhering to the very success of the conventional rationalist view, which seems to have figured out almost every fundamental question already. Science writers like John Horgan have contributed to this esthetic somewhat by suggesting that all the answerable scientific questions have indeed been settled.34 But Milton presses way beyond that to cases that look poor no matter how you tilt them. Since he lacks a sufficiently broad standard whereby the evidence might be carefully evaluated, he dignifies them as equivalent to genuine scientific challenges.35 What Milton is undercutting here is the practical skepticism typified by the vampire problem posed at the beginning of chapter four, where present understanding is applied to rule out certain phenomena (at least pending better supporting data). What he has in mind for a replacement to the current modality is a bloated inflation of David Hume’s preference for empiricism over the constraints of a priori theorizing. That translates in Milton’s hands into an amnesiac science, where all approaches are left on the table as equally reasonable until they bump into observation or experiment—and maybe not even then, since today’s result can hardly dictate that of the morrow. This would seem right up the Theistic Realism alley, where theoretical constructs don’t even enter the picture after observation, let alone before. But just as Cremo & Thompson had some baggage in tow when pushing their epistemology, so too Milton’s theory-free Twilight Zone has a twist ending. Milton explained that “someone who— before 1969—wished to entertain the hypothesis that the Moon was made of rocks like the Earth’s, held a view which was neither more nor less rational or scientific than one who held the greencheese theory.”36 He means it. Fueled by this hyper-empiricism, Milton offers us a glimpse of what his Forbidden Science has in store. When it comes to enshrining opposition to blinkered materialism, Theistic Realism seems a pretty anemic player: I believe that it is this superstitious belief in a rational universe which is the unconscious motivation for rejecting anomalous natural phenomena. Scientific anarchy seems to be looming in the wings, waiting impatiently to make an entrance just as soon as we admit the truth of our observations; the reality of our experience. Admit that being born “under” Mars increases a child’s chances of being sporting—runs the unspoken fear—and science will fall to the ground amidst the ruins of a once-rational cosmos. This fear is entirely groundless. However marvellous or bizarre any particular fact of nature should turn out to be, the cosmos remains what it has always been. It cannot cease to be rational, because it has never been rational. It simply is. 37

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Certainly Milton inhabits such a non-rational cosmos, where sauropod dimensions fall under Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, and total solar eclipses conveniently turn up to blind the reader whenever contrary information happens by in source material. But one thing particularly stands out about how Milton frames his approach to scientific epistemology. No less than with the Four Horsemen of the Discovery Institute, Milton is someone drawn by the lure of the Revolution, that heady exhilaration that comes from thinking you are in on the ground floor of a great paradigm shift. 38 Even though Milton has no explicit religious convictions to defend—or perhaps because of it—he still puts himself at the front lines of a daring beachhead. In his case, it is a paraphysical Mystery deep enough to confound the most skeptical of dullards, which he pursues as tenaciously as Johnson hammers at his ecumenical Wedge. 39 Knowing that Milton has an underlying agenda to advance after all makes it easier to sort out the symbiotic relationship between the methodology of antievolutionism and the often-conflicting philosophies of the antievolutionists. It’s obviously not religion per se—since the Wedge and the Mystery function as interchangeable parts. But psychological need is another matter. Whenever an ideology requires creative information management to be successfully sustained, only one method will do, and it’s not a sound one. Which goes a long way to explain why the “Christian” apologetics of someone like D. James Kennedy can sound so much like that of, well … out and out occultism. A pertinent example of this cropped up in 1993 when Kennedy devoted one of his radio sermons to lambasting astrology. Whereas a Carl Sagan-style naturalistic skeptic would embark on a description of how flimsy astrological theory was, and explain the manifold ways in which psychological expectation guide the believer’s acceptance of the horoscopic prescriptions, Kennedy tread his own distinctive path. For him astrology is a satanic corruption of the Biblical notion that the heavens declare the Glory of God. In a performance worthy of any occultist, though, Kennedy takes the zodiac literally as “The Art Gallery of God.” He related the constellations explicitly to Christian lore: how Virgo represented the Virgin Mary, Libra was Jesus’ payment for sin, Scorpio depicted Satan, Sagittarius showed Christ as the conqueror in Revelation, Leo was Christ the Lion of Judah, and so forth.40 Recall here that Kennedy was talking about astronomical constellations, which are entirely arbitrary two-dimensional picture patterns overlaid on the three-dimensional topography of interstellar space. Different cultures have picked out their own sets, of course, and the names and attributes associated with them have undergone plenty of modification through the ages. The constellations of the particular western zodiac were well established by the time the astronomer/astrologer Ptolemy got around to cataloguing them in the 2nd century AD, and represented a Hellenistic spin on the assorted astronomical traditions of Mesopotamia and, to a lesser extent, ancient Egypt.41 The plain historical fact is that the figures being honored by the zodiac were those of classical mythology—not Christianity. Leo represented the Nemaean lion killed by Hercules, Virgo was the goddess of justice, Astrea, the daughter of Jupiter and Themis, while Sagittarius was something of a conflation of Crotus (a satyr who invented archery) with Jason’s tutor, the wise centaur Chiron (who had his own constellation). As for Scorpio, it signified the scorpion Juno used to kill the boastful hunter Orion. Although Athanasius’ The Life of St. Anthony (about AD 360) held that demons might manifest as scorpions, this was only on a list that included leopards, bears, horses, and wolves, along with figures variously human and chimerical. There was simply no obvious historical association between Satan himself and scorpions, but even if there were, Kennedy should have been most wary of pressing the analogy, for as it happens his redemptive Libra was also known in the Roman world of Biblical times as Chelae Scorpionis (the Scorpion’s Claws).42 Now it is relevant to note that this aspect of Kennedy’s philosophy circulates most obviously in his electronic propaganda. So unless you happened to regularly follow his appearances on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, or listen to the radio version on one of the many Christian radio stations around the country, you could easily mistake Kennedy’s professorial demeanor for the sort of sharp mind that goes with it.43 Which returns us to the lesson of Clifford Wilson—where a familiarity with someone’s full output is often essential to measuring the soundness of their

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methodology overall. And that suggests the converse: that it is a lot easier to cozy up to a fringe argument without knowing it, if you haven’t taken the effort to locate the belief on the grid of scholarly propriety. When Charlton Heston narrated “The Mysterious Origins of Man” was he any more aware of the world of Carl Baugh than Milton was as interviewee? Has Phillip Johnson any more of a clue about just how flaky D. James Kennedy can be, compared to his being impressed with the anthropology of Malcolm Bowden?44 Such scholarly astigmatism is consistent with something conservative Christians have often complained about—that the secular media ignore them, apart from controversies like abortion clinic bombings or corrupt evangelists. And there is much merit to this criticism. But the same process that relegates religious programming to a cable ghetto works to the advantage of their public reputation insofar as the stranger crannies of Christian apologetics are concerned. People outside the sectarian palisades are rarely exposed to the strident flame of Biblical prophetic analysis as they are to ancient astronauts or UFOs. If they were, the disparity between some Christian thinkers and unabashed occultism would be harder to defend. We might start with obvious areas, such as the occult practice of numerology (where people, places or things are assigned attributes based on how the letters of their names convert via some numerical code). This activity has a direct counterpart in the apocalyptic calculations used to tag people or institutions with the 666 number. 45 The hobby has a long and colorful history, as centuries of believers anticipating the “imminent” Second Coming have been unable to resist identifying the Beast with whomever happens to be the nuisance de jour.46 By the time one has plowed down far enough to run into the Adventist “Amazing Facts” road show identifying the Beast as the Catholic Church (Michael Behe, take heed!) there should be little doubt as to how closely some defenders of the faith follow the methodology of pseudoscience and occultism. 47 That this is no trivial matter epistemologically was noted by Paul Boyer in his trenchant analysis of 1700 years of apocalyptic certainties: “if the prophecies can be applied with equal validity to any historical situation, what becomes of their status as a divinely inspired foretelling of specific events?”48 And what becomes of the analytical mind when it is dulled to the point where this problem ceases to be one? This question hovers like Banquo’s ghost through all too much of the thinking that goes on in the modern conservative Christian subculture. Consider what is going on over on the occult side when Nostradamusites extol the seer’s prophetic skills. His murky quatrains and epistles function like Rorschach blots, wherein the interpreter extracts exactly what they desire. The accuracy of his predictions is always astounding, at least up until the publication date of the book (though the flashy failure of the world to suffer cataclysm in 1999 pulled the rug from one of his more famous dated quatrains). But that hardly slows down the believers, who have been rationalizing his writings for centuries, lubricated by an ability to contort the text on demand. If need be, quatrains may be spliced together, with the parts that don’t fit discarded. Strained interpretations are offered with a smile, while contrary opinions are conveniently ignored. Does this method sound at all familiar? Think of how Duane Gish sliced his way through the forensics of Archaeopteryx back in chapter two. Or Phillip Johnson and Martin Eger, carving up Philip Kitcher to avoid thinking about the educational threat posed by Creation Science. Zeno-slicing is not an occasional foible for an inaccurate philosophy—it is the inevitable and preferred course of action for anyone out to defend the indefensible. Since there is a serious lesson to be learned here, about the ubiquity of faulty method in venues otherwise ideologically distinct, permit me a few concrete examples to illustrate the pattern as it plays out for believers committed to a text’s prophetic accuracy. One of Nostradamus’ most frequently cited quatrains is VI:74, which spoke of a return to power (in an unidentified realm) of an unnamed woman (at some unspecified time) who would reign apparently till age seventy. Traditional Nostradamusites peg her as Queen Elizabeth I. But during the Second World War, Francophilic interpreters were salivating at the prospect of a restoration of the French monarchy, and so drafted the same quatrain to that completely different objective. Postwar, and with no blood royal showing up, the gears shifted again. One author had

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Troubles in Paradise-Downard VI:74 clearly predicting the repatriation of exiled anti-Fascist European liberals … while for another it obviously portended the ascension of Napoleon III a century before. 49 Like von Däniken, “The Incredible Discovery of Noah’s Ark” and “The Mysterious Origins of Man,” Nostradamus has also been honored by sporadic television interest. And in common with inept print scholarship, such shows suffer from the limitations of their source material. 50 For example, author John Hogue often pops up as the default Nostradamus expert, as on an episode of the recent Discovery Channel series, Mysteries of the Unexplained, aired (with unintended irony) on April 1st, 1998. Narrator James Colburn informed us that “Volume 9, Quatrain 90 declares, in 1937 an infernal power will rise against the church. This shall be the second antichrist.” The seer’s “chilling accuracy” was reinforced by newsreel footage of Hitler and Mussolini. The only problem was, IX:90 had said no such thing—and neither had Nostradamus’ letter to Henry II that was actually the mistaken source for the claim.51 Clearly Nostradamus’ prophetic reputation rests on an endemic mixture of sloppy scholarship and historical illiteracy.52 But if this sort of juvenile cut-and-paste is unacceptable methodology when occultists practice it, what is one to make of someone like Josh McDowell? An affable and sincere Christian, McDowell’s televangelism concentrates on a youth ministry (an upbeat sports motif often prevails on the set). In his popular 1970s book, Evidence That Demands a Verdict, McDowell set about documenting all the Old Testament messianic prophecies he could find, and precisely how Jesus had supposedly fulfilled them.53 His position was unequivocal: I personally have never heard of a single individual—who has honestly considered the evidence—deny that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of man. The evidence confirming the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ is overwhelmingly conclusive to any honest, objective seeker after truth. However, not all—not even the majority—of those to whom I have spoken have accepted Him as their Savior and Lord. This is not because they were unable to believe— they were unwilling to believe!54 How McDowell went about justifying this mirrors the Nostradamus model precisely. Among his sixty-one prominent instances of exact fulfillment was the famous “Potter’s Field” prophecy, which McDowell cited as involving only the single verse, Matthew 27:7. Customary Biblical wisdom links this to an Old Testament text, Zechariah 11:13, which mentioned thirty pieces of silver being given to a potter (though nothing about any field). McDowell chose to magnify its importance by slicing it in half first, offering it as his examples 35 (“Money to be Thrown in God’s House”) and 36 (“Price Given for Potter’s Field”). 55 Given how Matthew hadn’t localized this purported real estate transaction to the temple, McDowell was already stretching things. But the scholarly band snapped in the verses following, the ones McDowell had not cited, where Matthew specifically attributed this prophecy to Jeremiah. Since no such passage is known from that prophet, Matthew may have simply confused one for the other (though memory loss is an unattractive option for most defenders of Biblical inerrancy).56 Fortunately, literalists have Nostradamus logic at their disposal, and McDowell satisfied his messianic needs by scooping up Zechariah as the closet available match, and tossing aside those parts of Matthew that didn’t fit.57 Endeavoring to top his case with mathematical certainty, McDowell relied on another enthusiast, Peter Stoner, to figure how likely it was all these prophetic hits could have occurred by chance. Prophecy piled on prophecy, until the odds had accumulated to a withering 1 in 5.761059 … which is indeed more than all the stars in the universe. The weight of numbers had tipped the scales for Jesus. But like D. James Kennedy’s Libra, there was more to it than that. These “calculations” were junk mathematics of the most rudimentary kind. No explanation was made for how these probabilities were arrived at. The clincher was that two of the “successes” counted by Stoner were McDowell’s double-dipped “Potter’s Field.”58 Now how exactly does one calculate the probability of fulfillment (twice!) for a prophecy that wasn’t made to begin with? May we ask John Hogue?

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Like the Nostradamusites, McDowell is perfectly willing to lop off any Biblical text that doesn’t fit the hole he’s trying to cram it into. This occurred in a big way when he presented the conventional Biblical view concerning the “Immanuel” who was “born of a virgin” according to Isaiah 7:14, and seen as fulfilled in Jesus by the events of Matthew 1:18. Aware that “virgin” might mean only a young woman or girl—and thus, one of the more momentous translation errors in the Bible—McDowell focused on discounting that controversy. 59 In this way McDowell overlooked the far graver implications of the ten subsequent verses. In these Isaiah spoke of extensive butter and honey consumption (which for “Immanuel” would somehow confer profound moral insight). God would further perform as the Barber of Assyria (engaging in pate, foot and chin hair shaving), while causing shrubbery in deep ravines to be blanketed by an anomalous migration of Egyptian flies and Assyrian bees. Briars and thorns would replace vines on so widespread a scale as to provoke military occupation (presumably on account of the disrupted agricultural economy). 60 McDowell addressed none of this, let alone tender evidence any of these momentous things actually happened at the time of Jesus’ nativity. If they did not, either 90% of the text was irrelevant embroidery … or Jesus was not the prophesied Immanuel. 61 For me, the most tendentious of McDowell’s efforts to shore up Biblical prophecy, and the one that lands him firmly in the Nostradamus box, involves Jesus’ physical ascension recorded in Acts 1:9. In reference to this, McDowell quoted Psalms 68:18a thus: “Thou hast ascended on high….” But like Phillip Johnson’s Kitcher and Weinberg ellipses, McDowell’s omission was surgical, and depended on the archaic King James phrasing. Turning to the clearer RSV, the full Psalm reads: “Thou didst ascend the high mount, leading captives in thy train, and receiving gifts among men, even among the rebellious, that the Lord God may dwell there.” Thus the one doing the “ascending” was clearly not off the ground at any point—and could hardly have been the Lord, for whose personal appearance the way was being prepared.62 It is not unreasonable to think that anyone who could fail to see McDowell’s sloppy reasoning might be doing so because they suffer from that affliction themselves. And D. James Kennedy obligingly closes that circle for us: One of the best known apologists (defenders) of the Christian faith today is Josh McDowell, author of the immensely helpful Evidence That Demands a Verdict. But did you know that, as a college student, he was very skeptical about Christianity’s historicity? In fact, he spent some time on study leave at the British Museum specifically to refute the faith. He thought the task would be simple. A slam-dunk. A no-brainer. After a few weeks of intense study, he realized how wrong he was. He saw that the Christian faith is based on historical facts, available for anyone open-minded enough to discover them. After examining the historical evidence and seeing the changed lives of some college friends, he, too, became a Christian. For more than thirty years now, he has spoken all over the world to share the good news of Christ. He has argued in innumerable debates with unbelievers on issues related to Christianity, especially the historicity of Christ's resurrection, which is arguably the best attested fact of antiquity.63 My, oh my, how the poor British Museum does get picked on! As though the “truth” were to be given added cachet by their authority.64 From the lists of “great Christian scientists” (of bygone eras) to the contemporary daisy chains of Johnson citing Dembski recommending Behe referencing Denton extolling Johnson, the misplaced appeal to authority has always taken precedence over a forthright exploration of the underlying facts.65 Seeing how closely D. James Kennedy and Josh McDowell track the sorrier aspects of occultist logic, it is necessary to venture one step further, and consider how deeply this methodology runs in the worldview that inspires religious antievolutionism. The tendency on both sides has been to polarize the controversy as one of Religion versus Science … or God versus Matter. And because the vast majority of antievolutionists happen to be conservative Christians, with a lengthy frontier of specific doctrinal forts to defend, a lot of the

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Troubles in Paradise-Downard argument has legitimately turned on that very dichotomy. But there’s more to it than just noticing that Young Earth creationists like Henry Morris or Kent Hovind are irrevocably committed to a literal Adam & Eve and a global Flood because the Bible says so, and observing how merrily they rearrange the available natural facts to fit. In their own ways, all Biblical antievolutionists man the same parapets.66 Biblical Inerrancy: A Madness to their Method Viewed methodologically, though, the next move is to ask how have these believers in Biblical authenticity come to be so certain about that base in the first place? Put that way, Biblical creationism turns into a subsidiary activity of traditional exegesis. For it turns out that the methodological cudgels used against evolution have long been in play to sustain Biblical inerrancy, on which bedrock the controversial scientific and philosophical positions rest. 67 And therein lies a permanent source of trouble: the very act of challenging Biblical creationism on the evolution issue treads on the toes of a mode of reasoning ultimately required to maintain fundamental tenets of worship.68 While this problem isn’t going to go away, or get any less touchy, it does have to be understood. The first thing to get straight is how formidable a topological role the Bible plays for the traditional believer. For someone like D. James Kennedy, the “Rock of Ages” is no idle metaphor: The Holy Bible forms the foundation of our faith. It is more than a book. As Christians, we believe it to be perfect—more powerful than a split atom, more true than death and taxes, and more reliable than the most sober and studied historian. We believe, in fact, the Bible contains nothing less than the very words of God. Our faith—our very lives—are staked on the trustworthiness of the holy Scriptures.69 With such stakes as that, one can hardly appeal to the Bible decisively once you start letting fumbles in, even little ones.70 So there is an unavoidable pressure to somehow “reconcile” any seeming contradictions. How that trick is accomplished is where the reaction to Biblical error turns into a big methodological deal. For as William James caustically observed of Karl Marx’s logical forebear Hegel way back in 1879, “One who is willing to allow that A and not-A are one, can be checked by few farther difficulties in Philosophy.”71 Add to this a curious absolutism that prevails even among believers who do not consider themselves of an especially “literalist” bent: that either everything in the Bible is true, or nothing is.72 Australian apologist Ian Wilson typified this esthetic in a breathless run-on summary: Either the whole “shebang”—the Bible, Jesus’s long foretold Messiahship, his unearthly return from death, “near-death experiences” and our sense of something death-transcending behind our “bones and flesh”—either all these are just moonshine, in which case both the Bible and this book have been a waste of time and effort, or they are mutually corroborative evidence that there is some unearthly dimension behind our “bones and flesh”. Either the whole thing is bunk, or there really is some Being—named “Yahweh”, “Jesus”, “I AM”, “God” or whatever—who longs for you to turn your mind to some greater attention to Him/Her.73 For those dwelling on such a Biblical landscape, dealing with the philosophical problems and technical glitches presented in the Old and New Testament requires very special handling. While poetry and metaphor can be accepted as part of the Biblical style, one thing that is definitely not allowed is the idea that any historical or doctrinal statements can be explicitly wrong. This in turn leads to the secular corollary: that anything external to the text that appears to conflict with its teachings cannot be right. Thus it is no coincidence that modern defenders of “the whole shebang”

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are (1) usually opposed to evolution, and (2) are equally certain there are no contradictions anywhere in the Sacred Scrolls. D. James Kennedy represented this position from his multimedia pulpit in September 2000: How many times I have heard people say, oh, the Bible is filled with errors or contradictions, and I have found that the unanimous, ah, verdict is always the same, whenever I simply say, oh, that’s very fascinating. I’ve studied it for 35 years—would you mind showing me where they are. And of course, some of ‘em take it in their hands and they are totally perplexed, dumbfounded—they haven’t the faintest idea where to look. 74 Which is a pretty amazing statement to make, given that the Bible isn’t “inerrant” … period. It quite obviously contains mutually exclusive statements, as many a skeptical scholar has pointed out over the years. 75 Some of these are fairly trivial typographical errors—such as a king ascending the throne when he was eight in one version, but with his age just as explicitly given as eighteen in another.76 Others are more theologically perplexing, at least if taken at face value. For example, the uncertainty about whether it was “God” or “Satan” who inspired David to undertake a divisive census of Israel.77 Now the lighter typographical goofs would be no big deal for a purely human document … but the Bible isn’t supposed to be a purely human document, as Rev. Kennedy et al. are wont to remind us. In a counterpart to Phillip Johnson’s scientific exclusionary rule (where if it messes up anywhere, it has to be rejected in toto), for the inerrantist even minor oversights loom in a way they would not in conventional historical scholarship. And if the error isn’t “minor”—what then? What if it cuts at a major theological underpinning, something potentially serious enough to rattle the very foundations of the belief? As we’ll see, there are a few of those, too. But first, let’s see how “inerrancy” is defended in the simple cases. There are two major options for believers to deal with inconsistencies, and these depend on whether they approach the Bible from a “liberal” or “conservative” direction. I put those terms in quotation marks because they don’t necessarily translate into their political analogs. 78 The Bible may be thought of as an extensive recipe for chocolate cake, except where the critical ingredient “chocolate” is occasionally replaced by “cement.” The “conservative” accepts the divine recipe as given (including how terrible the resulting dessert can taste). But since that’s evidently how God wants things, that’s how it’s going to be! The “liberal” approach is to submerge the problem in a larger spiritual truth. Reminding us that people in those days hardly understood how colloidal chemistry functioned in baking, the ancient authors may be forgiven their occasional lapses in specifying suitable ingredients. Besides, the important “liberal” lesson to glean from the preserved recipe is that God wants you to have cake.79 So while both sides rationalize away problems, the “liberal” exegete is able to slough off Biblical contradictions in a cavalier way that the “conservative” will not—though whether this approach is any less ad hoc than the literalist position is arguable.80 What it does mean is that the “conservative” has no option but to fall back on whatever analytical tools are required to whittle any observed “contradictions” down to size. 81 To see how closely all this tracks the antievolution template, we may start with the example of the North Carolina creation study group, that gang that lacked the curiosity to look things up.82 On that model, one way around the problem is to simply ignore it. As one confident young Christian senior at Duke University put it in 1999, “When confronted with the thought that (gasp!) there might be evidence contrary to the Gospel, God challenged me through other believers to develop my the [sic] relationship with Christ on a level of faith—not facts. Nothing can shake me from my belief in God now because I know Him. Not because I know about him.”83 Denial also appears to be the preferred option for Creationism Lite, as exemplified by William Dembski and Phillip Johnson.84 Indeed, one particularly amusing illustration of this turned up in the way Johnson thought to conclude a chapter on “A Real Education in Evolution” in Defeating Darwinism. If you notice where his stated goal began, and how promptly he trotted off to familiar turf (ending as vanguard of the revolution), Johnson sounds like some hapless astronaut trying to

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Troubles in Paradise-Downard lift off from a high gravity planet. Only he doesn’t have nearly enough fuel to achieve orbit … and so performs a comically shallow ballistic arc straight into the floor of the same small crater: Critical Thinking is Good for Religion Too Every scientific materialist who reads this will understandably want to ask: “Are you willing to apply baloney detecting to religion, as well as science?” The answer is (emphatically) yes! I can’t think of a better way to introduce students to Christianity than to invite them to read the Gospels with care and to ask all the tough questions. I’m also not particularly worried about how they answer those questions the first time through. Dealing with the tough questions is a lifelong business, and the most important educational point is not to try to spoonfeed students with oversimplified answers that won’t stand the tests of time and experience. Here are two examples of the kinds of issues I’d like young people to begin to think about. 6. The problem of suffering. One of the seeming advantages of Darwinism is that it makes it unnecessary to ask why God permits the innocent to suffer and (sometimes) the wicked to prosper. In a materialistic universe, moral arbitrariness is only to be expected. As Richard Dawkins puts it, “Nature is not interested one way or the other in suffering, unless it affects the survival of DNA.” Some religious people actually like Darwinism because they think it gets God off the hook. If (for some reason) the divine plan involved creating by means of scientific laws, then God couldn’t intervene to prevent suffering without spoiling his grand scheme. I don’t find that convincing, but it’s clear that some Darwinists believe in their theory less because of the scientific evidence than because they have theological or philosophical objections to supernatural creation. Of all the errors of scientific materialism, the silliest is that resolution of the National Academy of Sciences that religion and science are separate realms that should never be considered in the same context. On the contrary, evolutionary scientists are obsessed with the “God question,” and the problem of suffering is one important aspect of that question. I would tell students that none of the usual answers to the problem of suffering is entirely satisfactory. I’d want my students to have some familiarity with the classic treatments of the problem, especially the book of Job and the Grand Inquisitor section of Feodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, as well as a good Christian apologetic like C. S. Lewis’s The Problem of Pain. I’d want them to read the Psalms and the Gospels with the problem fully in mind, and think about whether and how the suffering and resurrection of Jesus help with it. I’d want them to understand that some of the appeal of Darwinism stems from the classic philosophical objections to the doctrine that the world is governed by a Creator who loves us and cares about what we do. Above all, I’d want them to face the fact that if science has its unsolved problems, so does religion. We see through a glass darkly—but what glass should we try to see through? 7. The problem of faith. One of the illusions of scientific materialism is its insistence that materialists don’t have faith commitments. Faith is not something some people have and others don’t. Faith isn’t something opposed to reason. Faith is something that everybody needs to get started in any direction, and to keep going in the face of discouragement. Reason builds on a foundation of faith. For example, scientific materialists have faith that they will eventually find a materialistic theory to explain the origin of life, even though the experimental evidence may be pretty discouraging for now. Because they have faith in their theory, Darwinists believe that common ancestors for the animal phyla once lived

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Troubles in Paradise-Downard on the earth, even though those ancestors can’t be found. Niles Eldredge calls himself a “knee-jerk neo-Darwinist” in spite of the invertebrate fossil record— because he is convinced, on philosophical grounds, that the theory must be true. That’s every bit as much of a faith commitment as the belief of a young-earth creationist that all radiometric dating must be wrong because it contradicts the literal words of Genesis—and because it is a lot easier to deal with the problem of suffering if pain and death first entered the world after human beings had sinned. Given that every position has its difficulties, where should we put our faith? To use the words that Jesus taught us, what is the foundation of solid rock, and what is the foundation of sand? The Christian says that the rock is God, and we should trust in the goodness of God all the more when the presence of evil and suffering inclines us to doubt. The materialist says that the rock is matter, and that we should never move from an unshakable faith in science and materialism even when we begin to be discouraged by the difficulties of explaining all the things that do exist without allowing a role to a Creator. Beginning a New Century—and a New Millennium Whatever their faith commitments, good thinkers ought to be dissatisfied about the way things stand at the present time. The evidence that can survive baloney detecting isn’t likely to satisfy either materialists or creationists. It seems for now as if new forms appeared mysteriously and by no known mechanism at various widely separated times in the earth’s history. Maybe we’ll be stuck with a mystery like that indefinitely, but I think it more likely that the twenty-first century will see a scientific revolution that will completely change our understanding of the history of life. If I’m right about that, the chance to participate in discovering that new understanding should be a thrilling prospect for young people looking forward to a career in science. What makes science sound boring is the impression the books give that the important things have already been discovered and all there is left to do is fill in the details. Showing young people that there is a lot we don’t know—and that we may even be dead wrong about some of the things we think we do know—is the way to fire their imaginations. I don’t know what new theories the future may bring, but I think I know where the revolution will start. It will start with the realization that life is not the product of mindless natural forces. Life was designed.85 How Johnson’s “mystery” stacks up against Milton’s Twilight Zone, I’ll leave the reader to decide. But it is instructive to learn that Johnson apparently thinks that applying the baloney detector to his religion and asking those “tough questions” consists of pointing out how inadequate scientific materialism is in answering them!86 The clear sweep of his remarks was to switch literal Biblical creationism over onto a siding, sparing himself the inconvenience of having to take a position on any of the scriptural arguments (like the Flood) that Bible believers are supposed to pay attention to. Or decide whether parts of the Bible really do contradict one another, and figure out what that might mean for the theology. In this respect Johnson is content to shovel large swaths of D. James Kennedy’s worldview right down the same “meaningless concession” slot that has swallowed speciation and the reptilemammal transition.87 All of which does put rather a manic recoil to Johnson’s “ah shucks” assertion earlier in the chapter that “You need to turn your baloney detectors on yourselves. It hurts a lot at first, but eventually you will learn to enjoy it. Trust me—I’ve tried it!”88 Which was particularly ironic, since at the very time Johnson was extolling the virtues of Theistic Realism baloney detecting in Defeating Darwinism, D. James Kennedy was offering up a prime slice of it (served with a big dollop of rancid pseudoscientific genetic mustard) in Skeptics Answered:

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One of the objections I hear the most is, “Where did Cain get his wife?” Cain, of course, was Adam and Eve’s son who murdered his brother, Abel. Genesis says that Cain went to live in the land of Nod, which was East of Eden, and there he took a wife. Where did this wife come from? The answer is simple. In Genesis 5:3 we find that “Adam lived one hundred and thirty years, and begot a son in his own likeness, after his image, and called his name Seth.” Then, in the next verse, it states, “After he begot Seth, the days of Adam were eight hundred years; and he had sons and daughters.” It’s quite obvious that Cain’s wife was his sister. You might object, saying that it’s forbidden in the Scriptures to marry one’s sister. Yes, but we need to be careful about ex post facto laws—making laws after the event. The law forbidding such marriages was passed several thousand years later. You might point out, “If one marries his sister, he is liable to have a very strange child.” That is true today, but evidently the gene pool was rich enough at the beginning not to constitute a problem. In a similar way, other objections to the Bible are easily answered. If you are troubled with Bible questions like these, I recommend investing in a good resource such as Gleason Archer’s Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, or a much older but still reliable book, John W. Haley’s classic Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible.89 We’ll see about Gleason Archer in a bit. But the import of Kennedy’s venture into human population genetics brings us to a familiar lesson: it is possible to believe one has a functioning “baloney detector” and even turn it on with impunity now and then … if no actual baloney is ever run under it to detect. That can occur in “willing neither to defend nor abandon” mode by refusing to even look up examples of contradiction when confronted with them (I personally know of Christians who have done exactly that). A parallel approach is to dismiss the problem without detailed examination, such as was done in the recent apologetic, The Jesus Crisis.90 And then there is the “meaningless concession” of acknowledging errors in specific cases as though this didn’t fracture the general principle of relying on the Bible as the Rock of Ages.91 This maneuver can draw on a Janus-faced ability to switch modes at critical junctures and not take the Bible “literally,” allowing textual oddities to be arbitrarily downsized as figurative.92 Should the text actually be figurative, all the better … for then the tactical option noted at the start of the chapter may be followed: attack only these “weak spots” that can be easily disposed of as depending on strained interpretation of obviously poetic text. D. James Kennedy fielded that option too: “Obviously, if you had two manuscripts and one of them said that Jesus went into a city and the other one said Jesus went out of the city, you would not know whether He went in or out, so that becomes an important issue.”93 This was an especially trivial “weak case” for Kennedy to comment on, compounded as it was by being a hypothetical example rather than a real textual discordance. But there is clearly an attraction to the “weak case” approach, found as it is from the breezy apologetics of ex-atheist Lee Strobel to the unctuous prophecy-hunting televangelism of Jack and Rexella Van Impe.94 It is also how some creationists have approached the problem—by which means OEC Hugh Ross and YEC Kent Hovind end up looking like methodological twins separated at birth. 95 Such evasion need not be intentional, though. Much as antievolutionists with the reptilemammal transition, it is likely that many defenders of Biblical inerrancy genuinely don’t know about the “hard cases” because of their Miltonian proclivity to rely on defenders to filter the controversy for them secondarily, rather than wading into the critical fray on their own.96 This process is easily abetted by the failure of some Bible concordances to “teach the controversy” (to borrow a recent catchphrase popularized by the Intelligent Design set). Since the believer with a scholarly bent can consult such resources without running the risk of having their certainties challenged, they may absorb their theological insouciance subliminally.97

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All these are pretty threadbare excuses, of course, given that a serious scholar ought to have been noticing these things on their own, by the very act of reading the Bible. Indeed, I had no trouble running into a lot of them back when I was in Methodist Sunday school—though that came from following the verse cross references tucked along the bottom margin of my RSV Bible rather than anything I heard from the teachers.98 And that’s evidently where I was making my “mistake.” For paying attention to the cross references is not what Zeno slicers are primed to do— especially if they are inerrantists unable to tolerate exceptions to their conviction that either everything in the Bible is true, or nothing is. If you want to convince yourself that therapsids aren’t intermediate between reptiles and mammals, carving the controversy to bits so that the salient evolutionary pattern cannot be seen is advisable. But it’s downright essential if you want to avoid imperiling your soul, as your most cherished religious convictions are eroded by concatenating skepticism about the reliability of Scripture—or the quirky methodology of the people who wrote it. Here is where the naturalistic assumption of the “vampire problem” merges with the exigencies of the Map of Time: the principles and characteristics of people today are (and should by necessity be) applicable to the past. This is a counterpart of the uniformitarian assumption that guides historical geology, only extending far beyond the parochial interests of any single belief system. Is it possible for people to believe things that aren’t true? You bet. How then do such things happen? Don’t we have legitimate standards to apply here? Phillip Johnson recognized the issue in Reason in the Balance, albeit translated into manageable terms: “It is not so much that any single finding undermines their faith; rather, the dayto-day practice of thinking in naturalistic terms about academic subjects makes it awkward to think differently when it comes to religion.”99 Only there’s more to the case than just naturalistic scruples. The core principles of sound historical reasoning are at issue. We may commence the logic chain with a suitably “awkward” incident. There is no question that apologetic fervor can drive people to the silliest of mistakes, especially when caught up in the zeal of spinning a good preacher’s yarn. During one 1990s sermon, radio evangelist David Jeremiah decided to use the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens as a cautionary theme—except the two times he mentioned the mountain’s location, he gave it as being in Oregon. I easily understood how it was possible for the San Diego preacher to have made that slip: the media reports on the eruption were channeled through the affiliates in the nearest major city, which happened to be Portland, just across the Columbia River from the erupting Washington volcano. Still, Jeremiah must never have consulted a map.100 Now if he could displace an entire mountain, how can we be so sure Jeremiah has properly evaluated all the other “facts” in his hermeneutics? And why then should we expect the devout of earlier times to be inherently more scrupulous than Jeremiah (or Gish or Phillip Johnson) today? One way to avoid the issue is to assert that the primary authors were somehow immune from such human foibles—inoculated against error by the Holy Spirit in a way our End Time Jeremiah evidently wasn’t. Why that dispensation should be applied turns into a circular defense of appealing to the claim of Biblical inerrancy in order to justify treating it as inerrant. For instance, in the ironically titled Don’t Check Your Brains at the Door, apologists Josh McDowell & Bob Hostetler blithely dismissed references to “apparent discrepancies” in the Bible (none of which they discussed) primarily because “the Lord Himself believed in the accuracy of the Scriptures.” 101 Over on the natural science front, Old Earth creationist Robert Newton similarly rested his rejection of YEC “creation with apparent age” partly on the reasoning that it suggested a “fictitious history” of galactic events. “Since the Bible tells us that God cannot lie, I prefer to interpret nature so as to avoid having God give us fictitious information.”102 While that sort of reasoning serves the needs of inerrant apologetics just fine, it inevitably misses the crucial epistemological lesson of casual goofs like Jeremiah’s migrating volcano. His mistake stood out as it did only because we have atlases (and personal experience) available to show the contrary. But what if we didn’t have those sources … how then could anyone know long after the fact that he had gone astray?

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You can see how this difficulty pertains to assessing the historical side of the Bible, let alone giving credence to the miraculous parts of the story. No less than with the taphonomy of Lagerstätten specimens, the Biblical apologist is hip-deep in the Rules of the Game. Had we an equally rich variety of original material regarding the Bible, of course, against which the scholarly accuracy of the authors could be directly measured, it would be possible to venture a more conclusive judgment for them too. But that is far from the case, especially as you burrow deeper into the history, past the direct documentary evidence of archives or monument and coin inscriptions … and into the realm of pure archaeological inference (as clues to cultural identity show up in pottery fragments or architectural ruins). For example, there appears to be very little independent corroboration (historical or archaeological) for the existence of the traditional Davidic kingdom. 103 Venture back a few more centuries to the conquest of Canaan, and the record looks ever murkier, as archaeologists wrestle over the skimpy indications of variations in the local population that might indicate the arrival of a wave of Hebrew immigrants.104 As for the seminal (and miracle-laden) Exodus, trying to relate the cursory Biblical text to the even leaner physical evidence turns into a perilous game of circumstantial shuffleboard.105 This is especially so when cataclysmic natural phenomena are dragged in to explain the Ten Plagues and the Pillar of Fire: from Velikovsky’s cometary Venus flyby to the eruption of Thera favored by Ian Wilson and others. For the “conservative” believer, it would have seemed easier to skip the pitfalls of “misplaced concreteness” and simply call these things miracles and be done with it.106 For all practical purposes then, the Bible rests as its own primary confirmation. But this is not how apologists see things, especially when assisted by a Miltonian scholarly sensibility. The confident Lee Strobel is a case in point. After quoting Craig Blomberg on how archaeology had supposedly corroborated the New Testament (“particularly the gospel of John”), Strobel stretched the limit of his investigative sinews: “That was a concise and helpful answer. However, while I had no reason to doubt Blomberg’s assessment, I decided it would be worthwhile to do some further research along these lines. I picked up my pen and jotted a reminder to myself in the margin of my notes: Get expert opinions from archaeologist and historian.” This turned out to be more likeminded traditionalist authorities (Bruce Metzger on a fragment of John’s gospel from the early 2nd century, and archaeologist John McCray on Mark, Luke, and John’s reliability). It simply didn’t occur to Strobel that he ought to interview scholars with opinions differing from the ones he wanted so to corroborate.107 The yearning to validate stories that might have been partly (or wholly) made up is by no means a private preserve of Biblical apologists like Lee Strobel or Ian Wilson, of course. The Atlantis legend offers an obvious and intermittently ridiculous parallel showing just how far inventive minds can go in pursuit of the mythic past. 108 But this condition of evidential retrofitting naturally occurs whenever a story just might be true. Take the many efforts to supply factual itineraries for legendary sea voyages. Trying to interpret the accounts of Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece, Homer’s Odyssey, or the aquatic sojourns of the medieval St. Brendan even half literally has produced a large body of works that are usually entertaining, occasionally plausible— and frequently completely contradictory.109 The Vinland voyages of Leif Erickson have been subjected to a particularly heavy load of overly meticulous interpretation. The point of relevance for Biblical analysis is that the trend among the more fervent authors in this area favored what turned out to be the wrong spot (Cape Cod) rather than the Newfoundland locale where the Vikings really did have their one and only American base. 110 Curiously enough, this Vinland controversy circles right back into the world of Ian Wilson. For just as L’Anse au Meadow was hitting the field of Viking archaeology, Yale University bought a supposedly medieval map of the Atlantic that conveniently showed the Viking Vinland parked out where America ought to be (shades of Piltdown Man!). Enthusiasm over the find waned, however, when technical analyst Walter McCrone determined that the ink of the “Vinland Map” was apparently modern.111 And guess which technical analyst would later detect signs of paint on the Shroud of Turin when he was a member of the STURP commission brought in to determine whether or not it was a medieval forgery? Thus a recent dispute over the forensic skills of

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Troubles in Paradise-Downard McCrone draws the Vinland Map saga into Ian Wilson’s orbit as a way of countering criticism of the Shroud’s authenticity … more ideas with more consequences. 112 But modern interpretive originality of the Strobel/Wilson stripe isn’t the only factor muddying the waters of Biblical studies. When we move on to New Testament times, a special wrinkle affects coverage of that period: besides the normal vicissitudes of documentary wear-and-tear over the centuries, there is also the undisputed matter of the active destruction of unacceptable texts (heretical and pagan) by early Christian zealots. Conventional Biblical scholars are more than aware of the scale of the problem. For example, Paul Johnson noted how “No book of Marcion’s has survived. He quarreled with the Roman Christian authorities in AD 144 and went east. Later he was denounced as a heretic by Tertullian, earliest and noisiest of the Christian witch-hunters. This means his works have not survived, except in extracts quoted in books attacking him.”113 A similar situation involves Origen and Celsus. Origen (c. 185-c. 254) was an extraordinary (albeit peculiar) prodigy who created Biblical theology all but single handed, fashioning a pacific Christian philosophy to supplant the Platonism that infused his own thinking. 114 Despite his being a prolific writer, some of Origin’s works have still been lost, while others are known only in paraphrases. That applies in spades to Celsus, an early pagan critic of Christianity. As atheist George Smith curtly observed, “Although there were numerous early critiques of Christianity, only that of Celsus is extant, and it is incomplete. It is not as if Christian censors failed to destroy this critique along with the others; rather, we have what we have because Origen of Alexandria quoted Celsus at length in the course of rebutting his arguments.”115 This naturally raises a scholarly question. Was Origen quoting Celsus accurately, fairly representing the strongest of his arguments? In the same sort of way, perhaps, that modern Christian apologists tackle skeptics today—or creationists deal with their critics? Without the originals to compare, we have absolutely no way of knowing. Which makes it more than marginally interesting (though hardly surprising) that works explicitly based on the historical correctness of the Bible narrative, such as The Jesus Crisis or Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ and The Case for Faith somehow manage to skip this part of the historiographic puzzle. 116 All these concerns do not prove a priori that the events of David’s dynasty or the Exodus or Jesus’ Resurrection were imaginary, or that any particular scripture passage would necessarily be wrong. But how much of these stories fall under the “Washington chopping down the cherry tree” creative morality play category cannot be objectively assessed without a substantial body of independent corroborative evidence. So, like it or not, here we are confronting the history of the problem … which, you may have noticed, is only an extension of the “map of time” governing the paleontological evidence over on the evolutionary side of the fence. And just as antievolutionists have employed Zeno slicing to silence the Darwinian implications of natural history, so too have Biblical apologists (often the same people) shown a remarkable propensity for disconnecting the historical narrative as a way of preserving a parallel set of nonnegotiable doctrines. At this point we may recall a pair of witnesses from chapter two: how one simple question on the “facts” of Creation elicited two all too simple answers from the Gablers. Well … there’s a humdinger of a query regarding the ancestry of Jesus’ “father” Joseph, as so attested by that inerrant pair, Matthew and Luke. To ask, “From which son of David was Joseph descended?” gets different answers depending on which Gospel you read. Matthew plainly tells us Joseph was descended from David’s son Solomon.117 But Luke just as clearly assures us that Joseph really traced his lineage from another of David’s sons … Nathan. 118 Both of them can’t be right. Or can they? A = !A? The dilemma here was recognized early on. In the 3rd century AD, Julius Africanus explicitly defended the historical accuracy of the Davidic ancestry of Jesus on the grounds that to admit any error would mean one or both of the evangelists had spoken falsely. Over the next century, St. Augustine in Alexandria and John Chrysostom (Bishop of Constantinople) firmed up the disavowal that the Gospel authors could ever have been in error. 119 From then on Christian scholarship has teetered on the edge of a fateful brink: both Matthew and Luke had to be “right” in recording what

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Troubles in Paradise-Downard they did, otherwise one might be tempted to start questioning everything they wrote … or whether “Matthew” and “Luke” were the authors at all. 120 Modern apologists face that same choice over a millennium and a half later, only now running along the well-rutted tracks laid by the “liberal” and “conservative” camps. With characteristic aplomb, the dreaded Jesus Seminar passed over the relevant passages in The Five Gospels without commenting on their destabilizing discrepancy.121 Other “liberal” commentators mirror the approach Cynthia Giles took with the Renaissance tarot, scratching their heads and musing on what a sublime Mystery all this poses.122 But there is no “mystery” to it: A and !A can’t both be true. So, if taken at face value, at least one of the genealogies must be wrong.123 Since that only lands the “conservative” back where they cannot be (the admission that the Bible isn’t inerrant) a different chain of reasoning must come into play. Somehow it is that “face value” that has to be rearranged: the appearance of contradiction that is causing the trouble. Here a little “frobbing” helps … the sort of thing Duane Gish did when he relabeled a few early mammals as therapsids. Simply reclassify Luke’s genealogy as actually applying to Joseph’s wife, Mary. Like Flood Geology, this kills two theological birds with one semantic stone. It not only dissolves the contradiction—it allows Jesus to be physically descended from David, via Nathan through his mother, in a way that clearly would not apply to his “father” Joseph, of Solomon’s line. 124 The only difficulty with this clever interpretation is that Luke quite obviously hadn’t mentioned Mary’s name, but rather specifically started the sequence with Joseph, of Heli. Which puts the “conservative” in something of a bind: who exactly granted proponents of this position (spanning the Christian gamut from evangelicals to Mormons) editorial privilege to rewrite the New Testament?125 I’d always thought that sort of thing was frowned on. Or at least it would be, if the “Rules of the Game” were being followed stringently. But it is at this stage that the Biblical inerrantist tends to stop asking such annoying questions, not unlike the tarot enthusiasts covered in the first chapter, when probing too near the edge of the shaky underpinnings of cartomancy. Since both Matthew and Luke were going to such detail in their genealogies, it would be good to know from where they were getting their material. Either Matthew or Luke’s genealogy might have been all or partly correct—or completely wrong. Without a way to check their provenance, though, there’s no way of knowing. 126 Of course, even if both Matthew and Luke had bungled their respective lists, this wouldn’t preclude Jesus having been descended from David after all. But the idea that a “correct” genealogy was floating out there someplace, one which had somehow been overlooked by the two Gospel writers most concerned with pressing the subject, strains the traditionalist who depends on the extant Bible being a selfcontained (and non-contradictory) repository of essential Truth. It also begs a further question: why were Matthew and Luke going to all this trouble in the first place? Here at least the answer is both known and revealing: whoever the Messiah was to be, a sign of his qualification for kingship would be his Davidic lineage. And just to clinch the deal, the Messiah would also be born in the same place as David … in Bethlehem.127 And guess which two Gospel writers provide the only detailed (and again conflicting) accounts of Jesus’ eschatologically vital Bethlehem birth? Matthew and Luke again. 128 Like the Madagascar tenrecs, are you getting a pattern here? At this point the naturally skeptical mind would at least entertain the possibility that Matthew and Luke might have been getting into all this muddle because they were trying to supply Jesus with the appropriate messianic credentials … retroactively. But that is an impossible situation for the believer to even consider, since it effectively disqualifies Jesus as the Messiah if he weren’t simultaneously of Davidic stock and born in Bethlehem. Starting with Matthew’s turn on the Nativity, we have a mixture of Christmas pageant and horror flick. First the famous “wise men from the East” show up, following the Star of Bethlehem in search of the future king of Israel. That naturally aroused the ire of the tyrannical King Herod, who (solely according to Matthew) ordered a slaughter of infants to do away with this potential threat to his tottering throne. Except an angel intervened to warn Joseph to flee with the family to Egypt, thus saving the baby Jesus.129 All this sounds not unlike what is supposed to have happened

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Troubles in Paradise-Downard to Moses, set adrift to escape Pharaoh’s similar command so long before (in that case, to stem a population surge in his recalcitrant Hebrew slave labor crew). Which makes the skeptic wonder whether Matthew (or some of his sources) might have borrowed a bit from that earlier story for dramatic effect.130 But that potential crib is not where the big problem comes in. If Matthew’s tale is accurate, Jesus was apparently born several years before the death of Herod the Great … and that occurred in 4 BC. It is one benchmark that can’t be moved.131 Enter Luke’s account to complicate things. Here we have no mention of Herod or infanticide to clutter the reverent Christmas tableau. Instead, Joseph and Mary are forced to take up temporary residence in the lowly manger, occasioned (solely according to Luke) because the family had to return to the ancestral family digs of Bethlehem to be counted in the Roman census ordered by Emperor Augustus. Now a feather in the cap of Luke’s reputation as a historian comes from the fact that such a census had indeed taken place, exactly when Luke said it did: when a certain Quirinius was governor of Syria. There was a census then because the cruelty of Herod’s dynasty and his equally disagreeable successors led to a serious agrarian revolt that prompted the Romans to dispense with the fiction of a separate Israeli client state, and formally annex the territory as a province. So Luke’s memory would seem to be running OK … except that the annexation that brought on the Quirinius-era census took place around AD 6. Which is roughly a dozen years after Jesus was supposedly born late in the reign of King Herod according to Matthew. 132 Now we have a problem. For the secular historian there is a perfectly straightforward scholarly solution: you draw on all the available evidence to reach a reasonable (albeit tentative) inference about what might have happened. That’s what Robin Lane Fox did when he decided Luke had been the one who probably got the time of Jesus’ birth right: about AD 6. Lane Fox reached that conclusion by comparing Luke’s observation with a few fixed (and independent) anchors. Josephus indicated that John the Baptist had been arrested late in AD 33 (or early 34), after the marriage of the tetrarch Herod Antipas and Herodias (a pair whose testy domestic life inspired the scandalously lurid 1905 opera Salome by Richard Strauss). Knowing that Pontius Pilate governed Judea only from 26 to 36, Lane Fox figured that Jesus was most probably crucified on Friday, March 30, AD 36. 133 Fine … only that would mean Matthew’s Herod-era Nativity story wasn’t true. And that is not going to work for Biblical inerrancy, is it—especially when applied to the reliability of the infallible evangelists. For if Matthew could concoct that episode (much as David Jeremiah relocated Mt. St. Helens), then how much else of the Gospel can be taken as, well … gospel? As these skeptical questions accumulate, we can see how historical analysis of the Bible operates as a counterpart of Phillip Johnson’s dichotomy of Methodological Naturalism versus Theistic Realism. Just as “MN” isn’t where Intelligent Design is running aground, but rather on the deeper shoals of the “Rules of the Game,” so too Historical Criticism represents only the surface manifestation of a more basic issue about how historical information is to be assessed. In any other venue than a religious document, Lane Fox’s scholarly approach would be taken for granted. But because that method requires falling back on either a “liberal” or “conservative” circumlocution to waylay Biblical difficulties, we get more Zeno slicing when it comes to the Nativity. Some writers soft-pedal matters, either by misplacing one of the stories, or merging them as though the discrepancies weren’t there.134 The more forthright “conservative” prefers to paste over the problem by writing some convenient history: postulate a previous Roman census of Judea (one not mentioned in any contemporary account). Then decide that Quirinius must also have been governor of Syria back then too—though the legates of that period are actually known, and Quirinius wasn’t one of them. D. James Kennedy’s oracle Gleason Archer typifies this inventive revisionism.135 For those more “liberally” inclined, one may simply acknowledge how the census “creates historical problems” (representing either a serious clerical error or a missing Quirinius census) … then letting the whole matter dissipate through procrastination: “No firm decision between these possibilities is possible at present.”136 Because the stakes here are so high (casting doubt on whether Jesus was indeed the foretold Messiah) none of these treatments could even breathe the possibility of the Occam’s razor solution: that the discrepancies existed because one or the other had got his story wrong. The census

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Troubles in Paradise-Downard controversy also underscores the arbitrary character of the “conservative” analysis: it is only because of Matthew’s conflicting account that they do not accept the historically corroborated Luke version at face value. Which means there is no “plain meaning” to the text—only the contingencies and caprices brought on by their a priori commitment to inerrancy. Of course, the ambiguity could itself have been divinely inspired … perhaps a joke to keep the skeptical and heretical fires alight for the deity’s amusement? Much as with the evolutionary implications of species overlap when applied to the synapsids, the operation of a rigorous scholarly sensibility starts knocking over a long line of “inerrant” Biblical dominoes the more you look. Which puts the “conservative” believer in that Scylla & Charybdis box: there are too many questionable issues to be defended piecemeal … and they present too big an obstacle if the story is taken as an integrated package. And this uncomfortable situation only escalates when you consider the third element of the messianic equation: the expected Messiah (of Davidic lineage and Bethlehem birth) was supposed to restore the long-suffering kingdom of Israel. That was the whole point of there being a Messiah. The evangelists clearly accepted this part of the tradition too, writing how they expected Jesus to accomplish this important task … and soon.137 Indeed, Jesus himself went so far as to specify that his messianic return would occur within their lifetimes.138 Here we slam flat into history—for that clearly didn’t happen. This categorical feature puts the Second Coming in a different class of logical difficulty than the Davidic elements. Whereas there might have been a correct Davidic ancestry or a prior Roman census to rescue the messianic model, there is no doubt about the non-event of the restoration of the kingdom of Israel. To get around that historical roadblock requires tweaking the text in one way or another to make its absence fall more easily into line. It also requires magnifying the Zeno slicing by invoking a quite maddening double standard. For let us imagine we were talking about some occult “Nostradamus” predicting the same signs and wonders. Does anyone seriously think Christian commentators would permit the prophet any leeway? Skeptics certainly wouldn’t … they would rightly chalk it off as a “failed prophecy” and write “Nostradamus” down as a crock. We know Christian apologists are able to respond in exactly this empirical and reasonable way when looking down their noses at the Roman-era seer Apollonius of Tyana (whose exploits have often been compared to those of Jesus). But because the name is Jesus, Christians have had to play by a completely different set of rules—though not ones we haven’t already spotted. 139 Old Earth creationist Robert Newman ingenuously tipped that off in Three Views on Creation and Evolution when he remarked how “The fact that Jesus didn’t return about A.D. 1000 (or even A.D. 100) when many expected him to must have also raised doubts.” 140 But it wasn’t how many anticipated Christ’s return a millennium later that was posing the problem. It was that the inerrant evangelists had expected him to return … and only because Jesus had led them to that conviction. That Christians a thousand years later were able to count themselves among the “generation” that would witness a reinterpreted future Second Coming only underscored the extraordinary restorative power of religious rationalization, which had began almost as soon as the Gospel ink was dry.141 That process has continued unabated, and affects “liberal” as well as “conservative” authors in about the same way. The “liberal” Jesus Seminar resolves the problem by laying on the Higher Criticism and deciding that all these inconvenient prophecies simply hadn’t been Jesus’ words— there, all done!142 But is that any worse than the surgical selectivity of the “conservative” who decides to lop off what parts of the Tribulation sequence they don’t like?143 One may accord special honors for gymnastic evasion in this area to Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ. First he mentioned (nameless) “critics” who “have said that early Christians were convinced Jesus was going to return during their lifetime to consummate history.” That these “critics” would only have been quoting the evangelists and Jesus directly somehow escaped his attention. Instead, he let Craig Blomberg do his pigeonholing for him: “The truth is that the majority of Jesus’ teachings presuppose a significant span of time before the end of the world.” If Blomberg supplied any Gospel references for this presupposed “majority” truth, Strobel elected not to share these salient texts with the reader. But the pièce de résistance came when Blomberg tried

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Troubles in Paradise-Downard to assure Strobel that, “even if some of Jesus’ followers did think he might come back fairly quickly,” this was simply part of the Judaic tradition of referring to a generalized Day of the Lord. Thus did Strobel fail to notice how Blomberg’s gyration had just bored the bottom out of his argument: trying to rationalize away the very point Strobel wanted to slough off as mere “critics” opinion (that Jesus’ own disciples had expected an imminent Second Coming). Strobel pronounced this apologetic fluff “reasonable” and pressed Blomberg no further. 144 Given how these Christian apologists have slogged their way through all the serious philosophical and factual difficulties brought on by treating Jesus’ birth, death, and Resurrection as unassailable facts of history independent of the believer’s faith, it is easier to understand how antievolutionism has piggybacked on that reflexive defense. 145 It also explains why the apologetic arguments of Christian antievolutionists so frequently blur over one another’s boundaries. Phillip Johnson’s dithering approval of Malcolm Bowden or Cremo & Thompson is ultimately all of a piece with his recommendations for Lee Strobel and Hank Hanegraaff. 146 But ideas have consequences, remember … or at least, flip sides. And this one skates into how the defense of religion inevitably intersects both education and politics. It was noted back in chapter one how a belief that the empirical case for evolution was unsubstantiated led Phillip Johnson and D. James Kennedy to attribute the stubborn persistence of Darwinism in modern science to the animus of godless materialism.147 Such logic runs as naturally in reverse gear, as when D. James Kennedy applied it to the Rock of Ages: With such strong credentials, both natural and supernatural, why is the Bible so often attacked and dismissed? Part of the reason, certainly, is that people’s hearts and minds are in rebellion against God. Romans 1:21 describes the human condition: “Although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.” To admit to the Bible’s impeccable credentials would be to admit God’s holiness, but humanity’s rebellious nature finds this option unacceptable.148 Which means all discussion of the historical context of the Bible (such as in public school?) had better end up affirming (or at least not questioning) those “impeccable credentials” … otherwise, it will be disparaged as one more instance of “humanity’s rebellious nature.”149 Though of course, it does depend on whose faith is being stomped on, doesn’t it? Hal Lindsey confidently rejected the idea that believers could get so caught up in their convictions that they might preserve traditional texts that may not have originally been as advertised: Many so-called Biblical scholars today try to “late date” such predictions as Isaiah’s to make his prophecies seem to be after the fact. To do this not only violates the consistent witness of the history of those times, but also makes the Jewish people religious charlatans and deceivers. The Jews would have had no reason to keep for posterity those writings of the prophets if they were a fraud. 150 But what if the believer didn’t accept that they were a fraud? Mightn’t they have preserved them out of an honest misapprehension? Although Lindsey cannot entertain that prospect for the Bible… that is exactly what Lee Strobel asked his readers to believe about every religion but Christianity. Ironically, just as Phillip Johnson had, Strobel suggested atheists are snobby elitists for intimating that those 90% or so of people who believe in God are mistaken.151 Yet without skipping a mental beat, Strobel devoted his whole fifth chapter of The Case for Christ to the claim that all those hundreds of millions of non-Christian faithful around the world were indeed barking up the wrong metaphysical tree. Strobel even went so far as to suggest that only the Christian God could be truly experienced.152 While those commanding an actual pulpit (from Jerry Falwell to D. James Kennedy) reinforce the Protestant exclusivity offered by the Strobels, Hanegraaffs and Robertsons of the apologetic media, their particularly incestuous buddy system comes at a stiff methodological price. Coming to

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believe that only their brand of thought carries legitimacy, they inevitably petrify their own social prejudices and scientific misunderstandings.153 But such density has its cost, as it insulates the believer from the experience of what can happen when irresistible theology meets immovable logic. Starting at the absolute margins, it is obviously true that Christianity and Buddhism cannot simultaneously be correct views of things, with Jesus being the risen Son of God in the same universe in which only the Buddha has shown the path to Enlightenment. The contentious mathematician/philosopher Bertrand Russell (as “very atheistic” a customer as they come) summed up the problem some years ago. Given that all major religions ultimately embody sets of specific doctrine, “It is evident as a matter of logic, since they disagree, not more than one of them can be true.”154 And therein lies the potential for civil discord. For how is a peaceable society to decide which Truth is true? There is plenty of certainty to go around. Indeed, a recent handbook of Roman Catholic apologetics by Patrick Madrid gave no ground to Lee Strobel, Vine Deloria, or Cremo & Thompson when it comes to staking out which side history is on: But we can know that the Catholic Church’s understanding of the gospel is the accurate one. To demonstrate that, we can compare what the Church teaches today with the unbroken line of teaching it has given since the days of the Apostles. Catholic doctrines such as the Eucharist, the sacrifice of the Mass, the sacraments, baptismal regeneration, the primacy of Peter, the Trinity, the Atonement, the divinity of Christ, purgatory, the communion of the saints, heaven and hell, the perpetual virginity of Mary, etc., are visible and unchanging within the life of the Church back to the earliest years. 155 Though it does seem that some pretty deadly wars have been fought over just how “unchanging” that provenance was supposed to be. But even that isn’t the end of it. One should not forget that there are millions of Latter Day Saints who are no less sincere and enthusiastic about the complete truth of the Book of Mormon as Patrick Madrid or D. James Kennedy are when it comes to their own denominations’ Old and New Testament editions.156 There’s even a Josh McDowell side to this, as Mormons allow Joseph Smith a modest prophetic inspiration, falling somewhere between the “accuracy” of Isaiah and Nostradamus.157 That Mormonism happens also to be one of the fastest growing faiths counts for naught among their critics, of course, who are quick to affirm the doctrinal impurity of Mormon practices. Yet opponents of the LDS are also perfectly capable of appealing to the record of empirical history … in exactly the way they do not apply to their own theology. 158 Now if this double standard isn’t a recipe for sectarian squabbling in the public arena, it’s hard to imagine what would. There is no way to reconcile philosophical conflicts that depend on the arbitrary application of standards of evidence. No way to mollify the bruised sensibilities of believers unable to understand why others fail to accept the “impeccable credentials” of their Truth. In this sense, the authenticity of particular religious systems raises the same issues for historical education as the creation/evolution debate does in the scientific realm. 159 Obviously, one way to decide which beliefs are to be accorded “impeccable credentials” is through politics. This is the populist tradition of William Jennings Bryan—let the people decide. But that is the option of a majority. A vote taken in Utah on how impeccable the Book of Mormon is might turn out somewhat differently than a parallel census conducted in Baptist Tennessee—and the Vedas or Koran would get a still different hearing. 160 No minority religious organization with half a brain is liable to open itself up to such a plebiscite. That is, unless we are talking coalitions. When it comes to uniting against the common enemy of “secular humanism,” religious social conservatives can operate under the umbrella of a general spiritual perspective, while leaving aside (at least temporarily) the contentious theologies themselves. Daniel Lapin illustrated that Wedge perspective as he waxed ecumenical: “As long as people share the same moral vision for America’s public square, it is less important whether that vision is fueled by Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Mormon, Buddhist or Moslem faith.”161

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Troubles in Paradise-Downard Less important to Lapin perhaps … but it matters a great deal to philosophy and education if the defense of this “moral vision” depends for its success on the spirit of David Jeremiah’s mobile Mt. St. Helens. Kulturkampf Morality and Historical Revisionism As we’ve seen, Lapin is not exactly the most qualified person to rely on for scrupulous methodology.162 Recalling the cautionary lesson of Clifford Wilson, it is no coincidence that Lapin managed to fog up the historical record just as easily, especially when trying to provide a pedigree for his own beliefs. One especially illustrative target was a volume of Will Durant’s classic The Story of Civilization, concerning the economy and culture of the Roman Empire. This was the period in which Christianity differentiated from the Jewish tradition, of course. But Rabbi Lapin had a somewhat different focus in mind than taking a firm stand on the “impeccable credentials” of a certain Davidic Messiah … or attesting to how “unchanging” or “accurate” the tradition of the Universal Church had been: In the third century, emperor Marcus Aurelius Severus Alexander made the Roman Empire flourish and prosper for the last time. He recommended that the Roman people embrace and live by the morals of the Jews and the Christians. He frequently quoted the Judeo-Christian counsel, “What you do not wish a man to do to you, do not do to him,” and had it engraved on the walls of his palace and on many public buildings. He assumed a severe censorship over public morals and ordered the arrest of prostitutes and the deportation of homosexuals. He reduced taxes, forced down interest rates and loaned money to the poor to enable them to purchase and own land. He didn’t last very long. His enemies derisively referred to him as “head of the synagogue,” and soon “The majority of the industrial establishments in Italy were brought under the control of the state. Butchers, bakers, masons, builders, glassblowers, iron workers, engravers were all ruled by detailed government regulations.” Derision of morality. Excessive government regulation. Sounds like yesterday’s headlines, doesn’t it? But it all happened seventeen hundred years ago to the greatest empire in the world—an empire which had just abandoned principles of social organization congruent with Judeo-Christian thought. SOUND FAMILIAR? By the beginning of the fourth century, the empire had instituted price and wage controls, effectively eliminating people’s ability to trade freely with one another. Says Durant: “This edict was until our own time the most famous example of an attempt to replace economic laws by governmental decrees. Its failure was rapid and complete.”163 In this one vignette, Lapin managed to hit just about every one of his hot button issues. We have the cautionary tale of a limited market-driven government, free of immoral licentiousness, nipped in the bud by carping enemies of Judeo-Christian morality. All we need then is to heed Lapin’s strenuous hand waving and merge hard right “Toward Tradition” (at least as his organization articulates it).164 That is, if your intellectual transmission didn’t drop out from bouncing over a number of rather sizable factual speed bumps. The first of these involves the impression Lapin was trying to give that Severus Alexander was bucking the contemporary trend by recommending those Judeo-Christian virtues. But Lapin’s own source of Durant suggested otherwise. To understand what was going on, you had to back up a little from Lapin’s gross oversimplification, and realize the role some very strong-willed Syrian women were playing in the late Severan dynasty, starting with Septimus Severus’ sister-in-law, Julia Maesa. Following the assassination of Severus’ dippy son Caracalla, Julia’s two daughters

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stepped in to guide the fortunes of their respective juvenile progeny: Elagabalus and Severus Alexander. Raised as a priest of the Syrian Baal, Elagabalus was an oddball hedonist who (at age fourteen) was made emperor in AD 218. Although Elagabalus wanted primacy for his Baal cult, Durant stressed that he “was willing to recognize all other religions; he patronized Judaism, and proposed to legalize Christianity.”165 Which wasn’t so very different from what his cousin and successor Severus Alexander would be doing with that Judeo-Christian ethic. Look at what Durant had actually written in the section Lapin had abstracted on Alexander’s reign: He recognized the absurdity of his cousin’s effort to replace Jove with Elagabal, and he co-operated with his mother in restoring the Roman temples and ritual. But to his philosophic mind it seemed that all religions were diverse prayers to one supreme power; he wished to honor all honest faiths; and in his private chapel, where he worshiped every morning, he had icons of Jupiter, Orpheus, Apollonius of Tyana, Abraham, and Christ. He quoted frequently the Judeo-Christian counsel: “What you do not wish a man to do to you, do not do to him”; he had it engraved on the walls of his palace and on many a public building. He recommended the morals of the Jews and the Christians to the Roman people. The unimpressed wits of Antioch and Alexandria referred to him as “head of the Synagogue.” His mother favored the Christians, protected Origen, and summoned him to explain to her his flexible theology. 166 But Durant offered no indication whatsoever that the “wits of Antioch and Alexandria” constituted a cabal of enemies, as Lapin intimated. In fact, Alexander apparently didn’t get into any trouble either for his religious window dressing or his broader social and economic policies. As for his not lasting “very long,” Severus Alexander reigned nearly fourteen years—a pretty good run for emperors in those days. He didn’t get into a security pickle until 235, when he let his mother talk him into trying to bribe invading Germanic tribes in a Neville Chamberlain appeasement stunt (with exactly “seventeen hundred years” head start). Having put up with years of Severan austerity, this was one straw too many, and the army disposed of Alexander, his mother, and a bunch of their friends who happened to be handy. By the 3rd century AD being Roman Emperor was a high-risk profession.167 And what about those laudable economic policies of our pious mamma’s boy … were they as Lapin advertised? Hardly. What Severus Alexander (or his mother) were doing was only an extension of the tactics begun by Septimus Severus and Caracalla. Anxious to keep the revenue streaming in as the imperial economy petrified, the Severans “reformed” matters by extending citizenship and landowning. But generosity and egalitarianism had little to do with it: they were increasing the roles of those qualified for inheritance taxes. Which is supremely ironic, since that is one revenue enhancement that Lapin’s “Toward Tradition” holds to be both excessively pernicious and unbiblical.168 By omitting as he did references to the later emperors Aurelian and Diocletian from his first quotation, Lapin tripped over our old Map of Time problem by seriously telescoping the chronology. The stretch from Severus Alexander to Diocletian covers about 70 years, which may be a blip in geological terms, but quite a haul when it comes to the decisions being made in human societies. It would be like writing that “Edward VII died in 1910, and soon after Hiroshima was destroyed by an atomic bomb and the space shuttle began operation.” A lot had happened in between, which the proper historian would need to pay attention to. It was that later emperor Diocletian whose wage and price controls were to prove such a disastrous prescription for the long term health of the Roman Empire—which means, like Kent Hovind and the Shrinking Sun, Lapin was starting off with a defensibly correct observation. But just as Hovind jumped off the logical cliff, Lapin didn’t spot how little the Judeo-Christian moral ethic had to say about slowing the economic decline of Rome, which had been building on centuries of outmoded thinking.169

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Troubles in Paradise-Downard In turn, Diocletian’s successor Constantine would show just how few modern economic notions were knocking around in the increasingly Christianized Roman world by what he did after repealing Diocletian’s edict (again, as Lapin’s own source of Durant had clearly explained). For what the first emperor of an officially Christian Rome thought appropriate in 332 was to force tenant farmers to remain on the land and laborers to stay at their jobs. Such were the opening lurches of the feudal system that subsequent Christian monarchs would have no trouble accepting as the “natural” order of things. Thus did generations of devout Christian thinkers come and go over the next thousand years without anyone saying, “Oh, I was reading Leviticus the other day and realized what we need is a free trade zone for the Holy Roman Empire.” 170 Indeed, this very point was unintentionally confirmed by a 1985 anthology addressing the question “Is Capitalism Christian?” The editor, Franky Schaeffer, didn’t even think to ask whether capitalism had scriptural justification or precedent, but only “has any one economic system proven to be more amenable to Christian values?” All the volume’s twenty-one contributors vigorously and rightly defended capitalism as a good idea empirically (especially when compared to Marxism) and explained why Christians could contribute to this process in good conscience. But this was obviously gauging economic systems by their suitability for Christian activity today and not by how closely they mirrored the arrangements familiar to Paul or Origen. Not one of these defenders of Christian capitalism (including Paul Johnson, Michael Novak, and Richard John Neuhaus of First Things) thought to ground their position on specific scriptural affirmations of what constitutes correct economic policy—an understandable omission, given the slim pickings available. 171 Since market capitalism is not in fact supported by explicit affirmation of Judeo-Christian theology, what Daniel Lapin demonstrated in his gloss on Roman imperial economics was a critical failure of historical perception. In his political universe, our modern way of economic life cannot represent the result of a long history of accumulating principles about how economies actually work, and how best to achieve egalitarian prosperity—another irony, as this may be thought of as an evolutionary synthesis tempered by practical experience.172 But there’s more to this than just the economics. Lapin’s argument was even more incongruous when viewed from the political side. Since both the Athenian democracy and Roman republic existed within Biblical times, if representative democracy were such a good idea, God might well have alluded to them, if only as flawed models to be improved on by the injection of Judeo-Christian virtue. But that Lapin-friendly option never cropped up in Scripture. And that’s because the theoretical roots of the Bible were part of the same worldview of divinely ordained autocrats and slave-based latifundia estates that the Romans venerated as part of their version of “Toward Tradition.” Christianity only amplified this philosophy. The Messianic Jesus was to be the King of Kings, after all—not the CEO of Rome Inc.173 That all of this was lost on Lapin falls back on the underlying flaws of his methodology … the patterns of history are as invisible to him as those suggesting the natural evolution of life. Just as Henry Morris can hardly refrain from ramming the “true facts” of science through the retroactive spigot of Biblical approval, Lapin approaches all his subjects as subsets of a comprehensive worldview, wherein “Culture, that is to say religion, shapes everything.” 174 Only the philosophical problem is that a lot of this shaping runs in the other direction, such as Lapin’s skipping past the example of Elagabalus to target his equally quirky cousin Severus Alexander instead. Now why might Lapin have done that? Well, a likely factor turns on how Durant’s account had included that reference to “deported homosexuals.” And with that bell we plunge into one of the core concerns of contemporary social conservatives. Next to abortion there are few issues that exercise their moral reflexes more consistently than disquiet over gay rights. And being of such paramount importance, there is also ample incentive for a flawed methodology to spill over from the theological reservoir. Which is why the cast of characters weighing in on this subject includes a battery of traditional antievolutionists, from D. James Kennedy and Chuck Colson through to Kent Hovind and Tim LaHaye. 175 By trying to draw such distinct historic parallels, though, Daniel Lapin went beyond the standard twitchy mantras to manifest two features salient to our investigation of exactly how inerrantist apologetics intersect the creationist methodology. The obvious one concerns our first Rule of the Game: paying attention to all the data. Even though it was essential to his argument,

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Lapin never thought to investigate whether Roman attitudes towards sex (such as which combinations of partners were given social approval) fell along the particular fault lines demanded by his theology.176 But beyond this dearth of proper scholarly curiosity there was the still more revealing picture of how comfortable Lapin was relying on the questionable precedent of Severus Alexander in the first place. Wouldn’t it have been easier simply to appeal to the Bible directly, and skip the celebrity endorsement? That’s where the apologetic imperative hits the same snag as the defense of “Biblical” market capitalism: there is a singular dearth of explicit “proof texts” on sexual preference. Unlike murder, adultery, bearing false witness, or making graven images, overt proscriptions on homosexuality weren’t deemed important enough to make it into the Ten Commandments, forcing a reliance on lesser textual lights (such as Leviticus) for moral guidance.177 That “whole shebang” precedent of relying on virtually any text as though it were of equal doctrinal merit will have some unpleasant fallout, as we’ll see in due course. But returning to the issue of Biblical support for sexual politics, the situation is not noticeably improved in Christianity. Evidently unaware of how contentious this issue would become a few thousand years later, Jesus did not clarify the matter by contributing any relevant advice (at least not as quoted in the Gospels).178 About all that may be said with certainty is that the Bible does not come off as especially open to understanding or tolerating same-sex attraction. This leaves the contemporary “gay Christian” in a troubling theological limbo whose boundaries are often defined by the most vocal sectors, such as the eminently blunt Tim LaHaye: “There is no question—a person who practices homosexuality as a way of life cannot be a Christian.” 179 All of which unwittingly sets the stage for some particularly curious ironies, starting in the Strange Bedfellows department. When it comes to summarily attributing homosexuality to a faulty upbringing, for example, End Time fundamentalist Tim LaHaye reads very much like End-theBomb atheist Bertrand Russell.180 Then there is the lure of authority. Not unlike creationists invoking the Christian credentials of Louis Agassiz or Isaac Newton as a way of enhancing their contemporary credibility, controversies rage as “great figures” of the past and present are pulled out of the closet (or shoved back in) to serve as role models. 181 This process can become emotionally vexing for the conservatively inclined should some cherished talent be identified as gay, from television and movie stars to artistic fixtures like Tchaikovsky (making it difficult to hear the Pathétique Sixth Symphony in quite the same way again).182 Economic sensibilities also play a role: consider the studied reluctance of the “liberal” (but definitely market-savvy) Star Trek to imperil their lucrative franchise by going “where no man has gone before” and adding an explicitly gay character to any of their series or movies.183 And let’s not forget the ricochets of historical contingency. It is a sobering thought to realize that the whole course of 20th century history may have been changed because one itinerant holy man didn’t settle down in a Russian Orthodox monastery … and only because there was too much gay sex going on there for his taste! The offended monk was Rasputin, and his mystic involvement in the deteriorating Romanov dynasty helped grease the skids for the Russian Revolution (otherwise Lenin might have remained a bilious café habitué in Switzerland). 184 But the incoming Marxist regime turned out to be just as disapproving of homosexuality as anti-Marxists like Daniel Lapin or Phillip Johnson. Except the doctrinal communist would not be attributing this condition to a sinful rebellion from God, but rather diagnosing it as the symptom of a decadent bourgeois society. Much as in the promised Christian Kingdom, you see, the impending Socialist Utopia was supposed to usher in an era of sexual decency in which homosexual behavior would never occur. 185 Confusing one’s “religion” (sacred or profane) with politics in this way is obviously as much a problem for the radical Left as the reactionary Right. The ad hoc imperatives of Liberation Theology differ little from radio fundamentalists proclaiming the “Biblical position” on government health care (as though the Bible had in fact taken so specific a stand). There is also a similarity between the dynamics of political and religious conversion, especially concerning the strain of millennialist thinking seen in the 20th century extremism of Hitler, Lenin and Mao. 186 Given how significantly the existence of (let alone toleration for) homosexuality challenges traditional views of what is “natural” in sexual relationships, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the

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process of internal rationalization can produce some whiplash shifts of opinion. Stephen Carter commented on that when he noted how “secular political motivations are driving what is framed as doctrinal analysis” in one particular Protestant denomination: The Southern Baptist Convention recently provided a useful example. The SBC was born in the middle of the nineteenth century as a protest against the northern-dominated Baptist faith, which decided not to allow members who owned slaves to serve as missionaries. Nobody, said the Southern Baptists in one of those fascinating American melds of principle and prejudice, has the right to tell another church how to run its business. The Southern Baptist Convention was thus created in an effort to protect slavery—but its rhetoric suggested that its actual goal was to protect the autonomy of local churches. Today, the Southern Baptist Convention no longer believes in local autonomy, for it voted in 1992 to withdraw “fellowship” from churches that affirm homosexuality. That, of course, is the SBC’s right, and neither government command nor secular protest should alter SBC’s view on the will of God. As critics have pointed out, however, it is at least peculiar that the SBC can find no other sin—literally, for there are none listed—for which a member church will lose its fellowship. Consequently, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that rather than consulting their religious consciences and deciding which sins should lead to withdrawal of fellowship, members of the SBC consulted their political convictions and decided which one to enshrine as a new fundamental law of the convention.187 Such introspection may be contrasted with the characteristic tread of Phillip Johnson when he sidled past the “H” word in Reason in the Balance. Though in his case he endeavored (as he has all through his Wedge campaign) to subtly redefine the debate, trying to turn the issue upside down: I have found that any discussion with modernists about the weakness of the theory of evolution quickly turns into a discussion of politics, particularly sexual politics. Modernists typically fear that any discrediting of naturalistic evolution will end in women being sent to the kitchen, gays to the closet and abortionists to jail. That kind of consideration explains why any perceived attempt to undermine the teaching of evolution as fact in the schools is met with such fierce opposition; much more than a scientific theory is deemed to be at stake.188 Now I have read a lot of works on dinosaur evolution over the years, and not once did any of them hinge on issues of sexual politics. Was this then another instance of Johnson turning his own parochial experience into a universal?189 That seemed to be the case at the Whitworth “Creation Week,” where Johnson managed to bring the subject up in his very first lecture without any Darwinist prompting whatsoever. So there is every reason to think it is Johnson whose philosophy is running with the trigger lock off, quite independently of any obsessions held by materialist evolutionists.190 Speaking of which … how do evolutionists tackle this controversial subject? Once you disentangle the biological orientation from the contentious lifestyle and legal issues, you are left with a fascinating scientific question. For homosexuality would seem, at first glance, an odd thing to be maintained by sexual reproduction. 191 Yet in trying to figure out how that has come to be, evolutionary theorists turn out to be a remarkably circumspect bunch. Even books devoted to human evolution don’t always remark on it—and there appears no stampede of reductive causation even when they do.192 That’s because scientists have come to realize that sexual orientation itself is not likely to be produced from any single gene, but more probably from a complex concatenation of hormonal and genetic factors playing out in individuals living in a cultural milieu. In that event, kin selection readily permits the maintenance of alleles in a population,

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Troubles in Paradise-Downard especially if they contribute to group survival. It’s within that framework that the origin of homosexuality has been sought.193 As a scientific problem, homosexuality is therefore only a part of how sexuality originated in the first place. For perspective, we humans have a fairly conservative sex life compared to many animals, where all sorts of adventurous reproductive strategies are known (from parthenogenesis to midlife sex changes).194 This Big Picture view of sexuality has been considerably clarified in recent years, though still far from being fully resolved. One surprising factor is how sexual reproduction appears to be just the thing a multicellular organism needs to both minimize mutation errors and keep at least one step ahead of their co-evolving parasites (the “Red Queen” hypothesis). 195 Now the contrast between how these questions are approached by science as compared to the creationist Kulturkampf could not be more distinct or fundamental. It involves a turf war over the very nature and boundaries of scientific investigation. For those who see homosexuality as a sinful choice, there is nothing to investigate—no way by which a moral matter can be illuminated through reason. This attitude appears as a recurring theme in the interpretative spin put on the purported success of “reparative therapy” to convert gay men and women to functional heterosexuality. 196 But issues like sexual preference are only the most topical example. In principle this applies to all of human behavior. Which means the social conservative is facing the same choice presented by evolution in general. Just as macroevolution has to be rejected en bloc to preserve the special created character of human beings, no aspect of our human moral character can be conceded to physical processes, lest the “whole shebang” give way. 197 Thus the social effects of “Darwinism” run on a deep feedback loop with the concerns of the culture as a whole. Darwin’s biographers Adrian Desmond and James Moore affirmed that when they described the mood of Britain in 1838, the Dickens era of economic squalor and political turmoil that provided the backdrop for Darwin’s developing ideas: That spring Darwin was in his deepest radical phase, playing with inflammatory issues as the country slid further into depression. His notes were acquiring a compulsive quality. He had reduced life to its starkest, to its living elements—self-organizing atoms. This sort of flaming science was favoured by street agitators, the people trying to overthrow the undemocratic state. It petrified clerical society; self-sufficiency was tantamount to atheism. With Christianity part of the law of the land, and used to keep the lower orders in check, anything that undermined it was seditious. If living atoms had the power of self-development, the divine influence of Sedgwick’s God was lost. And since that influence worked through the Church, the chain of command from God down through the priesthood into nature would be snapped. And with that, Sedgwick believed, came the end of civilization.198 Over a century later, Darwin’s “one long argument” has continued to function as just such a “universal acid” (as Daniel Dennett likes to put it) whenever it comes in contact with social practices derived from traditions and dogmas the science can neither revere nor defend. And the Sedgwicks of the present world are no less annoyed by this state of affairs, as Frederick Crews remarked recently in The New York Review of Books: One doesn’t have to read much creationist literature, for example, before realizing that anti-Darwinian fervor has as much to do with moral anxiety as with articles of revealed truth. Creationists are sure that the social order will dissolve unless our children are taught that the human race was planted here by God with instructions for proper conduct. Crime, licentiousness, blasphemy, unchecked greed, narcotic stupefaction, abortion, the weakening of family bonds—all are blamed on Darwin, whose supposed message is that we are animals to whom everything is permitted. This is the “fatal glass of beer” approach to explaining decadence. Take one biology course that leaves Darwin unchallenged, it seems, and you’re on your way to nihilism, Eminem, and drive-by shootings.199

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Phillip Johnson fumed in reply that “Crews has only sarcasm for those who worry that a universal acid might dissolve some things that are worth preserving.” But it’s not the “Darwinian acid” that Johnson should be most worried about here, but rather the steady drip … drip … drip of a sound historical and scholarly perception. For Crews’ catalog of creationist moral anxiety exhibited less “sarcasm” than accurate reporting.200 Which is more than can be said for Johnson himself, who in The Wedge of Truth indulged in just the sort of hyperbole that Crews was taking aim at. In the passage immediately following the piece examined last chapter on the “memes” of Dawkins and Blackmore, Johnson devoted an extensive section to Evolutionary Psychology Explains Infanticide, and how Steven Pinker and others supposedly engage in a duplicitous campaign to make the world safe for baby killing. Since this concerns the deepest intersection of science with philosophy, one might argue that it deserved some space … and, like Duane Gish with the tenrecs of Madagascar, Johnson may also have felt he had too hot a point in this echo of King Herod to let go. 201 But also like Gish, Johnson clearly hadn’t recognized how thin his source ammunition was for so massive a retaliation—or how an uncertain aim might only serve to pulverize his own line of trenches. For besides measuring the importance Johnson assigned to it, his verbose jeremiad managed to leave undefended several really important moral and religious issues. Since it also illustrates how source material is relied on, to make it easier to follow the stepping stones in Johnson’s cavalcade, the direct quotations from Steven Pinker are highlighted in bold: Newspapers in 1996-1997 reported two particularly shocking cases of infanticide. In one, a pair of eighteen-year-old college sweethearts delivered their baby in a hotel room, killed him and left the body in a dumpster. In the other, an eighteen-year old briefly left her high school prom to deliver her baby in a bathroom stall, left the infant dead in a garbage can and returned to the dance floor. Both events led to convictions for homicide. Conventional explanations attributed the crimes either to moral failure (personal or social) or to some form of mental pathology. Steven Pinker, professor of psychology at the Massachusetts Institute of Psychology [sic] and a leading popularizer of evolutionary psychology, had a different kind of explanation: a genetic imperative. Writing in the New York Times Pinker argued that what he termed neonaticide (the killing of a baby on the day of its birth) is not attributable to mental illness because “it has been practiced and accepted in most cultures throughout history.” Rather, a capacity for neonaticide is hard-wired into the maternal genes by our evolutionary history. Mothers in primitive conditions had to make hard choices between caring adequately for their existing infants and nurturing a newborn, and so “if a newborn is sickly, or if its survival is not promising, they may cut their losses and favor the healthiest in the litter or try again later on.” According to Pinker the same genetic disposition may trigger neonaticide in any case where the pregnancy is threatening to the mother, such as where she has to conceal the pregnancy and possibly give birth alone or in dangerous circumstances. For this reason Pinker hypothesized that various cultural practices and psychological conditions protect the mother from too great an immediate attachment to an infant who may have to be sacrificed. “A new mother will first coolly assess the infant and her current situation and only in the next few days begin to see it as a unique and wonderful individual.” In those first few days, it would seem killing an unwelcome infant would be perfectly natural and appropriate. And yet Pinker also wrote that “killing a baby is an immoral act,” and that “to understand is not necessarily to forgive.” Readers wondered what he could possibly have meant by these words. Do we perhaps have a “gene for justice” that causes us to impose retributive punishment on a mother whose gene for neonaticide causes her to kill her baby?

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Troubles in Paradise-Downard Pinker’s reasoning attracted some harsh criticism. Michael Kelly in the Washington Post wrote that Pinker “did not go quite so far as to openly recommend the murder of infants…. But close enough, close enough.” Pinker responded indignantly by repeating the qualifications he had inserted in the original piece: killing is immoral, and to understand is not to forgive. But in what sense can any conduct be immoral if it is a product of a genetic imperative? Pinker’s astonishing answer (in his book) was that moral reasoning requires that we assume the existence of things which science tells us are unreal. “Ethical theory,” he wrote, “requires idealizations like free, sentient, rational, equivalent agents whose behavior is uncaused, and its conclusions can be sound and useful even though the world, as seen by science, does not really have uncaused events…. A human being is simultaneously a machine and a sentient free agent, depending on the purpose of the discussion.” That may seem self-contradictory, but perhaps it is worse than that. What Pinker may mean is that morality is founded on a “noble lie” that the intellectual priesthood tells to the common people. Of course the priests themselves know the lie for what it is and do not recognize it as a limit on their own thinking or conduct, but they conceal their nihilism by pretending to believe in conventional morality. This is the same pretense Philip Wentworth had in mind when he wrote that the myth of supernatural religion with its stern father-figure in the sky may still be necessary to discipline the multitudes who are incapable of self-control. For the same reason Voltaire reportedly took care that his servants didn’t hear the conversation at the dinner table for fear they would steal the spoons. Much the same theme is at the center of Dostoyevsky’s novels Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, in which the student Raskolnikov and the servant Smerdyakov each committed murder because they acted on the nihilistic philosophies they learned from intellectuals. Now that these philosophies are promoted in the mass media, we may expect many more people to apply the logic of nihilism to their own conduct. Andrew Ferguson of The Weekly Standard followed up Kelley’s accusation with a devastating review of Pinker’s logic, noting particularly the very weak anthropological evidence that Pinker cited in support of his expansive conclusions. Basically, evolutionary psychology proceeds by erecting a mountain of speculation on the basis of fragmentary evidence from primitive cultures. In Ferguson’s words, “Conjecture solidifies into fact; the fact then becomes a basis for further conjecture, which evolves into another factual premise, and so on.” Besides the shaky factual premises, there is the inherent absurdity of a discipline that can explain any behavior pattern and its direct opposite equally well. If mothers protect and nurture their infants, that behavior exemplifies the maternal instinct that is produced by natural selection. If they kill their infants, then that behavior illustrates the neonaticidal instinct—which is also produced by natural selection. Like psychoanalysis, evolutionary biology can explain equally well why a man will betray his closest friends or why he will sacrifice his life to save a stranger. Experience with other pseudosciences, particularly Freudianism and Marxism, has taught the critical audience that a theory than explains everything explains nothing.202 [The text continued under the heading Is It Wrong to Kill Babies?:] These methodological deficiencies of evolutionary psychology are notorious, although similar pseudoscientific practices go unnoticed when Darwinists stick to explaining the body. Pinker did not defend his factual assumptions or methodology when he responded to Ferguson’s review, but he did defend himself on the moral question. Ferguson had pointed out that Pinker’s logic closely tracked that of philosopher Michael Tooley, who has unapologetically argued that it is not intrinsically wrong to kill human infants before they attain “at least a

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Troubles in Paradise-Downard limited capacity for thought” and thus become “quasi-persons,” at about the age of three months. Before that time their capacities do not significantly exceed those of animals, and so they have no right to life greater than that of animals. Pinker endorsed the logic but merely refrained from drawing the inevitable conclusion that infanticide is morally objectionable, probably because he thought his readers were not ready for the bottom line—yet. This point deserved emphasis because it illustrates how Darwinian logic works and why it fools so many people who are all too willing to be fooled. We saw in the previous chapter that the representatives of the scientific elite overwhelmingly reject any form of supernatural religion and believe that science compels that rejection. Nonetheless, they consider that they are not saying anything “about God” if at that precise moment they do not explicitly draw the conclusion that God is dead, or if they leave room for some form of modernist theology. Hence they indignantly reject any accusation that by teaching “evolution” they are undermining the belief that we are created by God. Their indignation is echoed by many theistic evolutionists, who take any criticism of Darwinian logic as an attack on their own sincerity. The important thing is not the conclusion that scientific materialists are drawing today, however, but the conclusion that they will draw tomorrow on the basis of the logic that they are insinuating today. For a time they may say that science and religion are separate realms, with science owning the realm of fact and religion belonging to the realm of subjective opinion. Once this division is accepted, they will point out that it implies that religion has no access to knowledge, and so its realm is effectively empty. Today evolutionary psychologists may say that killing infants is wrong, but (in Andrew Ferguson’s words) “they make us see it not as a moral horror, but as a genetically encoded evolutionary adaptation, as unavoidable as depth perception or opposable thumbs.” Tomorrow they will say that the points you conceded yesterday establish that infanticide is not wrong after all. Whenever the “separate realms” logic surfaces, you can be sure that the wording implies that there is a ruling realm (founded on reality) and a subordinate realm (founded on illusions which must be retained for the time being). The formula allows the ruling realm to expand its territory at will. For example, Pinker explained the basis of morality by reasoning that “science and morality are separate spheres of reasoning. Only by recognizing them as separate can we have them both.” Readers will recognize that this is exactly the formula by which Stephen Jay Gould related science and religion, and it has the same consequences. When the time is right to overthrow some traditional moral restriction, evolutionary psychologists will complete the logic by observing that the moral sphere is as empty as the religious realm. After all, both religion and morality rest on assumptions that science has shown to be false. How can any authority be real if it is founded on unreality? We can see exactly this process operating in Pinker’s reply to Andrew Ferguson. First, Pinker demolished the idea that there is any clear line between those who have a right to life and those who don’t: If you believe the right to life inheres in being sentient, you must conclude that a hamburger-eater is a party to murder. If you believe it inheres in being a member of Homo sapiens, you are just a species bigot. If you think it begins at conception, you should prosecute IUD users for murder and divert medical research from preventing cancer and heart disease to preventing the spontaneous miscarriages of vast numbers of microscopic conceptuses. If you think it begins at birth, you should allow abortion minutes before

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birth, despite the lack of any significant difference between a lateterm fetus and a neonate. Pinker repeated his pro forma disclaimer that neonaticide is an immoral act which should not be decriminalized, but his logic implied that what is really immoral is the “species bigotry” that holds that there is a moral difference between killing a baby and killing an unwanted kitten. If the line between persons and nonpersons is inherently arbitrary, then the boundary can be moved at any time if it becomes convenient to expand the category of members of Homo sapiens who do not have a right to life. After all, Pinker himself believes that our sense of personhood is merely a circuit that the genes create to ensure that the whole body goes in one direction. As for relying on religion for guidance, Pinker scornfully commented, “That solution has given us stonings, witch-burnings, Crusades, inquisitions, jihads, fatwas, suicide bombers, abortion-clinic gunmen, and mothers who drown their sons so they can be happily reunited in heaven.” So that religion has no more standing in discussions of morality than it does in science, Pinker nailed the point down: Secular thinkers are prepared to struggle with difficult moral questions by reasoning them out on moral grounds, while welcoming our increasing knowledge about the brain. Ferguson instead seems to want to root morality on the theory that a deity injects a fertilized ovum with a ghostly substance, which registers the world, pulls the levers of behavior, and leaks out at the moment of death. Unfortunately for that theory, brain science has shown that the mind is what the brain does. The supposedly immaterial soul can be bisected with a knife, altered by chemicals, turned on or off by electricity, and extinguished by a sharp blow or a lack of oxygen. Centuries ago it was unwise to ground morality on the dogma that the earth sat at the center of the universe. It is just as unwise today to ground it on dogmas about souls endowed by God. In that case it is equally unwise to ground morality on the dogma that there is a self that reasons and makes moral choices. After all, state-of-the-art neuroscience has proved that you can extinguish the so-called self by a sharp blow or a lack of oxygen, which proves that it is merely highly organized matter. If you follow the materialist logic through to the end, as Pinker and Susan Blackmore have done, you will conclude that the personal self in which we put so much stock is no more than an illusion. And if the right to life is founded on personhood rather than on mere membership in the species Homo sapiens, then nobody has a right to life. The logic that justified neonaticide likewise justifies the slaughter of healthy adults.203 And thus has Johnson added guilt by association to the grease already spread on the “slippery slope” of creeping moral relativism by Andrew Ferguson’s “devastating review” … as though Johnson had caught Pinker (or Blackmore) actually favoring neonaticide (and beyond) as appropriate human behavior.204 Johnson took the absence of an overt defense of “his factual assumptions or methodology” in Pinker’s brief rejoinder letter to Ferguson both as an admission of the theoretical weakness of evolutionary psychology and as an opportunity for not examining any of these matters himself. 205 But Johnson ought to have drawn a cautionary breath over the bad intellectual omen represented by Ferguson’s flippant summary: “Pinker brings together (what I assume to be) the latest findings in linguistics, cognitive psychology, paleontology, microbiology, anthropology, and other -ologies too numerous to mention.”206 If there were indeed “shaky factual premises” underlying Pinker’s position, Johnson showed no appreciation that Ferguson might not necessarily be the best Atlas for the job of dislodging them.207 And that’s because Johnson had no cause to doubt anything Ferguson

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Troubles in Paradise-Downard said … for he had relied on The Weekly Standard piece to do most of his homework for him: from the quotes to be commented on to the spin imparted to them. 208 By now we have journeyed full circle back to the fundamental scholarly lessons we began with in chapter one. Just as Clifford Wilson’s campaign against ancient astronauts disguised a ditzy methodology that just as easily accepted Carl Baugh and demonic UFOs, the “Erich von Däniken of Modern Creationism” relies on that same Miltonian urge to absorb friendly authority as a general practice. From the very start of his deconstruction of materialist evolution Johnson has soaked up other people’s complementary opinions, sometimes so thoroughly that he misplaces where he got them (such as Denton’s “other examples”).209 But while Zeno slicing could account for Johnson having overlooked certain issues because Ferguson hadn’t mentioned them, only bad reporting could explain his failing to investigate a point he had gone out of his way to bring up. That was the case with the one spot where Johnson deviated from Ferguson’s treatment: the “newborn is sickly” passage. Appearing on the opening page of Pinker’s piece, it did not refer to human maternal urges specifically, as Johnson intimated … but to mammalian behavior generally. That should have prompted Johnson to explore this potentially relevant issue, to better understand at least where the evolutionary psychologists were coming from. But since Ferguson hadn’t thought about it, there was no reason to expect Johnson (holding fast to The Weekly Standard coattails) to use it as anything other than apologetic meringue. Had Ferguson or Johnson been disposed to look, they would have learned that the question of infanticide inevitably arose in evolutionary thinking because of jarring discoveries in animal behavior, especially since the 1960s. By the time Barbara Burke surveyed the field in the mid1980s, it had been established that “deliberate infanticide is a chronic hazard for rodents, birds, fish, lions, and more than a dozen species of primates.”210 Further investigation has related this violence to mating practices, usually where males in non-monogamous species seek to skew their own reproductive success by disposing of the progeny of earlier competing males. Interestingly enough, maternal abandonment of children is not a common primate feature. But it does occur (though still quite rarely) among “cooperative breeders” who share the duties of raising offspring, such as tamarins … and human beings.211 Burke concluded her 1984 survey with a comment entirely applicable to the present Murphy/Ferguson/Johnson v. Pinker squabble: To what extent man has inherited a propensity for violence is an open question. If researchers cannot agree on why animals kill infants, much less can they agree about people’s motives. But the idea that infanticide may have evolved in animals is giving new impetus to studies of our own violence toward babies and children. That research is unlikely to produce simple answers, but it may help us find the right questions and ultimately make us better understand the strengths and weaknesses of our animal inheritance.212 But none of these conservative Christian critics of Pinker have shown much interest in complex answers or fresh questions that challenge the ethical postulates of a traditional religious worldview wherein human beings cannot have an “animal inheritance.”213 From their perspective all proper moral guidelines have been defined in advance, in the Bible. As Daniel Lapin suggested above, you didn’t even need to be an actual believer to benefit from the divine precepts—pagan moralists consulting that infallible resource could not help but be improved by its ennobling example. 214 The nature of morality, and how it fits into an evolutionary or skeptical philosophy, is a worthy and profound question that we’ll be getting to in a moment. But to assess what makes something “moral” or not, and whether religious definitions are preemptively superior in this area, we first have to press through one of those minefields Johnson thought to bypass: that litany of iniquity Steven Pinker brought up so “scornfully.” How are philosophers to account for believers who faithfully follow the Word of God straight into brutal inquisitions and jihads?215 Since this is a case of applied ethics, clearing this up would seem a particularly obvious course for Johnson to have followed. It relates to a host of religious, cultural, political, and even

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economic issues. What are the processes whereby cultures turn violent? What role does ideology play in this, and can these beliefs ever be grounded on religious convictions? What are the social mechanisms that serve to curb such excesses, and how are such checks and balances to be reliably preserved? The whole history of the rise of modern civilization is implicitly contained in Pinker’s position, and Johnson would have done justice to the question had he responded to it. But he didn’t … and it was obviously not for want of space. Exactly as Duane Gish had with the Biblical flat earth cosmology, Johnson made no effort to challenge Pinker's examples of religious violence, let alone examine the means by which the devout have attempted to justify their behavior. Instead, Johnson acted as if all this didn’t matter … which is especially ironic, as that is a fault he attributes to (unspecified) materialists who marginalize the Bible’s Truth. “The most effective argument that the most intelligent materialists make against Christian theism is not that they know the gospel to be false but that they know that it is safe to disregard the gospel whether it is true or false.”216 What we’re seeing here in this blind spot is the tip of a sizable cultural iceberg. Secularists like Steven Pinker are operating within a very different framework of assumptions and analysis than Phillip Johnson and the Christian antievolution community. That’s obvious enough. But what may be less apparent is how deep their differences go. This is more than simply “materialism” versus “religion.” These are serious divides to be sure, but they are positions ultimately resting on divergent attitudes about how the nature of society is to be explored. In “scornfully” bringing up inquisitions and jihads, Pinker was asserting the relevance of history. But not thin slices of it … the “whole shebang,” warts and all. Just as we are who we remember we are individually, so too are cultures the embodiment of all that they record and actively recall. This is the “Map of Time” problem once again … except this time darkened by the specter of historical amnesia. It isn’t that Phillip Johnson avoids historical examples altogether, but he approaches them in much the same cavalier way he does the fossil record. Thus in Reason in the Balance Johnson briefly acknowledged (with considerable understatement) that the tolerance “of groups like Catholics and Jews” in America’s Protestant-dominated culture had “varied greatly depending on place and time.” Just how greatly the reader couldn’t know, of course, since he offered no specifics or references. But in the Research Notes that substituted for direct citation, Johnson did quote extensively from Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America affirming the idyllic religious life of Jacksonian America.217 Compared to the bloated official churches of Europe that was certainly true. Indeed, it may be reasonably argued that the religious vitality of American culture stems precisely from the absence of tax-supported piety.218 But if there were (and are) many positive sides to religion in America, there were (and are) also more problematic aspects. As we’ll see, Christian belief played a very mixed role in the debate over the abolition of slavery. And it functioned with virtual neutrality when it came to the violent ethic of “honor” that pervaded antebellum Southern society.219 Johnson’s Going My Way vista of religion as essentially benign reappeared again in a chapter on “The Beginning of Reason” when he wrote that “a merely scientific concept of rationality prepares the way for the irrationalist and tribalist reaction that is so visible all around us.” Again there were no illustrations of what he meant by this, suggesting Johnson thought this so self-evident that specificity would only be of tedious redundancy. But any historian must pause to marvel at what a world it must have been in those splendid days before the intrusion of scientific rationalism, when no tribalism existed, and there was nary a hint of the irrational. 220 The closest Johnson got to exploring this issue in his books occurred in one of the “subversive essays” collected in his anthology, Objections Sustained. A 1997 review of several books on the Orthodox religious experience accepted their cheery diagnoses of the contribution of that faith as readily as he would Ferguson’s gloss on Steven Pinker. Johnson concluded his review with a revealing summary of the history of Christianity, trimming the rough edges until what remained was a lean morality tale following a simple catenary curve already familiar in the trajectory of Christian redemption. As in Genesis, things start out at a high point of spiritual purity … but corruption sets in, a fall into worldly materialism … until the far end of the curve promises a restoration through spiritual renewal:

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One thing we can learn from Orthodoxy is to take the long view of Christian history and see the Reformation as one episode in a much bigger story. The first Christian millennium could be called the Age of Constitution-Making. The great councils that framed the creeds and rejected the heresies were often rowdy affairs, but they achieved wonders by the Holy Spirit. Papal absolutism was not a product of this collegial process but a repudiation of it. The second millennium was the Age of Schisms. It began with the papal legate’s excommunication of the patriarch of Constantinople in 1054, reached its nadir with the sack of Constantinople and the atrocities of the wars of the Reformation, and ended with the fall of communism and (I predict) the exposure of scientific materialism as an absurdity. Throughout the twentieth century Christianity seemed doomed to wither away under the devastating critique of scientific investigation. In the end it was materialism that withered. What name shall we give the third millennium? I like to think that we are coming to an Age of Reconstitution. Christianity is not dead or dying but poised for a new beginning in a world that needs the good news more than ever. We need to stop multiplying schisms, set aside the tools of worldly power and give the Holy Spirit a chance to help us rediscover the truth that once united us. Those of us who are not inclined to join the converts to Orthodoxy can nonetheless rejoice to have them as worthy partners in that great work of healing.221 The configuration of this story (which might be thought of as Johnson’s “Second Descent of Man”) reminded me of a scene in the popular apologetic story, The Robe. Filmed as the first widescreen CinemaScope spectacular in 1953, it starred Richard Burton as a jaded centurion who came to accept Christ and a willing martyr’s death (with Jean Simmons) at the hands of Caligula. One of the most moving parts of the story concerned the centurion’s search for Jesus’ burial robe that brought him to a peaceable Christian community led by Dean Jagger. Anyone watching the film couldn’t help but lament the reaction of the unfeeling pagans who ridiculed these admirable believers. Here were people so unequivocally virtuous as to preclude all cynicism: modest, gentle, understanding, bearing no envy or malice or arrogance. But how many early Christians really were like that? We have only the Gospel testimony and the scattered history of early saints to go by—and the responses of some critics (or at least what Christians like Origen thought to quote from them).222 They may all have been exactly as Christian tradition affirms, of course. But when reverence takes front seat, isn’t the natural tendency to indulge in hagiography? To polish off the rough spots until the “big picture” looks more to one’s theological liking? And isn’t it the necessary job of the careful historian to step back far enough to see whether that sort of tidying up might be going on? Thought Experiment time… What if we had the Wayback Machine to observe it all directly? What would the world of the earliest Christians have looked like? What would our honest impressions be of Matthew and John, or later converts like Paul or Luke, if we had penetrating interviews with them instead of only selected writings attributed to them? What would we hear in candid comments by their friends or relatives about what didn’t get into even those epistles? Anyone thinking to assess the “bigger story” of the origin and character of the Christian faith, including both its strengths and defects, would need to take a look at that question.223 While not everything is known (and maybe far from enough to satisfy either the skeptical historian or the needs of the dedicated apologist) there is certainly a lot to consider … and more at least than hinted at in Johnson’s catenary summary.224 Here again the dreaded naturalistic assumption comes into play. Where you don’t have all the history, observations about more contemporary episodes (where more information is available) could be theoretically illuminating about what might have got left out of the preserved record. Judging by the range of recent examples, the religious world is invariably shot through with

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personalities ranging from the sweet art appreciation of Sister Wendy to the vicious banality of Osama bin Laden. So was the world of early Christian inspiration more like today’s turbulent spiritual kaleidoscope … or the leaner idealization of The Robe? One may start with that “collegial process” of ecumenical great councils Johnson alluded to, since that was going on far closer to the start of things than the Crusades or the Reformation. While “rowdy” may be adequate to describe the behavior of frat jocks who’ve had too much to drink, it hardly does justice to the climate of increasing Christian fanaticism that accompanied the rise in the faith’s popularity.225 Just when Constantine’s Edict of Milan legalized the practice of Christianity in 313, the millennialist Donatist sect from Carthage was out to exterminate those “invalid” priests who had handed over Scripture during the preceding Great Persecution of Diocletian. To root out these dangerous quislings, bands of shock troops called Circumcellions “pillaged and destroyed Catholic churches, beat priests and killed some, and robbed travelers who could not prove they were Donatists.”226 The Donatists overconfidently appealed to Constantine to help their rampaging spree of revenge, which he did for awhile. But in the end the emperor decided things had gone far enough, arresting their leaders and confiscating their churches … whereupon Roman soldiers and Christian mobs representing the winning side massacred many of the remaining Donatists … tit for tat.227 So far, this is an old story all too familiar from the more recent centuries of cyclical sectarian violence and rationalization, and thus understandable in those terms. But not long after, the Arian controversy embroiled the church over less political considerations: whether Christ was one with God or of separate natures, human and/or divine, in one combination or another (depending on how one translated the Greek for “essence”). With no reason to think Arian and orthodox would not imperil the social order (and thus the imperial grip on it) much as the Donatists had, Constantine hauled in the bishops for the first great council, where he sided with the Triune interpretation of the Nicene Creed. 228 On the ascendant this time was Athanasius, the disagreeable orthodox Bishop of Alexandria, “a violent man, who regularly flogged his junior clergy and imprisoned or expelled bishops.” Showing how Diocletian’s approach had not gone away, but only switched sides, in 333 Constantine ordered the destruction of the heretic Arian writings … and the death penalty for any who hid his books.229 Constantine’s expedient fusion of religion and politics embodied much that would be going wrong with the Christian church over the next thousand years. Paul Johnson highlighted Constantine’s superstitious side: a “weird megalomaniac” who feared offending any religious cult (most of whom appeared to be just as credulous as he was).230 Ramsay MacMullen stressed his ruthlessness: “The empire had never had on the throne a man given to such bloodthirsty violence as Constantine.”231 But the new Defender of the Faith also knew a good deal when he saw it: as Diocletian’s experience made clear, Christians didn’t revolt even when persecuted to the hilt. By accepting life’s inequalities as they did, Christianity seemed just the thing for an emperor in need of a pliable religious veneer for his restored single-Caesar autocracy.232 The problem was, Christianity was still very much a minority belief system. At the time of the Great Persecution at the start of the 4th century, Christians were no more than five percent of the population.233 And this was true in more ways than sheer numbers, as Paul Johnson reminded: Constantine was almost certainly a Mithraic, and his triumphal arch, built after his “conversion”, testifies to the Sun-god, or “unconquered sun”. Many Christians did not make a clear distinction between this sun-cult and their own. They referred to Christ “driving his chariot across the sky”; they held their services on Sunday, knelt towards the East and had their nativity-feast on 25 December, the birthday of the sun at the winter solstice. During the later pagan revival under the Emperor Julian many Christians found it easy to apostasize because of this confusion; the Bishop of Troy told Julian he had always prayed secretly to the sun. Constantine never abandoned sun-worship and kept the sun on his coins. He made Sunday into a day of rest, closing the lawcourts and forbidding all work except agricultural labour. In his new city of Constantinople, he set up a statue of the sun-god, bearing his own features, in the Forum; and another of the

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mother-Goddess Cybele, though she was presented in a posture of Christian prayer.234 But the root of the troubles plaguing Christianity went beyond trying to separate true doctrine from pagan syncretism (as divisive as that could be). It involved the idea that once you figured out which God to worship and how properly to do so, other people were obliged to worship that God too … and in precisely the same way.235 This was the escalating logic of a worldview that thought to explain everything, from the creation of the universe through to how all people ought to live their lives. As Paul Johnson put it, “Because the Christian society was total it had to be compulsory; and because it was compulsory it had no alternative but to declare war on its dissentients.”236 It was against this background that the “wonders” of the ecumenical conferences played out, seesawing back and forth over which version of the nature of Christ everyone would have to accept. The Third Ecumenical Council at Ephesus condemned Nestorius (the Bishop of Constantinople) in 431 for favoring “two natures” for Christ … issues still murky when the Fourth Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon was convened in 451. The bishop appointed to the council from Alexandria made the mistake of misunderstanding how far their compromises deviated from their church’s Coptic tradition: “Bishop Prolerius of Alexandria so infuriated his flock by accepting the decision of Chalcedon that in the end they literally tore him to pieces.” 237 During this period the church also adopted a more proactive policy on the pagans. Starved of imperial patronage the pagan temples had quickly grown poorer under Constantine, but in 341 Constantius II aimed at the complete eradication of pagan “superstitions” by closing their shrines.238 In 356 worshiping pagan images was made a capital crime, though it was generally ignored in much the same way that anti-Christian laws had been under the ancien régime.239 Of course, official enforcement was not the only way to register disapproval. Not unlike Storm Troopers on Kristallnacht, Christian mobs were able to destroy temples with comparative impunity because church leaders and the civil authorities looked the other way. Since one person’s “superstition” is usually another’s deeply held conviction, such tits can provoke equally violent tats. On one occasion, pagans ambushed Marcellus, Bishop of Apamea (who had kept in the background while his gang of soldiers and gladiators desecrated their temple) and burned him alive. 240 Now one might think that this incendiary idea of idol worship was safely removed from the picture with the abolition of paganism and the triumph of Christian clarity. But that was far from true for the Orthodox East—that society whose “long view of Christian history” Phillip Johnson thought to contrast with the schismatic excesses of the Catholic West. 241 As revealing as the absence of Probainognathus from Darwin on Trial, there was no reference in Objections Sustained to the unsettling Iconoclasm controversy which convulsed Orthodoxy for over a century, from 726 to 843. That fracas began when Byzantine Emperor Leo III decided icons of saints were detestable “pagan idols” and would have to go … along with the artists who perversely insisted on painting them and the faithful who stubbornly persisted in venerating them.242 But even after the restoration of icon veneration, the institutional mayhem didn’t stop: Orthodoxy kept up with all the latest fashions in heretic disposal, such as burning Basil (head of the Bogomil sect) late in the 11th century.243 Not that Catholicism wasn’t holding up its end in the West: they remained trendsetters by honing their new crusading skills against infidels at home and abroad. 244 Indeed, all the papal crusades undertaken by the inappropriately named Innocent III were directed at Christians, most notably against the popular Cathars in the 12th and 13th centuries. 245 As described by Terry Jones & Alan Ereira, Pope Innocent’s “concept of the world was genuinely totalitarian; people should have no bonds to each other, only to the Church. Heresy is an expression of shared differences. In a culture where religion infuses every aspect of life, cultural differences are expressed as religious differences. A war against heresy was a war against differences.”246 Looking at this disquieting record of “ideas with consequences” puts Phillip Johnson’s distancing of “Papal absolutism” in a somewhat less roseate light. The early great councils were not convened merely to debate doctrine in the “collegial” way Johnson might square off with Ken Miller over macroevolution. The bishops were assembled in times of distasteful sectarian strife to

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codify doctrine, to eliminate differences—by force, if necessary. And that could only occur insofar as it was accepted that there should exist a compelling ecclesiastical authority over matters of everybody’s faith. That characters like Leo III or Innocent III would (and could) go as far as they did to protect the unity of their Christian societies wasn’t “a repudiation” of the process of agreement: that was the process.247 Applied Biblical Morality: Heretic hunting and how to treat your slave Here we have to face up to a quite important history lesson—and a recurring one, unfortunately, to the extent that people keep on making the same mistakes. Really big social nuisances (like Iconoclasm or the Inquisition) don’t just pop out of nowhere. They customarily draw on centuries of prior practice. Indeed, that may be one of the prime sources of their strength, as they resonate with a way of thinking so ingrained that few stop to give the underlying assumptions anything like the proper consideration … that is, until its too late to avoid the consequences. You wake up one morning and find its 726 or 1209 and people are getting killed. The actions of a Leo or Innocent could hardly have come about had there not been a chain of theological precedent crafted by otherwise bright philosophers who most probably didn’t have anyone like them in mind as the fanatics who would eventually put it all into practice. Several hefty links in this department were provided early on by St. Augustine, whom Paul Johnson identified as “the dark genius of imperial Christianity, the ideologue of the Church-State alliance, and the fabricator of the medieval mentality.” Augustine infused Christian thought with the “despondent passivity” that ran through the Punic form of faith he grew up with: profound and courageous, but also intolerant and uncompromising. Besides laying the foundation for Christian nationalism, Augustine was the first theorist of persecution, co-opting the cruelty of Roman torture for the arsenal of God.248 Karen Armstrong assessed the result of this grim legacy as it played out centuries later during the Crusades: “What must distinguish Christian from pagan violence was that it had to be inspired by love. When he used violence, a Christian must be full of love for the enemy he was fighting, and see his violence as medicinal, used in rather the same way as a parent who chastises a child for its own good.”249 Nor was such “tough love” switched off when Protestant reformers came along to set things right with those “atrocities of the wars of the Reformation.” Coursing under their position was just as dangerous an inertial logic, as atheist apologist George Smith was more than willing to point out: Luther’s appeal to conscience as the ultimate judge of scriptural truth proved to be extremely effective against Catholicism, but it created serious problems among Protestants themselves. As dozens upon dozens of sects arose, many with bizarre and unorthodox beliefs, each claimed for its own doctrines the subjective certainty of conscience that had been defended by Luther. Luther found this pluralism and diversity abhorrent, as did the other great Reformer, John Calvin. But having unleashed the individual conscience as the final arbiter of religious truth, how could this anarchistic force be contained? The political aspect of this problem was easily solved: Both Luther and Calvin were determined foes of religious toleration, and both called for the extermination not only of Catholics, but also of heretical Protestants (such as Anabaptists and antiTrinitarians) whose interpretation of Scripture did not comport with their own. 250 From Popes to Patriarchs to Protestants … everybody seemed to be playing by the same rules, and one may note that these did not involve either ontological naturalism or worldly materialism. What these faithful were defending was their faith. The truth as they were certain of it. Yet when creationist Protestants like D. James Kennedy or Tim LaHaye assess the dark reflection of Reformation violence they are no more willing to see the glaze of their own theological presumptions than Phillip Johnson was. Indeed, Kennedy and LaHaye go beyond Johnson’s “Creationism Lite” by passing the buck in an orgy of sectarian rationalization. 251 For

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Troubles in Paradise-Downard them the Inquisition wasn’t all that big a deal because Protestants weren’t “on the giving end” of the torture, and not all that many people were killed anyway (only 30,000 or so). And besides, the Reformation’s religious wars pale by comparison to the carnage of the ideologically motivated Nazis and Communists of the 20th century.252 But if you think Catholicism is especially open to taking the blame here, expositor Patrick Madrid is on hand to set you right. After acknowledging in the most vapidly general way “the excesses and cruelties that some Catholics” had done, Madrid outdid Kennedy & LaHaye by passing the buck again—this time all the way upstairs: “God himself established the principle and practice of a religious inquisition.”253 It’s hard to decide which of these rationalizations are more oblivious (or injurious) to the history. Madrid’s is akin to the Titanic/iceberg problem, where intentionality cannot be easily quarantined from ethics. If God really had ordained inquisitions, wouldn’t he be somewhat at fault for failing to supply the faithful with a more prudently clear manual of conduct? But against this “asleep at the switch” option, Kennedy & LaHaye offer the logic of the bully … or the sociopath. We didn’t do anything wrong … and besides, they started it—and worse, too! Their penchant for historical revisionism takes on the further political dimension of conservative Protestant creationism, where opposition to communism is just as much a given as their religious objections to evolution.254 The anti-Marxist intersection gets a revealingly broad run of antievolutionary traffic, by the way, where the blur of Michael Behe flitting past can resemble Henry Morris at speed. 255 Sometimes the jam would be more serious if it weren’t already so funny … like the apologists straining to extract an advantage from a remarkably ridiculous controversy about a dinosaur display at the London Natural History Museum that supposedly promoted “Marxist” ideology because it used cladism!256 But at other times comedy takes a back seat … such as the Joseph McCarthy jitters one can get whenever Kent Hovind gratuitously tosses off his definition of the ACLU as the “American Communist Lawyers Union.”257 Conservative mileage in this apologetic lane gets a strong boost from the fact that a number of those responsible for encouraging fundamental theoretical debate in recent evolutionary thinking were vocally active back in the radical Sixties—most prominently, that lightning rod Stephen Jay Gould.258 That can lead to some far from subtle political knife sharpening, as in this speedy version of Gould àla mode prepared for his Toward Tradition clientele by Daniel Lapin: In his closing comments for a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation documentary for David Suzuki, called The Nature of Things, he said, “Now that we know we were not made in anybody’s image, we are free to do whatever we wish.” I personally suspect that this view has less to do with his paleontological training and more to do with his secular Jewish background and the flag of the USSR that used to decorate his office wall.259 Lapin might have wondered whether Gould was not posing a dynamic ethical challenge to the CBC audience: that because we are free to chart our destiny on our own, rather than having a course set by theological decree, the decision making process becomes all the more important. What should we wish? This is not in principle a repudiation of deeper ethics, but rather a call for a reassessment of basic principles. As we’ll see below, this is the same issue Steven Pinker was getting at—and Phillip Johnson wasn’t. But listening to what people say and thinking about what they might have been getting at is more difficult to do when everything has already been cast on either side of a strict philosophical divide. The inability (or unwillingness) to differentiate between past and present practice, or to keep from confusing a politicized upbringing with the open advocacy of that ideology come hell or high water, is just the sort of “black or white” picture conservative creationists are most comfortable with. Never mind looking too closely at how other people might be reading their road map … keep the eye fixed on the only acceptable destination in your own worldview, as Henry & John Morris are wont to do:

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It is time—high time, late time—for Christians to become alert to the fact that creationism is the only real antidote to this left-wing ideology that in one form enslaved more than half the world and is now almost at our own gates in another form. It may not conquer the free world by revolution and military power; but even our own schools and other public institutions, by its intellectual pretensions, are all based on its atheistic, evolutionary, pseudo-scientific presuppositions.260 And speaking of presuppositions… Phillip Johnson joined this apologetic parade in Objections Sustained when he skewered the angst of leftists like Todd Gitlin who pine for the comfort of the old Marxist creed lost when things turned sour. Johnson would not let Gitlin off the hook concerning the fruits of their ideology, such as how “identity politics” flowed from radical ideals of government. “Gitlin consistently refuses to follow through on the obvious implications of his own analysis, however, probably because by doing so he would instantly reclassify himself as a neoconservative.”261 Which was a cheeky position for Johnson to take, to be sure: holding Gitlin to account in exactly the way he would not measure the comparable motivations and methodology of his own Christian tradition. This is more popularly known in the philosophy biz as a “double standard.”262 But double standards are the stock in trade of stubborn (though not necessarily healthy) ideologies. Just as orthodox Marxists imagined religion as solely the “opiate of the people,” so too conservative antievolutionists act as though the recipe for contemporary oppression were as simple as: “Take one sinful mankind; add Darwinism; mix well.”263 The problem with this pastiche is that it is more than just a pastiche … it epitomizes a revisionist streak that could have practical consequences if professional historians weren’t around to keep the record straight. The bloody tapestry of 20th century totalitarianism simply cannot be understood without appreciating its many threads, from misplaced idealism and questionable economic theories to the differing ways in which societies rationalized oppressive conditions. 264 While no lasting insights on evolutionary dynamics are to be found in the speeches of Hitler, Stalin, Mao or Pol Pot, the political dynamics that allowed them to do their dirtiest work would have been completely familiar to any ancient autocrat, pagan or Christian. Permitted a peek at the modern machinery of absolute power, there is little reason to doubt that Constantine, Leo or Innocent would have taken very long to figure out which levers to pull. 265 Failing to appreciate the underlying similarity of materialist and religious autocracy could easily translate into not realizing how critical a free press, independent judiciaries, or responsible labor unions may be in dampening the pendulum of excess. That is the possible political fallout. But the tar and feathering of Darwin veers into a more serious historical amnesia when the lessons are hitting closer to home, and we get into that when we look into how antievolutionists think to assess the origin and legacy of Nazism.266 The part of the story conservative creationists like to stress is the role the eugenics movement played in Nazi racial policies. This is a genuine skeleton rattling in the scientific closet. Mixing racial prejudice with politics and “objective” data, eugenicists thought that the human species could be “improved” through selective breeding … or at least have its less desirable members (invariably not themselves) pruned through sterilization or even euthanasia. Eugenic philosophy built on a lot of ideas, including evolutionary biology. But eugenicists also drew on the practical experience of animal husbandry, which went back a lot longer than evolutionary theory and owed very little to Darwinian postulates.267 The dangers of extrapolating from what seemed a solid experiential foundation was illustrated when the fastidious inbreeding used to preserve pure bloodlines was recommended outside the barnyard: So satisfactory were the results of such close inbreeding in animals that they were repeatedly urged as justification for similar hygienic practices among people—at least marriages between first cousins, if not between members of the same nuclear family—so long as “the parties” were not “both predisposed to the same

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Troubles in Paradise-Downard disease.” The “extraordinary fear” with which people had traditionally regarded such unions was disparaged as the result of “ignorance” and “delusion.”268 But this was only the start of their theoretical trouble. A practical eugenics depended on at least three seriously unsubstantiated assumptions. First, there was the idea that you could identify “useful” traits to begin with. But what makes one person “better” than another? Was deafness a handicap for Beethoven, or ultimately an inspiration? Who exactly should be deemed qualified to decide such things? Presuming you could clear that hurdle, how could anyone define what mix of abilities would be advantageous for a whole society? Eugenics promoters acted not unlike the absolutists who steered the early Christian synods: they simply assumed that the recipe for a better world was to have a lot more of themselves to populate it. But even granting that narcissistic axiom, there was no guarantee that those “good” traits really were specified genetically. Remember this was in the pre-DNA era when scientists hadn’t a clue about how much of anything was inherited. Finally, there was an obvious snag in this department that George Bernard Shaw spotted when invited to mate with the flibbertigibbet dancer Isadora Duncan. When she enthusiastically imagined their potential offspring as a favorable balance of her beauty and his brains, the famed playwright supposedly declined her offer with the warning that it was just as likely to be the other way around! But rather than pausing over their ignorance as Shaw did, eugenicists blundered ahead as if they knew the correct answers … or even the right questions. As noted by those modern evolutionary demographers, the Cavalli-Sforzas, “The eugenicists of the time were incompetent scientists but successful politicians, and had their own way over the race laws.” 269 Unfortunately for the fate of many millions of people, it didn’t seem quite that way at the time. In its heyday early in the 20th century eugenics had some significant (and disparate) supporters: “In the United States, President Theodore Roosevelt, birth-control pioneer Margaret Sanger, and inventor Alexander Graham Bell were all eugenicists.”270 Then along came World War I to unnerve European society … and a global depression to impoverish it. In that environment of fear and tension, the Nazis appeared with a mission to apply corrective “racial hygiene” to the hilt. Here we have one of the nastiest episodes in that historical lesson mentioned above—about how deep the roots of social nuisances can run, and how dangerous it can be not to look at them thoroughly before it’s too late. In this area, the Nazis happened to plow a particularly long and rotten trail.271 It included an unprecedented level of hysterical political scapegoating along with a clutch of pseudoscientific beliefs so ludicrous that no one should have taken them anywhere near as seriously as they so tragically did.272 Now one obvious thing about the role evolutionary thinking played in all this is how evolutionists and historians have made no secret of it. That’s because it is not possible for serious disciplines to properly assess the lessons of history without thoroughly and fairly understanding what went on and why. Thus in a 1988 article on “Biological Science and the Roots of Nazism,” George Stein openly stressed that, “with the exception of a pathological hatred of the Jews, shared by many Völkish Germans, Hitler did not invent national socialist biopolicy.”273 Yet that only reinforces the adjoining issue: while eugenics provided the “scientific” rational for Nazi antiSemitism, where had that “pathological hatred of the Jews” come from for them to exploit. 274 That also is no secret … provided one is open to look. The seeds of European anti-Semitism rest on several New Testament passages where John and Paul stressed the recalcitrance of their fellow Jews in refusing to accept Christianity. 275 But instead of being repudiated by the early Church as it expanded among the Roman gentiles, such resentment only grew over the centuries until it could find a release via the complicity of the state. Historian Adrian Hastings observed that, “The new Christianity was already becoming alarmingly intolerant, and this was particularly noticeable in regard to the Jews, whom the pagan empire had treated far more kindly than it had treated Christians.”276 Before the 4th century was out, Christian mob attacks on synagogues had become common, and as the Roman world gave way to barbarian kingdoms in the west and the Byzantine “New Rome” in the east, Jews got the short end of a lot of sticks whenever times got tough. Mandatory baptisms under the Franks in 582 following a plague … persecution in Visigoth Spain after Catholics subdued the Arian heresy there in 589 … forced

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conversions in 608 as the Persians threatened Antioch. 277 Eventually all levels of the hierarchy played a part, as David Keys noted of Byzantium: “In 630, under pressure from local Christians and their priests, Emperor Heraclius ordered the massacre of Jews in Jerusalem and Galilee areas.”278 The situation grew more intense in the middle of the 11th century after the Seljuk Turks put Jerusalem under the control of militant Muslims, who began to restrict Christian access to the Holy Land. Pope Urban II responded with a call for the first crusade in 1095, embarking western Christendom on a fateful and destructive course which ultimately “fossilized Islam into a fanatic posture” of uncompromising jihads (the effects of which we’re still having to deal with today). 279 But this went far beyond religious freedom in Jerusalem, or who was to get geopolitical dibs on the decaying Byzantine Empire, as historian Frederic Baumgartner described: A more horrific aspect of millennialism that appeared first among the crusading poor was the belief that the success of their efforts to bring about the Second Coming required the deaths of the “enemies of Christ.” Millennialist beliefs led the crusaders to seek to cleanse the world of Jews and Muslims. It is easy to see how, caught up in the bloodlust of battle, they could massacre God’s enemies, as they did in Jerusalem when they took the city in 1099. But before going to fight in the Holy Land, they had felt the need to cleanse Christendom of “Christ’s first enemies,” the Jews, resulting in the deaths of Jews in several Rhineland cities. There is evidence to indicate that for many of the crusaders, popular and knightly alike, millennialism played a role in many atrocities that they committed. Antichrist would be a Jew from the tribe of Dan and his most devoted followers would be Jews. Since the Parousia would not take place until all the Jews had converted to Christianity, the event would be hastened by forcing them to convert and killing those who refused. It seems clear enough that religious belief was the primary reason behind the massacres of Jews in medieval Europe, because baptized Jews were assured of the safety of life and property.280 This is not a very pretty picture … and it was painted a long time before Darwin and evolutionary theory trotted on the scene to add the twaddle of eugenics to the Hieronymus Bosch nightmare. But for the Biblical apologist anxious to pass moral judgment on selected targets (like evolution) there is no ambiguity about apportioning blame. Zeno-slicing simply flattens the factual landscape until it matches the required perspective. Which is, as Ankerberg & Weldon blithely put it, that “Christian values could never have resulted in such acts.”281 This attitude reflects a very common feature of the apologetic toolkit. Writing comfortably atop a contemporary moral tradition where anti-Semitism is definitely passé, the logic of inerrancy requires the dissolution of the conflict. Just as the Bible cannot be allowed to contain any internal contradiction, or be at variance with any of the “true facts” of history or nature, so too can there be no learning curve to Biblical morality. But since there has quite obviously been a considerable evolution of ethical behavior over the last few thousand years, a sort of moral imperialism kicks in to flavor the exegesis. Much as conservative apologists haven’t physically rewritten Luke’s genealogy to mention Mary, but plainly read it as though it were, a surprisingly broad swath of Biblical moralists generously retrofit contemporary mores into the belief system as though they had always been there. 282 And akin to territorial imperialism, moral imperialists are not especially open to local autonomy. In the case of anti-Semitism, this translates into a refusal to apply the converse of their logic to philosophical opponents like Darwinists. While Christian values are excluded from contributing to the matrix of unacceptable moral behavior, individual evolutionists can be as ethical as all get out without their convictions lessening the taint of that Original Sin whereby those improper beliefs must ultimately be partly their fault. Wendell Bird fielded this double standard in his overview of Social Darwinism, Marxism, racism and Nazism: “Needless to say, most evolutionists do not embrace those political faiths.” But in the end he had the tar and feathers ready anyway: “If it is at all relevant that the theory of abrupt appearance is consistent with some

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religious faiths (although different from them), it logically must be equally relevant that the theory of evolution is consistent with Marxism, racism, and Nazism, as well as with a comparable number of other religious faiths.”283 Here Bird’s argument turns on a distinctly curious use of consistency. Much as Phillip Johnson envisages “testing” the fossil record as something only applicable to repudiating Darwinism, so too did his fellow-lawyer Bird slip off the logic of his own position by not thinking about where he planned to pigeonhole the many beliefs whose consistency he did not discuss. This ranged from Protestants and Catholics having gone at each other during the Thirty Years’ War to the unequivocally racist antievolutionary KKK. By such (tactical?) omissions Bird left us with rather a wink-wink, nudge-nudge, by which “consistency” became a tacit synonym for evolution’s complicity. Were matters only as murky as the legalist polishing of creationists like Wendell Bird, we might slough this off as merely one more pitfall of failing to abide by the Rules of the Game (that “paying attention to all the evidence” thing). This would be annoying but not necessarily sinister. But behind the positional jousting there lies a far more disconcerting metaphysic that suggests how often Biblical antievolutionism marches along more ancient parapets, ready to dump the boiling oil on the heathen if only given a chance. Thus in their fresco of bad sociopolitical effects supposedly sprouting from the Darwinian vine, Ankerberg & Weldon added a particularly medieval chiaroscuro: “We do not offer the following examples to argue that the theory of evolution is directly responsible for the terrible events cited. Obviously, many factors were at work, including human evil and, in all likelihood, demonic evil as well.”284 Now don’t think for a minute that this reference to “demonic evil” was anything like perfunctory window dressing. No less than Richard Milton embracing the irrational universe, Ankerberg & Weldon mean just what they say about demonic influence in human history—and they are by no means alone in believing it. In this they are only taking their New Testament straight up when the evangelists described dozens of cases of demons being physically cast out of people by Jesus and other competitors. For example, Merrill F. Unger was ever so matter-of-fact: Certainly the Jews of Jesus’ day were also under pagan influence when they exorcised demons (Matthew 12:25-29). Some expulsions were no doubt genuine answers to fasting and prayer by sincere Pharisees, but many served Satan’s program by their temporary results and protection of the real enemy. Such expulsions do not represent divisions in the satanic kingdom nor instances of “Satan casting himself out,” but satanic collaboration to extend his empire of evil (cf. Matthew 12:25; Acts 19:13-17).285 Of course when calibrating a Biblical demonology one obvious loose end is telling the episodes from genuine inspiration. That was the problem Unger stepped over when he suggested Satan might have assisted in some demonic expulsions. And the reason why there is such ambiguity here is that (surprise!) the relevant New Testament texts offer highly conflicting advice. For example, Matthew 7:22-23 declared plainly enough that “Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.” Yet Mark 9:38-39 just as directly offered: “And John answered him, saying, Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name, and he followeth not us: and we forbade him, because he followeth not us. But Jesus said, Forbid him not: for there is no man which shall do a miracle in my name, that can lightly speak evil of me.”286 If figuring out under these rules whether an expelled demon represented an approved miracle seems complicated enough, just imagine how much more difficult it would be to ferret out the machinations of Satan when it comes to the more mundane circumstances of human history. Roman emperors came and went, with varying policies toward any local autonomy that might threaten the imperial system, such as boat-rocking Christians who refused to follow Tradition by worshiping the emperor … or even more subversively, suggesting that their King of Kings was

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about to set up a new regime. But that numerological nitwit Robert Faid cuts through all these side issues to discern the real show: Satan tried his best to destroy the early Christian church. By placing men of his own choosing in positions of power in the Roman Empire, he attempted to wipe out the believers in Jesus Christ. First Caligula, then Nero and later emperors persecuted and killed Christians. But the more vicious the attacks of Satan, the more solid became the faith and determination of the early Christians. Satan did not succeed in destroying Christianity, but he is still trying. Only his tactics have changed.287 Quite unintentionally I am sure, Faid actually revealed something very important about how Christians could honestly end up persecuting others with just as much cruelty as they had suffered in the Roman arena. And how such ideas can remain alive and well (if that’s the right word) in an era of instant coffee and fax machines. For Faid, the Romans were not merely defending their own religious ways and social arrangements with the same confident brutality they had used to conquer their empire. Instead, a whole new subtext has been eased underneath the bald historical facts: the conviction that Satan had personally stage-managed the politics of Imperial Rome. That means seeing human beings as pawns on a great eschatological chessboard. 288 In such a venue “means” and “ends” can take on a very different twist. For if Satan can manipulate pagans in this way … well, maybe heretics masquerading as “Christians” should also be looked at. And since heresies are about differences concerning the foundations of an eternal truth, wouldn’t defenders of the faith be obliged (in the spirit of Innocent III) to resolve them with all the weapons at their disposal? After all, consider the stakes: the very fate of someone’s immortal soul. Under those conditions, believing in the “wrong” thing is nothing to be skipped over lightly. Ankerberg & Weldon may be more prosaic in how they frame the matter today, but their attitude is as plainly consistent as any medieval cleric: “Risking one’s money at Las Vegas is one thing. Gambling one’s soul on evolution is another matter entirely.”289 Throw in next the disjunctive quality of Christian “tough love” summed up by Hal Lindsey when he told of his pre-conversion encounter with a Christian proselytizer. “Young man, you may reject me, but if you reject the gift of God’s love, then His wrath will fall on you for all eternity.” Lindsey then observed: “That ‘shot’ hit below the belt!” By this he did not mean he thought the missionary was using a rhetorical trick—Lindsey meant only to indicate how seriously this point struck him. Nothing seemed amiss about a god who loves you so much he will punish you eternally for your weakness if only you happen to mistakenly not let him love you in just the right way. 290 Think then of what someone might be capable of who believes in the same metaphysic as John Ankerberg or Hal Lindsey do today … and is armed with all the machinery of the state, as Innocent was. This is more than worldly temptation—it is something directly implied by the content of the theology. Wouldn’t it be remiss not to apply just a little force now and then in so important an endeavor? And then maybe a little more, if results weren’t obtained right off? And finally … all the might necessary to see to it that those corrupted by Satan do not spend the rest of eternity roasting in an even more frightful condition?291 You can see the quandary for the non-fanatic in such an environment. Even should one challenge this “tough love” logic on theological grounds, how exactly might this interpretation take hold if the extremists aren’t persuaded by it? There are precedents in the Bible suggesting just how intractable the A=!A mindset can be when it comes to interpreting the significance of contrary opinion or expectations. These are instances not where confusion is occurring because of later church redaction but because there is a level of genuine information distortion at the source. Such as Matthew 13:10-15, intimating that (in order to fulfill a prophecy) Christ spoke in parables deliberately to be misunderstood by outsiders. That at least would be an honest confusion—but Paul suggested there could more dishonest misunderstandings too. II Thessalonians 2:11-12 rationalized why some would accept Satan’s miracles in the last days: “And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they

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should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” And this isn’t the only instance where the Lord was described as apparently manipulating people’s thoughts. The Old Testament has several. In Joshua 11:20 we have the unappealing maliciousness of God hardening the hearts of an enemy people so “that they should come against Israel in battle, that he might destroy them utterly.” This relates to the genocide issue we’ll get to shortly. But of course it also brings to mind that better-known episode of divine brainwashing: the repeated “hardening” of Pharaoh’s heart in Exodus 7-11, whereby the Lord evidently would not permit Pharaoh to let his people go until all the Ten Plagues kit had been used up. Responding recently to a questioner on this point, Hank Hanegraaff resolved the “misplaced concreteness” here as artfully as had Gleason Archer’s Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties twenty years earlier. The “Bible Answer Man” simply interpolated some text, explaining that it was actually not God but God’s mercy that had hardened Pharaoh’s heart. And this was because stopping those plagues each time was so merciful that Pharaoh could only continue rejecting God’s just authority by hardening his own heart, thereby spitefully precluding the termination of the plagues. All of which left only the interchangeability of God’s “mercy” and Pharaoh’s own will to be accounted for in Hanegraaff’s dizzying hermeneutics.292 The ability of at least some people to employ an A=!A mode of reasoning in this way casts a dark pall over the rationalist optimism of E. O. Wilson in his book Consilience when he agreed with one mathematician’s definition of “proof” as “that which convinces a reasonable man; a rigorous proof is that which convinces an unreasonable man.”293 But that witticism presupposes a common context for the limits of unreasonable. The very existence of A=!A inerrancy calls into question that assumption. It may be true that many (and perhaps even most) people can be persuaded of true things on the basis of evidence, if only you’re thorough enough. But it is also a sorry fact of history that there are some people who cannot be persuaded of a position’s validity no matter what the evidence. Moreover, the most distinctively “unreasonable” people of the past also have one surefire way to respond to even the most definitive of proofs: doing away with the logician instead. It is at this stage in the cultural game when the tit-for-tat cascade threatens to come in. For if the persecutors won’t relent, do you have to take up arms to defend your freedom … like the Cathars had? And if the “tough love” gets really tough, such as when your opponents engage in atrocities (or at least you have heard they have) will the defense of the Truth run the risk of becoming just as ruthless as the defenders of the wrong? These are far from academic issues … and hardly restricted to the Judeo-Christian context, as contemporary Muslims have discovered in the wake of the “911” terrorism. Just as the “Papal absolutism” of Innocent III rested on centuries of prior tradition, today’s ruthless martyrs for the faith have only revived a philosophy of jihad that had cooled considerably in the centuries since the Islamic world played a central role in Eurasian culture and politics. 294 And, not surprisingly, the mechanics of Islamic rationalization are geared to the same A=!A transmission ratio seen among Biblical inerrantists, such as those who couldn’t accept Osama bin Laden’s complicity in the attacks even after his confessional tape was made public late in December 2001. A few obdurately questioned whether it was a valid translation … or showed no inclination to change their opinion even if it were accurate. And this reaction came not only from the expected quarter of Muslim apologists abroad—it was also heard from a group of remarkably gauzy non-Islamic college students interviewed at the Catholic Gonzaga University, who had been taught by their parents never to be judgmental about anyone or anything. Such attitudes reflect the persistent danger of what Kendrick Frazier of Skeptical Inquirer describes as “dogmatic skepticism.”295 Such are the undercurrents of pathology coursing beneath the hard-won veneer of our civilization. For if there’s one thing that the history of fanaticism teaches, it is how fragile the vessel of civility is. Cultures can spiral out of control with horrific speed, as someone with the Wayback Machine would have learned in 1928 Weimar Berlin by jumping only a scant five years ahead. That’s one lesson of the Nazi experience that often gets lost in the apologetic shuffle: how old ways of thinking can click into new configurations too fast to be stopped. Similar non-linear processes were at work most recently in Iran, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan, as the lure of absolute

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conviction devours whatever traditions there were of reason and dignity. Neighbors and relatives you had lived with fairly peaceably for as long as you could remember suddenly are enemies—or you become an enemy if you won’t go along. Rather than engaging in such substantive historical reflection, however, the lure of moral imperialism leads Biblical creationists like Chuck Colson & Nancy Pearcey to paint a picture of reassuring calm: When Jewish theologian Dennis Prager gives speeches, he often asks audiences to imagine that they are walking down a dark city alley at night and they suddenly see a group of young men coming toward them. Prager then asks: “Would you be frightened or relieved that they are carrying Bibles and that they’ve just come from a Bible study?” Audiences invariably laugh and admit that they would be relieved. Commitment to biblical truth leads to more civil behavior.296 Transplant that dark alley out of the secularized 20th century, though, and pedestrians in early Christian Alexandria or Antioch might not have felt quite so relieved … especially if the Bible students coming at them were intent on “rowdy” encounters like the Circumcellions. By implicitly rejecting the idea that a fully Christian society could be anything but wellmannered, Colson & Pearcey are only reinforcing the “awkward” character of another of those questions that Phillip Johnson didn’t investigate in his accordion history of Christianity. Isn’t an escalation of sectarian violence exactly what a truly moral religion is supposed to restrain? Fellow dilettante antievolutionist and Kulturkampf warrior Robert Bork clearly thought so too when he quoted this warning of Paul Johnson, on how vital Christian thinking was to the preservation of a civil society: Certainly, mankind without Christianity conjures up a dismal prospect. The record of mankind with Christianity is daunting enough, as we have seen. The dynamism it has unleashed has brought massacre and torture, intolerance and destructive pride on a huge scale, for there is a cruel and pitiless nature in man which is sometimes impervious to Christian restraints and encouragements. But without these restraints, bereft of these encouragements, how much more horrific the history of these last 2,000 years must have been!297 This is a curious counterpart to Stephen Jay Gould’s musings on the primacy of contingency in historical processes. If we reran the temporal tape and somehow could isolate out the Christian influences, would things really have turned out worse? More importantly, could other “restraints and encouragements” (ones not necessarily grounded on strictly Christian precepts—or even on religion at all) have worked as well? Of course we have no more way of knowing that than we can tell what might have happened to the dinosaurs minus one Yucatan crater. But it is particularly revealing to see the sort of things that are excluded from the Christian interpretation of the trajectory of human history. The arguably “liberal” John Polkinghorne illustrated this when, like Paul Johnson, he struck a chord of hopeful ambiguity concerning the operation of the Christian tradition. Although cognizant of the darker facts of church history in a way the “conservative” Colson & Pearcey were not, Polkinghorne ultimately rested his argument on one of the same foundation stones that the likes of Robert Faid and Tim LaHaye use to ground their own more apocalyptic palisades: The history of the Church contains many episodes—crusades, inquisitions, forcible conversions—for which Christians can feel only a penitent sorrow. Yet there are countermovements to be set against those terrible deviations. The time of the Fourth Crusade in Egypt was also the time when Francis of Assisi denounced the excesses of the crusaders, crossed the military lines and had a long conversation on spiritual matters with the Sultan, who was deeply impressed,

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though not converted. It seems that the Body of Christ has its own spiritual immuno-suppressive system to counteract the effects of infection by demonic distortion. It would be ungrateful and ungenerous for universities and hospitals not to acknowledge the Christian Church’s role over the centuries in fostering learning and providing for the care of the sick.298 But what if the episodes calculated to elicit such “penitent sorrow” were not due to some “infection by demonic distortion” but rather by honestly following the explicit teachings? What if the people responsible for these centuries of cruelty were only convinced that it was the right thing to do because that’s what God had said was the right thing to do? The religious mind can accept (within limits) that followers of their faith might abuse doctrine and engage in violent or disreputable acts in spite of the teaching ... but never because of it. This is precisely the rationale quoted by Patrick Glynn in God: The Evidence: “There is more than a grain of truth in G. K. Chesterton’s observation that Christianity has not been ‘tried and found wanting’ but ‘found difficult and never tried’.”299 Never tried? Glynn did not see this as a disheartening admission that Christian ideals couldn’t be successfully applied on a social scale even after eighteen centuries of dedicated effort. Still less did he take Chesterton’s perhaps too clever epigram as an open invitation to wonder whether they might have got the question wrong. That along with laudable ideals of fellowship with God and compassion for their brethren, there might also be features to the Biblical worldview that would be impossible not to abuse. For example … Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.300 That seems a pretty straightforward guideline, doesn’t it? No need to put on the thinking cap to figure out what’s to be done here: if somebody’s a witch you’re supposed to kill them. That’s what the Bible actually says. And so it should not be even slightly surprising to learn that Christians actually did put witches to death. This started out as largely a sidebar to rooting out heresy, as the first instance of witch killing under the now officially Christian system took place in 386 when heretics Priscillian (Bishop of Avila) and others were also indicted under a witchcraft law. Confessing under torture, they were burned at the stake (a punishment which was considered rather excessive at the time).301 But then the times were getting tougher. And so were the authorities, as Priscillian found out when he appealed unsuccessfully to Pope Damasus I for mercy. I think it puts Priscillian’s plight in clearer perspective when you realize that Damasus (later made a saint, by the way) was not exactly the best role model for contemplative papal clemency. Adrian Hastings rated his contribution to the edifice of early Christianity as a tad more officious that that: Damasus was hardly an attractive figure. He had come to his position by disposing of his Christian opponents in a couple of very nasty massacres, one in the Julian basilica, the other in the Liberian. He lived in a grand way, socializing rather too frequently with senatorial ladies, and proving very unhelpful in regard to St. Basil’s patient attempt to sort out the continuing confusion left in Antioch by the Arian conflicts. Basil finally described him as impossibly arrogant. Damasus spent his time harping on the authority of his “apostolic see” and his position as direct successor of St. Peter, while showing very little understanding of what was actually going on in the East. But he built churches, restored catacombs, wrote epigrams about the martyrs and had them elegantly inscribed in marble by a friend. Moreover he commissioned his secretary, St. Jerome, the outstanding scholar of his age, to revise the existing Latin translations of the Gospels on the basis of the Greek texts. He behaved, then, very much like many a later Pope, and he represents the way in which the withdrawal of the emperor from Rome left room for its bishops to expand the exercise of their authority even though, for the time being, that of the Bishop of Milan where the imperial government in the West had its base was politically more important. 302

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All this means that the modest bonfires first lit to dispose of the likes of Priscillian would be fanned haphazardly by jurisdictional turf wars and recurring social anxiety until they had consumed at least a few hundred thousand more “witches” over the next 1300 years. 303 By that time the practice had got really professional, during the Renaissance and Reformation, when political conditions were lumbering under the combined weight of schismatic theological disputes and a virtually unrestricted climate of superstition to inspire the nervous believer to new heights of frenzy.304 Now at this point the fuddy-duddy Methodological Naturalist may feel it appropriate to chime in with a reality check. There aren’t any witches—at least not in the sense of our “vampire” problem. Most of those who were accused of being witches were probably nothing of the sort, from the little old lady herbalist down the lane getting the blame for somebody’s cow dying … to heretics who insisted on worshipping God in an unacceptable way. There may have been a few genuine Satanists caught up in the gears of inquisition, of course, but that is harder to credit historically given that most anyone might confess under torture to have been honoring the devil. And a few of the victims may have honestly had “magical” experiences of one sort or another because of the hallucinogenic effects of “flying ointments” or ergot-laced tainted rye bread.305 But all these post hoc sociological, psychological and pharmacological factors beg the thorny theological issue. However ignorant or venal the witch-hunters may have been personally, that doesn’t let the author of Exodus 22:18 off the moral hook. The God who had supposedly inspired the inerrant Bible would have known the full score on the existence of supernatural witchcraft, no less than how many planets there really were or that protons are made of quarks and not fairy fluff. So wouldn’t a better rule have been: Thou Shalt Not Take A Witch Seriously. And while we’re about it … what prompted Christian societies to stop taking witchcraft seriously? It certainly wasn’t because they’d unearthed some new Bible. No … Europe abandoned witch trials for two very practical philosophical reasons—both of them secular. First, as the insidious naturalistic assumption started its slow but steady appearance on the intellectual landscape, it began to dawn on people that there really weren’t any witches able to invoke true occult power. The belief in witchcraft eventually went the way of the Flat Earth and Geocentrism: old ideas that were simply forgotten, until it seemed as though no one in their right mind could ever have believed in them. But the main reason why the authorities stopped hanging and burning witches was not that the demonologists (or even geocentrists) had gone away … not even today, as we’ve seen. What happened was a sea change in how politics was conducted. Independent institutions evolved to the point where governments stopped paying attention to religious authority when it came to suppressing heresy. Witchcraft was simply a subset of this new more diverse worldview, where people thought less and less about persecution and more about pursuing capitalist profit and scientific discovery. However much fanatics might want to flush out the devil worshippers from their midst, by the late 18th century they no longer had access to the levers of power that could do anything about it. And cut off from this intoxicating and dangerous feedback loop, fanaticism dried out into a more benign social criticism … until by the late 20th century you get the sort of populist demonology Tim LaHaye or John Ankerberg embrace. That they look silly rather than scary is only because they appear in a context where you know they haven’t a snowball’s chance in hell of ever getting close enough to the sort of power required to turn them into a real nuisance. At least one hopes. But that same mellowing historical process also puts modern Christians between an ethical Scylla and Charybdis. For how could the killing of witches have been all that wrong if the Bible said you were supposed to do it? And if it isn’t wrong, why then should any Christian society stop doing it? The logical implications of this are clear: either the Bible was correct after all (suggesting that perhaps we shouldn’t be so fussy about prohibiting witch killing today) … or the inerrant Bible had made at least one really serious moral boner. There is no evidence to indicate that Christian apologists find either of these alternatives particularly attractive. And the reason why “there is no evidence” in this area is that they don’t think about it … in exactly the same way they haven’t thought about the reptile-mammal transition

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when wearing their antievolution hat. As with the therapsids, the subject never arises for most authors, and probably for the same Miltonian reason (of only reading other apologists who don’t discuss it).306 Thus while Daniel Lapin freely expounded on why an Orthodox Jew should follow the Old Testament teachings on dietary laws, capital punishment, and proscriptions on homosexuality, there was nothing about whether the old witchcraft rules should still apply. 307 And in those rarer instances when antievolutionists do inadvertently touch on the subject it is in that same tradition as Duane Gish and Phillip Johnson tackling the cynodonts. We get the parochial obtuseness of Henry & John Morris, bringing up witchcraft only as a pretext to castigate New Age beliefs and feminism.308 Or William Dembski, ever so magnanimously deciding that “many elements of premodernity needed to be discarded” (such as “superstition, astrology, witchcraft, witch trials, alchemy”) … as though the Bible itself hadn’t ventured a quite specific preemptive verdict on that witch trial stuff.309 Now one way off this merry-go-round is to take up a third alternative: that the Bible is morally relative. In that case, the Old Testament authors may be absolved of their moral lapses on the grounds that they were operating under their own situational ethics. Just how unpalatable an option that is for the traditional Biblical moralist was suggested recently by Francis J. Beckwith, in his contribution to Norman Geisler & Paul Hoffman’s apologetic anthology Why I Am a Christian. To avoid acknowledging that Christianity’s moral standards might have changed when it came to doing away with witches, Beckwith decided that what had really happened was just an improved recognition of social dynamics: During colonial days in Massachusetts, certain individuals were put to death as punishment for practicing witchcraft. We do not execute witches today, but not because our moral norms have changed. Rather, we don’t execute witches because we do not believe, as the seventeenth-century residents of Massachusetts did, that the practice of witchcraft has a fatal effect on the community. But suppose we had evidence that the practice of witchcraft affects people in the same way that secondhand cigarette smoke affects nonsmokers. We would alter the practice of our values to take into consideration this factual change. We may set up non-witch sections in restaurants and ban the casting of spells on interstate airplane flights. The upshot of all this is that the good of the community is a value we share with the seventeenth-century residents of Salem, but we simply believe they were factually wrong about the actual effect of witches on the community.310 One may note how Beckwith restricted his “upshot” to the comparatively mild instance of Salem witchcraft, which involved only a score of victims rather than mass campaigns—and also came toward the end of the witch-hunting era, standing out as quite atypical of New World disinterest in such practices.311 But Beckwith’s argument represented a further disingenuous twist, since there was far more to the witchcraft hysteria (even just in Salem) than merely an empirical assessment of the “good of the community.” Because the activity of malignant spiritual forces has always been part of the Biblical cosmology, 17th century Christians thought that to deny the reality of witches or demons was to implicitly question the existence of God. 312 The real “upshot” is that abhorrence of “moral relativism” functions for Biblical traditionalists today much as the existence of witches did for their philosophical ancestors, as a litmus test for a body of convictions that must be accepted (and defended) as a unity. That’s how moral relativism figures in the “whole shebang” favored by Tim LaHaye & David Noebel: Each generation has to decide if Christ is superior to Nietzsche; if God is smarter than Plato; if freedom is better than totalitarianism; if private property is superior to socialism; if creationism is superior to evolution; if purpose and design are superior to chance; if truth is better than falsehood; if beauty is better than ugliness; if love is better than hate; if good is better than evil; if right is

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better than wrong; if heaven is better than hell; if moral absolutes are better than moral relativism; if adoption is better than abortion; if self-control is better than licentiousness; if individual responsibility is better than victimization; if patriotism is better than globalism.313 It’s all part of that “fatal glass of beer” mentality that Frederick Crews lampooned (and which Phillip Johnson found so unattractive). But then Johnson has his own distilled Creationism Lite version (“God or matter”) that is just as uncompromising and polarized. Thus in Defeating Darwinism, moral relativism is but a subset of the “modernist assumptions” that the Wedge is out to fission: Relativism is particularly hard to avoid in the realm of value, because one of the basic modernist assumptions is that “ought” cannot be derived from “is.” Science may be able to tell us exactly how things happen, but it cannot tell us whether anything is bad or good, beautiful or ugly. Only humans (or God) can make moral or artistic judgments, and these judgments cannot be derived directly from mere facts. History may be able to tell us that most societies have condemned prostitution or homosexual behavior, but this fact cannot prove that such practices are “wrong” for us. After all, some of those same societies practiced barbaric cruelties and condoned slavery. Why shouldn’t we toss tradition overboard and base our ethical and artistic standards on our own desires?314 Alas, the witchcraft case makes mincemeat of this schema, since that “barbaric” practice was plainly and inextricably a part of the very Biblical tradition whose modern abandonment he so laments. But Johnson made the credibility of his argument even worse by actually bringing up the subject of slavery, which falls under quite another category of “awkward” problems for the Wedge esthetic. Whereas the Exodus witchcraft rule represented an overt sin of commission, slavery is one of omission: the Bible failing to clarify a moral issue, and thereby allowing unethical conduct to leak in through the fissure. Following this matter through to its historical, philosophical and theological roots is even more revealing of Biblical ethical standards than the example of witchcraft. That’s because witch-hunting told us mainly how Christianity related discordant beliefs into a cosmology invested with supernatural agencies. But Christian slaveholding shows what they thought acceptable in the way of economic and social arrangements—the day-to-day humdrum of how one is to conduct a virtuous life. There is also a rather hefty surprise in store, as a functional moral relativism has been known to seep in to creationist rationalizing in this area … though the practitioners of this ironic apologetic don’t seem to be aware that they’re doing it. We may start with Daniel Lapin briefly mentioning Thomas Jefferson’s slaveholding in America’s Real War, but only regarding how history should honor the country and not criticize such things too much. Toward the end of the book Lapin decided that “retroactively applying current thinking to past conditions seldom yields useful results. Condemning those founding fathers who owned slaves in the eighteenth century is neither informative nor constructive. In no way does this data serve to invalidate the Constitution written by those men.” 315 But it wasn’t only the vigor of the Constitution that Lapin should have been thinking about. Implicit in this argument is the notion that we have a standard about human slavery that the 18th century didn’t. And how could that be if their moral compasses were guided by the same unswerving Judeo-Christian traditions Lapin would have us honor today? As Phillip Johnson reminded above, the idea that cultural practices temper what is “right” and “wrong” is a feature of situational ethics … only an absolute morality permits no such equivocation. Like Robert Newman above concerning early Christian belief in the parousia, Lapin was skirting the issue, which wasn’t just whether 18th century Americans could hold slaves (with or without a clear conscience)—though that alone should have been enough to raise serious questions for the philosophically astute.316 The point Lapin was trotting past here was (like Severus

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Alexander) a matter of history: slavery was practiced in the Bible, supposedly the gold standard for ethical rectitude. If it is true that owning human beings is inherently immoral (and I contend that it is), then it would have been wrong for all times and places … even on an alien world, whenever one sentient organism decided it was OK to treat another as property. The “upshot” of an absolute morality is ineluctable: however admirable they may be in other ways, any society that could tolerate such practices would be in at least that respect morally deficient.317 Nor does this dilemma go away even when the apologist believes they have some doctrinal support for their position, as Chuck Colson & Nancy Pearcey obviously thought when they presented this seemingly well-buttressed rationalization of Biblical practices: Both the Old and New Testaments were written in societies that practiced slavery, and critics have often attacked the Bible for not challenging the practice. Yet, considering the times in which they were written, the Scriptures are among the most radical documents ever penned. In the Old Testament, God provided a means for slaves to earn their freedom (Deut. 15:12), and in the New Testament, Paul tells slaves that “if you can gain your freedom, do so” (1 Cor. 7:21). More important, the Bible calls both masters and slaves to recognize their primary identity as servants of God: “He who was a slave when he was called by the Lord is the Lord’s freedman; similarly, he who was a free man when he was called is Christ’s slave” (1 Cor. 7:22). It is not economic conditions that count so much as the condition of the heart—and when the heart is transformed, that will inevitably change the way people structure their external relationships. That’s precisely why Christians in the West came to see slavery as incompatible with the God-given dignity of all people, and why many believers became leaders of the abolition movement.318 It’s that “came to see” part that underscores the hidden moral relativism here. For how could Christians have come to see slavery as incompatible with their religion unless earlier Christians hadn’t seen it that way?319 But Colson & Pearcey never got that far. Much like the Bermuda Triangle Defense in creationism, it didn’t occur to them to investigate the actual practice of slavery in Christian societies before pronouncing on the theology of it. And there was a further “Garrett Hardin” quality to their reliance on 1st Corinthians as a way out of the moral dilemma. For there was some historical perspective available on this text, as Robin Lane Fox noted: “Paul’s short letter to Philemon nowhere suggested that there was a Christian duty to free a slave, even a Christian slave: Christian commentators on the letter took his silence for granted.” 320 Hank Hanegraaff slipped just as easily through an adjacent Hardin crevasse: “While Scripture candidly acknowledged the existence of slavery, it never condones it. In the last book of the Bible, Revelation chapter 17 and 18, God pronounces final judgment on an evil world system that perpetuates slavery.”321 But saying the Bible didn’t “condone” slavery was a glib circumlocution: the inconvenient point for an absolute moralist is that it never prohibited it. The essence of the Biblical position is summed up by the Talmud, which recommended that slaves be treated as members of the family. 322 This was better than the Roman attitude to be sure, which considered slaves more as childlike household pets (an attitude carried over into American antebellum slavery). But it still silently affirmed the obvious: everything was about how you were supposed to treat your slave—not that you weren’t supposed to have them at all. In that respect the Judeo-Christian position was little different than that of ethically refined Romans: “Humanitarians did not attempt to free slaves, merely to behave as good masters.”323 And in some ways the Christian system turned out to be both stranger and less considerate than the legalistic Romans. Lane Fox again: Christian teaching was not concerned with worldly status, because it was inessential to spiritual worth. So far from freeing others as a spiritual duty, some

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Christians were prepared to enslave themselves voluntarily. In Rome in the 90s, one group of Christians sold themselves into slavery in order to ransom fellow Christians from prison with the proceeds. Not until the fourth century and the rise of monastic communities do we find clear hints of Christian attempts to better the slave’s position. In the 340s, the Council of Gangra threatened excommunication and the dire “anathema” against anyone who provoked slaves into disobedience “under pretext of piety”: we would very much like to know whom the council had in mind. Monks, certainly, were cautioned against receiving fugitive slaves into their company, as many Christian leaders took a wary view of runaways. In the pagan Empire, slaves who had a grievance against their masters could seek asylum at any statue of the Emperor or within the precincts of certain specified temples. Their case was investigated and if justified, they were sold to another master or made into temple slaves of the god. In the Christian Empire, slaves could take refuge in church, but they were returned after inquiry to the same master. 324 Given this historical record, the potential Biblical moralist should have been paying more attention to whether the Bible’s rules on the treatment of slaves really were all that enlightened … especially when seen from the perspective of an absolute and unchanging morality precisely intended by God. This problem becomes even more acute when the original Mosaic Code is considered at full strength. Translations have of course muddied the waters: much as antebellum Southern masters did, the King James Version of Exodus 21 referred to slaves more genteelly as “servants.” But the ethical quagmire comes across all too clearly when the slavery provisions are read in the plainer Revised Standard Version: “Now these are the ordinances which you shall set before them. 2 them. 2 When you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, and in years, and in the seventh he shall go out free, for nothing. 3 If he If he comes in single, he shall go out single; if he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him. 4 If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master’s and he shall go out alone. 5 But if the slave plainly says, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free,’ 6 then his master shall bring him to God, and he shall bring him to the door or the doorpost; and his master shall bore out his ear through with an awl; and he shall serve him for life. 7 “When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do. 8 If she does not please her master, who has designated her for himself, then he shall let her be redeemed; he shall have no right to sell her to a foreign people, since he has dealt faithlessly with her. 9 If he designates her for his son, he shall deal with her as his daughter. 10 If he takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, or her marital rights. 11 And if he does not do these three things for her, she shall go out for nothing, without payment of money. 12 “Whosoever strikes a man so that he dies shall be put to death. 13 But if he did not lie in wait for him, but God let him fall into his hand, then I will appoint for you a place to which he may flee. 14 But if a man wilfully attacks another to kill him treacherously, you shall take him from my altar, that he may die. 15 “Whoever strikes his father or his mother shall be put to death. 16 “Whoever steals a man, whether he sells him or is found in possession of him, shall be put to death. 17 “Whoever curses his father or his mother shall be put to death. 18 “When men quarrel and one strikes the other with a stone or with his fist and the man does not die but keeps his bed, 19 then if the man rises again and

21

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walks abroad with his staff, he that struck him shall be clear; only he shall pay for the loss of his time, and shall have him thoroughly healed. 20 “When a man strikes his slave, male or female, with a rod and the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished. 21 But if the slave survives a day or two, he is not to be punished; for the slave is his money. 22 “When men strive together, and hurt a woman with child, so that there is a miscarriage, and yet no harm follows, the one who hurt her shall be fined, according as the woman’s husband shall lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. 23 If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe. 26 “When a man strikes the eye of his slave, male or female, and destroys it, he shall let the slave go free for the eye’s sake. 27 If he knocks out the tooth of his slave, male or female, he shall let the slave go free for the tooth’s sake. 28 “When an ox gores a man or a woman to death, the ox shall be stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten; but the owner of the ox shall be clear. 29 But if the ox has been accustomed to gore in the past, and its owner has been warned but has not kept it in, and it kills a man or a woman, the ox shall be stoned, and its owner also shall be put to death. 30 If a ransom is laid on him, then he shall give for the redemption of his life whatever is laid upon him. 31 If it gores a man’s son or daughter, he shall be dealt with according to this same rule. 32 If the ox gores a slave, male or female, the owner shall give to their master thirty shekels of silver, and the ox shall be stoned. Before cutting to the bone of our analysis of the Mosaic Code, one might note first a few peripheral curiosities about these provisions. You may have spotted the heartless cruelty facing a slave who had the misfortune to fall in love with a bond servant given him as a wife, and thus could only stay with his family at the cost of his own permanent servitude. Or there’s that limited money-back guarantee required when selling one’s daughter (but not sons) into slavery. Double standards of that sort were all too common in the “good old days.” For example, concerning accusations about a bride’s virginity, Deuteronomy 22:13-21 ordered non-virgins to be stoned to death—but husbands who had falsely accused their wives of this were only to be “chastised.” Apropos the abortion controversy, the miscarriage case of verses 22-23 above was also not treated as seriously as a physical injury done to the woman (let alone equating it with a death). Parenthetically, no one seemed to be asking the woman’s opinion about any of this. But all this sexist “double standard” stuff isn’t where the Code is getting into its most serious trouble from the standpoint of a proper absolute morality. Just as with the issue of creationist typology, it is through the application of a definition that one may assess its fuller meaning (or lack of it). To see what’s egregiously wrong about the Mosaic Code on slavery, let’s tune into Court TV, Bible style, and apply it to a few of the complainants. Suppose a man owned a notoriously violent bull that escaped one day and killed a neighbor after the overworked slave assigned to tending it nodded off. Awakening the slave with a sound punch to the jaw, the master knocks out a tooth. In that case, the slave would be freed (“for the tooth’s sake”) while the master (having been warned about the angry bull) would be put to death … unless he could arrange to pay a ransom sufficient to mollify the aggrieved parties. (One may imagine which approach a rich master would favor.) Now shuffle the variables: should the bull have only gored the neighbor and the slave been struck hard enough to kill him on the spot, the master would be subject to a negotiable fine for the bovine assault … and “punishment” (in some unspecified manner) for the slave’s death. That a slave wasn’t considered inherently equivalent to a free person’s worth is confirmed by what would happen had the bull only gored the neighbor’s slave, and the master’s slave hung on a few days rather than dying immediately. The master then would have to pay a fixed fine to the injured slave’s owner (not the slave, of course) ... but would experience no punishment at all for the

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delayed death of his own slave. This is arguably one of the stupidest provisions in all ethical history, and one may roundly applaud those Judeo-Christian cultures that ended up ignoring it. Now how exactly do Biblical apologists deal with this idiotic rule whilst defending the conviction that their worldview has exclusive dibs on the moral High Ground? Well, as we’ve already seen all too often in the creation/evolution and inerrancy debates, they simply don’t deal with it. Hank Hanegraaff didn’t when he brought up the subject of Biblical slavery recently on his “Bible Answer Man” show. And Richard Hiers’ Trinity Guide to the Bible matched the online apologist Glenn Miller by surgically skipping past the patently absurd verse 21 when extolling the lofty character of Bible-based servitude.325 Instead Hanegraaff and Miller specifically sought to let Biblical slavery off the moral hook by claiming that the American obscenity of racially based servitude was far worse. According to their revisionist version, Antebellum slaveholders could treat their chattel any way they liked, with legal impunity—unlike the restrained Mosaic system (as though being more generous in one’s ownership rules rendered the practice of owning people any less inhumane from the standpoint of absolute morality). In actual fact, though, the Southern states did have regulations on the treatment of slaves and the accountability of their owners, and these were often explicitly based on Old Testament models. The Alabama statutes actually surpassed the Mosaic Code by classifying slave killing as murder—but even the slacker South Carolina rules (where one was only subjected to a fine and jail term for killing a slave) were all too consistent with the principles set down in Exodus 21.326 Once more the Map of Time rears its ugly head, as the amnesiac apologetics of Hank Hanegraaff and Glenn Miller illustrate yet again that the A=!A mindset cannot help but get tangled up on the bald facts of history. The fact that it took so long for the Christian world to abandon slavery itself underscores how much evolving there was in store for cultures putatively based on the ideal precepts of Biblical morality. Islam’s track record on slavery shows a similarly equivocal character.327 Sadly, by the end of the pre-Christian era there were only two Hebrew groups who were unequivocally antislavery: the Essenes and Therapeutae. “To condemn slavery as powerfully as these two sects did was extraordinary for that time. No one else in antiquity seems to have advanced that far. Not until certain radical Protestant sects appeared many centuries later did the world hear slavery denounced so sweepingly.”328 One reason why Christian slaveholders were able to go on for so long as they did relates to the historical traditions of the Bible, from Joseph sold into slavery by his brothers to the Egyptian Exodus. As seen right at the start of Exodus 21, the Mosaic Code governed how their own people should be treated; hence there were restrictions on how long Hebrews could be kept in bondage. Though such principles were not always honored (especially in tough economic times) they were a legitimate improvement over indefinite servitude and unlimited abuse. But there was one obvious loophole to this practice that bears on subsequent Christian moral evolution: the rules didn’t necessarily apply to heathens.329 Which helps explain why many of the slaves in ancient Israel were foreign prisoners of war … or how Roman Christians could adapt their own traditions to the new religion without working up much of a sweat. Or how antebellum American slaveholders could combine all these scriptural and institutional precedents to justify their own “peculiar institution” of African slavery.330 Now toss in some reactionary 19th century rationalizing and you get thinking like that espoused by cultural critic George Fitzhugh, who from 1850s Virginia discerned ominous signs of decay on the American horizon. In his Sociology for the South (which coined the new term) and Cannibals All! Fitzhugh hammered on many of the same issues as Henry Morris or Phillip Johnson seven score years later … that is, if you slipped on a blindfold when you hit the last two sentences: Yet, I believe that, under the banners of Socialism and, more dangerous, because more delusive, Semi-Socialism, society is insensibly, and often unconsciously, marching to the utter abandonment of the most essential institutions—religion, family ties, property, and the restraints of justice. The

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present profession is, indeed, to stop at the half-way house of No-Government and Free Love; but we are sure that it cannot halt and encamp in such quarters. Society will work out erroneous doctrines to their logical consequences, and detect error only by the experience of mischief. The world will only fall back on domestic slavery when all other social forms have failed and been exhausted. That hour may not be far off.331 Fitzhugh was (fortunately) completely wrong about the impending collapse of Northern wage “slavery” and its replacement with what he insisted was the compassionate and progressive Southern chattel alternative. Less fortunately, it would take America’s deadliest war to literally ram abolition down the throats of the Confederacy at the point of a bayonet. And this process was one that owed surprisingly little to Christian believers consciously taking up the sword of antislavery, let alone realigning their theology to suit the abolitionist take on Scripture. The soldiers marching off to war in 1861 were not doing so to defend or abolish slavery, but rather to preserve States Rights or the Union.332 That the Civil War turned into just such a moral campaign indicates the ironic power of underlying historical trends … or maybe even the hidden hand of Providence.333 Now that latter sentiment would seem right up Colson & Pearcey’s alley, as their book went on to stress Christian leadership in the abolition of the slave trade, and that Lincoln and others appealed to a “higher law” in opposing slavery. All of which was true enough … as far as it went. But exactly which “higher law” were these Christian reformists appealing to, and how consistent was all this with the traditional Scriptural base? It was typical of the Zeno-slicing mindset that it didn’t occur to Colson & Pearcey to think this one through. 334 Since Biblical slavery functioned as a “conservative” error of omission, it was perhaps fitting that abolitionists had in fact used a “liberal” inversion to fill in the gap. Abraham Lincoln’s reasoning took rational reciprocity out to its logical limit: “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master.” And that sort of seat-of-the-pants ethics governed much of antislavery reasoning. Never mind what the Bible didn’t say … slavery is just, well, wrong.335 Thus Stephen Carter noted how abolitionists appealed to the most general of principles, such as that “The Bible commands Christians to love their neighbors as themselves.” Another was the Golden Rule: Abigail Adams opposed slavery on this “do unto others” ground. But you can see how the theological problem hadn’t been resolved. Upholders of Tradition still could ask, if slavery really were all that objectionable, wouldn’t God have objected to it? And who are we to second-guess the Almighty anyway? It was exactly that breed of conservatism that the president of New Hampshire’s Dartmouth College, Nathan Lord, represented in 1855 when he rejected the “specious humanitarian philosophy” of abolitionists.336 As the slavery case makes plain, the imperatives of moral imperialism are much easier to perform with witchcraft and heresy trials, since that hubbub faded from the scene in the 18th century. But slavery and the legacy of racism are far more recent nuisances to be disposed of so easily … or at least without a certain air of clumsiness. Thus Tim LaHaye & David Noebel insouciantly anticipated when “The church of Jesus Christ would once again become the moral conscience of the nation and speak out clearly on the issues, as she once did regarding slavery and civil rights, when pulpits were aflame with righteousness and America’s conscience was pricked.”337 As they did not examine which pulpits were doing this pricking, they managed to revise two records with one blow: appropriating the civil rights movement and dousing the flame of pro-slavery antebellum ministers as though archconservative believers of the day had been quick to hop on either bandwagon.338 The extraordinary facility of conservative Biblical apologists to dispatch all A=!A anomalies fuels a black hole vortex that tends to suck in all their orbiting cultural obsessions. Like Duane Gish deciding Galileo had been persecuted by the “scientific establishment” of his time, Jerry Falwell complained about those “pussyfooting” preachers who failed to see the similarity between his moral crusade against gay rights and the antislavery campaign of the 19th century. 339 Yet we know that antebellum ministers of Falwell’s own Southern Baptist denomination (such as Thornton Stringfellow from Liberty University’s Virginia backyard) had defended slavery entirely on

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Troubles in Paradise-Downard Scriptural grounds. Given how Falwell’s anti-communism inspired him to support the South African apartheid regime during the 1980s, we might legitimately wonder how far Falwell would have landed from Stringfellow or Fitzhugh had he been preaching in 1856. 340 All of this pseudo-history may be thought of as a theological doppelganger of the motto Arthur C. Clarke once suggested for the Science Fiction Writers of America: “The Future Isn’t What It Used to Be.”341 But things can assuredly spiral off the chart for the A=!A set whenever “The Past Isn’t What It Used To Be” either. This has proven especially true when the subject turns to those episodes in the Old Testament when God appears to be actively violating his own standards of moral conduct. Now the journalistic mettle of Lee Strobel did not shrink from this challenge. The Case for Faith called on Norman Geisler to assure the reader that “The Bible doesn’t have any cruel and tortuous executions that God commanded.”342 Of course there were passages that seemed to be saying things like that, but that was only because ill-informed people lacked sufficient “balance and context” to realize how they were actually seeing the opposite. Just like those alleged “contradictions” that went away whenever you squinted hard enough, all you needed for this Biblical home improvement were a few new throw rugs and some colorful drapery … and Strobel permitted Geisler to wander around his next seven pages until the accessories were positioned just so.343 The centerpiece of Geisler’s moral redecorating scheme involved sprucing up God’s gruesome instructions to Saul in I Samuel 15:3: “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”344 Do that sort of thing in AD 2000 and its called genocide. But not so according to Geisler. You see, those Amalekites were simply so wicked that even having them around would run the risk of moral contamination. In this application of Biblical hygiene there was nothing else for a moral people (or God) to do but kill them all. Even the children, one might ask? Well, “technically, nobody is truly innocent,” commented Geisler matter-of-factly. Besides, they would go to heaven anyway. And God, being the Creator, can take life as he pleases, for whatever reasons. 345 QED … no moral problem. Applying the same insightful reasoning that characterized his investigation of the evolution of human consciousness and artistic abilities, Hugh Ross offered a parallel ethical cleanup job when he set The Boundaries of God’s Wrath in The Genesis Question: The limits of defilement identified above also define the limits of God’s wrath. His judgment never goes beyond the boundaries of sin’s damage. This principle becomes clear not only in this Flood account but also in God’s instructions for the Israelite invasion of Canaan under Joshua’s leadership. In the conquest of some Canaanite cities, God instructed the Israelites to kill only the Canaanite adults. In the conquest of other cities, God decreed death for the entire population but not for the soulish animals, the nephish creatures tamed by the inhabitants. (The negative impact of evil humans on the birds and mammals living with them most of us have seen, and the Bible directly identifies, but no amount of sin affects the behavior of insects and bacteria, for example.) In the conquest of a few cities, God told the Israelites to destroy everything: people, their soulish animals, and in still rarer, more extreme cases, the people’s possessions too. The extent of destruction was determined by the extent of the defilement. Such destruction always resulted, of course, in the death of some insects, plants, lizards, viruses, bacteria, and so on, in the immediate environment. Though they were untainted by reprobation, to save them was neither practical nor necessary. Unlike birds and mammals, these species multiply and reestablish rapidly enough that any limited region of destruction would quickly recover.

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In the rarest of cases, such as Sodom and Gomorrah, even the land was laid waste. To this day, despite the land’s former fertility and abundant water supply, no crops or herds are raised in that region.346 Besides sounding eerily medieval, the reasoning of Geisler/Strobel & Ross shoots clear off the “misplaced concreteness” index. We have a Chosen People marching into the Promised Land and inevitably bumping into an assortment of intervening natives—some of whom clearly do not share the newcomers’ religion or manifest a special willingness to abandon their way of life just to insulate the interlopers from temptation. We know what has tended to happen with situations like that closer to our own time (think Wounded Knee), but what is the Biblical moralist to do? Yahweh (or those who spoke for him) was a most jealous God, who would tolerate no accommodation or intermarriage, lest the purity of the Covenant be defiled. “In a Jewish holy war,” explained Karen Armstrong, “there was no question of peaceful coexistence, mutual respect or peace treaties.” 347 That this qualifies as misplaced concreteness may be illustrated by a scene from the fifth (and weakest) of the Star Trek movies. When the Enterprise penetrates a terrible energy wall at the center of the galaxy to reach a being that the crew has mistaken for God, the imprisoned entity summarily requests the use of their starship to travel beyond the barrier. Whereupon a quizzical Captain Kirk butted in, “What does God need with a starship?”348 And we may similarly ask why would an omnipotent Creator need a human army to do any of his territorial housecleaning for him? Even assuming that these Canaanites were as irredeemably evil as Geisler/Strobel & Ross posited, couldn’t God have swept the whole offending bunch off to some uninhabited island? We know Hawaii was open real estate at that period (though if you think that’s too cushy for such presumed reprobates, there’s always the more rustic Galápagos). And we also know (if the accounts are to be credited) that this is a God who didn’t shy away from ostentatious spectacle when it came to parting the Sea of Passage. Such a maneuver would have been damned impressive, for the Canaanites and Amalekites as much as for Joshua and Saul. It would certainly have resolved the “you kids just can’t seem able to play” encounters between Samson and his testy Philistine neighbors.349 Think also of the apologetic impact, as millennia later Christian missionaries encounter their descendants, telling of their ancestors’ miraculous transportation in a twinkling of an eye from their former homeland by the very hand of God. 350 Of course, these defiled peoples could have been slow on the uptake and continued their (presumed) wicked ways in their quarantine and ended up bumping one another off. But then at least their demise would have been by their own doing, and not at the instruction of a deity whose rules had made such a big deal about things like Thou shalt not kill.351 Except that’s not the story we have to work with, is it? Instead of showing off with such ingenious (but pacific) miracles, God instead ordered the Hebrews to carry out this ruthless policy of ethnic cleansing. Which suggested he had a method to this madness: God wanted them to engage in genocidal conquest, to experience the bloodlust of battle, the screams of slaughtered infants and the wails of their grieving parents. Is this really where Biblical morality wants to be? Or are we missing something?352 What we have here is the same problem of “meaning” and “purpose” we saw in the Intelligent Design case for the immune system, only ratcheted up to a much more serious level. The Old Testament horror stories in 1st Samuel and so forth look suspiciously like what would have taken place without a deity’s involvement. It’s the familiar tragedy of migrating peoples hitting on the locals to get out of the way, and justifying their successful brutality with the imprimatur “our God said it was OK.” Though, ironically, there is a naturalistic resolution to the problem (that there is scant historical evidence for the conquest itself, let alone any massacres that may have taken place along the way), the inerrantist mind cannot avail itself of that option. Hence the logical thrust of Norman Geisler and Hugh Ross, willingly massaging the apologetic conscience for the present generation. 353 This is A=!A rationalization at its most chilling. It would seem that there is nothing in the Bible that could trigger their sense of moral outrage. Scripture is taken to be tautologically perfect, come what may. But that in turn means that the

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Troubles in Paradise-Downard “fact” of the Amalekites and Canaanites having been exterminated is deemed proof of their having deserved extermination. Such circular reasoning is the moral equivalent of the “Get Out of Jail Free” card in Monopoly.354 All of which lends bitter credence to the observation of the “very atheistic” Steven Weinberg: “With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion.”355 Relatively Absolute Morality and the Ratchet of Progress This is not to say that tenets of the Judeo-Christian tradition (such as their acceptance of compassion as a virtue and human equality before God) didn’t contribute to a very desirable cultural feedback loop … when applied in the right socioeconomic setting. But this is far from the “whole shebang” morality that Biblical defenders are thinking of, where one can stand one’s ethical ground, sublimely confident that everything in the Bible is “good” and everything good is in the Bible. Looking at the combined record of genocidal warfare, equivocal slaveholding, irrational witch hunting, relentless inquisitions and Crusades corroded by anti-Semitism, the Bible doesn’t come close to that level of “if-and-only-if” certainty. And indeed, the moment that its apologists start thinking as if it did, that’s when the society they endeavor so to preserve runs the risk of sliding into very deep trouble.356 Now I don’t entertain the conceit that my brief foray into the dingier side of Biblical ethics is anything like comprehensive. And that’s the point. Returning to that issue I left dangling some pages ago, how could anyone thinking to dispose of Steven Pinker’s turn on ethics try to get by without pressing even as far as I have had to? Whether or not the MIT philosopher had scorn in his heart when he brought these unpleasantries up in his Weekly Standard rejoinder, it was phenomenally disingenuous of Phillip Johnson to proceed as though this gaping hole in his own defensive perimeter didn’t exist. But that’s only the half of it. There’s more to consider here than simply the inadequacy of religious morality (as serious as that is philosophically) … there is still the problem of whether a naturalistic morality is even possible, let alone something to be embraced with conviction. Had Pinker not thought anything about this issue, Johnson would have been entirely in his rights to hit him over the head with it. But you may have noticed that Johnson didn’t claim that (an understandable omission, since Pinker was quite explicit about his position, as we’ll see below). Once again Johnson was operating like Gish with the Biblical flat earth, trying to end-run the problem as he had with Pinker’s litany of religious excess. Only this time his strike was more preemptive and unsettling: going even further than Michael Kelly or Andrew Ferguson had by steadfastly refusing to take at face value Pinker’s “pro forma disclaimer that neonaticide is an immoral act which should not be decriminalized.”357 This is where Johnson’s Jeremiad got really interesting. For in suggesting that Pinker “probably” believes infanticide is morally acceptable (but refrains from saying so for ulterior motives) we may be learning less about the expediency of Pinker’s materialist metaphysics than we are about the philosophy and tactical apologetics of Phillip Johnson’s Wedge. First, the philosophy… In the traditional Christian worldview, Pinker’s rejection of neonaticide could only be pro forma because all evolutionary roads are non-Biblical ones that merge into one “slippery slope” leading to the junk heap of moral relativism. That attitude means the Wedge has had trouble enough coming to grips with evolutionary Christians like Ken Miller. 358 But things go tilt completely when confronting unabashed philosophical materialists like Pinker who nonetheless obdurately refuse to concede the moral high ground to the Bible. 359 By freely operating outside the traditional religionist’s either/or frame, they challenge one of the fundamental postulates of the theological worldview: that morality is there only because God put it there—and conversely, without God no morality can even exist. 360 Phillip Johnson offered a particularly strained version of this dichotomous way of thinking in one of his Subversive Essays:

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The concept of natural law makes sense only if our lives have a purpose. Consider two influential statements of the human condition. The first comes from the neo-Darwinist George Gaylord Simpson: “Man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind.” This is modernity’s official doctrine of creation, and it provides no foundation on which moral reasoning can build. As accidental byproducts, we might as well do whatever gratifies our strongest feelings or helps us to get whatever it is that we happen to want. All else is pious humbug. Now consider the famous words of the Westminster Catechism: “Man’s chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy him forever.” From that statement we know that a moral law exists, and it consists of those precepts that teach us how to achieve our chief and highest end. If we start there, we can read what is written on our hearts. 361 Neither conclusion actually followed, of course. There is no logical reason to presume that God could not apply moral codes to members of an evolving primate clade in a universe of his own contrivance. Nor is the mandate to worship God per the Westminster Catechism logically equivalent to the existence of a “moral law.” The process of veneration Johnson was describing involves man and God, not man and man … so whether any strictures existed as to how human beings (created or not) were supposed to treat one another when not engaging in that veneration would require more than simply the Westminster Catechism for justification. There is some curious etiological baggage to this view that moral law exists solely as a necessary corollary to the “purpose” of mankind as worshippers, and not as an inevitable concomitant of our status as conscious beings. Because “purpose” is muddied up with the quest for the intentionality of biological design, the creationist moralist is potentially up a treacherous ethical creek … one William Dembski unwittingly paddled into during his 2001 appearance on Hank Hanegraaff’s show. Asked what the “huge” effects would be of the Intelligent Design revolution, Dembski’s first and only reply was that it would affect ethics. (So much for the reformation of microbiology or vertebrate paleontology.) Having evidently forgotten that ethics is not (and cannot be) a property of anything that ID has claimed to have empirically detected (from the “irreducible complexity” of bacterial flagella to the “specified complexity” of DNA), Dembski illustrated his moral point with the “promiscuous lifestyles in Hollywood.” This condition he in turn attributed to a “sovereignty of the self” that Hanegraaff agreed had pervaded psychology, business and economics because of Darwinism. (By the way, Dembski decided that naturalistic Darwinism was “overwhelmingly pessimistic about human possibilities.”) 362 While the “sovereignty of the self” might well offend a given deity (especially one with a fragile ego), knowledge of this opinion could hardly be determined without some recourse to revelation. Thus it was not possible for Dembski to clear this particular logical hurdle without doing exactly what he said ID wasn’t about: “speculating about the nature of the intelligence.” It also begged the critical philosophical question: does Dembski really think that God’s own ethical judgment on promiscuity (or anything else) cannot be applied unless the physical plumbing of our reproductive system or the hormonal chemistry that urges humans to one coupling or another were intentionally designed by that God? In other words, the “scientific” pretensions of Intelligent Design are utterly irrelevant to the moral matters Kulturkampf creationists are so exercised about. If particular positions of a religious morality are arguably admirable (like not killing people) or idiotic (like the Exodus slave rules) such assessments ought not to be dependent in the slightest on the extent to which any facet of our physical biology were designed or evolved. Such is the “foolish consistency” of a moral imperialism that tries to crush all the layers of a quite rugged philosophical landscape into a single deposit in much the same way that Flood Geology tries to digest the Grand Canyon. But the inability of Biblical creationists to even conceptualize the possibility that ethics, design and God might not be inseparable doesn’t

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adequately account for how Phillip Johnson could so easily reach his accusatory conclusion that Steven Pinker was being actively duplicitous about his rejection of human infanticide. Here’s where the obligation of tactical Wedge apologetics shows its Janus side. Remember how easily some conservative Christians have accepted the “urban legend” of Darwin’s deathbed conversion, as complementary to their own way of resting belief on “proof texts” and authority?363 Well, Johnson appears to be tracking a parallel course in attributing ulterior motives to Pinker: “hiding the ball” in exactly this way is central to how his Wedge hopes to invigorate conservative Christianity in public life. This tactical imperative is far from obvious in his printed and website utterances, where Johnson has only sprinkled appetizers of the grand banquet.364 But standing before the throng of enthused faithful at D. James Kennedy’s “Reclaiming America for Christ Conference,” he let himself go: Now bringing the Bible into the question works very well when you’re talking to a Bible-believing audience. But it’s a disastrous, ah, thing to do when you’re talking, as I am constantly, to a world of people for whom the fact that something’s in the Bible is a reason for not believing it! You see, if they thought they had good evidence for something and then they saw it in the Bible, they’d begin to doubt.365 Rolling up his metaphorical shirtsleeves, Johnson went on to describe the rationale behind the Wedge, the broad-based ecumenical movement among Christian intellectuals that would build on the common cause of conservative Protestants, Roman Catholics and Greek Orthodox (he didn’t mention Mormons, Muslims … or Cremo & Thompson’s Hare Krishna).366 As for those in Kennedy’s audience worried that all this technical talk of “irreducible complexity” veered too far from the essential Truth, Johnson reassured them from his own practical experience as a budding Christian evangelist: Now, of course, some people who are Bible believers are a bit concerned when they hear the issue presented in exactly this way, because they say are you only bringing in the god of the philosophers, you know, or something like that, and not Biblical authority. Ah, well, I think that when that objection is made they don’t quite understand the program and where it’s going. You know, you have to start someplace, and you have to prepare minds to hear the Truth—you can’t give it to them all at once. When God decided to do something important for the Jewish Bible, he didn’t hand them the Old Testament and say, “Here, read this, and figure it out.” You see, it—it took many centuries of work and experience and learning, ah, for people to get the idea of what God was about. And you had to have John the Baptist before Jesus, didn’t you, to prepare the way. Uh, and— and likewise, if you’re going to introduce people to scriptural Truths, the first thing they have to understand is that there is a possibility that God actually could communicate. And in order for that to be possible it has to be possible for God to be our creator. And that isn’t possible if God is just an imaginary idea in our minds. You see, so, one has to start at the most basic level, with opening the minds so that it is in a position to receive Truth well before it actually is capable of, ah, absorbing it.367 Now the way that I see, ah, the logic of our movement going is like this: the first thing you understand is that the Darwinian theory isn’t true, it’s falsified by all of the evidence; the logic is terrible. When you realize that, the next question occurs to you is, well, where might you get Truth? Well, when I preach from the Bible, as I often do at churches and so on, on Sundays, I don’t start with Genesis. I start with John 1:1. In the beginning was the Word, see—in the beginning was intelligence, in the beginning was purpose, and wisdom. The Bible had that right, and the materialist scientists were deluding themselves. Well now, next question:

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why did so many brilliant, well-informed, intelligent people fool themselves for so long with such bad thinking and bad evidence? Where you gonna go for the answer to that? Some of you are already thinking it [… a pause ensued as he let the audience catch up …] Romans 1:20-23: because the God’s eternal power and glory were always evident in the things that were created. Even Richard Dawkins, the arch-atheist, arch-materialist, high priest of Darwinism in England, begins his major book on this subject by saying that biology is the study of extremely complicated things that look as if they were designed by a creator for a purpose.368 [There occurred some resonant murmurs from the audience.] Biology is the study of complicated things that look as if they were designed by a creator for a purpose, and the job of science is to show that they weren’t. So it isn’t as if the Truth wasn’t made evident to him—he turned away from it, and why? Well, you see, that’s explained in Romans 1. And that brings us into the sin question, and then eventually to a point where we can ask people the great question that Jesus posed to his disciples: who do men say that I am? And who do you say that I am? See, before you prepared the way, that’s a meaningless question—“why should I care?” would sort of be the answer that you would expect, until you get people into the situation where that makes some sense. 369 So that’s how to turn a losing issue into a winner—to understand the mindset of the other people, and to plan to raise the questions in a way so that it unifies your own side and divides the other side, rather than dividing your own side and unifying the others’. So that it brings a large number of friendly people into your camp, and so that gives you a starting point that you can hit hard, before going on to the other detailed issues, which can be put secondarily (important as they are).370 As Johnson keeps so many of his opinions safely under wraps until the audience can be properly softened up not to gape at them, it was evidently easy for him to imagine that other people (like Pinker) proceed in just the same way. 371 But a major defect of Johnson’s position is that he doesn’t really “understand the mindset of the other people” at all.372 Indeed, evolutionists loom on his Wedge horizon only insofar as they resemble a species of anti-Johnson, agreeing with his essential postulates, except in reverse. That’s how he has indexed the materialistic Richard twins (Dawkins and Lewontin), despite their obvious scientific discord over the primacy of the Darwinian gene. Another equally comfortable atheist foil for Johnson is the evolutionary biologist William Provine, who readily marches off the very cliff the Wedge is out to warn us about: Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear—and these are basically Darwin’s views. There are no gods, no purposes, and no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That’s the end of me. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning in life, and no free will for humans, either. What an unintelligible idea. 373 Unintelligible to Provine perhaps, but not to his fellow evolutionary biologist Kenneth Miller, someone of deep religious convictions who discerned the curious implication of Johnson’s preferential targeting: This clash of two cultures extends over a battle line encompassing every moral, ethical, and legal issue of modern life. The giddy irony of this situation is that intellectual opposites like Johnson and Lewontin actually find themselves in a symbiotic relationship—each insisting vigorously that evolution implies an

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absolute materialism that is not compatible with religion. This means, in a curious way, that each validates the most extreme viewpoints of the other. 374 A symbiosis far tighter, it would seem, than the grip mitochondrial organelles have on the metazoan ATP cycle, for it inspired Johnson to some particularly bad reporting when it came to explaining what Pinker’s philosophy consisted of before trying to bury it. This is because Pinker had outlined his non-religious approach to moral reasoning twice in the sources Johnson cited. And not only did our “Erich von Däniken of Modern Creationism” manage to overlook both of these explanations—he failed to realize that in a quite fundamental sense he actually agreed with them! The first instance came in the Weekly Standard letter, in the paragraph immediately following the one Johnson quoted (the one about how difficult it was to apply “absolute” standards to concrete situations, such as prosecuting IUD users). 375 While Johnson presented this as a surrogate for having no rules at all, Pinker had moved on to a deeper philosophical level—and it did not involve any “species bigotry” about killing unwanted kittens: Biology does not announce solutions to our moral problems. My view is that we need to work them out by moral reasoning, using concepts such as right and wrong, free will, responsibility, interests, and rights—concepts that are not part of science. Ferguson worries that this makes them “pretenses,” “a rickety platform from which to launch the pursuit of right and wrong.” But in mathematics we reason with entities that are not part of science, such as perfect circles, infinite lines, and dimensionless points. There is nothing rickety about mathematical reasoning, and there need be nothing rickety about moral reasoning just because it depends on concepts that are not reducible to biology. 376 Pinker continued this theme in the second spot Johnson had to step over, in the Edge lecture when an audience questioner asked him and Dawkins point blank: “If there is a sense of good which is independent of us, who put it there?”377 Pinker responded that “it may be like the question, ‘Who put the number three there?’” Although he apologized that “a real moral philosopher” would be much better suited to explaining the profundities of this mathematical analogy, Pinker nonetheless gave it a stab: Perhaps morality comes from the inherent logic of behavior that has consequences for other agents that have goals. If one of the goals is to increase total well-being, then certain consequences may follow in the same way that the Pythagorean theorem follows from the construction of a triangle. Moral truths may exist in the same sense that mathematical truths exist, as consequences of certain axioms. That’s my best rendition of the premises of a theory of moral realism.378 Such reasoning may be as literally incomprehensible to the creationist moralist as the idea of an “intermediate form” has been from evolutionary paleontology. 379 We certainly don’t know what Johnson would think about it, of course, since he elected not to discuss Pinker’s actual position in his peroration on incipient amorality. In any case, it is a rather curious fix for an absolute moralist to be in, since we are actually treading the outskirts of typological dynamics—a region of absolutes, where things are what they are by their own ineluctable nature, independent of anyone’s opinion to the contrary. Had Johnson felt obliged to investigate some of this terrain, he could have discovered that defenders of the theoretical legitimacy of an absolute morality cover a bevy of strange bedfellows, from Mortimer Adler and Carl Sagan to the prickly Australian philosopher, animal rights advocate and Princeton bioethics professor, Peter Singer. 380 All three of them called attention to the ubiquity of the Golden Rule: independent of any religious baggage, people tend to chafe whenever double standards crop up in human relations. This opens up the possibility that, not unlike Chomksy’s

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Universal Grammar, there might be an innate sense of natural reciprocity and moral outrage at its violation.381 But if we do have some innate moral perception, is it purely a metaphysical or spiritual affair … or can it have aspects that are strictly natural? Following through on that question is where evolutionists start parting methodological company with Mortimer Adler, who stressed that the “first principle of morality” is to seek only what is truly good for humans without completely nailing down why we think anything is “good” or “bad.” Because Adler is no Darwinist, his attention wasn’t drawn to naturalistic explanations for why people might make the distinctions they do—such as the effect “kin selection” (favoring the survival of closely related genes) can have on altruistic behavior. 382 Or the game theory modeling of social interaction favored by many evolutionary psychologists to account for at least some of what we deem to be “good” for ourselves. That set Adler apart from evolutionists like Sagan, who freely drew on such insights as the selective effect of the “Prisoner’s Dilemma” to see how social environments can actively stimulate cooperative behavior over Machiavellian selfishness.383 Yet there is also an interesting Gödelian twist to such research. A recent paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences identified a firm brick wall when trying to model human economic behavior: “it is impossible for perfectly rational players to learn to predict the future behavior of their opponents (even approximately) no matter what learning rule they use.” 384 And when the players are not “perfectly rational” (as real people tend to be) the “inherent tension between rationality and prediction” the authors described mathematically is all too consistent with the observed history of practical moral thinking: more a philosophical art than a deductive calculus.385 Or put another way … absolute standards can’t be applied absolutely. A well of ambiguity is built into moral systems even when they are founded on absolute principles. Peter Singer recognized this in Writings on an Ethical Life by cautioning how the application of a universal ethics had to be tempered by pragmatic concerns about the consequences of our actions … a philosophical position already pioneered by the annoyingly thorough William James.386 That was also the point Steven Pinker was getting at with his IUD comment Johnson so misunderstood. Which is where the sublime irony cuts in, for this happens to be a position Johnson definitely agrees with. In Reason in the Balance he had written: “Pagans and agnostics as well as religious Jews and Christians know, or should know, that the killing of another human being is wrongful in the absence of justifying circumstances.”387 That there can be “justifying circumstances” for something even so basic as the taking of other human lives shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to the historically astute. During World War II, for example, the very fate of civilization hung in the balance, requiring moral people to make some very tough choices to keep the “definitely bad guys” from winning. Although individual Americans (like Quakers) might be honestly compelled by their conscience and deep religious faith to abide by the “thou shalt not kill” rule and remain pacifists, if the larger society had adopted such a stance the practical outcome could have been very bad indeed. Thus an absolute morality cannot consist simply of a set of fixed rules—it has to be accompanied by a practical heuristic whereby one may identify the “justifying circumstances” governing their application. And it is on that level that religious morality sports an Achilles Heel as “awkward” as does anything coming down the pipe from the atheist utopia of Stalin’s gulaginfested USSR. As we saw in the examples recounted earlier, without the ameliorating influence of Enlightenment tolerance and representative government to keep the list of “justifying circumstances” in check, Bible-based societies were perfectly capable of diving off the deep end into Amalekite genocide and enthusiastic heretic roasting. 388 This distinction explains much of the confusion between Phillip Johnson and Steven Pinker. When Pinker “scornfully” objected to the logic of traditional morality, it was in this fuller sense of the rules themselves plus their application. The two can’t be separated, because it is only through their use that the meaning of the rules are to be understood. By failing to see the “justifying” and the “wrongful” as elements of a unified analysis, Johnson was holding true to the Zeno-slicing tradition already observed so ubiquitously in the antievolution debate. But the rhyming applies with special force here, since this was exactly the same difficulty encountered when

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Troubles in Paradise-Downard creationists speak of designed “kinds” or “types” without reference to specific correlates in living or fossil examples. Now as if it weren’t bad enough that an absolute morality is saddled with an inherent Gödelian ambiguity, enter that old troublemaker Plato to make things even worse when trying to fit God into the picture. First we have to lay down a big propositional gauntlet: supposing that there is an absolute morality … whatever it is, it has to be transcendent. By which I mean it is not simply some agreedupon social convention, or even an embodiment of a successfully utilitarian tradition. However practically useful such rules may be, all of those would still fall under the “naturalistic fallacy” of equating what is with what ought to be. From William James in his 1880 essay on “The Sentiment of Rationality” to E. O. Wilson in Consilience a hundred and eighteen years later, the debate over relative versus absolute morality cuts to the core of existence and the meaning of it all. For semi-evolutionist James, this involved nothing less than “the radical question of life—the question whether this be at bottom a moral or an immoral universe.”389 For unabashed evolutionist Wilson, “Centuries of debate on the origin of ethics come down to this: Either ethical precepts, such as justice and human rights, are independent of human experience or else they are human inventions.”390 At least as a working hypothesis, the truth of the absolute position may be supported (though not proven) through an argument by negation. Suppose no transcendental morality exists … none. Think about it. In that case literally nothing is “wrong” in the sense meant here. Taking a meat-axe to your neighbor (or their child or their goldfish) for no reason at all (or for any reason you could wish) might be socially embarrassing … or provoke a stern pragmatic sanction by the disgruntled civil authorities on the grounds of your being a nuisance. 391 But without a transcendental morality against which such behavior could be measured there would still be nothing more or less wrong about it than failing to keep your lawn mowed or painting your house in an especially unfashionable color.392 Evidence that this negated supposition is indeed incorrect (if not also preposterous) may be supported by the empirical observation that not even the most strident atheist actually believes it. Not all the way, at least.393 When push comes to shove, there are always some things the seeming “moral relativist” will advocate or oppose because individuals or society would be improved by it. Thus in his debate with Phillip Johnson, William Provine slipped on the same logical banana peel that felled B. F. Skinner: “if you’re going to make things better for yourself or for those you care about, you had better become an activist while you’re still alive.” But what is “better” and why should anyone care whether you have your corner of happiness or not? Social activists come in all shapes and sizes, from Martin Luther and Gandhi to Hitler and Stalin. Without any transcendental postulates to sort them out, Provine was trying to have his social progress cake while eating its logical foundations. In this his thinking was no less incomplete than Johnson’s phalanx of meaningless concessions when it comes to the naturalistic implications of the fossil record. 394 But accepting the existence of a transcendental morality is only the first step. It’s what the theologically minded try to do with it once they have it that brings on what may be called “Plato’s Dilemma.” Suppose you have a list of wrongful things that God has by some means communicated to you (the Ten Commandments come to mind … but you can slip in the Book of Mormon or the Koran or even Dr. Zaius’ Sacred Scrolls instead if you prefer). Whatever the list may be, the important issue is how the rules relate to an absolute moral standard. Are such things “wrong” simply because God has said so (and can punish you for doing them) … or are they truly wrong because of that independent standard? In that event, wouldn’t they still be wrong even if God weren’t there to remind you of it?395 This is the subtle logical flaw in the traditional Biblical argument equating God with morality— and, by inference, the rejection of all nonreligious ethics as unworkably relativistic. For if the “wrong” things are wrong because of that transcendental measure, why can’t the atheistic absolutist skip the middleman and go for the transcendence directly, by stipulation? This is certainly no more

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ad hoc than Geisler/Strobel and Ross rationalizing away Old Testament genocide. Indeed, it is only stepping through a gate that has been open in the Christian philosophical cathedral for centuries, as unresolved (and unresolvable) a dilemma as Stephen Jay Gould’s NOMA is for secular demarcationists.396 The upshot: while it may be true that God and a transcendent morality are both real and indissoluble, that relationship is a theological claim that must be assumed to be true. Just like the presumption of moral transcendence itself, God  morality cannot simply be deduced from within the system.397 Gödel strikes again! Now an awful lot of people spend no time at all fretting about this. Many end up thinking like the guardedly optimistic Hannah (played by Paulette Goddard) in Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator. Amid threatening fascist oppression, she asked the Jewish barber whether he believed in God. Chaplin stammered evasively, but Hannah wasn’t waiting for his answer, burbling on with a quite succinct statement of Jamesian pragmatism: “I do. But if there wasn’t one, would you live any different? I wouldn’t.” This little clump of Chaplinesque philosophy may seem unprepossessing. But like the “hidden in plain sight” clues of the Small Shelly Fauna or avian bipedality, our Hannah is waving a Purloined Letter at us. Inside of which is a map showing a concealed path around Plato’s Dilemma and the limitations of the “naturalistic fallacy.” Set on a field of historical empiricism, its cartography follows how evolutionary systems actually work, plus a few trick signs indicated by the Gödelian paradox. But it all hinges on the fact that every one of us shares something with Goddard’s Hannah: the ability to consciously choose at least some of what we do.398 Or as John Polkinghorne put it: “I cannot conceive of an occurrence in the universe’s evolutionary development that is more astonishing and fraught with signs of fruitful significance than that it should have become aware of itself through the coming to be of humanity.”399 He was thinking more of the theological import of humanity’s existence, of course, but the impact is just as “astonishing” when you think through what it means for a social system to exist in an evolutionary framework. At any given moment, organisms operating in a Darwinian context may be thought of as points on a “fitness” landscape. Seen through time, their characteristics fluctuate as species come and go. The peaks of successful species (and the valleys of extinction between them) represent a bounded but nonlinear space. It is bounded because there are only so many viable peaks available to climb given the individuals’ particular repertoire of genes—and nonlinear because the landscape itself changes shape depending on the mix of ecological participants. The ultimate success or failure of competitors and predators and parasites and prey all depend on one another, which means the total picture of a living system is causal yet (for the most part) exasperatingly unpredictable.400 All well and good for non-sentient organisms … but the moment consciousness enters the picture, the “fitness” landscape explodes onto a whole new dimension, defined by a completely different scale possessing some extremely novel properties. That’s because the working end of a social system is not the gene or even strictly the meme, but rather a whole lot of ideas. Any one of which can be adopted or rejected or modified without any consideration about where it came from in “idea space.” You can see how this obviously differs from a Darwinian inheritance: it would be as if a squirrel could look at a butterfly’s wings and go, “I like that” … and promptly incorporate it into its genome. Because “idea space” operates by a form of Lamarckian inheritance, it is just as nonlinear as its Darwinian counterpart—but it is also completely unbounded. There are no functional limits to the number of ideas that may be thought.401 Nor is a thinking being restricted to just the ideas that are presently available. Nothing in principle prevents any idea from being conjured up at any time by any member of a conscious species. It is that staggering panorama of possibility that puts social interactions on a completely different footing than genetic inheritance. 402 Now the failure to distinguish the Darwinian inheritance space of genes and the Lamarckian domain of memes and ideas can lead to some rather clumsy category mistakes. And creationists aren’t the only ones liable to do it.

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Troubles in Paradise-Downard Much as theological moralists have in equating God and morality as though they weren’t relying on unspoken assumptions, E. O. Wilson stumbled over exactly this pothole in Consilience when he tried to run our Lamarckian moral engine on a Darwinian track. Wilson started off with a curiously cluttered alphabetical listing of purported cultural universals: In a classic 1945 compendium, the American anthropologist George P. Murdock listed the universals of culture, which he defined as the social behaviors and institutions recorded in the Human Relations Area Files for every one of the hundreds of societies studied to that time. There are sixty-seven universals in the list: age-grading, athletic sports, bodily adornment, calendar, cleanliness training, community organization, cooking, cooperative labor, cosmology, courtship, dancing, decorative art, divination, division of labor, dream interpretation, education, eschatology, ethics, etho-botany, etiquette, faith healing, family feasting, fire-making, folklore, food taboos, funeral rights, games, gestures, giftgiving, government, greetings, hair styles, hospitality, housing, hygiene, incest taboos, inheritance rules, joking, kin groups, kinship nomenclature, language, law, luck superstitions, magic, marriage, mealtimes, medicine, obstetrics, penal sanctions, personal names, population policy, postnatal care, pregnancy usages, property rights, propitiation of supernatural beings, puberty customs, religious ritual, residence rules, sexual restrictions, soul concepts, status differentiation, surgery, tool-making, trade, visiting, weather control, and weaving. It is tempting to dismiss these traits as not truly diagnostic for human beings, not really genetic, but inevitable in the evolution of any species that attains complex societies based on high intelligence and complex language, regardless of their hereditary predispositions. But that interpretation is easily refuted. Imagine a termite species that evolved a civilization from the social level of a living species. Take for the purpose the mound-building termites Macrotermes bellicosus of Africa, whose citylike nests beneath the soil each contain millions of inhabitants. Elevate the basic qualities of their social organization in their present-day insectile condition to a culture that is guided, as in human culture, by heredity-based epigenetic rules. The “termite nature” at the foundation of this hexapod civilization would include celibacy and nonreproduction by the workers, the exchange of symbiotic bacteria by the eating of one another’s feces, the use of chemical secretions (pheromones) to communicate, and the routine cannibalism of shed skins and dead or injured family members. I have composed the following state-of-the-colony speech for a termite leader to deliver to the multitude, in her attempt to reinforce the supertermite ethical code: Ever since our ancestors, the macrotermitine termites, achieved tenkilogram weight and larger brains during their rapid evolution through the late Tertiary Period, and learned to write with pheromonal script, termitic scholarship has elevated and refined ethical philosophy. It is now possible to express the imperatives of moral behavior with precision. These imperatives are self-evident and universal. They are the very essence of termitity. They include the love of darkness and of the deep, saprophytic, basidiomycetic penetralia of the soil; the centrality of colony life amidst the richness of war and trade with other colonies; the sanctity of the physiological caste system; the evil of personal rights (the colony is ALL!); our deep love for the royal siblings allowed to reproduce; the joy of chemical song; the aesthetic pleasure and deep social satisfaction of eating feces from nestmates’ anuses after the shedding of our skins; and the ecstasy of cannibalism and surrender of our bodies when we are sick or injured (it is more blessed to be eaten than to eat). 403 Here Wilson’s use of “easily refuted” reminded me of Michael Behe back in chapter four, likewise so “easily answering the argument from imperfection.”404

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Troubles in Paradise-Downard You will notice how Murdock’s list of human universals combined features that were clearly cultural (such as clothing or food taboos) with elements that are just as assuredly connected to our status as conscious beings (language, ethics and religious beliefs). 405 But while it is easy to envisage how regional biogeography could temper what foods are to be proscribed, it is not immediately obvious how any conscious being (even a sentient termite) could avoid being able to conceptualize such fundamental principles as reciprocity or justice.406 Conflating those issues was a flaw in Wilson’s reasoning, which he then compounded by trying to reject a commonality of ethics on the basis of those sentient termites—an argument that does rather depend on whether there could actually be sentient termites capable of such distinctions.407 And here is where all that fuss between the Eldredge/Gould and Dawkins/Wilson camps over the mega-evolutionary patterns of life (which creationists have so misunderstood) turns out to be of considerable theoretical importance.408 It may be that only certain forms of life are capable of consciousness. As seen last chapter, specific arrangements of neurological feedback loops and modules for emotional reactions may be necessary (although perhaps not sufficient) conditions for selfawareness or language. It is thus by no means clear that any possible arthropod lineage could assemble the components needed to appreciate Wilson’s humorous termite address. 409 This forced him to perform a sleight-of-hand: appealing to a hypothetical example (much as Behe did so often against evolutionary forays into molecular biology). Wilson might just as well have tried to defend the machine ethics of HAL 9000 by calling Robby the Robot or C-3PO as character witnesses—or closer to his home discipline, proposing to extract value judgments based on the cartoon protagonists in the movie Antz.410 Now part of the reason why Wilson could not resolve his concerns about transcendental versus empirical morality may have been because he never got around to Plato’s Dilemma or the limitations of Gödelian uncertainty.411 And “ultra-Darwinian” Richard Dawkins hasn’t done any better—though for a different reason. He shows a positive aversion to questions that do not interest him, especially if they involve the really fundamental (and therefore most interesting) “why” questions of Life, the Universe, and Everything. 412 Indeed, Dawkins has exuded a form of personal disinterest curiously akin to the “personal incredulity” he considers so disreputable about antievolutionists.413 This situation slops over onto the debate over Darwinian ethics because antievolutionists have tended not to delve deeper into a question than have the professionals they are criticizing. 414 E. O. Wilson’s termite vision may be theatrical fluff, but creationists haven’t picked on him for it (yet). Steven Pinker obviously approached the core issues more directly, but we saw how quickly those were lost in the swirl of daisy-chain apologetics over his infanticide article … and subsequent controversies in evolutionary psychology are subject to the same Pavlovian convulsions. 415 Which leaves Richard Dawkins’ wordy popularizations to carry the burden of defending the primacy of the Selfish Gene … except that Dawkins hadn’t worked through these problems with anything like the requisite clarity and scope. Should the creationist then treat Dawkins’ vacuum as though it were the last word, they would be making the mistake of letting his inactivity circumscribe the field for them. That’s what happened in The Wedge of Truth when Phillip Johnson drove home his anxieties about evolutionary ethics with pile-driver force: The logic implies that it may be only natural for robot vehicles to murder, rob, rape or enslave other robots to satisfy their genetic masters. Indeed, ruthless extermination of rival genes should be nearly as powerful an imperative as propagation of one’s own. Modern Darwinism seems also to leave no basis for valuing the humane arts like poetry and music except to the extent that such things are useful in spreading the genes by (for example) building tribal solidarity. Nineteenth-century Darwinists, writing for European gentlemen who took their own social order for granted, might have been able to shrug aside such objections on the ground that science requires that we take an unsentimental view of the realities of life. Darwin himself coolly predicted in The Descent of Man that the most highly developed humans would soon exterminate the other races because

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that is how natural selection works. Such casual references to genocide only began to seem reprehensible after Hitler, Stalin and Mao demonstrated what they meant in practice. Nowadays even the most uncompromising Darwinists have to make some concessions to morality, even at the cost of logical contradiction. Modern Darwinists can respond that selfish genes do not always make selfish people, because it may be in the interests of the genes to encourage some forms of social cooperation, particularly within the family. According to the doctrine of “inclusive fitness,” a mother might spread her own genes most effectively by sacrificing her own life to preserve the lives of her offspring, who carry the same genes. That’s a pretty weak reassurance when contemplating the kinds of things that commissars and fuhrers tend to do, however, even if the mass murderers have an inclination to spare members of their immediate families. Stronger medicine is required if Darwinism is to avoid the obloquy that now attaches to “social Darwinism,” and so Dawkins tries to square his gene theory with some acceptable morality by proposing a robot rebellion. He writes, “Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to.” This is both scientifically absurd and morally naive. How could natural selection favor the development of a capacity to thwart the interests of the ruling genes? Any tendency to pursue goals other than gene copying would be selfexterminating because by definition it would be less effective at spreading genetic copies. The genetic basis for this amazing capacity would have to emerge all at once, by what amounts to a materialist miracle, and then it would have to evade the destructive scrutiny of natural selection as it spread through the population. On the other hand, what is consistent with Darwinian logic is that gene selection might favor a talent for hypocrisy. If human nature is constructed by genes whose predominant quality is a ruthless selfishness, then pious lectures advocating qualities like generosity and altruism are probably just another strategy for spreading the selfish genes. Ruthless predators are often moralistic in appearance in order to disarm their intended victims. The genes that teach their robot vehicles not to take morality seriously but to take advantage of fools who do will have an advantage in the Darwinian copying competition. If you are preparing your son for a career with the mafia, you’d better not teach him to be loving and trusting. But you may teach him to feign loyalty while he is planning treachery. And if your daughter is planning a career writing popular books promoting gene selectionism, you may teach her to pretend to believe in morality even if she understands that her system implicitly excludes the concept. 416 While it was entertaining to learn that Johnson is capable of almost as much sarcasm as I am, it was also true that his “ulterior motive” view of evolutionary psychology had drawn him just as quickly into a metaphysical trap as deep (and ironic) as Wilson’s moralizing termites. Johnson was assuming something that even Dawkins hadn’t: that the culture and mores of a naturally evolved species like us are exclusively (or even primarily) genetic. He has confused the software of human culture with the hardware of the brains in which it takes place. 417 If human culture were operating in a strictly Darwinian inheritance frame, without selfawareness, then we would indeed all be icebergs: no more liable to moral judgments than Plasmodium falciparum or a leopard stalking its next dinner. But we aren’t unconscious organisms. The things we make and the actions we take are not like a bowerbird assembling a mating display.418 Everything we do generates “meaning” and “purpose” because we are conscious of our doing it. The decision to install enough lifeboats on a new ship is a choice taken in an idea space where the possible outcome of not doing so is in principle recognizable (even if in practice

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not always explicitly recognized). Thus all human activity constitutes a metaphorical Titanic, subject to ethical judgments simply by existing.419 Johnson then compounded his difficulty by failing to follow through on another thing Dawkins hadn’t: the extent to which the “meanings” and “purposes” of our choices can be deemed naturalistically good or bad based on an external objective standard. Organisms in a Darwinian milieu cannot be considered “fitter” except insofar as they have got by better under the circumstances … not because they are in any objective sense “better” than those that didn’t make it. Nor can genes be thought of as “true” or “false”—indeed, the very question is meaningless. Genes simply are, and are capable of doing (or not doing) certain things in particular contexts. But the shift to the new dimension of ideas that comes with self-awareness not only obliterates that limitation—it forces us to make Gödelian distinctions.420 Unlike genes, ideas (or least meaningful ones) are objectively true or false. 1+1 really does equal 2 … and the earth does in fact revolve around the sun. These are not only “decidable” propositions—they have been decided (Malcolm Bowden notwithstanding). Meanwhile, other statements may be equally true (or false) but not decidably so from within the system. Some are physical problems, such as why the universe is made of matter—or, indeed, why there is a universe at all. Other statements (perhaps most of them) relate to transcendent questions, such as religious truths. For example, whether Jesus is God … or whether Joseph Smith actually had a set of gold plates recounting the New World revelation of the angel Moroni. 421 Now these axes of true/false and decidable/undecidable provide the coordinate system for all of idea space, against which an individual or society may be said to navigate. This is a critical distinction. Whereas the “fitness” of an organism in a Darwinian inheritance space represents a temporary point on a local landscape of adaptive success, the fitness of an idea (or the society promoting it) is not a statement of location, but one of relation to the totality of idea space. And that is a fixed topology composed of nothing but true or false statements, which may either be decidably known to be one way or the other … or are undecidable (and so require a Gödelian postulate for a working acceptance). While a squirrel cannot be faulted for being ignorant of a butterfly gene, a society can be judged according to its familiarity with idea space and its facility for positioning itself in it. A society couldn’t avoid starting out in ignorance that the earth revolves around the sun. But their fitness would be a cumulative gauge of their ability to develop the science necessary to obtain the correct answer eventually—as well as their willingness to adopt the new knowledge as it comes along. This would apply just as clearly to moral policies … such as a knack for not trying to kill people as “witches” or deciding it’s a bad thing to own others as property. 422 In Consilience E. O. Wilson adopted a strictly functionalist slant here: “the harsh lessons of history have made it clear that one code of ethics is not as good—at least not as durable—as another. The same is true of religions. Some cosmologies are factually less correct than others, and some ethical precepts are less workable.”423 Measured against idea space, though, such distinctions also mean that a society is objectively meritorious or flawed quite independently from whether it recognizes its own “fitness” position … or even whether it survives. The Aztecs are a useful object lesson here. Cortez and his rowdy band of gold-hungry Conquistadors were rightly flabbergasted by their splendid capital Tenochtitlan, one of the largest cities on earth at the time, resplendent with floating markets showcasing the agricultural bounty of a great empire. But the Aztecs also mistook the invaders for gods, and that misapprehension was a reflection of a metaphysic that wasn’t on the ball when it came to figuring out major things about their world. Their astronomers could figure the position of Venus with stunning accuracy—but they still thought the sun might not rise without a continuous supply of human hearts. But supposing Cortez had been repulsed in 1519, and the Aztecs survived to this very day, their cosmology would still be just as unreal. Conversely, the extinction by supernova of a society that was otherwise navigating perfectly through idea space would not mean that society had been a failure—only horribly unlucky. In this way we have bypassed the “naturalistic fallacy” by functionally inverting it: “better” can really be better based on how skillfully a culture traverses the objective topology of idea space, not whether

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they happen to be the most successful kid on the biological block at any given moment. 424 Ought is where a society should end up as its map of that space becomes sufficiently accurate to identify where it is and make suitable course corrections based on an increasingly refined appreciation of truth and decidability.425 Science may be thought of as that secure method whereby a culture reliably extends the boundaries of its ignorance of the decidable universe—and philosophy the tool of choice for identifying and dealing with the equally interesting but undecidable parts. Such a division of labor is what Gould’s NOMA was getting at, concerning “human purposes, meanings, and values— subjects that the factual domain of science might illuminate, but can never resolve.”426 But that’s not good enough for critics of methodological naturalism like Phillip Johnson or Alvin Plantinga, who bristle at the idea that science is left to decide what is objectively true. 427 Susan Blackmore leaped much the same conclusion from the opposite direction: “I do defend the idea that science, at its best, is more truthful than religion.”428 But remember that the “undecidable” propositions of philosophy are by no means necessarily less “true” than decidable things like the earth’s revolution around the sun. It only means that you require axioms to proceed … and tolerance for how the consequences of those postulates might be incorporated into the larger society and its institutions. People of religious faith (and secular humanists without it) have every justification in making their own assumptions about the nature of transcendent morality and the consequences of belief or apostasy. They simply have to be very careful about not acting as though their favorite “undecidable but true” propositions are really “true and decidable.” Now there is an intriguing silver lining to this process of navigating idea space. Because ideas are provisionally decidable or undecidable based on the available data, as a culture follows a “better” course some undecidable notions will be properly nudged over onto the decidable side. And because the whole notion of decidability is one of absolute methodology, that procedure is ideally irreversible. Once a concept becomes rigorously decidable, that’s it—no evidence could ever arise whereby a decided proposition like heliocentrism could be legitimately shoved back onto the undecidable list. It is therefore very tempting to extend this ratchet of progress over into the realm of overall cultural improvement. One may take heart in the historical fact that the Aztec’s gruesome cosmology didn’t make the cut. We might likewise note how the Spartans are no longer a force to be reckoned with, despite their macho policy of leaving newborns out in the cold and keeping only those tough enough to survive. And there’s also the fact that, bumpy though it may have been, civilization did manage to stop witch burning and human slavery … as well as picking through the Biblical “thou shalt” list to adopt some commendable ideas like universal brotherhood and compassion.429 Such progress can be seen as a sign of hope, that despite the “naturalistic fallacy” goodness really will win out in the end, as the human species gets its is and ought into proper alignment. Ironically, that’s exactly the rosy American go-getter attitude of evolutionary psychologist Robert Wright when he claims to have detected a distinct arrow of progress to the adaptive logic of game theory.430 Wright starts off with the basic observation that “zero-sum” games (where winning comes at another’s expense) compete in the natural world with “non-zero-sum” games (in which cooperative wins are possible). Over time, the non-zero-sum games tend to win, leading to an accumulation of such “non-zero-sumness” as biological complexity, consciousness, and ethics. 431 “You might even say that non-zero-sumness is a nuts-and-bolts, materialist version of Bergson’s immaterial élan vital; it gives a certain momentum to the basic direction of life on this planet.”432 Well, maybe … but there’s also the British gloominess of Simon Conway Morris, who spots a lot more than just élan about the momentum of human culture: The long history of mankind is studded with convergences, perhaps most notably in social systems and the use of artifacts and technology. But for human history, set in the arrow of time, there appears to be one intolerable stumbling-block. This is the catastrophic failure in human values and decency. The list is almost

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endless: the sacking of Constantinople in 1204, the destruction of Baghdad in 1258, the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, and the Nazi Holocaust are only some among the infamous epochs in the litany of disaster. If there were a clear prospect that such evils were part of a barbarian past, then at least we might find a small crumb of comfort. No such prospect exists: no scientific analysis can even remotely answer or account for past and present horrors of human behaviour. It is my opinion that human history can make no sense unless evil doings are recognized for what they are, and that they are bearable only if somehow they may be redeemed.433 Or even, as the Christian might add, the possibility of being Redeemed. For in the end there is no way around the realm of undecidable truths. It’s what makes us human. The thorny questions of “why” that Richard Dawkins doesn’t like to consider—or that Phillip Johnson thinks he has the crib sheet for—will remain as the inevitable accompaniment of our journey through idea space. And there’s certainly a lot of navigating to be done. We may yet get by without blowing the planet up (one of the practical corollaries of a robust ethical system should be to avoid doing irrevocably stupid things). 434 But if there is a meme for genocide, some of us still seem to be carriers, conjuring up Amalekites on many continents. And the fitness of our society had better also include an ability to map comets and asteroids—as well as a space program sufficiently proactive to intercept any earth-grazers before they have a chance to end our particular experiment in Lamarckian inheritance. 435 Maybe we need to start thinking more like the egalitarian members of a Star Trek crew, trying to keep Spaceship Earth and its inhabitants in one piece and in peace long enough until our technology permits us to explore beyond our solar system. If there are any extraterrestrials to run into, hopefully by then we won’t be seen as a nuisance. But one thing may be said: our course into the future won’t be helped much by the method of Richard Milton … or D. James Kennedy … or any of the other True Believers whose Zeno-slicing stumbles around the grid of true/false & decidable/undecidable without knowing which direction is up. Ideas do have consequences, remember … and the choice of undecidable ones may have the biggest consequences of all.

NOTES to Chapter 6 1

Phillip Johnson is someone you might think would be drawn to anthropic reasoning, but refrains from doing so. A look at his emerging logic chain helps explain why. Johnson (1997, 17) opined how wanting to “exchange the Creator God of the Bible for the lifeless First Cause of deism” was “like trading real gold for counterfeit money.” That deistic peril certainly applies to anthropic reasoning. While practitioners of the sport like Hugh Ross toe the Biblical line, others (such as Paul Davies) often as not allow for some natural evolution, and affirm only the reality of a God (frequently of the Eastern or deistic variety). In addition, anthropic reasoning is deeply steeped in conventional physics, such as Barr (2001) concerning the synthesis of heavier elements in the hearts of ancient main sequence stars. Thus any anthropic invocation would risk antagonizing Young Earth creationists (as seen in note 249 of chapter three, Johnson doesn’t seem especially keen on burning his bridges to that camp). Not that all YEC groupies appreciate such niceties, such as the Big Bang/anthropic card played by Thompson & Harrub in their riposte to Rennie (2002b) (apologeticspress.org/docsdis/2002/dc-02-sa04.htm). Besides, Johnson is already certain of God’s identity—so better then to simply avoid the problem and draw circumstantial arrows from the more restricted quiver of Behe or Dembski, whose views reinforce all forms of creationism ecumenically while not having (yet) been appropriated by mystics or heretics (though as seen in chapter five, note 360, even that doorway is closing pretty fast). Within the Wedge there can be no contradiction

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between antecedent faith and true science or reason … and where have we heard that before, Dr. Zaius? 2 The most obvious practitioner of this is Dembski (1999a), as catalogued in note 332 of chapter five—see also notes 39 & 362 below. Jonathan Wells has his own somewhat different set of theological axes to grind, as we’ll see next chapter. Dogging their unprotected philosophical rear are Morris & Morris (1996c, 117): “With both Lamarckianism and Darwinism on the wane, many creationists are celebrating too soon, citing with relish the writings of such anti-Darwinists as Lovtrop, Hoyle, Denton, and others, apparently not realizing that New Age pantheistic evolutionism, which in effect they are promoting (being unwilling to accept true monotheistic creationism, as revealed in Genesis), is destined prophetically to be the religion of the coming world government of Antichrist.” One may note how this cast of characters has shifted somewhat from Henry Morris (1963, 94): “This monstrous system, toward which numerous world movements seem now rapidly to be gravitating (e.g., international communism, the ecumenical movement in religion, world socialism, the United Nations and its multitudinous tentacles, etc.) seems all but certain to culminate sooner or later in the Biblical Antichrist, which will be both a world-system and the Satan-inspired man at the pinnacle of that system.” 3 Intelligent Design has little opportunity to reflect on the continuity of creationist method, given how assiduously they avoid analyzing the “crazy” side of Creation Science. For instance, Dembski (1999a, 198-199, 257-252) considers YEC debates over radiometric dating to be bad for the “interdisciplinary dialogue,” and distances his “specified complexity” arguments from Creation Science beliefs. ID insularity is further reinforced by a failure to engage YEC believers in debate— as of this writing, I know of none involving Behe, Dembski, Johnson, Meyer or Wells, who prefer to cross swords only with evolutionists. This may be compared to how often Old Earth creationists like Hugh Ross debate YEC believers as well as evolutionists. Though in the former case the issues often turn on potentially divisive theological interpretation more than evidential scientific logic, where the exchanges can get pretty testy. For example, Jonathan Sarfati’s lengthy post mortem (at answersingenesis.org/news/Ross_Hovind_Analysis.asp) of a debate moderated by John Ankerberg in October 2000. Sarfati repeatedly accused Ankerberg of being a Ross partisan—a curiosity, given AiG’s subsequent angst over Hovind and Ankerberg’s Hovind stroking (notes 61 & 243, chapter three). Biblical purists pay close attention to such exchanges, of course, with several creationist websites spotting Sarfati’s analysis (such as rae.org/essay_subject3.html and intelligentdesign.org/menu/whatsnew/new.htm). Now since we know Phillip Johnson samples the Answers in Genesis output (note 388, chapter five) it would be interesting to see how well the Berkeley pundit (or any of the other Discovery Institute gang) would fare against either Hovind or Sarfati. For that, I would bring popcorn. 4 Stephen Jay Gould cited “Jacobs et al. (1998)” in his 2002 bit on axial inversion (note 85, chapter two) that never made it into the printed bibliography. Proofreading glitches cropped up in Berger & Hinton-Barber (2000, 182, 305), duplicating a stray line of text as well as spelling Australopithecus garhi correctly and as “gahri” on the same page. McKee (2000, 84, 267, 279) misspelled “Stephen” Stanley’s name. Robert Wright (2000, 412) and Mayr (2001a, 299) filed the Cambrian paleontologist under “Morris, Simon Conway”—though both did reference Maynard Smith correctly, unlike evolutionist Ryan (2002, 239, 308) or Michael Behe (note 216, chapter five). Mayr didn’t actually cite Conway Morris in the text; Wright invoked him in his breezy riposte to Gould. Some of these errors may be due to the practice of publishers having in-house talent compile the indices for their publications—thus Jonathan Wells (2000a, 275, 336) had Conway Morris properly in the Research Notes, while the index misfiled him under Morris. This sort of thing may be compared to Hoyle (1983, 45, 253) on the punctuated equilibrium of “Neil” Eldredge (both in the main text and index listing). Or Colson & Pearcey (1999, 88, 498n) attributing Behe’s Darwin’s Black Box to 1993 and leaving out the quotation marks in an extensive passage taken from Schwartz (1999, 3). Cf. also note 12 (chapter two) on date transpositions, and spelling flubs on “Sedgewick” (note 68, chapter three) and Rodhocetus or “Philip” Johnson (notes 158, 180 & 242, chapter four).

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5

See notes 10 & 72 of chapter four on Coyne and Wells overplaying the peppered moth, and Doolittle versus Behe on mice, or the stray flubs of Ken Miller in notes 140 (chapter three) & 331 (five). One may also compare the shared myopia of Richard Milton (note 86, chapter three) and Susan Blackmore (note 221, chapter five) recognizing only the abstractions of sedimentation rates or not all ideas being memes. 6 Notable scientists have had major league egos, of course—such as Owen or Newton (see notes 14 & 19, chapter five). For an interesting recent example, Jon Cohen (2001, 219-220) noted Jonas Salk’s “gift of retroactive infallibility” that played out during his involvement with the search for an AIDS vaccine. Francis Crick and James Watson also have substantive egos, and provoked considerable pique among many of those who didn’t get to the structure of DNA ahead of them, Michael White (2001, 289-291). This may be compared with Alan Mann’s jab at Donald Johanson, as highlighted by Phillip Johnson (re note 106, chapter five). 7 Most of Eldredge’s The Triumph of Evolution (2000) reprised The Monkey Business (1982), for example, and one may compare the similar themes of Eldredge (1995; 1999). But that is amateur stuff compared to the Bible-friendly anthropic interpretation of modern physics rolled out in Ross (1994; 1995; 1996). Ross’ The Genesis Question (1998) does tread newer technical ground, though not necessarily accurately—see notes 3 (chapter three), 168-169 (four) and 166, 183 & 201 (five). This is distinct from the more serious daisy chain sin of plagiarism, which has recently tarnished the reputations of Joseph Ellis, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and the late Stephen Ambrose; cf. Jim Lippard’s examination (primenet.com/~lippard/Bakerreport.txt) of Skeptical Inquirer contributor Robert Baker (Sheldrake’s critic in note 276, chapter five). 8 The result of that process being the wording of notes 24 & 64, chapter five. It is noteworthy to point out that I had not been able to find corroboration for the Taung Child datum in the likes of Johanson, Tattersall, or Schwartz—for good reason, as it turned out! That latter case was particularly understandable, since Jeffrey Schwartz was among those whose work started the change in interpretation of australopithecine dental eruption patterns back in the 1970s. Here then is an instance where the absence of information offered a clue to how the science had moved on regarding the reliability of that information. 9 To recap Milton’s prior offenses, we saw in chapter two his overstating Protoavis and being oblivious to the reptile-mammal transition (notes 176 & 218). In three, Milton’s macho sauropods vied with skimpy sedimentation, garbled by orders of magnitude along with absurd tectonic slips (notes 83, 88-89, 114 & 225). He floundered on whales in four (note 136) and in five pirouetted on clavicles, the Milton-Foley debate, and Java Man (notes 52, 120 & 138). These do not include Milton’s limited interpretative imagination (such as over horse or finch phylogeny). What we have here are plain matters of inept scholarship and factual error, symbolized by that unequivocally imaginary “Brontosaurus” in the London Natural History Museum. 10 A recent instance merging paleontology and mythology: generations of scholars had repeated a story about the Greek philosopher Empedocles relating the Cyclops myth to prehistoric elephant skulls. Adrienne Mayor (2000, 6-8, 284-285n) traced this back to a 1914 book by Austrian paleontologist Othenio Abel, who had turned out to have just made the story up. Until Mayor looked into it, no one had consulted the original Empedocles to see whether he’d actually said it. When the influential science writer Willy Ley repeated Abel’s version in the 1940s, the tale took on a life of its own (including a citation by Mayor herself before her scholarly antennae started vibrating and set her on the investigation trail). Extinct elephants could indeed have inspired such mythmaking, of course, with or without Empedocles’ assistance, in much the same way as dinosaur bones have (re note 56, chapter three)—see a January 29, 2003 CNN online report on paleontologists making exactly such an argument concerning the prehistoric fauna of Crete (cnn.com/2003/TECH/science/01/29/elephant.ancestors.ap/index.html). 11 Newcomb (1901; 1903). The spectacular failure of the Smithsonian’s Simon Langley to get his Aerodrome off the ground counted for a lot, causing many scientists to question whether existing technology could propel a significant payload without using a dirigible—or even with one, since Count Zeppelin tended to crash a lot too. Thus were the reports of the Wright’s early flights greeted with considerable skepticism, such as the anonymous editorial in Scientific American,

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January 13, 1906 (p. 40) on “The Wright Aeroplane and Its Fabled Performances.” (The journal was in those days a weekly, incidentally.) There is more to this tale of Newcomb and the aeroplane, though … as will be seen next chapter. 12 This Great Moment in Rocket Science appeared anonymously as an editorial in the Times on January 13, 1920 (p. 12). Coincidentally, this was the same day of the month as the Scientific American Wright Brothers piece 14 years earlier (see preceding note). They fell on different days of the week, though—and neither were Fridays. 13 Milton’s interests are not all that surprising for a Mensa member. Creationism can rub shoulders, as the YEC articles by Glenn Jackson featured at the East Tennessee Creation Science Association (etcsa.org/GJackson/PtsOfOrigin20010203.html) proudly notes that “He is a lifetime member of both American Mensa and the Creation Research Society.” Apropos the paranormal angle, Shermer (1997, 56-57): “The IQ score has acquired nearly mystical proportions in the last half century, but I have noticed that belief in the paranormal is not uncommon among Mensa members (the high-IQ club for those in the top 2 percent of the population); some even argue that their ‘PsiQ’ is also superior.” But not always their sense of historical anachronism: the co-founder of Mensa, Australian barrister Roland Berrill, was a firm believer in the occult tarot. In the late 1950s he went so far as to commission a deck to illustrate the (historically spurious) theory that the tarot originated at a convention of adepts supposedly held in Morocco around 1200 AD. The reproduction of this “Royal Fez Moroccan Tarot” in my collection is rather a stuffy and unimaginative copy of A. E. Waite’s Rider deck (re note 24, chapter one). The artist also clumsily included a bevy of visual details retained from the real gaming tarot that only appeared long after the 13th century (shades of Gish’s St. George, per note 36, chapter three). And while we’re in this bailiwick, a personal observation: the content and philosophy of Forbidden Science was eerily like a project I collected notes for back in the early 1970s (my working title was Renaissance II: Towards a New Worldview). But the more deeply I delved into the “facts” the less secure my positions became, until I shelved the whole thing as irremediably half-baked. In writing Troubles in Paradise a quarter century later I discovered a lot of my old notes turned out to be quite useful, albeit in a very different context. Milton and I are also about the same age, so it is as though we were time twins, branching our separate methodological ways. Wither but for the grace of Providence (and sound Scholarship) go I, so to speak. 14 Milton (1994, 22). There were no citations. 15 The anonymous interview (“Utter Bilge?”) appeared in Time magazine on January 16, 1956 (p. 42). Meanwhile, I could find no hint of Spencer Jones’ “bunk” anytime around Sputnik or later, suggesting that the attribution was a garbled secondary version of Woolley’s “bilge.” How and when the phrase was modified and attributed to Spencer Jones is unclear, but it was in full swing at least by the time I started hunting for it in the early 1970s. Contemporary collectors of pithy sayings have continued to “quote” Spencer Jones on this, as recently as Brian Aldiss in a Nature commentary, “Desperately Seeking Aliens” (February 22, 2001). Ironically, some especially comprehensive compendiums field Woolley’s “bilge” along with the “Spencer Jones” doppelganger, such as “Great Aviation Quotes” (offered at skygod.com/quotes/predictions.html), “Zenith Media Quotes Page” (at zenithmedia.com/quotes.htm), and “The Official Truth (eskimo.com/~nillb/freenrg/laughed.html). None appended a direct citation for the Spencer Jones bit (which is consistent with my hypothesis that there never was one to begin with). 16 This may be compared to the more genuine failure of imagination afflicting Scientific Creationism on this point after the lunar evidence was in (re note 20, chapter two). Incidentally, the “Spencer Jones” case neatly illustrates the seductive lure of rhetoric: “space travel is bunk” was just too good a line to spoil with careful research. Young Earth creationists may have felt the same tug when offering Behemoth’s “stiff as a cedar” tail as the “perfect match” for sauropods (re note 49, chapter three). In both instances, the superficial scholar is easily anesthetized against a body of available facts that plainly contradicted the attractive “punch line.” 17 Clarke (1999, 492, 526). Incidentally, the 1956 Time report also quoted Leonard Carter, the Secretary of the British Interplanetary Society (of which Clarke was an avid early member). Carter believed the first lunar flight would take place “within the next 20 years and that Professor Woolley

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would live to see it." Right on both counts. Though Carter did miss a bit when he insisted that “Future Astronomers Royal will spend most of their time in space observatories and not in Hurstmonceaux.” In the PC/Internet era, astronomers can get their Hubble fix from the comfort of their den, without the inconvenience of having to physically peer through the eyepiece of an orbital instrument. But then, even the savviest science fiction writers underestimated the pervasive impact of computer technology, as Nicholls (1983, 200-201) noted: “Obsessed by the idea of intelligent robots, most science fiction writers failed to see the possibilities of computing machines. Robots who walked and talked like (or nearly like) men were commonplace in novels—which at the same time would refer to the whirring and clicking of electrical calculators on the ship’s bridge, while the astrogating officer pored over his star charts and made calculations on a slide rule.” 18 Fred Hoyle (1983, 157) was closer to the mark when he briefly mentioned (though without reference): “Sir Richard Woolley, a former Astronomer Royal, who brusquely announced ‘space travel is bunk’, to the delight of the media which specialize in catching the fish that swims against the popular tide.” The Intelligent Universe appears bibliographically in Milton (1997, 287)—so unless Hoyle was read only for the 1997 revision (which seems unlikely), there was at least one resource available to him suggesting a more accurate “bunk” citation. 19 Upholding the Velikovsky case as among “the best-documented modern examples of the Paradigm Police in action,” all of Milton (1994, 135-143, 243n) was clearly courtesy of de Grazia (1966). See note 141 (chapter three) for the background on Velikovsky and some available critiques. Of particular relevance is the section in Bauer (1984, 98-134) on Velikovsky’s peculiar conceptions of the physical sciences—especially those suggested in his privately published 1946 paper, “Cosmos without Gravitation: Attraction, Repulsion, and Electromagnetic Circumduction in the Solar System.” Bauer found that neither his supporters nor detractors had paid much attention to the “Cosmos” piece (I know firsthand how true that was). Had it been more thoroughly examined earlier on, it is possible the Velikovsky phenomenon would have had a somewhat shorter shelf life. This stands as a further reminder of the “hit the strong case” rule when dealing with pseudosciences: go for the core citations right off the bat, since someone will have to do it eventually. On the psychological front, Bauer (1984, 154-174) also explored Velikovsky’s considerable ego (self-importance, infallibility and testiness)—which again I observed at close quarters at the 1974 AAAS meeting, recalled in note 154 of chapter three. 20 One may recall Milton’s dated unawareness of hemispherical brain functions, and Vine Deloria’s equally threadbare epiphanies on Velikovsky (see notes 312 & 405, chapter five). 21 As he explained via e-mail, Rissing drew on Newman (2001) summarizing Alroy et al. (2001) to suggest how “the accepted view of life’s history” started with “a burst of diversification in the Cambrian and Ordovician.” Cf. Benton et al. (2000) on evaluating fossil data, and notes 72 & 224 (chapter two) on the Cambrian & Johnson’s “Update” activity. Recall also Gary Parker lumping so many Ordovician fauna into his “Cambrian” seascape. Stray evolutionary goofs here: Frederick Pohl (2000, 40) referred to the Permian event as the “Cambrian extinction” of 230 mya, and Rennie (2002b, 80) had “Jurassic period (65 million years ago)” when he should have written Cretaceous in a critique of creationist arguments. Re PNAS, Hancock (2002, 573, 625, 739n) riffed off press accounts of Brace et al. (2001) to claim ancient Americans were descended from the Jomon of Japan. Brace had mentioned the Jomon/Ainu resembled a larger earlier European population, not that they were their direct ancestors (cf. note 411, chapter five). 22 Chapter 8 of Milton (1994, 105-118) was on “Calling a Spade a Spade.” Here are some typical examples of Miltonian shuffling. Kuhn (1970, 59): “X-rays, however, were greeted not only with surprise but with shock. Lord Kelvin at first pronounced them an elaborate hoax.” That became Milton (1994, 111): “When Roentgen announced his discovery it was greeted with surprise and with shock. Lord Kelvin pronounced X-rays an elaborate hoax.” Kuhn had footnoted a 1910 biography of Kelvin (including volume number and page). Milton (1994, 242n) offered only that biography in his endnote, not Kuhn—but left out both the volume and page reference. Incidentally, Milton even referenced direct quotations in exactly this cavalier way, listing only the main source without page number—such as Milton (1994, 97, 242n) quoting what turned out to be Kuhn (1970, 58); there was also a small typo in Milton’s version, where an “s” was left off “paradigms.”

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Curiously, Evans (2001, 50) noted that Holocaust denier David Irving also had a habit of bypassing page references in his frequently misleading source citations. Another passage from Kuhn (1970, 60) was even more interesting as a scholarly marker: a 1939 German monograph on fission products which Kuhn apparently translated into English himself. Milton (1994, 113) quoted the English version, complete with Kuhn’s ellipsis and a bracketed explanatory inclusion, but replaced the chemical symbol abbreviations with their full element names (such as barium for Ba); perhaps in haste, Milton lopped off one word (“schema”) from the passage. This time, though, the endnote matched Kuhn’s full citation, Milton (1994, 242n). 23 See note 171 (chapter two) on Huse’s citation trawling. (Sunderland plays a subterranean role in another attribution trail, per note 65 below.) To be fair, Huse’s loose scholarly grip is amateur night stuff compared to the incestuous copying practiced by some pop authors, particularly those in the UFO and ancient astronaut field. Here an added incentive may be financial, as a hot seller is somewhat more likely to occur for a book on alien or ghostly visitations than within the more limited creationist circle. For an example of how fast paranormalists can play with the facts, follow the convoluted scorecard tracked by Nienhuys (2001) concerning how a single burn tragedy mislabeled as “Spontaneous Human Combustion” was juggled and multiplied over the years into separate tales. 24 See note 80, chapter three, on the Morris/dinosaur connection. Which does cast doubt on the efficacy of one stated aim of Milton (1994, 102): to determine “how we can tell a real crank from a researcher who merely stumbles accidentally across a subject that is taboo to orthodox science.” 25 Harding (2000, 24). Although Jerry Falwell was the main topic of her book, Harding’s particular example of this adaptive practice was Martin Luther King Jr. 26 Milton (1994, 223-224). Not that Milton (1994, 42) was unaware of the issues: “that Geller is some kind of stage conjurer or magician; that he has been examined only in uncontrolled environments such as television studios; that his effects are not repeatable on demand; that inexperienced scientists are easily fooled by conjuring tricks; that Geller himself has been caught cheating and ‘exposed’ as a fraud; that there is sparse and unreliable hard evidence for any serious kind of paranormal phenomenon. Strangely, the facts are pretty nearly the exact opposite of these widely held beliefs.” Just like that British Museum Brontosaur. 27 Not that Milton liked it when the laboratory set changed their minds. Milton (1994, 45-46) decried the physicist John Taylor (1980) for having done so on Geller and psychokinesis generally. The reason why Taylor jumped ship on the reality of PK was because he couldn’t confirm his pet theory that this had to be an electromagnetic effect. About which Marks & Kammann (1980, 149) commented: “This is surely an amazing chain of reasoning. First, Taylor confidently ignores the possibility of cheating, in spite of evidence of hoax accumulating around Geller and the child spoon-benders, and even a demonstration of conjuring by Randi in Taylor’s own laboratory. Next Taylor confidently assumes that psychic phenomena must work by EM force, thus ignoring the possibility that paranormal communication might use any known or unknown energies in ways not yet understood. The absence of EM signals is no more a disproof of psychokinesis than the absence of magnetic fields around a hypnotized person is a disproof of hypnosis, except for Taylor. To say that Taylor has now ‘seen the light’ is a risky conclusion, for we cannot predict the next step in his peculiar logic.” 28 Milton’s attitude on Geller is only one recent chapter in a long serial on the willingness of researchers to take psychic fraud in stride. Hereward Carrington (1908; 1920; 1930; 1954; 1957; 1958) offers a long and illustrative trail, having studied (and rationalized) the activities of such notables as Eusapia Palladino and Margery the Medium. Milton (1994, 5) sidled past this issue during an appeal to authority (though without citation) concerning the founders of modern spiritualism, the Fox sisters: “Faraday left his researches and spent substantial time and energy attempting (without success) to prove the Fox sisters fraudulent. Even someone who professed to believe that nothing is too wonderful to be true found table-turning an intolerable affront to reason.” Maggie, Kate, and mastermind Leah (whose success the other sisters grew to detest) had a pretty good run, though Maggie quite publicly spilled the beans later in the 19th century as to how they pulled off their routine, Jackson (1972) or Andreae (1974, 26-48). Parapsychologists

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who have (like Milton) held out the hope that there might have been something genuine beneath their joint popping include Nandor Fodor, “The Birth of Spiritualism—The Fox Sisters and the ‘Hydesville Rappings,’” in Knight (1969, 16-23) and Rogo (1975, 44-47). 29 Randi (1980, 131-160). Although Milton (1994, 155-156) briefly touched on Randi (1975), he never got around to detailing the fraud accusations. Milton’s bibliography did not include Randi’s 1980 book, where further grist was milled (including Geller confederates who had come forward in the meantime)—though, as noted above, Milton had read John Taylor (1980). Further criticism of Targ & Puthoff (1977): Ray Hyman, “Outracing the Evidence: The Muddled ‘Mind Race,” David F. Marks, “Remote Viewing Revisited,” and Martin Gardner, “How Not to Test a Psychic: The Great SRI Die Mystery,” all in Frazier (1986, 91-121, 176-181). Gardner (1998a-c) related Puthoff’s Scientologist past before his SRI phase, and his current quest for “Zero Point Energy.” Puthoff (1998) responded that Scientology was merely a youthful inclination, but sidestepped the lackluster aspects of the Geller episode. There actually is a core of scientific reality to Zero Point Energy, by the way, as explained by Yam (1997), though Ingram (1998, 252-253), Gardner (2000b, 60-71) and Barrow (2000, 204-210) are skeptical that Puthoff will be achieving any breakthroughs here soon. Gardner (2001a, 12) also commented on Targ’s background: his father, William Targ, ran a Chicago book store with a large section on the occult and paranormal, and later served as an editor at Putnam books (where he was responsible for picking such works as von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods?). Russell Targ’s daughter Elisabeth carried on the family tradition, receiving NIH grants and a Templeton prize for alternative medicine research (ironically dying in 2002 of a type of brain tumor she had been studying), Gardner (2003, 203-210). Her work filtered into Carter (2001, 145, 229-230n), as well as fellow-Templeton winner Chuck Colson’a breakpoint.org website for October 11, 2001 (“Can Prayer Heal?”). While Carter is generally skeptical of faith healing claims, it does not seem to have occurred to Colson that nonChristian prayers might be just as “effective” (with philosophical implications explored in the next chapter). Cf. Price (1982a) on the similar way in which corroborating “evidence” is handled by advocates of Transcendental Meditation and the gang at the ICR. For the more critical, Sloan et al. (1999) found the test protocols of faith healing studies rather shaky. Concerning some of the “background noise” that could account for some unexpected healings without jumping to a divine or paraphysical conclusion, see de la Fuente-Fernández et al. (2001) and Petrovic et al. (2002) on the quite real neurobiology of the placebo effect. Ramachandran & Blakeslee (1998, 212-221) have some useful observations on the extraordinary dynamics of the mind/body relationship. 30 Milton (1994, 232). A similar escalation commenced in Milton (1994, 134): “Sadly, however, the spirit of Salem is still alive and as recently as 1981 when Professor Rupert Sheldrake published his concept-shattering A New Science of Life, the editor of Nature, John Maddox, ran an editorial saying the book was ‘the best candidate for burning there has been for many years’.” Which Milton (1994, 198) then ratcheted into: “When Professor Sheldrake proposed an innovative biological theory, the editor of the world’s leading scientific journal was able to call for the book to be burnt, without causing even a raised eyebrow.” The idea that anyone was on the verge of stoking the fire pit on Maddox’s approval was hyperbole enough, nor did Milton explain what Sheldrake’s “innovative biological theory” consisted of (cf. notes 241 & 276, chapter five). For contrast, Morris & Morris (1996c, 121-122, 124-126) took aim at Sheldrake from the opposite pole, positioning Gaia and evolutionary pantheism as demonic ideas. Cf. Chandler (1992, 204-206) lumping Gaia in with New Age mysticism, and Hunt (1998, 19-37) decrying the role of “evolution” in mysticism and occultism. 31 Joel (1974) and Reynolds (1974) covered this juicy farce in Popular Photography. There was a psychic named Ted Serios who was famous for supposedly imprinting images mentally onto unexposed film, and Geller expressed an intention to do likewise. A test was arranged with a camera whose lens cap had been taped over. The experimenters wandered in and out, during which Geller was occasionally alone with said camera. When the film was later developed, sure enough, there were images … unfortunately, someone had by happenstance used a wide-angle lens instead of a regular one. As further tests indicated, had a normal lens been used, pulling off the tape and snapping a few shots would have shown some mysterious blobs. But with a wide-angle lens, what

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you got were some really nice pictures of Geller holding the lens cap in front of the camera. Although Geller (1975, 277), Targ & Puthoff (1977, 176-177), and Milton (1994, 147-148) all criticized Hanlon (1974), who highlighted the Popular Photography incident, none of these works alluded to that snafu. In Milton’s case, Hanlon is not even in his bibliography, so he may simply have relied on the secondary account in Randi (1975)—but since Randi mentioned the Joel piece too, Milton isn’t off the scholarly hook in the end. Saul-Paul Sirag, “The Skeptics,” in White & Krippner (1977, 538-539) did take a spin at damage control. First, by proposing that the figure in the film holding the lens cap might not have been Geller at all, and then noting how the exposures were in the middle of the sequence of shots, when Geller was under observation. Sirag did not speculate who this phantom personage could have been, strolling in unbeknownst to Geller, who was in the same room with the camera all the while. Though he recognized that Geller could have wound the film back to expose earlier frames (precisely to fend off such suspicion), Sirag dismissed this idea on the rather slim grounds that Joel hadn’t thought to mention it. 32 Although carping at James Randi for criticizing his earlier experiments with Geller, when John Taylor (1980, 117-119) set up apparatus sufficient to exclude sleight-of-hand, the ability of Geller and others to paraphysically bend spoons promptly disappeared. This shouldn’t have been a surprise. One of Geller’s most thumping failures occurred with Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show, where Geller was unable to accomplish any of the feats he seemed to do so handily on other talk shows. That’s because Carson had a background in stage magic, and consulted with James Randi to make sure the props couldn’t be fiddled with by conjuring means. Incidentally, Geller was back on The Tonight Show in early 2000 (with non-magician Jay Leno now hosting), doing the same old shtick (minus the spoon bending). By then Geller was a caricature, having come up with paranormal test kits available at chain bookstores, while objecting to the inclusion of a satirical “Un-Geller” card in the Pokémon pack. His latest appearance I’ve seen was on a glossy 2-hour program on the Fox network in May 2000 featuring a cavalcade of “paranormal” feats (the usual mind reading, hypnotic regression, etc.). Leon Jaroff, “The Magician and the Think Tank,” in Kurtz (2001, 95-100) recounts the Geller SRI heyday; Joe Nickell (2000a) recaps Geller’s recent (and unsuccessful) lawsuit against CSICOP. 33 Also like Johnson, Milton (1994, 171-173) spreads traces of the Von Däniken Defense, contending that anomalous test results that conflicted with conventional atomic theory were successfully rejected as “experimental error” because of the theory’s popularity: “In the final analysis it was a matter of acceptance, not a matter of evidence.” Milton (1994, 211) even tracks some familiar hobbyhorses: “Darwinism, Freudianism, Marxist historical and economic analysis are prime examples of flat Earth beliefs that have been exported the world over.” However, Milton (1994, 206) evidently differs from the Discovery Institute set by a more environmentally directed alignment of “science” with adverse technology (such as Bhopal and Three Mile Island). 34 As expounded in Horgan (1996b). Such pessimism isn’t new: molecular biologist Gunther Stent (1969) fielded a similar argument (but then that was back before string theory and black holes kicked open a lot of theoretical doors). It is true that there are functional technical limits to how much may be learned about some technical issues, especially in advanced physics. To unify gravitation with the strong and electroweak forces, for example, would require an impossibly powerful particle accelerator (nature pulled off this experiment once already … it’s known as the Big Bang). And plenty of scientific theories are unlikely to be overturned by any subsequent discovery; Malcolm Bowden notwithstanding, heliocentrism seems secure. 35 Cf. Milton (1994, 159-170, 224-229) with Kohn (1986, 18-26, 45-48) or Gould (1980, 80-83) on an assortment of iffy early 20th century physics and Paul Kammerer’s controversial 1920s midwife toad experiments in acquired characteristics. Apropos parapsychology, Milton (1994, 219): “Not surprisingly, when Rudi Schneider, or Nina Kulagina, or Uri Geller move objects at a distance in laboratory conditions without touching them, the results are simply dismissed as impossible, because they violate the principle of relativity.” Milton did a lot of sprinting here, as though one could have no legitimate qualms about these “laboratory conditions.” Schneider is no longer available for study, being a 1930s psychic whose telekinetic effects were received favorably by one source in Milton’s bibliography, McCreery (1967, 44-54). Kulagina (a.k.a. Nelya

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Mikhailova) drew proportionately more upbeat coverage for awhile in the 1970s: Ostrander & Schroeder (1970, 68-86), Pratt (1973, 55-83), Thelma Moss, “Psychic Research in the Soviet Union,” in Mitchell & White (1974, 475-478), Hinze & Pratt (1975, 135-152), and J. G. Pratt, “Soviet Research in Parapsychology,” in Wolman (1977, 891-896). It is of interest that Pratt commented on his difficulty in getting at Mikhailova for even cursory observation. As for theoretical lacunae, Barry L. Beyerstein, “Whence Cometh the Myth that We Only Use 10% of Our Brains?” in Della Sala (1999, 4) wryly noted Geller claims he was able to achieve his amazing psychic feats because he had somehow transcended that (nonexistent) 10% barrier. Incidentally, Milton offered no sources for his curious “relativity” criticism, but there are skeptics who do fall back on theoretical objections ahead of pinning down the lack of empirical support—e.g. Hansel (1966). See Schick & Vaughn (1999, 21-23) for the pitfalls of a priori dogmatism. Incidentally, such grumbling (cf. note 27 above on John Taylor) fueled a debate that parallels the concerns of modern Intelligent Design over the primacy of materialist reductionism. See particularly the essays of Cyril Burt, “Psychology and Parapsychology,” in Smythies (1967, 61-141), and “The Implications of Parapsychology for General Psychology,” in Rhine & Brier (1968, 211-222). Burt’s reputation wasn’t helped when later on he was found to have fudged intelligence test data and wrote several papers with imaginary “co-authors,” Kohn (1986, 52-57). The extended analysis in Gould (1981, 234-239, 273-296) is of particular relevance, as Gould suggests Burt could be perfectly reasonable whenever he was courting a subject outside his petrified certainty about the inheritance of intelligence. For lagniappe, Burt also served as a president of Mensa. 36 Milton (1994, 217). This appears in a chapter all too aptly titled “A Methodological Madness.” Of course the standard approach to science has no problem with empiricism: had the lunar regolith turned out to be green cheese, there would have been a lot of astonished faces back at Houston. 37 Milton (1994, 218). The allusion to sporting Mars concerns the statistical work of Michael Gauquelin (1967; 1970; 1983) which presented evidence that certain aspects of traditional astrological influences were real. West & Toonder (1970) also popularized Gauquelin’s work. Time and skepticism have taken their toll, though, such as Nienhuys (1997), Martin & Trachet (1998), Schick & Vaughn (1999, 121-128), Cornelius de Jager & Jan Willem Nienhuys, “A Dozen Years of Dutch Skepticism,” in Kurtz (2001, 277-280) and Dean (2002), who suggest Gauquelin’s massive studies were fatally compromised by some persistent inaccuracies. See also Dean (2003) contra Gauquelin defender Ertel (2003). It is interesting to compare Milton’s attitude with the early views of parapsychology-friendly Koestler (1960, 12): “The respect for ‘hard, obstinate facts’ which a scientific education imparts, does not necessarily imply a denial of a different order of Reality; it does imply, however, the obligation to exhaust all possibilities of a natural explanation of phenomena before acknowledging that they belong to that different order.” The trouble for pursuits like parapsychology or creationism has been translating such theoretical willingness into a practical reality. 38 Not all antievolutionists see themselves as waving the Revolutionary banner, of course—Gish and the Creation Scientists are out to restore the Biblical ancien régime dislodged by modern skepticism. Intelligent Design shares some of this nostalgia too, but the overall tone is one of scientific innovation, not retrenchment. DeHaan & Wiester (1999, 69) declared how “The theory of intelligent design, with its new perspective on design in biology, is destined to replace Darwin’s mechanism of natural selection. The implications of this paradigm shift are staggering. No longer will natural selection be assigned a creative role in the formation of major innovations in the history of life and of the cosmos.” An ad by the Discovery Institute on p. 25 of the December 2000/January 2001 issue of The American Spectator, nestled amidst Wells (2000b), illustrated “The Phylogeny of Revolution: Where does your information come from?” In their case, it was the likes of Johnson (1991), Davis & Kenyon (1993), Behe (1996), Denton (1998), Dembski (1998d; 1999a) and Wells (2000a). Similarly, with William Dembski as guest on the “Bible Answer Man” show (an airing in August 2001), Hank Hanegraaff burbled how Intelligent Design promised “massive movement” in a “giant paradigm shift.” Hanegraaff recommended that every Christian should have Dembski (1999a) on their “must reading” list, and the book has been repeatedly offered since (such as in July 2002). See below (re note 362) for what Dembski sees in store for

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this Renaissance (and cf. notes 245, chapter three, and 101, chapter four). The spirit of the Revolution is also to be seen in the fresh sprouts of ID student clubs, including one offshoot of the Access Research Network: the “Intelligent Design Undergraduate Research Center” (idurc.org). A lead posting by J. Alder (May 15, 2001) proclaimed “The Coming Revolution: It’s Up to Us.” It is not easy to tell whether the student members have even a clue to how far-removed they are from the actual evolutionary data, since the site simply circulates the papers and views of ID regulars like Dembski and Stephen Meyer. I know from personal experience how enticing this feeling can be, though, having ridden the Velikovskian mini-tidal wave from crest to trough. Several upbeat journals appeared in the early 1970s to document the impending scientific convulsion (such as Pensée and Kronos). Indeed, Pensée looked a lot like Cosmic Pursuit, Fred Heeren’s bouncy journal devoted to extolling the glory of God through anthropic cosmology. Behe and Dembski were among those in its premiere issue (re notes 49 & 121, chapter five), but the main focus since has been on interviewing astrophysicists with an eye to pinning down the fingerprints of God. Incidentally, Heeren’s “Day Star Network” (at daystarcom.org) is not to be confused with the “DayStar Network” (at day-star.net) which is the website of the Missouri Lutheran Synod (an ironic juxtaposition there, re note 41 of chapter five). 39 In chapters concerned with refuting the naturalistic critique of miracles, Dembski (1999a, 67, 69) and Strobel (2000, 62, 64) skirted close to Milton’s preoccupation with the mysterious. While Strobel drew on Behe and Intelligent Design as a justification for the acceptance of Biblical miracles, Dembski assembled a more curious logic chain that attaches design to the coattails of the miraculous. Dembski (1999a, 67, 69) argued that the blanket rejection of miracles is simply another name for “methodological naturalism.” MN in turn “is supportable only if miracles can be precluded”—which they cannot, according to him, so “The possibility of design is therefore reopened.” Besides the persistent conflation of ontological and methodological naturalism, Dembski’s argument slipped a major cog. For by his own stated logic, the most one could say about a designed feature’s “specified complexity” is that its origin couldn’t be accounted for by purely unguided naturalistic means (at least as presently understood). Were pan-dimensional beings (like the “mice” in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) designing things all over the place, this still wouldn’t necessarily mean any “miracles” were involved (in the sense of contravention of natural processes). Whether the existence of vampires could be readmitted to historical analysis on these grounds remains to be seen—Dembski clearly has different miraculous “” to fry. Ruse (2001, 97) is relevant: “There are quite enough problems with the authenticity of the miracles because of the ambiguous (perhaps corrupt) nature of the biblical texts, making them dubious as a matter of pure reason, without the added difficulties of science and its commitment to law. If you are prepared to accept the miracles (as law-breaking miracles) despite these difficulties, I doubt that science is going to make much difference anyway.” 40 A similar appeal to “signs and wonders” crops up in creationist home school authors Felice Gerwitz & Jill Whitlock’s Creation Astronomy: A Study Guide to the Constellations (mediaangels.com): “Jesus placed the stars precisely in the heavens and wrote His future there for all to see.” Gerwitz & Whitlock’s science series in turn earned a glowing recommendation by Christian home schooling greenleafpress.com/reviews/books991231.htm, including a quote from John Morris: “This is excellent material.” That dedicated dim bulb Kent Hovind has expressed similar Zodiacal sentiments (home1.gte.net/dmadh/hovind2.htm & hovind6.htm), garnering criticism from AiG (answersingenesis.org/docs2002/1011hovind.asp). Kennedy’s video lecture on such “signs and wonders” has likewise drawn the ire of conservative Christian apologist Hank Hanegraaff (equip.org) on his “Bible Answer Man” radio call-in show (May 23, 2001). Kennedy’s astrological hijinks and the frequency of failed “prophecies” offered by fellow TBN regulars Paul Crouch (see note 171, chapter five) and Benny Hinn—cf. Nickell (2002a)—so ticked off Hanegraaff that he considers the whole TBN operation unworthy of being supported by Christian donation. Which ironically puts AiG and Hanegraaff way ahead of Phillip Johnson when it comes to defining what one believes theologically and following through even to the point of criticizing fellow Christians—though both Answers in Genesis and the Bible Answer Man have their limits. For example, Hanegraaff was evidently bowled over by Steve Austin’s deep geological knowledge

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when the pair visited the Grand Canyon recently. Hanegraaff is slightly more skeptical about YEC cosmology, by the way, though he remains impressed by the humility of physicists like Russell Humphreys who treat their revisionist cosmological theories as tentative. It apparently didn’t occur to him that their timidity might be due to the practical difficulty of rearranging physical reality to fit their preconceived theology, rendering their topical shelf life limited. When a YEC questioner asked (October 16, 2001) whether there could be any compromise with OEC, Hanegraaff confirmed the obvious: that OEC complains about YEC ignoring recent scientific understanding, while YEC counters that OEC doesn’t pay enough attention to Biblical passages. But much as Phillip Johnson has with YEC, the “Bible Answer Man” is unwilling to read the OEC camp out of the Christian fold. See also note 44 below. 41 Kennedy isn’t alone in being oblivious to the historic origins of the zodiac. Although DeYoung (1989, 69-70) was more cautious here than Kennedy, he still suggested Aries the Ram denoted “sacrifice.” Riffing off the sacrificial lamb aspect of Old Testament Jewish tradition has had a significant resonant appeal, as Hopkins (1999, 305-306) noted: “The similarities between the elaborated Isaac stories and the death of Jesus are remarkable.” But plugging that lore into the astronomical realm requires some especially tendentious interpretation, given how Aries came to be associated with that particular chunk of sky. As covered by Martens & Trachet (1998, 60), the Babylonians called that constellation the “Hired Farmworker”—the cuneiform abbreviation for which was later confused with that for sheep and rams. Thus “Aries” was a clerical error, which eventually got folded into the general Greek mythological world, Ridpath (1988, 29-31) or Staal (1988, 36-41). It would be as if a modern astrologer (or Bible believer with as loose a grip) mistook the Japanese name for the Pleiades (suburu) and began attributing to the constellation the ruggedness of four-wheel drive. Incidentally, the Pleiades got tagged via Grant Jeffrey’s 1990s “Signature of God” tape, where Amos 5:8 was offered as an example of the scientific accuracy of the inspired Word of God. “Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night: that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The Lord is his name.” Since only six stars are visible to the naked eye, Jeffrey concluded in his breathlessly cloying style: “A few years back with telescopes they looked at the constellation Pleiades and there are seven stars. Again, the Bible’s right.” Since telescopes have been around for over three centuries, Jeffrey has a peculiar notion of “a few years back.” But as Tyson (1996, 46) noted, “While a simple telescope shows dozens of stars, the naked eye sees only six.” How seven got in the picture was alluded to in my old 1959 World Book Encyclopedia—that “People with very sharp eyes can see a seventh star.” See Ridpath (1988, 121-122) or Staal (1988, 75-76) for how this acuity distinction was interpreted mythologically. The most Jeffrey could have legitimately made of this was that some 8th century BC eagle eye could spot the dimmer seventh star in the Pleiades (out of the dozens God would presumably have known about). One may compare Jeffrey’s “misplaced concreteness” here with the numbers game in the Dogon Sirius case (note 183, chapter three). 42 See Ridpath (1988, 80-81, 84-85, 112-115, 131-134) and Stall (1988, 113-119, 157-159, 212215, 219-227) for the mythological symbolism of the constellations, both western and in other cultures, or Patrick Moore (1983, 220, 222, 240, 242, 254) for précis. The relation of Libra and Scorpio is logical, since they are adjacent groups. Although the Sumerians called that section of the sky the balance of heaven, it wasn’t until the 1st century BC that the Romans popularized the Libra version (performing double duty as the scales held by Astrea in the nearby Virgo). The demonic bestiary is described in Robbins (1959, 132). 43 A personal observation on media cosmetics: much like the Kennedy-Nixon debate in 1960, one’s reaction to people is tempered by whether they are seen or heard. (Nixon came off the winner for radio listeners, while on television Kennedy got the better of Nixon, suffering then from an illness and notable stubble). D. James Kennedy has a similar split, cutting a rather grandfatherly figure when seen preaching on television. But where I first encountered him was on radio—and without the visual cueing, Kennedy sounded quite like the smuggest person I had ever heard (especially when disparaging the benighted ignorance of those who mistakenly accepted the myth of Darwinism). For contrast, Rush Limbaugh runs the opposite direction: his rambling chat style

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during his hours on radio was somewhat less abrasive than when he had to crunch his shtick down to play on only a half hour on syndicated TV. 44 Some of Johnson’s insouciance may stem from a failure to examine the footnotes of the sources he extols, as a recent example suggests. Although Hank Hanegraaff readily affirms his YEC sympathies to his radio questioners (e.g. October 2001), his website and antievolution book did not directly allude to it; the softball Q&A skirted very tightly around it when Johnson appeared on “The Bible Answer Man” show in December 2000. Whether Johnson discussed the issue with Hanegraaff privately is unknown. The Bible Answer Man considers him the premiere philosopher of the new creed, and Johnson’s laudatory “Forward” to Hanegraaff (1998, xi-xiv) returned the favor: “He exposes the specific wrong answers and provides lots of references to other literature.” As indeed he had, citing an especially dated 1981 edition of Henry Morris’s Scientific Creationism, Morris & Parker (1987), Sunderland (1988), the 1993 editions of Scott Huse’s The Collapse of Evolution and Paul Taylor’s The Illustrated Origins Answer Book, and the venerable Gish (1995). These authorities were all that underpinned his flip disparagement of bird evolution as being based on spurious “Pseudosaurs” (re notes 122, 142, 159 & 175, chapter two). Given its fresh 1998 vintage, even compared to Huse, Hanegraaff’s The Face That Demonstrates the Farce of Evolution was at best vacuously superficial. By the way, the “FACE” in Hanegraaff’s book title was a mnemonic for “Fossil Follies,” “Ape-Men Fiction, Fraud,” “Chance” and “Empirical Science.” A creator of “Memory Dynamics,” Hanegraaff is especially fond of such memorable acronyms. One he might work on in future: “Getting Adequate Factual Footnotes.” Finding out how Hanegraaff manages to get so far off the scholarly straight-and-narrow isn’t easy, though, as I learned when I wrote the Christian Research Institute in June 2001. At that stage I wanted to know about Hanegraaff’s views on recapitulation (re note 178, chapter four) which he had just reprised on his radio show, and whether he was aware of any of the criticism of ID exemplars Behe and Wells. The CRI promptly replied with a packet of irrelevant apologetic literature and a request for donations. Undaunted, I replied in July 2001 asking specifically whether Hanegraaff wanted to defend or repudiate Gish’s “scholarship” in the Protoavis case, and enclosed the section on bird evolution from chapter two (with notes and selected bibliography) so that he would have all the necessary material available under his nose. I never got a reply to any of that. I did receive a “personal” form letter from Hanegraaff in August 2001 on his “prayer request” for my financial assistance “to help people hungry for biblical, God-centered prayer” by ordering his book (or audio tape version) pertaining to that vital subject. A clueless CRI phone solicitor tried hitting me up for a contribution some months later; I informed him of my prior communiqués with the CRI, and suggested that this might indicate I was arguably the last person on earth to approach as a likely candidate for financial support. He hung up. Most recently, in September 2002 an overworked CRI Research Consultant belatedly offered a singularly evasive response to my first letter (offering no answer to the critical scholarly and methodological issues that I had pointedly raised). The fate of my chapter two bird enclosure in the second letter thus remains unknown. This farcical correspondence exhibits the same pattern seen with D. James Kennedy and Daniel Lapin—probing letters received not a coherent response but were treated as opportunities for fundraising or boilerplate apologetics. All this suggests a lot about the insular (or brazen) mindset prevailing at organizations like Coral Ridge Ministry and the Christian Research Institute. 45 The prosaic historical interpretation is that Revelation reflected the activities of the imperial delinquents of St. John’s own era (notably Nero and Domitian), Robin Lane Fox (1992, 345-351). Though there is some dispute over whether Domitian’s presumed 94 or 95 AD persecution of Christians took place—Robin Lane Fox (1986, 433) argued it had, Cohn (1993, 215-216) is among the skeptics. Regarding the Number of the Beast, Boyer (1992, 44): “The most prevalent system of gematria numbered the alphabet’s first nine letters 1 to 9, the next nine 10 to 90, and the succeeding ones 100, 200, 300, and so on. By this system ‘Neron Caesar’ (a common early usage) totals 666 in Hebrew. ‘Nero Caesar’ totals 616—the number that appears in some early manuscripts of Revelation.” Hiers (2001, 248): “His name, like that of Haman in the book of Esther, might then apply to latter-day persecutors, in the same way that Zimri’s name was applied to a latter-day traitor in 2 Kings 9:31. The author of Revelation actually uses Jezebel’s name in this

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way, referring to a contemporary idolatress (2:20).” See also Michael Grant (1970, 251-252) and Klingaman (1990, 366-372) on Nero and Domitian’s roles in the 666 legend. 46 An early example of apocalyptic name-calling would be the 5th century author that “found the number 666 in the name of Gaiseric, the Vandal king who sacked Rome in 455. Who else could Vandals, Goths, or Huns be but the hordes of Gog and Magog?” Baumgartner (1999, 47). Fill in the blank with Muslims, Norse, Mongols, or an assortment of rival popes and Holy Roman Emperors—let alone “heretics” like Martin Luther (from the Catholic point of view)—and you can toggle your way through the next fifteen centuries of Antichrist fashion. By the 20th century just about any headline figure that chanced to poke their head up, from Russia to the Persian Gulf, stood a good chance of getting pegged as the latest Beast. During WWII Mussolini was a popular target as the Beast, possibly because of his association with Rome, Boyer (1992, 108-111). A more recent example noted by Boyer (1992, 178): Robert Faid identified “Mikhail S. Gorbachev” as the possible antichrist because those letters translated to 1332 = 2 x 666. Who can argue with math like that? See Faid (1993, 25-32, 174-175) for further performances of this peculiar numerological juggling act (dwelling on multiples of 37 as secret allusions to Christ, for example), and John Williams (2001, 156-173) for some apologetic debunking of the practice of antichrist hunting. Nor is Eastern Orthodoxy immune: some Greeks reject European unification as the true threat of “666” (with New York City performing the offstage title role of Whore of Babylon), Victoria Clark (2000, 165-169, 191-195) and Williams (2001, 35). On the lighter side, Gardner (2000a; 2000b, 288-296) showed just how easy it is to perform such “Beastly” gematria by calculating a few hilariously unlikely contenders. For instance, using the same method apocalyptic Gary Blevins used to peg (of all people!) Ronald Reagan as the threatened world dictator, Gardner discovered 666 could also be tagged to that frequent presidential wannabe, “Pat J. Buchanan.” 47 “Amazing Facts” relied on two numerical props (if there were any disgruntled Catholics fuming in the audience, they did not make their presence known on the night I attended). The first derived the Number of the Beast “666” from the sum of the Roman numerals contained in the Papal title “Vicar of the Son of God”: Vicarius Filii Dei (with U=V=5). The other concerned the 1260 that the Book of Daniel relates to the reign of the Beast. This too has a convoluted provenance, not substantively clarified by the “perfect sense” Archer (1982, 289-292) thought to make of it. Daniel 7:25 reads: “And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.” Under the notion that a day stands for a year, the last clause may be taken to represent three and a half “years”—only that translates into 1277 “days,” not 1260. That lower number is obtained by using 42 months of 30 days each. That calendrical foible aside, 1260 years happens to span 538 AD (when the Bishop of Rome was granted some secular authority) to 1798, when Napoleon supposedly ended the Vatican’s power by conquering Rome. Here we have simple data selection, where figures are picked to conform to the desired outcome. That “Amazing Facts” starting point is debatable—the Papal States didn’t really materialize until 755 when the first Carolingian king, Pepin the Short, courted papal favor by handing over some conquered Italian territory as a gift. The terminal date is even more suspect, since the Vatican’s territorial control hardly vanished in 1798—that would have to wait until the renascent Italian monarchy finally nipped the papal bud in 1871. Ironically, New England Puritan minister Jonathan Edwards undershot the dates less badly than the Adventists, having pegged the rise of the papal Antichrist’s authority to 606, and thus predicted its fall for 1866, Baumgartner (1999, 128). Other interpreters have permuted the “1260 years” differently, of course: in 1627, the English apocalyptic Joseph Mede decided the Millennium would commence in 1736 (1260 years after the fall of the western half of the Roman Empire in 476), Baumgartner (1999, 104). One of those “old Chinese sayings” applies here: Prophecy is extremely difficult, especially with respect to the future. 48 Boyer (1992, 77). “For prophecy to confirm the fundamentalist view of biblical inerrancy, its precise ‘fit’ with historical reality had to be maintained—a feat that required constant adjustment and ingenuity. While the core structure of the premillennial scenario remained remarkably stable for 150 years, new events were continually elevated to the status of ‘prophetic fulfillments’ or ‘endtime signs’ while individuals or events that failed to live up to their expected role were quietly

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dropped: the Soviet Union replaced the Ottoman Empire as the most likely candidate for Gog; a long parade of world figures succeeded each other as Antichrist possibilities; and the details of Antichrist's end-time system were repeatedly updated to incorporate the latest technological innovations, from railroads and the telegraph to computers and communications satellites,” Boyer (1992, 295-296). That this spirit of linking omens and symbols is more common than one might think was reaffirmed during the writing of this chapter. On October 24, 2001 David Klinghoffer, Editorial Director of Daniel Lapin’s “Toward Tradition,” issued an “Urgent Message” that called attention to that Wednesday’s Drudge Report concerning Stephen Hawking’s advocacy of human colonization of space because of the physicist’s “prediction that biological warfare will render the earth uninhabitable.” Klinghoffer poured cold water on this (with attached rainbow) via Scripture: “Professor Hawking made his prediction because of the events that commenced on 9/11. What chapter and verse contain the refutation of Hawking’s despair? Curiously, it’s Genesis 9:11.” This reads: “And I will establish my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth.” Klinghoffer took this to mean that God won’t allow anything chancy to do us in—which apparently includes not merely the flood waters specified in the text, but present concerns from genetically engineered viruses to accidental asteroid impacts. Thus armed with 9:11, we don’t need to worry. Sleep tight. 49 See Ward (1940, 190) for the mainline Queen Elizabeth interpretation. While Boswell (1941, 288-289) was generally convinced there would be a literal Henry V on a postwar French throne, Lamont (1943, 288) used VI:74 to flatly predict the restoration would occur in 1943 (oops!). See Roberts (1949, 203) for the liberal return tack, and Robb (1961, 67) to watch how imaginatively he manages to drag Napoleon III into the picture. For the original text and translation, see Leoni (1961, 301), still a definitive non-occult scholarly source in this otherwise undisciplined field. 50 In 1981, contemporary with the Arkansas “balanced treatment” trial, Orson Welles narrated the portentous “Nostradamus: The Man Who Saw Tomorrow,” which was revamped ten years later with a new host, Charlton Heston. This was five years before his MOM gig. The original program, made when Libya and Iran were the villains de jour, skewed the prophecies toward Muammar Qaddafi and the Ayatollah Khomeini. By the time the revised edition appeared Persian Gulf tensions stressed a new tyrant, Saddam Hussein. Schick & Vaughn (1999, 59-61) survey more of the hijinks Nostradamus interpreters have been prone to over the years. 51 Dated prophecies in Nostradamus happen to be extremely rare, and the “1937” item wasn’t one of them. The epistle to King Henry II of France referred not to the year 1937—or any year in fact—but to “37 degrees” (presumably of latitude). To make matters worse, variants of the epistle replace 37 with 47. See Leoni (1961, 341, 409). It was fairly clear no one on the program staff had taken even the rudimentary step of basic fact checking, since it required nothing more laborious than consulting a reliable source to determine this prophecy was a dud. A few months later, on a repeat installment of TLC’s Unnatural History series, narrated by Mark Hamill, Hogue was back with more dating games from the Henry epistle. Here there was a semblance of balance, with CSICOP skeptics like James Randi on hand to criticize Nostradamus’ authenticity, but a prophecy about persecution of the Catholic Church to commence in 1792 still passed without editorial challenge. Hogue (1997, 599) commented thus: “The persecution of the Church during the Revolution had only begun in 1792; however, Nostradamus had accurately foreseen the year the revolutionaries created a new calendar to mark the dawn of a new age.” This skipped lightly over the content known even to Hogue, where it was clear Nostradamus had been prophesying about travail culminating in 1792, not beginning then. What the show left out was that Nostradamus had gone on to predict the spectacular revival of Venice, which was to become as great as ancient Rome. Although of historical interest to the Venetian Chamber of Commerce, in the real world, Napoleon squashed what remained of the moribund Venetian Republic in 1796, Leoni (1961, 341, 690-691). Leoni noted that 16th century occultists were convinced on astrological grounds that the 1790s were going to bring trouble, but obviously couldn’t settle on what or exactly when. Hogue (1997, 599) treated the Venetian resurgence as a surrogate for Italy in order to support his strained interpretation of Henry’s epistle as a blueprint for Fascist military expansion. Reading that Venice would “raise its wings,” Hogue rhapsodized how “one can imagine the air fleets of Italy

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stretching their wings over the Mediterranean—to attack Libya in 1925, and later Somalia and Ethiopia in 1935-36.” 52 Quatrain X:49 described the calamity in store for the “New City”—which Nostradamusites (including those drawn on anonymously for the Orson Welles/Heston show) have taken to be somewhere in America. More specifically, Goodman (1979, 7) was convinced that Los Angeles (a “new” city if ever there was one) was doomed. Cheetham (1985, 195-96) was equally certain the prediction was fulfilled that very year by the Three Mile Island reactor mishap in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (resolving the tiny matter of the name by the ingenuous geographical caveat that Harrisburg lies “only” 180 miles from New York City). Both skipped a more likely candidate far closer to Nostradamus’ crystal ball: Naples, whose Latin name (neapolis) means the “new city,” and is nestled perilously at the foot of Mt. Vesuvius. Of course, predicting the eventual eruption of an active volcano known to Nostradamus is rather less dramatic than dropping it on unrelated and distant locales. Again, cf. Leoni (1961, 746). Incidentally, like Cynthia Giles and Dummett on the Renaissance tarot, Cheetham had sufficient pretensions to criticize Leoni’s meticulous crossreferenced work … while likewise neglecting to give any specific examples. Nostradamus’ “new city” got a fresh turn by Hogue (1997, 784-785; 2002, 202-202), who applied X:49 to both the 1993 & 2001 World Trade Center attacks. Several faked quatrains also circulated online after September 11th, Radford (2001). One was a flat forgery, concocted for the occasion—the other was spliced together from two actual quatrains (X:72 and VI:97). Which was ironic, as X:72 was the famous 1999 prediction of disaster—the online source simply removed that year and replaced it with “the year of the new century” to fit 2001. One may compare Hogue (1997, 798-800; 2002, 178-179, 198-200) for some pre- and post-1999 spin on what X:72 was supposed to signify … and notes 125 & 135 below on comparable torque applied to certain Biblical texts by Christian apologists. 53 The McDowell (1975, 1979) books are readily available in Christian bookstores and are invoked both by conservative theologians and the individual believer. I encountered one unauthorized “citation” in the graffiti penciled into a library copy of Burr (1860) by an obviously disgruntled seventeen-year-old girl. Besides affirming that “God completely satisfies my soul,” she recommended Evidence That Demands a Verdict to anyone “wanting to know to trust the Bible!” Another self-appointed annotator added that Burr’s critical treatment “was another attempt by Satan to instill hate into the hearts of man”—but assured the reader that this state of affairs only “proves that God is indeed everything!” It is perhaps indicative of the “occult” aspect of certain Christian mindsets that the writer clearly thought that particular conclusion somehow followed. Incidentally, one may note the parochial superficiality of McDowell (1979, 22) quoting Wilbur Smith about how “Mohammedanism” wasn’t foretold in the Bible the way Jesus’ arrival and fate were. Both were evidently unaware of how extremely offensive the dated and inaccurate term “Mohammedanism” is for believing Muslims, who do not in any way worship the founder of their faith. Cf. Armstrong (1991, 593). 54 McDowell (1979, iii). Hanegraaff (1998, 137) expressed a similar sentiment: “Indeed, the evidence for Christ’s resurrection is so overwhelming that no one can examine it with an open mind without becoming convinced of its truth.” By implication, anyone who retains doubts about the Resurrection therefore cannot have had an open mind. In a commentary in Books & Culture (November/December 1996) on Horgan (1996b) and the Sokal postmodernist lampoon (cf. notes 103, chapter one, and 31 above), Johnson (1998a, 152-153) likened the underlying authenticity of the Gospel accounts of the Resurrection to the universal applicability of physical laws discovered by science. Johnson (2000, 152) compressed this to: “At a fundamental level we know the reality of God, and yet we often deny it.” Barr (2003, 11-14) evinces a similar cheery attitude when affirming the concordance of “rational inquiry” with the dogmatic truths obtained by divine revelation via the Bible. Barr did not discuss whether any of the revealed truths (such as the mandate to kill witches, discussed below) might have been either unreasonable or wrong. 55 McDowell (1979, 146, 159). Zechariah wrote of a shepherd king of Israel betrayed for 30 pieces of silver. Specifically, Zechariah 11:13: “And the Lord said unto me, cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was prised at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to

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the potter in the house of the Lord.” McDowell’s affinity for extracting extra mileage from Scripture was shown when McDowell (1979, 146-149) counted the ancestry of Abraham down to David as six separate prophecies, as though it were possible for someone to be descended from David and not Abraham, Isaac or Jacob. McDowell & Hostetler (1992, 66-69) remained consistent, offering Zechariah 11:12 as the fulfillment of Matthew 26:15 … though this time they added ironic insult to injury by contrasting the prophetic hits of Jesus with that “dead in the water” seer Nostradamus! See note 58 below for Norman Geisler’s similar remark. 56 Where Lane Fox (1992, 344) and Spong (1996, 244, 262, 267-268) readily explored Matthew’s inappropriate reliance on Jeremiah, the traditionalist is prone to some scholarly wallpapering. Archer (1982, 345) stressed spots where Jeremiah 18:2, 19:2,11 & 32:6-9 mentioned potters and field purchases (though not together). D. James Kennedy (1997, 40) included the Zechariah “prophecy” on his list of purported Old Testament messianic prophecies, but without reference to Matthew’s attribution of it to Jeremiah. Strobel (1998, 182) referred obliquely to how “prophecies talk about betrayal for thirty pieces of silver,” as did Christine O’Donnell citing Zechariah on Politically Incorrect. Neither addressed Matthew specifically or his attributive memory lapses. Similarly, when Eric Lyons asked “Who Bought the Potter’s Field?” (apologeticspress.org/rr/abdiscr18.html) it was directed at whether Judas did so, not whether Matthew had connected it to an unverified “prophetic” statement. Robert L. Thomas, “Impact of Historical Criticism on Theology and Apologetics,” in Thomas & Farnell (1998, 368) was even more rarified. Concerning whether New Testament authors took liberties with their citation of the Old Testament, Thomas argued that, “Anyone could tell immediately just by looking at the quotation alongside the Old Testament source whether a writer quoted verbatim or whether he quoted loosely or paraphrased.” But Matthew’s Biblical confabulation went beyond “loosely or paraphrased,” and so would have seemed a particularly ripe topic for discussion. Unfortunately, Thomas offered no examples of such quotations for analysis—and skipped even a reference footnote (a curious omission for someone otherwise prone to redundantly thorough attributions on matters of redactive opinion). 57 Matthew 27:7-10 reads: “And they took counsel, and bought with them the potter’s field, to bury strangers in. Wherefore that field was called, The field of blood, unto this day. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him that was valued, whom they of the children of Israel did value; And gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord appointed me.” Thuesen (1999, 82) noted the effort to get the RSV translation committee to tidy up the Matthew prophecy by replacing Jeremy/Jeremiah with Zechariah, but the scholars stuck to their guns and refused to “correct” the text merely to simplify traditionalist redaction. All this presupposes, of course, that the potter’s field transaction really did take place, Matthew’s report being the only extant evidence for it (Matthew’s possible creative license plays a more significant role in the Nativity stories covered below). 58 The Stoner probabilities appeared in McDowell (1979, 167, 283, 285, 287, 293, 308, 314, 319). Cf. Faid (1993, 75-76), Strobel (1998, 183, 262) and Barry R. Leventhal, “Why I Believe Jesus Is the Promised Messiah,” in Geisler & Hoffman (2001, 207) playing the prophetic probability game. Ironically, while Strobel’s 1998 source (Jewish Christian convert Louis S. Lapides) extolled Stoner’s probability claims, in Strobel (2000, 132-133) Norman Geisler contrasted the lofty and precise fulfilled prophecies of the Bible with the vague ones of Nostradamus. Which provides a droll cap to the closed circuit of glowing recommendations gracing the back cover of Strobel’s book. Phillip Johnson commended the author for the same analytical skill Johnson professes: “Lee Strobel asks the questions a tough-minded skeptic would ask and provides convincing answers to all of them. His book is so good I read it out loud to my wife evenings after dinner. Every inquirer should have this book.” D. James Kennedy said the work “sets a new standard among existing contemporary apologetics.” Several of Strobel’s quoted authorities also patted the author’s back: Gary Collins (American Association of Christian Counselors), Bruce Metzger (Princeton Theological Seminary), and J. P. Moreland. As a technical aside, Strobel (1998, 107, 284n; 2000, 128, 195, 240, 283n, 286n, 290n) freely drew on Young Earth creationist authors Gary Parker and Paul Taylor, along with followers D. James Kennedy and Clifford Wilson—though not for their

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opinions on scientific data but rather for their theological insights. Strobel also appears on YEC sympathizer Hank Hanegraaff’s “Bible Answer Man” hour to praise one another’s apologetics. In shying away from taking a stand on the YEC convictions and methodology of his sources and allies, Strobel qualifies for honorary membership in the Creationism Lite club. 59 McDowell (1979, 145), his example 2. One may contrast Dembski (1999a, 43, 281) who perfunctorily accepted the “well-substantiated” virgin birth with the liberal Spong (1996, 219-232) who questions the whole tradition at length. See Archer (1982, 266-268) for a typological spin. Ruse (2001, 34-35) noted how a specifically virgin birth eventually became critical to Christian dogma: “It is an essential part of traditional Christian theology, especially as articulated by Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430), the greatest of all the early theologians (the ‘Church fathers’), that all people carry innately the mark of Adam’s fall. We are all in a state of ‘original sin.’ However, Jesus through his suffering—God letting Himself be put to death—washes away our sin and makes possible our future salvation. He is the sacrificial lamb. Jesus himself, although human, was not tainted by original sin. Such sin is transferred down through the generations by way of the sexual act. The mother of God—Mary—conceived as a virgin.” Thus no issue of translation has proven more contentious than whether the Hebrew almah (which does mean “young woman”) may be taken as denoting “virgin” (for which there is a Hebrew term, bethulah, which occurs elsewhere in the Old Testament—but not in Isaiah 7:14). It was recognized for nearly a century before the RSV got around to making the switch back to “young woman” in 1952. The problem dated back at least as early as the Septuagint Greek text that had translated almah as parthenos (virgin). The RSV committee also had the advantage of more recently discovered New Testament texts, dating from the 2nd or 3rd century—thus perhaps a hundred years earlier than the Alexandrian Codices Vaticanus and Sinaiticus 19th century translators had relied on. But conservative theologians (especially anti-Catholic and anticommunist ones) readily took the RSV’s scholarly authenticity as signs of papal and/or Red influence, and the more evangelical-friendly New International Version eventually restored the almah/virgin translation in 1978. See Thuesen (1999, 84, 94-119, 124127), and Today’s Parallel Bible (2000, 1566-1567) for the “virgin” version in situ in the KJV, NIV, New Living & New American Standard translations. The contemporary language version of the Bible by Eugene Peterson (2002, 1218) also sticks to the “virgin” usage. For comparison, Metzger (2001, 117-122, 125, 131, 134, 138-141) noted some of the politicization of the RSV and a few of the NIV’s translation foibles, but limited his brief discussion of Isaiah 7:14 to the New Jerusalem Bible (1966) and the New American & New English translations (both 1970). 60 Isaiah 7:14-25 reads: “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil, and choose the good. For before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land that thou abhorest shall be forsaken of both her kings. The Lord shall bring upon thee, and upon thy people, and upon thy father’s house, days that have not come, from the day that Ephrahaim departed from Judah; even the king of Assyria. And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall hiss for the fly that is in the uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt, and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria. And they shall come, and shall rest all of them in the desolate valleys, and in the holes of the rocks, and upon all thorns, and upon all bushes. In the same day shall the Lord shave with a razor that is hired, namely, by them beyond the river, by the king of Assyria, the head, and the hair of the feet: and it shall also consume the beard. And it shall come to pass in that day, that a man shall nourish a young cow, and two sheep; And it shall come to pass, for the abundance of milk that they shall give he shall eat butter: for butter and honey shall every one eat that is left in the land. And it shall come to pass in that day, that every place shall be, where there were a thousand vines at a thousand silverlings, it shall even be for briers and thorns. With arrows and with bows shall men come thither; because all the land shall become briers and thorns.” As the RSV translates “butter” as “curds,” the reader may wish to determine by their own experimentation which dairy product is more conducive to selecting good over evil. 61 Isaiah suffered further truncation when example 24 of McDowell (1979, 156) declared Jesus’ miraculous healings recounted in Matthew 9:35 the apparent fulfillment of Isaiah 35:5-6a. Just as above, McDowell stopped at the point Isaiah went on to describe some rather notable geologic and

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environmental effects that would accompany all this: streams infiltrating deserts and swamps disrupting dragon habitats. It would have been uniquely instructive to learn about dragon ecology in 1st Century AD Palestine, and how it was undermined during the reign of Tiberius, but it did not occur to McDowell to so educate the reader. Isaiah 35:5-7 reads in full: “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert. And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water: in the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes.” This might have shed light on Duane Gish’s Baryonyx “dragon” he had St. George slay in Dinosaurs By Design, except the RSV takes much of the ginger out of this verse by translating “dragons” as “jackals.” 62 McDowell (1979, 157), example 31. Kennedy (1997, 41) also listed this on his fulfilled Old Testament prophecy list. For the record, the full KSV passage reads: “Thou hast ascended on high, thou hast led captivity captive: thou hast received gifts for men; yes, for the rebellious also, that the Lord God might dwell among them.” 63 Kennedy (1997, 14). See Habermas & Moreland (1998, 111-154), Gary R. Habermas, “Why I Believe the Miracles of Jesus Actually Happened,” in Geisler & Hoffman (2001, 117-124) or Polkinghorne (2002, 66-79) for apologetic summaries of the evidence for Jesus’ Resurrection. The importance of this topic in Habermas & Moreland’s Beyond Death is attested by the disproportionately heavy footnoting devoted to that section. Cf. also Colson & Pearcey (1999, 275-276) and note 145 below. As for slam-dunking and no-braining, Kennedy (1997, 95): “Moving into the twentieth century, let us consider one of the most famous historians, writers, and skeptics of the first half of this century—H. G. Wells, who wrote the famous Outlines of History. Probably best known for his science fiction and movie directing, he was, by profession, a historian as well as a very outspoken skeptic of Christianity.” While Herbert George Wells did supply a penetrating screenplay for the 1936 science fiction classic Things to Come (directed by William Cameron Menzies), it was Orson Welles who was the one actually known for film directing. Kennedy may have slipped a memory cog here because of Welles’ famous radio broadcast of the other Wells’ War of the Worlds that scared the pants off Depression-era Americans in 1938. Kennedy’s slip may be compared to the creationist children’s book Stephen Jay Gould (2002a, 988) commented on, where a picture of robber baron Jay Gould (no relation) had been used to illustrate him. 64 See note 6 of chapter three. Though Johnson’s appeal to “Feinberg” (note 199, chapter four) is hard to beat, McDowell (1979, 106, 127, 133) comes close in citing Napoleon on how wondrous, amazing, and superb Jesus and the Bible were. He did this not once, not twice, but (ala Peter and the cockcrow) thrice, as though what 19th century emperors thought one way or the other had any bearing on the validity of contemporary prophetic exegesis. Federer (1999, 461-464) was similarly giddy over Napoleon’s religious commentary. Not that Rev. Kennedy is giving any ground in this picayune game of Truth by Association. In his September 2000 series he drew on Napoleon, as well as a presidential laundry list including Washington, Jackson, Lincoln, Grant, Teddy Roosevelt, Hoover, and Reagan. One example was particularly inept: quoting William James on how the Bible contains some great poetry and history, as though that meant James held the theology of Scripture in equally high esteem. What Kennedy didn’t quote (and was likely unaware of, under the superficial scholarship rule), was a 1904 questionnaire on religious beliefs directed at prominent figures, reprinted in James (1987, 1185). “Do you accept the Bible as authority in religious matters? Are your religious faith and your religious life based on it? If so, how would your belief in God and your life toward Him and your fellow men be affected by loss of faith in the authority of the Bible?” James’ blunt reply, in toto: “No. No. No. It is so human a book that I don’t see how belief in its divine authorship can survive the reading of it.” Religion for James was simultaneously sublime and neurotic, profound and stupid, as explained in his 1902 lecture, “The Varieties of Religious Experience,” in James (1987, 3-469). One main point of his argument was that you could never “prove” the existence of God by any means, and for that reason James preferred to base his view of ethics on pragmatic reasoning. See his 1898 address, “Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results,” in James (1992, 1077-1097), and his 1906 “Pragmatism” lecture, in James

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(1987, 481-619)—views which in recent years have undergone a resurgence in popularity, Menand (1997). Cf. also notes 260 (chapter five) and 71 below on James’ philosophic logic, and Schick & Vaughn (1999, 110-113) for a skeptical assessment of James’ view that faith could still be a source for some knowledge. Not unexpectedly, Federer (1999, 317) tendered a quick frown at Jamesian pragmatism, as did Norman Geisler in “Why I Believe Truth Is Real and Knowable,” Geisler & Hoffman (2001, 31); Tucker (2002, 141-143) is longer but similar. James represented one facet of the growing American culture of unbelief appearing especially in the period 1865-1890, explored in depth by Turner (1985). One of the tartest summations of the new attitude was quoted by Turner (1985, 207): “‘I will call no being good,’ wrote John Stuart Mill in his influential Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy (1865), ‘who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow creatures; and if such a creature can sentence me to Hell for not so calling him, to Hell I will go.’ God did not measure up to Mill’s standards.” Of course that may mean Mill ended up in the nether regions encountered in note 291 below. 65 Recall the science parade per notes 15 & 21, chapter five. Citational daisy chaining plays an important supporting role here, such as seen in the Horgan-Schroeder-Lapin trail (re note 136 of chapter five) whereby Mayr was “quoted” for an opinion virtually the opposite of his actual view. Phillip Johnson acted as the terminal point for one of the longer and more convoluted paths away from the original material, in his reliance on William Fix for Ronald Reagan’s evolution statement (per the extended quotation re note 106, chapter five). Niles Eldredge has explained his part in the affair. Eldredge (1995, 104) noted how he and Gould “were the scientists Ronald Reagan had in mind [sic] when he said, ‘Well, it is a theory, a scientific theory only, and it has in recent years been challenged in the world of science and is not yet believed in the scientific community to be as infallible as it once was believed,’ just after he addressed a group of fundamentalists during his first presidential election campaign.” (The “[sic]” was Eldredge’s own tart editorial inclusion.) Eldredge (2000, 187n) later specified that it was Luther Sunderland who “had managed to get through to several of Reagan’s speechwriters and that he was proud to take credit for inserting these antievolution remarks into Reagan’s campaign rhetoric.” Thus Johnson was abstracting Fix’s version of CBS’s account of candidate Reagan’s expression of a speechwriter’s secondary take on the often scientifically illiterate Sunderland’s muddled comprehension of how punctuated equilibrium fitted into modern evolutionary thinking. (Pause for breath!) Moreover, given Johnson’s observed tendency to build on isolated nuggets of information, the point Johnson juxtaposed with Reagan’s remark (the AAAS statement about fossils being “100 million facts that prove evolution”) may be the wellspring for his subsequent “mere existence of fossils” claim (note 182, chapter four). 66 Henry Morris (1963, 29-30) is a characteristic statement of the “Bible first, scientific conclusions after” line of creationist thinking. See Bailey (1993, 166-168) for a representative survey of quotes. The limits of such reasoning may be seen in a 2001 piece “In favor of God-of-the-gaps reasoning” (snoke2/phyast.pitt.edu/gaps.pdf) by David Snoke of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Pittsburgh. “Christians must have the humility to revise their theology, i.e. to mature, without throwing the baby out with the bathwater,” Snoke averred—but offered the failures of Flood Geology as his sole example, not whether any of his own theological bath water might be open for flushing. Moreland & Reynolds (1999, 62, 124, 213-215) was similar: from YEC Paul Nelson & John Reynolds to OEC Robert Newton and even Howard Van Till’s “fully gifted creation,” none volunteered any doctrine they were willing to scrap in the light of scientific discovery. Then there is Ross (1994, 57-58): “Thus when science appears to conflict with theology, we have no reason to reject either the facts of nature or the Bible’s words. Rather, we have reason to reexamine our interpretations of these facts and words because sound science and sound biblical exegesis will always be in harmony.” Only we “always” know which side has to give in a pinch, as was demonstrated by his 2000 debate with Kent Hovind, during which Ross admitted: “If the Bible clearly taught that it was young, I would believe that in spite of my astronomy.” Add Jonathan Sarfati’s nonnegotiable comment on the debate from Answers in Genesis: “The Bible does teach the Earth is young, and it’s not ‘despite’ any astronomy, but consistent with astronomical data.” Over on the ID side, Dembski (1999a, 187-236) devoted about a fifth of his book to

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defending the “mutual support” view of nature and the Bible. “Not only do these books agree, but each helps us make sense of the other. Much of the confusion in science and theology these days results from severing these books,” Dembski (1999a, 192). One may compare Rhodes (2001, 246) applying just such reasoning to winnowing the “cult” of Unitarianism from the Christian orbit. 67 F. David Farnell, “Form Criticism and Tradition Criticism,” in Thomas & Farnell (1998, 216) stressed that the traditional “grammatico-historical exegesis” he and the other contributors favor “presupposes inerrancy.” Such views were formalized by 1920s fundamentalism. Larson (1997, 33): “Conservative theologians at the Presbyterian seminary in Princeton added a formal theory of biblical inerrancy, leading their denomination to adopt a five-point declaration of essential doctrines that became central tenets of fundamentalism: the absolute accuracy and divine inspiration of scripture, the virgin birth of Christ, salvation solely through Christ’s sacrifice, the bodily resurrection of Christ and his followers, and the authenticity of biblical miracles.” There is also a strong eschatological role in play: “It is precisely those with a powerful millennial vision who have the least doubt about the authenticity of the Gospels, and take Jesus and his disciples as the model of how to live and behave,” Baumgartner (1999, 17-18). Boyer (1992, 295) remarked that the search for fulfilled prophecy is seen by premillennialists as an affirmation of inerrancy. Recall also (per note 5, chapter one) that for many Biblical creationists, evolution is literally a satanic plot to entice believers away from the Rock of Ages by confusing them over the “age of rocks” (to borrow the cunning pun attributed to William Jennings Bryan). But while Henry Morris (1963, 23) explicitly argued that evolution leads to questioning Biblical authority, not all apologists are so compulsive. For example, Baptist minister (and evangelism director for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship) Rick Richardson (2000, 44, 164) glanced at Darwinism only as a subset of the modern materialist worldview—indicating evolution triggered no hot buttons on the order of abortion or homosexuality. 68 Price (1983) has noted the confluence of creationist and inerrantist apologetics. Henry Morris (1985, 247) states the issues from the YEC antievolution side: “Modern theologians who would eliminate the first eleven chapters of Genesis from the realm of true history are guilty of removing the foundation from all future history. They, in effect, reject the teachings of Peter and Paul and all the other Biblical writers as naïve superstition and the teachings of the infallible Christ as deceptive accommodationism. The ‘framework hypothesis’ of Genesis, in any of its diverse forms, is nothing but neo-orthodox sophistry and inevitably leads eventually to complete apostasy. It must be unequivocally rejected and opposed by Bible-believing Christians.” Which position is not all that far removed from Morris-critic Hayward (1985, 190): “Dismissing the first eleven chapters of Genesis as myths might seem a good idea at first. On reflection a serious snag appears: the New Testament always refers to the early characters of Genesis, including Adam and Eve, as historical figures.” See note 102 below for further analytical characters shared by OEC and YEC believers when it comes to interpreting the Bible. 69 Kennedy (1997, 19-20). Other evangelists thread Biblical authenticity implicitly through their commentary, such as when Rick Richardson (2000, 124) referred to Adam & Eve as real personages. As for pulling up the rear, Phillip Johnson currently has the honor of place here (as recounted per note 175, chapter five). But underlying his view is the presumption that faith is more certain than any scientific finding ever could be—an attitude which suffuses how he approaches evolution. For example, Johnson (2000, 90): “I have observed that in some Christian academic circles it is considered far more offensive to deny the theory of evolution than it is to deny the divinity of Jesus or even the existence of God.” He did not elaborate with references or examples. But replace “theory of evolution” by “heliocentrism” and “the divinity of Jesus” with “the historic truth of the Book of Mormon” and you can see how one category operates in an empirical realm while the other is totally dependent on the faith of the believer. 70 Göttingen University theology professor Gerd Lüdemann (1998) is an obvious case study: his Christian faith imploded altogether as a result of seeing how Biblical authority disintegrated under the Historical Criticism he so methodically practiced—and the university has been trying to eject him from the department ever since! Over on the “conservative” side, The Jesus Crisis agrees on the threat of admitting textual mistakes or interpolations of opinion. Kelly Osborne, “Impact of

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Historical Criticism on Gospel Interpretation,” in Thomas & Farnell (1998, 300): “no one can have full confidence in the credibility of the gospel writer or—which is even more disastrous—any secure knowledge of what Jesus actually said (or did).” Likewise it is axiomatic for Robert L. Thomas, “Impact of Historical Criticism on Hermeneutics,” in Thomas & Farnell (1998, 327) that the traditional “grammatical-historical hermeneutics allow for no human gaffes in recording their descriptions.” This even extends to esthetics, as later on that page Thomas criticized William Lane for attributing an “awkward syntactical structure” to Mark 2:10-11: “It is hardly appropriate to label a writing inspired by the Spirit as ‘awkward,’ whether Mark did it intentionally or not.” Regarding Grant Osborne’s analysis of critical issues, Thomas asked in the “Impact of Historical Criticism on Theology and Apologetics,” Thomas & Farnell (1998, 361): “If gospel writers handled actual events as loosely as he proposes, what proves that they did not handle all the data that loosely?” And Montana pastor Dennis A. Hutchison, “Impact of Historical Criticism on Preaching,” in Thomas & Farnell (1998, 350): “How can the author of a book purportedly teaching the highest possible ethics be so unethical as to misrepresent the source of his material? In addition, what does this system imply about the God who inspired the Gospels? Finally, what does it say about the preacher who teaches it as though it were a fact?” For the theological conservative, there is clearly no wiggle room here. 71 “The Sentiment of Rationality” in James (1992, 955). Schick & Vaughn (1999, 15-17) note the pivotal importance Aristotle assigned to the non-contradiction principle—cf. Barrow (2000, 284285). Hegel leaves nothing to Schroeder (1997, 11) though, as he dissolved difficulties in the Old Testament text: “The author was smart. These contradictions are not by chance and not errors. They are beacons urging us to seek the deeper meanings held within the text just as we seek meanings within the subtleties of nature.” Thus Schroeder decided the sun being created on Day 4 in Genesis was meant to get us to thinking “beyond a simple reading of the text (as we do later).” That concerned the “misplaced concreteness” argument touched on in note 194, chapter three. As a Jewish Bible apologist, Schroeder was not out to defend the coherency of the New Testament, of course, but by focusing only on debatable textual problems he falls in the same class as the crowd covered in notes 83-95 below. Cf. also the creationist defenders of “non-contradiction” in note 195 (chapter four). 72 Paul Johnson (1977, 56) contends this attitude has an early canonical pedigree, where “The author of 1 John insisted that anyone who rejected his interpretation not only rejected part of the faith but the faith, because it was indivisible.” Certainly 1 John 4:6 doesn’t permit gray areas: “We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error.” See also Turner (1985, 143-150) on 19th century angst over Higher Criticism and uniformitarian geology. Recent players include D. James Kennedy and Josh McDowell in their multimedia venues, as well as Rousas J. Rushdoony, avatar of the radical Christian Reconstruction movement based on Dominion theology. In a 1960s piece (“The Necessity For Creationism”) available at the Quarterly Journal of the Creation Social Science & Humanities Society (creationism.org/csshs/v3/v03n1p05.htm), Rushdoony concurred that “anyone who denies the authority of Scripture at one point has denied it at all points.” The CSSHQ regards Rushdoony’s “hard hitting and uncompromising article” as “well deserving of re-statement and consideration.” Chandler (1992, 142-143) thought Rushdoony and his allies might play a role in later 1990s radical Christian thinking. Rushdoony and Andrew Sandlin maintain an official website (chalcedon.edu); for more critical tours through the labyrinthine political philosophy of Dominion theology see religioustolerance.org/reconstr.htm, and politicalamazon.com/er-quotes.html for a chilling selection of quotes from their literature. Although notorious primarily for their extremist political philosophy, Christian Reconstruction has close ties to Young Earth creationism, McIver (1988b, 197-199, 238-239) and Numbers (1992, 199-200, 315-316). Besides being “implacably opposed to the anti-biblical heresy of democracy,” as McIver put it, Rushdoony helped kick off the modern Creation Science movement by persuading the Presbyterian and Reformed publishing house to publish Whitcomb & Morris’ The Genesis Flood (the book that converted Dean Kenyon in the 1970s, remember). More recently, Rushdooney’s esthetic on the dangers of denting Biblical truth influenced a 1994 Institute for Creation Research “Impact” pamphlet (no. 247) on the theme of

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“COMPROMISES AND CONSEQUENCES,” which found its inevitable way in link-land to another creationist website (incolor.inebraska.com/stuart/imp-247a.htm). 73 Ian Wilson (2) (1999, 247). Then again, Mormons take a similar either/or attitude on the reliability of Joseph Smith, Abanes (2002, 3). A digression on those “near-death experiences” (re note 239, chapter five). If Intelligent Designers like Phillip Johnson want another prickly issue to investigate (along with the Flood and whether the earth really does revolve around the sun) NDEs are a fine candidate. For those looking for a generic spirituality NDEs seems ideal (the longest chapter in Patrick Glynn’s God: The Evidence was a defense of near death research). But the inherently anecdotal character of this field (one can hardly justify inducing NDEs experimentally) has tested the mettle of both mystics and materialists—which even Moody (1999) acknowledged in a curious melange critical of both parapsychologists and Christian fundamentalists. The strong spiritualist aspect to this research bothered Meynell (1994, 111-125) a bit, but not so much that he wasn’t willing to incorporate NDEs as evidence for an afterlife in his defense of the truth of Christianity. Likewise Ian Wilson (2) (1999, 27-79, 245-247) give NDEs a conveniently Christian interpretation, while rejecting reincarnation and spiritualist options. But the obvious problem from the theological end is that those having NDEs usually reflect their own cultural expectations, not any consistent religious perspective. Osis & Haraldsson (1990, 225) tended to downplay this, such as when they grouped reports of the Virgin Mary along with the Hindu goddess incarnations of Kali and Durga, even though they embody totally incompatible metaphysical arrangements. Glynn (1997, 134) likewise glossed over the diversity of NDE divinities: “The fact that Hindus encounter Hindu religious figures rather than the figure of Christ should hardly be surprising even to Christians. ‘Heaven’ would be a rough place indeed if an individual who was born and reared in the Hindu religion would be greeted upon the moment of death by Christian religious figures announcing that he or she had adhered through earthly life to the wrong religion!” That Christian doctrines might turn out to be the illusory belief system here instead of Hinduism was an option that apparently did not occur to Glynn. Habermas & Moreland (1998, 154-218, 237-253) adopt a double standard: NDEs are accepted despite the diversity angle, while the case for reincarnation is deemed evidentially suspect. Meanwhile, the more overtly fundamentalist Hunt (1998, 267-287, 376-381) remains wary about letting “faith” and “spirit” creep into medical practice along with the cuddlier features of NDE beliefs, since they threaten to carry along with them doctrinally unacceptable New Age baggage. For some interesting contrast, Koestler (1960) was highly skeptical of Eastern mystical philosophies like Yoga and Zen, which may be compared in turn to Shermer (1997, 66-82) on NDEs. 74 Jerry Falwell expressed a similar sentiment on CNN’s Crossfire (August 17, 1999): “And having read the Bible through hundreds of times over the past 47 years, I can tell you that there is not one contradiction in scripture in any book against any other book or any other statement.” (Punctuation and emphases mine for both Kennedy and Falwell, based on their broadcast delivery.) Meanwhile, Robert L. Thomas, “Redaction Criticism,” in Thomas & Farnell (1998, 246) breezed past the matter with a remark how the gospel authors were sufficiently “under the dominating control of the Holy Spirit” to render their accounts “free from error.” While Falwell had only a few moments to express his opinion, Kennedy had no more of an excuse than The Jesus Crisis for abbreviating the issue: in nearly two hours of on-air sermonizing that week, he managed to devote not one sentence to the many instances of serious internal contradiction. The same was true of “The Signature of God” by Canadian apocalyptic Grant Jeffrey shown on TBN cable in October 2000. Over its two-plus hours the accuracy of scripture was steadfastly maintained, but not by examining any of the text where that didn’t seem to be true. An ironic aspect concerned the topicality of the original video: apparently dating from the late 1990s, “The Signature of God” warned of the impending (and anticlimactic) Y2K meltdown (generally one should check the copyright date on any TBN airing, to gauge its functional shelf life). There will be more on Jeffrey’s wacky positions next chapter. 75 Secular humanist Michael Arnheim (1984) offered a particularly tight analysis of the fractures in traditional Christian dogmatic logic, while Robin Lane Fox (1986; 1992) approached many of the same issues from the scholarly end. Cf. also the late Steve Allen (1990), who applied his polymath

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curiosity to Bible oddities as he did to music and comedy … or “The Entire Bible—Condensed” wryly offered by Hayes (2000, 117-161). Apostates get in their licks, of course, such as exCongregational minister M. M. Mangasarian, “The Truth About Jesus: Is He a Myth?” in Kick (2001, 272-277) from 1909 … or fundamentalist preacher-turned-atheist Dan Barker (ffrf.org/lfif/contra.html)—cf. Ruth Tucker (2002, 183-190). Of historical note is the snappy (and still useful) compendium by New York Unitarian minister Charles Francis Potter (1933). Believing that the Bible could be reconciled with evolution, Potter criticized William Jennings Bryan and briefly appeared in Dayton during the Scopes Trial, Larson (1997, 116-118, 123, 145, 157-158, 167, 182, 202). Cf. LaHaye & Noebel (2000, 158). Hunting for textual contradictions can turn tendentious, though, such as skeptical 19th century journalist William Henry Burr (1860) nitpicking the text in much the same way as the Bible defenders of notes 85-87 below. The Burr spirit lives on at the American Atheists (atheists.org/church/contradictions.html) and infidels.org/library/modern/donald_morgan/inconistencies.html, fielding the sort of hair-splitting verse comparisons that Bible advocate gospelscom.net/apologeticsindex/b08.html can all too easily cite as examples of poor reasoning. 76 II Chronicles 36:9 reads: “Jehoiachin was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned three months and ten days in Jerusalem: and he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord.” II Kings 24:8-9 has: “Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he began to reign, and he reigned in Jerusalem three months. And his mother’s name was Nehushta, the daughter of Elnathan of Jerusalem. And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, according to all that his father had done.” Interpreter’s (1971, 207, 219) noted the contradiction only in the second listing, suggesting the older age better reflected II Kings 24:15 where Jehoiachin had wives, and that the missing ten may have been slipped over to the “three months and ten days” in the Chronicles account of his reign. The Oxford Bible (2001, 264, 307) didn’t note the age conflict in either the II Kings or II Chronicles commentary. This may be compared to the oblique Garrison (1968, 23). The author(s) of Kings/Chronicles were distinctly vague about the “evil” done by Jehoiachin; the immediate context seems only to relate to the kingdom of Judah rebelling against Nebuchadnezzar (which suggests which side they were on). Dever (2001, 173-198) accepts the 18 age for Jehoiachin, but explores the broader background of religious life during the 8th century divided monarchy. This included a remnant Mother Goddess cult (to Asherah, the female consort of Baal) whose worship is indicated at many sites and more obliquely alluded to by the disapproving Kings/Chronicles monotheists. Cf. Spong (1988, 118-119). Biblical copyist errors also concern the differing number of Solomon’s horse stalls (40,000 per 1 Kings 4:26 versus 4000 in II Chronicles 9:25), as well as the soap opera revolving around which of Saul’s daughters wanted dibs on the future King David. “Michal” was said by II Samuel 21:8 to have eventually borne five sons to Adriel … while II Samuel 6:23 insisted that same Michal was childless. As I Samuel 18:19 mentioned another daughter, Merab (who was evidently married to the same Adriel “Michal” supposedly was) the II Samuel reference may have simply been a miss-copy of Merab. 77 II Samuel 24:1, “And again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them to say, Go, number Israel and Judah.” I Chronicles 21:1, “And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel.” Incidentally, this is the only use of “Satan” as a proper name in the whole Old Testament. While Revell (1990, 116) or Hiers (2001, 67, 75, 134n) mentioned simply that the Davidic census accounts differed, apologists like Archer (1982, 186-188, 220-221) balk at the obvious (that a copyist of one or the other slipped a stylus). Although citing Archer, Kyle Butt (apologeticspress.org/rr/abdiscr04.html) skipped the God/Satan issue to finesse some minor numerical discrepancies between the two accounts, concluding: “Once again, God’s inspired Word shines forth as the beacon of truth, resisting every accusation of contradiction or discrepancy.” The unhindered.com/apolo/contradictions/31.shtml website thought to reconcile the verses by gluing them together: “God allowed Satan to inspire David to take the census.” Unhindered, indeed! Likewise Glenn Miller at christian-thinktank.com … or Robert C. Newman, “Conclusion,” in Moreland & Reynolds (1999, 156-157): “God can be spoken of as acting in the same act, even when Satan or the Assyrians are the means he uses to accomplish some result (e.g., on David’s census, see 2 Sam. 24:1 and 1 Chron. 21:1; God using the Assyrians, Isa.

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10, esp. vv. 5-7, 13-13, 15-16).” One should recall what that “result” entailed: God’s annoyance with David (which would seem fickle indeed were the census at his instigation) brought on a choice of punishment (a three-year famine, pursuit by invading armies, or a three-day pestilence). The third option eventually prevailed, resulting in 70,000 people dying (presuming the figures are to be believed, this would constitute roughly 5% of the 1.5-plus million Israelites so numbered). Back in those less democratic times census taking was obviously less benign than the quadrennial ritual in the United States—think about that the next time you fill out a census form! Cf. the tepid coverage of II Samuel 24:10-16 & I Chronicles 21:7-15 in Oxford Bible (2001, 229-230, 278). To conclude on a lighter note than practice genocide, a few Bible authors appear to have dispensed with copyist middlemen and gone directly for self-contradiction. In Galatians 6, Paul recommended in Verse 2: “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.” Then in Verse 5: “For every man shall bear his own burden.” But Proverbs 26:4-5 has that beat, with an adjacent pairing of advice as convoluted as anything Polonius ever burbled in Hamlet: “Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him. Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit.” But then, the “infinite wisdom” of these “two verses actually sum up the emphasis of the Answers in Genesis ministry” (AiG for March 15, 2003). Why am I not surprised? 78 Conservatives tend to believe human nature is inherently sinful, while liberals favor a more innocent character. How this plays out in politics depends on fashion and history. Believing people were usually up to no good, classical 18th century conservatives favored restrictive government (often run by divine right monarchs) to keep the rabble from being a nuisance. Classical liberals, by contrast, wanted minimal government in order for a free people to manifest their good nature. The situation has reversed in modern times: liberals now see constitutional government as the instrumentality whereby the people achieve their goals, while conservatives view oppressive bureaucracy as the means by which man’s nasty nature can run amuck. Given the checkered development of democracies and totalitarianism in the 20th century, on this issue both sides are simultaneously right and wrong. 79 Lapin (1999, 151) ironically observes a similar cake analogy, while firmly recommending the “conservative” recipe. Insofar as Phillip Johnson keeps the Creator and the creation at arm’s length, he too falls technically on the “liberal” side of this equation. For example, Johnson (1995, 14): “The culturally important element in the Darwinian theory is not the claim that there was some process of ancestral descent in biology, nor is it the claim that biological creation was a gradual and lengthy process rather than the single week described literally in Genesis. Such claims have to do only with the method of creation, not the nature of the creator. The important claim is the one that substitutes a purposeless material process for the Creator. I call that claim the ‘blind watchmaker’ thesis, after the title of a famous book by Dawkins.” As for reconciling Johnson’s otherwise traditional conservative stance with his “liberal” position here, we need only look at how he has juxtaposed Theistic Realism with Methodological Naturalism. By banishing the mindset that insists on exploring the full range of discordant data in a well-defined theoretical context, Johnson can have his theological cake and eat it. 80 Conservative theologians are no fans of liberal rationalizing, of course, such as Gregory A. Boyd quoted by Strobel (1998, 114) on the Jesus Seminar: “The Jesus Seminar represents an extremely small number of radical-fringe scholars who are on the far, far left wing of New Testament thinking.” Likewise Craig L. Blomberg, “The Seventy Four [sic] ‘Scholars’: Who Does the Jesus Seminar Really Spaak [sic] For?” via the Christian Research Institute Journal, Fall 1991 (at iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/cri/cri-jrnl/web/crj0183a.html) … or Burger (2000), Farmer (2000) and McCormick (2000) on the traditional Catholic side. Cf. Johnson (1997, 108-112) or Carter (2001, 128-132); incidentally, Carter briefly affirmed that “the biblical text is above criticism.” An exemplar of “liberal” waffling is retired Episcopal Bishop of Newark, New Jersey, John Shelby Spong (1996, 326), who can discern a practical distinction between something being “not literally true, but profoundly true.” For example, his symbolic take on the spiritual significance of the Easter Resurrection, Spong (1996, 305-307). British apologists Meynell (1994) and Polkinghorne (2000, 64-65) glided past the inerrancy issue entirely (cf. also note 178, chapter five). Gardner (2000c, 332-350) decried such liberal Christian mushiness along with the rigidity of conservatives,

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but reserved special puzzlement for the “willful ignorance” of the erudite William F. Buckley, who danced around whether he really believed in essential elements like Adam & Eve or the Flood. See also Gardner (2003, 85-93) on “The Strange Case of Garry Wills.” Finally, this jab by the “very atheistic” Steven Weinberg (1992, 257-258): “Wolfgang Pauli was once asked whether he thought that a particularly ill-conceived physics paper was wrong. He replied that such a description would be too kind—the paper was not even wrong. I happen to think that the religious conservatives are wrong in what they believe, but at least they have not forgotten what it means really to believe something. The religious liberals seem to me to be not even wrong.” Amen. 81 The psychology and sociology of the traditional Christian worldview contributes to the ability to dissolve inconsistencies. Harding (2000, x-xi) noted how Jerry “Falwell inhabits a world generated by Bible-based stories, and his language has the creative quality of the Bible itself. Skeptics tend to read him as they would read the Bible, looking for discrepancies that reveal the ulterior motives and social conditions of its human authors. As a result, skeptics are blind, or deaf, to the Bible’s generativity. Falwell’s people read infelicities according to interpretive conventions that presume, and thus reveal, God’s design. Their Bible, their preacher, is thus constantly creating new truth.” Harding (26-27) later described how Falwell’s fluid memory allows for his own contradictory pronouncements to be taken figuratively after the fact, eased by followers who read him “as they read the Bible—not as already true, but as always coming true.” Such attitudes function as a useful scholarly sinkhole to trap unwieldy technicalities. Cf. Ruth Brown (2002, 158-161) on Falwell’s tendency for exaggeration, from his anti-Clinton diatribes to the inflation of his own accomplishments. 82 As covered by Toumey, re note 120, chapter one. Ignorance of the text also plays a role. A May 2001 poll of Christians reported by CBN.com suggested many Americans had only a nominal understanding of Biblical contents and Christian doctrine. D. James Kennedy also decried Biblical ignorance on the part of the general population, in his September 2000 “Truths That Transform” broadcast series on the trustworthiness of Scripture. Likewise Hank Hanegraaff (November 19, 2002) stressed how a lack of familiarity with the Bible undermined the correct position, which is that one should believe the Bible because it is true, not hold it to be true by faith—though cf. Tertullian in note 113 below! The CBN take was to suggest that “Biblical illiteracy” lay at the root of “the breakdown of homes, divorces, the permissiveness of sex, homosexuality, AIDS.” Neither CBN nor Kennedy considered the possibility that the “Christian” ethics and political philosophy of many Christians might be fueled by just this illiteracy, and that a thorough reading of the original material might not be all that comforting to their theological security. Cf. Lloyd Bailey (1993, 135138) taking issue with Henry Morris over Biblical analysis—or the “Happy Heretic” Judith Hayes (2000), who was raised in a fundamentalist background but became a non-Christian after really reading the Bible. Laxity with Scripture cuts both ways, of course, since it allows Christians to indulge their interpretations without serious criticism. For example, magician Penn Jillette (of Penn & Teller) sounded like a secular Phillip Johnson as he blustered on the philosophy of religious belief instead of hitting the specifics when confronting Christine O’Donnell (a perky ex-witch Christian convert) on Bill Maher’s Politically Incorrect show (December 21, 2000). O’Donnell is a member of the Revolution Youth Ministries of Poplar Bluff, Missouri, whose Christian rock group Halos was formerly known as “S.A.L.T.” until a conflict of priority forced a new moniker—shades of Mononykus! A link at their website (saltrocks.com) leads to Jimmy Swaggart Ministries (jsm.org), who in the opinion of S.A.L.T./Halo is “the greatest evangelist of the 20th century and should be the greatest evangelist of this century.” 83 Josh Crossman recounted his experiences online at boundless.org. He did not explore the wonderful world of scriptural contradiction—nor did Colson & Pearcey (1999, 21) when they affirmed that “Scripture is God’s inerrant revelation.” And no examples weighed down Chittick (1984, 122) as he waxed philosophic: “The desire to be autonomous or independent of God is the root of the pagan mindset. The pagan mind challenges the accuracy of Scripture using a very subtle approach. It begins by assuming that there might be errors in God’s Word. Then it sets itself up as an absolute standard to determine what those errors are. The arrogance of this approach is almost

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unmatched. Finite wants to judge the Infinite.” Translated into practical epistemology, Chittick is playing the Von Däniken Defense: that the very act of observing a contradiction in the Bible cannot be because the text might be naturally confused, but rather that the observer is at fault for their reprehensible “pagan mindset.” There is indeed an unmatched arrogance operating here—and subtlety has nothing to do with it. Interestingly, not unlike Phillip Johnson, Chittick argued that the shift away from traditional creationism to materialism “was associated with a change in world view rather than new scientific discoveries,” and Chittick (1984, 120-122) even dangled a “theology of science” that sounded not dissimilar from the essence of Johnson’s “theistic realism.” 84 Dembski (1999a) and Johnson (2000) managed to completely sidestep all concerns about Biblical reliability. Incidentally, when Ruth Tucker’s Walking Away from Faith faced up to “The Challenge of Science & Philosophy,” Dembski (1999a) was her sole source for the scientific legitimacy of Intelligent Design, Tucker (2002, 112-115, 230n). She even relied on him for her quote on Michael Behe’s irreducible complexity; cf. notes 247 (chapter three) & 101 (chapter four). Which made Tucker (2002, 188) appropriately consistent when she dived into “The Challenges of Theological Complexities & Biblical Criticism” next chapter. “Another problematic area for those who struggle with doubt and unbelief is the realm of apparent biblical contradictions. Some evangelicals have gone to great extremes to harmonize the Scriptures, often with less than satisfactory solutions; others are more comfortable with the not-so-easily-resolved problems. But for those who consider the Scriptures infallible the issues can be very troublesome—enough to lead to doubt and loss of faith.” Which evangelicals or what problems she might have been thinking of (or what her own position on inerrancy was) remained invisible, however—and on the next page she explained that her book was “not meant to serve as an apologetics text or a response to the socalled biblical difficulties. There are many other volumes that seek to do just that.” None of which she recommended, thus requiring the reader to absorb whatever her position may have been by osmosis. The closest her bibliography got were Lee Strobel (1998, 2000)—see also note 148 below. 85 Johnson (1997, 64-67). Cf. theistic evolutionist Haught (2001, 10-11) on theodicy as a philosophical problem that doesn’t get any milder for religion even with Darwinian naturalism removed from the picture. One may note parenthetically that Johnson appears to have begun the process of conflating Eldredge’s paleontological views with Lewontin’s materialist philosophy. Johnson’s argument falls in the same category of analytical myopia that Michael Behe demonstrated in his reluctance to contemplate the implications of biological systems that weren’t designed (re specifically notes 21 in chapter one and 132 in chapter four). The numberings in Johnson’s schema were the last in a string of topics discussed in the chapter. Point No. 1 was “Learn to distinguish between what scientists assume and what they investigate,” which consisted of evolutionists not including the possible role of supernatural creation. No. 2 was “Learn to use terms precisely and consistently”—following brief commentary on dog breeding and finch beak variations, Johnson then slid into his No. 3 admonition to “Keep your eye on the mechanism of evolution; it’s the allimportant thing.” No. 4 offered with perfectly straight face: “Learn the difference between testing a theory against the evidence and using selected bits of evidence to support the theory.” No. 5 advised “Learn the difference between intelligent and unintelligent causes”—here was Johnson’s take on “Berra’s Blunder” (see note 217 from chapter four). 86 Johnson (1997, 41) whistled past the graveyard with this: “In almost every disputed matter there is a problem of bias on both sides, and it’s legitimate to bring this out. Bible believers may be reluctant to credit evidence that seems to contradict some passages in the Bible, and atheists may be reluctant to credit evidence that seems to suggest that natural selection can’t do all Darwin claimed for it.” This occurred in a discussion of “Ad Hominem Arguments”—one of that listing of standard logical errors Johnson contends plague evolutionary thinking. Johnson (1997, 38): “Let me describe the varieties of baloney that every baloney detection kit should be equipped to recognize. They are basically the same ones Sagan listed, but I’ll apply them to some examples of my own.” The first (“Selective Use of Evidence”) consisted of Johnson’s stock mantra about the purported absence of transitional forms for the Cambrian phyla (as we’ve seen, ultimately a variation on the Bermuda Triangle Defense). For the second item (“Appeals to Authority”)

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Johnson didn’t think to give any examples of evolutionists actually appealing to authority (which would have put him on the spot by requiring him to defend whether the authority position was justified by the facts or not). Instead, Johnson (1997, 39-40) offered “a fictionalized version of the Challenger space shuttle disaster,” to show “the difference between politics and science” where authorities anxious for launchings marginalize warnings of potential danger. How this bears on technical evolutionary issues such as the therapsid jaw configuration remains obscure, though Richard Feynman’s connection to the Challenger hearings gives Johnson’s remarks a piquant irony (re note 199, chapter four). The third item was the ad hominem case. “Attacking somebody as a creationist, or an atheist, is often a way of distracting attention from valid arguments that a person has to offer,” Johnson (1997, 40), although he stressed that “it is not necessarily irrelevant or unfair to point out that a person has a bias.” Which evolutionists employed terms like “creationist” in any manner more ad hominem than Johnson had with the “very atheistic” Weinberg or the Marxist Lewontin, he neglected to clarify. Next came the “Straw Man Argument,” Johnson (1997, 42): “One prominent science writer wrote to me for months, never engaging the scientific issues but constantly pestering me with questions about my interpretation of Genesis (‘Did Adam have a navel?’). Obviously he was hoping to find a straw man to ridicule.” I suspect the science writer was Martin Gardner (cf. note 296, chapter three). If so, Gardner was trying to pin Johnson down on matters of historic controversy. Johnson’s replies could be turned into a straw man if and only if (a) they really could be easily disposed of—and (b) did not accurately reflect Johnson’s stated position. But Johnson has never let slip what his position might be (either scientific or Biblical), rendering their “straw man” potential unrealized. For “Begging the Question,” Johnson (1997, 42) equated “Why should I believe the Bible?” (“Because the Bible says so.”) with “What evidence proves that life evolved from nonliving molecules?” (“Don’t reject a scientific theory just because you have a religious prejudice.”). Again, had Johnson quoted any scientist stupid enough to have made such a reply, he might have had something, but instead he offered that as a “typical example” without attaching it to anyone. The “Lack of Testability” and “Vague Terms and Shifting Definitions” (dog breeding) examples were previously discussed in chapter four. 87 Johnson (1997, 100) remarked en passant on “those supernatural elements that are so embarrassing to modernists” without saying what these might be, or whether any of them were also embarrassing to him. As with Martin Gardner on Adam’s navel (re the previous note), when Eugene Scott asked Johnson pointblank about his views on Noah’s Flood during the 1997 “Firing Line” debate, he promptly disavowed the whole subject as an illegitimate one for Intelligent Design. Cf. note 22 of the Introduction. Likewise, when a particularly opaque environmental scientist called into Hank Hanegraaff’s show in August 2001 and skeptically brought up flood myths, the “Bible Answer Man” immediately objected that the Biblical Flood was no myth. Hanegraaff supplied no details, though—instead, inviting guest William Dembski to “jump in” with his view. This invitation Dembski pointedly didn’t accept, abruptly switching the subject away from whether the Bible was informed on this Noachian incident or not. Like the befuddled James Dobson bobbing between Duane Gish and Hugh Ross in the debate described in chapter one, Dembski offered only how uncertain he was as to how the YEC/OEC debate would play out. Left tactfully unclear was whether Dembski was referring to the scientific issues involved or to the purely political question of how successful YEC beliefs might prove in future Christian dogmatic thought. I for one would have loved to learn whether Hanegraaff wanted to invoke Morris’ Scientific Creationism here—and what Dembski would have had to say in that event. But alas, another opportunity missed for antievolutionists to compare resource bases in public. Cf. also the pirouettes in Dembski (1999a, 25-48) on “Recognizing the Divine Finger.” Dembski drew on Biblical episodes (pp. 35-38) without explicitly endorsing their veracity or casting doubt on them— for example, the 10 plagues on Egypt during the Exodus. 88 Johnson (1997, 56). Defeating Darwinism was chockablock with platitudes. Johnson (1997, 91): “A faith that has to be protected behind walls is like a house built on sand. When the protection ceases, the faith collapses. Faith is confirmed by testing and validated by struggle in a world that gives a multitude of reasons for doubt.” And: “Protecting young people works only if they can be kept forever uninformed or unthinking, and that is a losing strategy in the long run. For

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that matter, it would be an unworthy strategy even if it were more successful. Jesus did not tell his disciples to form a protected community where they could shut out corrosive philosophies.” But Jesus’ opinion on the significance of the reptile-mammal transition is not recorded … nor is Johnson’s view on how much of Genesis can be taken as historically valid. Remember that an idea worth having is one worth defending. 89 Kennedy (1997, 28-29). “Answers In Action” cult-watchers Bob & Gretchen Passantino offered a similar paring of resources in a 1993 piece (“Academic Books: Why and How to Sell Them” at answers.org/BookReviews/academic.html): “Any Christian who reads the Bible often encounters Bible questions, and alleged Bible ‘contradictions’ are favorite weapons of hostile agnostics. John Haley’s classic century-old Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible (Whitaker House and others) is still one of the best in this area, as is Gleason Archer’s up-to-date Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties (Zondervan).” Not surprisingly, the Passantinos are part of Hank Hanegraaff’s orbital guest list, with Gretchen appearing on the Bible Answer Man (January 30, 2003) to decry the Raelians’ alleged cloning (cf. note 360, chapter five) . See note 125 below for just how “classic” Haley’s 1874 apologetics can get. On the actual matter of the Adamic gene pool, one may note that Archer (1982, 77) ventured nothing about it, while 20 years of apologetic progress saw Wayne Jackson in 2002 (apologeticspress.org/rr/abdiscr27.html) sufficing to remark that mankind back then was “obviously much more physically robust than it is now.” Kennedy’s invocation of sources who know no more about population dynamics or allele diversity than he does mirrors his reliance on seeming authorities like Scott Huse on creationism. A similar situation prevailed in Hugh Ross’ piece on “Finding a Wife for Cain” at his Reasons to Believe website and Kent Hovind in an August 17, 1999 interview on Chuck Missler’s radio show (which may be heard online at Missler’s website). Anyone seeking to draw on the Bible for information on reproductive biology should tackle Genesis 30:27-42 first. This recounts how Jacob circumvented the machinations of his conniving uncle Laban, who agreed to allow Jacob to select certain colored sheep, lambs and goats from Laban’s flock, then arranged for those to be hidden away. Jacob simply bred more animals of the desired color by showing them appropriately patterned wood chips while they were mating! This biologically preposterous exercise in telegony (cf. note 9, chapter five) followed Jacob’s own rather dysfunctional efforts at begetting, Genesis 29:15-35, 30:1-13. Although Laban agreed to let Jacob marry his daughter Rachel, Laban foisted another sister, Leah, on Jacob instead (who apparently had sex with her without noticing until it was too late). Jacob ended up hating both the sister (who successfully bore him a son) and Rachel (whom he eventually got, but was for some reason made barren). Fortunately Leah and Rachel did graciously let their maidservants bear him additional children instead. Family values indeed! 90 Robert L. Thomas, “Impact of Historical Criticism on Theology and Apologetics,” in Thomas & Farnell (1998, 363) turned out to be the only listing under “contradictions, Gospel” in the book’s index. But that wasn’t a discussion of actual contradictions; it consisted of Thomas contrasting the opinions of 19th century evangelicals who attested to inerrancy with their 20th century counterparts who are considerably less sanguine. Regarding the “Presuppositional Probability” that gospel writers ought to be assumed to have recorded the sayings of Jesus correctly, Thomas set up a hurdle bar, Thomas & Farnell (1998, 373): “Only positive and conclusive evidence to the contrary could prove a discrepancy by factors such as a gospel writer’s editorial liberty.” No examples were offered as to what such “positive and conclusive evidence” might look like, which made it about as useful as Johnson’s meretricious pleas on “testing” evolution. Indeed, The Jesus Crisis was structurally similar to creationist tracts in many ways. Conclusions were rested more on authority quotes than on explaining the particulars of the disputed texts directly (especially so regarding the Genealogy Problem discussed below). Critics were also dismissed for using “circular reasoning,” Thomas R. Edgar, “Source Criticism: The Two-Source Theory,” and Robert W. Yarbrough, “Eta Linnemann: Friend or Foe of Scholarship?” (pp. 149-151, 176-177), or merely driven by their “evolutionary-based philosophy,” Robert L. Farnell, “Form Criticism and Tradition Criticism” (p. 188). 91 The “scribal gloss” and “copyist error” position surfaces in various forms, such as the murky Bernard Ramm (1969), available online via asa3.org/asa/pscf/1969/jasa12-69ramm.html. Garrison

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(1968, 112) uses it as a way around such problems as Matthew’s “monumental boner” on Jeremiah (note 76 above). Archer (1982, 16, 206-207, 214-215), James Patrick Harding (Chapter 3 of the “Encyclopedia of Biblical Errancy refuted” at tektonics.org/contrad.html) and Eric Lyons (apologeticspress.org/rr/abdiscr24.html) use it to sideline Jehoiachin 8/18 (note 48 above). See Geoffrey Kahn, “The Hebrew Bible,” in Oxford Illustrated (2001, 60-96) for a general survey of the texts, translations, and occasional scribal modifications detected over the years concerning the Old Testament. 92 Howard J. Van Till, “The Fully Gifted Creation,” in Moreland & Reynolds (1999, 206-212) typifies the “poetic license” approach, regarding the Bible as divinely inspired—but not divinely written (a notion which Van Till dubs “bibliolatry”). William Lane Craig temporarily adopted the “liberal” position when he suspended inerrancy as to minor discrepancies in the Resurrection accounts, allowing for differences in human observer opinion, as quoted by Strobel (1998, 213217). Likewise, to disarm the notion of a global Flood, theistic evolutionist John Jefferson Davis stressed the “poetic license” angle of Genesis 41:57, Deuteronomy 2:25, I Kings 18:10, II Chronicles 9:23, Acts 2:5, and Colossians 1:23 in his “Response to Paul Nelson and John Mark Reynolds,” in Moreland & Reynolds (1999, 83). But consider the prophecy in Daniel 2:39-40 about successive empires that would rule “over all the earth.” The traditional position, as briefly reprised in Hanegraaff (1998, 131), accepts the full prophetic integrity of Daniel in specifying the rise of Persia, Alexander the Great, and Rome. This view also figures in the End Time scenario of Lindsey & Carlson (1973, 78-79), where the inerrantist position required a bit of up front retooling for rationalization. Lindsey & Carlson explained that “These kingdoms would conquer everything that was worth conquering on the known earth of that time.” Boyer (1992, 132-133, 296, 430n) commented on the “pious linguistic tinkering” of prophecy writers like Lindsey and Church Smith, who treat their own paraphrasing of Biblical passages as though it was the original (cf. note 135 below on Gleason Archer’s version of Luke). But even on the history Lindsey & Carlson were off base. The Persians never bested Greece, and Alexander never conquered India. As for the Romans, they were unable to knock off the Parthians, a major regime that occupied roughly modern day Iraq and Iran, and functioned as the Russia of the classical world. Like the opponents of Napoleon or Hitler, all the Parthians had to do was retreat, sucking to their doom vast legions under Roman commanders from Crassus to Antony. Emperor Trajan very briefly “defeated” Parthia, but his successor Hadrian quickly disposed of that albatross and retired to the defensive hobby of wall building. To add to the prophetic problem, Historical Criticism tends to late-date Daniel to c. 124 BC, as a response to King Antiochus’ attempt to impose Greek culture and religion on the Jews, Lane Fox (1992, 98-99) or Cohn (1993, 166-171). By that time the Romans were the big kids on the block, which would render the prophetic geopolitical vision of “Daniel” 20/20 only by hindsight. 93 Kennedy (1997, 25). 94 Strobel (1998, 46-47, 64-65) kept “contradictions” to a manageable few (see below on his response to the genealogy problem). The few “Alleged Biblical Discrepancies” touched on at Van Impe’s website (jvim.com/discrepancies/index.html) juxtaposed figures of speech (such as God not forgetting the saints in Isaiah 49:15 with God having to remember Noah in Genesis 8:1), but skipped tougher examples. Incidentally, Van Impe may have swallowed an April Fool’s prank, when his April 2001 broadcast recap of recent apocalyptic signs mentioned a Fox news announcement that Route 66 had been changed to 666 and the new signs stolen. (There are a few 666 highways around the country, such as in Colorado, Ohio and Utah—but none seem to have been numbered that way lately.) Recently, Van Impe has drawn critical fire from some fundamentalists—though not for rationalizing Biblical discrepancies. Over the last fifteen years Van Impe has come to sound too ecumenical for his critics’ theological taste, particularly for a willingness to include Catholics as members of the Body of Christ. See “The Baffling World of Jack Van Impe” (raptureme.com/rap71.html) and “The Van Impe’s Downward Slide” (tcsn.net/tbchurch/fbcvanim.htm). There is no reason to suspect similar complaints won’t eventually surface about the members of Johnson’s Wedge, given the prominence of Roman Catholic Michael Behe or Unification Church minister Jonathan Wells. (It would also be interesting

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to see if Behe or Wells would be as warmly received at Kennedy’s “Reclaiming America for Christ” gatherings as Presbyterian Johnson.) 95 Ross (1996, 51-54, 108-110, 129, 134-135, 137, 141, 185-186) had no shortage of problems to deal with, except they all boiled down to the theological one of why God allowed bad things to happen (cf. Phillip Johnson per note 87 above). But Ross skipped any internal contextual controversies that might undermine notions of Biblical authority. And however much Ross and Hovind may hiss and scratch in debates over the age of the earth, Hovind purrs along the same lines when it comes to Bible gaffs (his anemic  case was touched on in note 296 of chapter three). Hovind also declared, “Many scoffers claim that the Bible is full of contradictions. They will nearly always cite Genesis 1 and 2 as examples.” This is an oblique reference to what is now regarded by mainstream Biblical historians as an aspect of the J/P source problem (recounted back in chapter three)—cf. Hyers (1983, 10-12). On this point, the very brief gloss on “alleged contradictions” in Genesis by McDowell (1975, 134-135, 139-141) skipped over the bumpier aspects of Creation and the Flood, including the evidence available in one of his own sources. In Garrett Hardin mode, McDowell (1975, 334) reprinted a 1959 Cyrus Gordon article that specifically noted the “older variant Flood account” that had been “excerpted in Genesis.” Incidentally, while Gordon’s interpretation of Old Testament archaeology figured frequently in McDowell (1975, 48, 69, 74, 78, 144, 168, 303, 331-334, 351-352), the biographical section of More evidence that demands a verdict did not mention Gordon’s controversial advocacy of pre-Columbian sea voyages (cf. note 406, chapter five). 96 Strobel (1998) certainly depended on likeminded analysts to dispose of recalcitrant issues for him. For example, Strobel (1998, 29, 32) quoted the skeptical Armstrong (1993, 79, 82) on several matters of Bible history, but then let Craig Blomberg do all the responding (see note 103 below) rather than interviewing Armstrong directly. Strobel (1998, 111-118) followed the same track with the Jesus Seminar—no Funk et al. (1993) in the citations or bibliography. Strobel (2000, 127-139) drew on another secondary prop when he let Norman Geisler answer the question, “Can the Bible be Trusted?” This consisted not of an examination of possible contradictions, but rather an affirmation of how archaeology had confirmed Bible statements and how prophecies had been fulfilled; Geisler’s views are reflected in a piece on “The Inerrancy of Scripture” at rexonline.com/articles/Inerrancy.html. Such reasoning may also be viewed as a subset of the “all or nothing” logic of literal Christianity: establishing the validity of any feature (such as the historical reality of Babylon) is tantamount to confirming the whole package. In which case, controversies can be dismissed as peripheral elements in an unassailable proven unity. This is again exactly what Phillip Johnson complains about evolutionists—that they conflate isolated pieces into an “all or nothing” whole (re note 222, chapter two). 97 Oxford Companion (1993, 304) concluded their discussion of inerrancy straddling the fence: “Today all but the most extreme Jewish and Christian fundamentalists recognize the complicated and heterogeneous origins of the Bible and that it contains statements that in any other literary work would be considered erroneous.” They did not offer instances of these erroneous statements, or assess their potential theological import. Meanwhile, New Bible (1994, 3-10, 60-61, 65-57, 384, 418) couldn’t quite admit to mistakes in the texts, and skirted around the reliability of Genesis and the Flood—and the two sections on Jehoiachin did not comment on their mutual 8/18 contradiction. The older Interpreter’s (1971, 7-10) stressed dramatic impact as they covered the Flood and Tower of Babel stories without committing to whether any of it were really true. Thus, although “startling inconsistencies are not removed” from the Flood story, “Yet the composite account is remarkably unified and loses little of its force as a result of its uneven composition.” Incidentally, anyone wanting to hunt up Biblical inconsistencies in Interpreter’s got no help from the index: no listing for such potentially useful entries as contradictions, inerrancy, literalism, or mistakes. Mistrust made it in, though (alluding to Isaiah 30, in case one was curious). 98 My siblings and I were all trundled off to Sunday school as children in order that we might decide for ourselves how seriously we were to take religion. Incidentally, like Sagan’s fictional Ellie Arroway, I too got asked to leave eventually because of the questions I kept posing about

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Noah’s Ark. I was told I wasn’t supposed to ask such things. But from my point of view, I was far more impressed by their lack of good answers. 99 Johnson (1997, 88). Which brings to mind Turner (1985, 155): “President Andrew Dickson White of Cornell recalled that his belief in Christ’s miracles, on which Christian truth seemed to depend, collapsed in the 1850s when he learned that Islam claimed the same sort of evidence for its doctrines.” (See islam-guide.com for the prophetic side of the Qu’ran and miracles attributed to Muhammed.) The problem of applying critical standards uniformly extends well past Christian supernaturalism, of course. Take levitation. St. Joseph of Cupertino (1603-1663) is reputed to have repeatedly floated off when in religious ecstasy, Robbins (1959, 513) or McBrien (2001, 381382). But 19th century spiritualist D. D. Home also had witnesses (both aristocratic and scientific) who swore he could glide effortlessly out a window, Andreae (1974, 49-68) or John Beloff, “Historical Review,” in Wolman (1977, 7-10). Whether you look at it them from either the skeptical or believer end, it seems difficult not to accord St. Joseph and Home comparable “credibility” as historical events. 100 Nor did I detect any trace of audience gasps at the gaff (more probably due to the tradition of rapt acquiescence during sermons than from geographical ignorance). Although Jeremiah may be thought of as falling on the near right of the apocalyptic Christian world (cf. note 43, chapter five), answering a “Bible Answer Man” questioner (on October 5, 2001) Hank Hanegraaff ranked him overall as “a wonderful brother.” Another example of getting carried away with an object lesson occurred when “Amazing Facts” Adventist lecturer John Bradshaw (a mild-mannered ex-Catholic from New Zealand) invoked Leonardo da Vinci painting the Last Supper. When admirers focused on the tablecloth rather than Jesus, recounted Bradshaw, the great artist realized he had improperly framed the scene. Bradshaw then remarked how Leonardo took the picture down, returning it to its easel for a touchup job to render the tablecloth less of a distraction from the central Jesus figure. Now there was a neat trick, since the Last Supper happens to be a fixed and massive wall fresco, and so was quite unable to be taken anywhere—up, down, or sideways. Incidentally, Leonardo was experimenting with a new fresco technique, which turned out to be a bad one, giving subsequent restorers headaches. Nor was the artwork helped when later caretakers drove a door through the middle, nipping off a section of the bottom. 101 McDowell & Hostetler (1992, 46-47). Likewise Gregory Koukl in a 1997 “Stand to Reason” piece (str.org/free/commentaries/theology/authorit.htm). Rick Richardson (2000, 31-32) and Lee Strobel (2000, 69, 71, 279n) invoked Paul in I Corinthians 15:3-8 to support treating the Resurrection of Jesus as a plain fact of history (not surprisingly, Strobel heartily recommended Richardson’s book). Cf. note 145 below, as well as Hopkins (1999, 309). 102 Robert Newton, “Progressive Creationism,” in Moreland & Reynolds (1999, 109), pertaining to Titus 1:2 (that God “cannot lie”). Just how far one can go with such Biblical information management was indicated by Ashby Camp in his True.Origin criticism of Douglas Theobald’s Talk.Origins piece (alluded to in note 27, chapter five). Camp allowed that God might have intentionally positioned nonfunctional transposons identically in the DNA of otherwise unrelated species. Such insertions wouldn’t mean the Lord was being gratuitously misleading, though, because “God cannot be charged fairly with deception when we choose to draw conclusions from data that contradict what he has revealed in Scripture.” If that logic isn’t to one’s liking, YEC David A. Plaisted (alluded to in note 102, chapter three, and the “cheap shot” of note 21, chapter five) has several medieval ways to deal with genetic similarities (such as those between humans and chimpanzees, note 28, chapter five). These could have resulted from God’s curse on life after the Fall: “One could expect that similar species were cursed in a similar way out of fairness.” Or they “could even have been inserted as tests of our faith.” Cf. Edward E. Max’s comments on Plaisted at talkorigins.org/faqs/molgen/plaisted.html. One may let the evolutionist Marks (2002, 257) have the last word: “The 98% genetic correspondence of humans and chimpanzees does have a consequence with which hard-core creationists must wrestle—namely, that either humans and chimps do share a recent common ancestry, or else they have been independently zapped into existence by Someone lacking a great deal of imagination.”

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103

See Marcus (2000, 105-128) on the archaeology of David and Solomon, including the revisionist “Copenhagen School” embodied by Finkelstein & Silberman (2001, 123-145) who contend the Davidic tales conflate the exploits of Iron Age chiefs (further muddled by more recent archaeologists anxious to confirm the grand dynastic myth). But McKenzie (2000, 9-24) noted David’s 1000 BC era was a dark age in Mesopotamia and a rebuilding phase in Egypt, understandably limiting some of the corroborative data. The first fragment helping the traditionalist view only came along in 1993: the Tel Dan Stele bearing a brief reference in Aramaic to the “house of David” (inscriptions on the Mesha Stele and the Shoshenq Relief are more problematic, however). Due to this thin external historical trail, McKenzie naturally relies on the Bible as a primary (but certainly not revealed) source for David’s “soap opera story.” Similarly, non-theist Dever (2001) defends much of the traditional view on archaeological grounds, taking particular aim at the deconstructivist “minimalist” theory that the accounts of the substantial Iron Age Israelite Kingdom were only written in Hellenistic times as propagandistic nostalgia. For more conventionally believer friendly takes on the Davidic era, U.S. News & World Report’s religious correspondent Jeffrey L. Sheler (1999, 60, 96) offers a glancing stab, while Ian Wilson (2) (1999, 102-117) fields a longer version. Cf. Bruins et al. (2003) on radiocarbon dating of sites relevant to the era of Pharaoh Shosenq I (mentioned as Shishak in the Bible) from around 925 BC. 104 Marcus (2000, 78-104) covers the considerable difference of archaeological opinion about the Hebrew appearance in Canaan—an issue not without intense regional political ramifications, as Dever (2001, 294n) noted re Balter (2000a-e). William Albright articulated the traditional conquest story; Albrecht Alt favored a more peaceful infiltration theory. George Mendenhall added a third radical view during the 1960s: that the Israelites were natives to the region who revolted against the Canaanites. Israel Finkelstein went still further in his fourth option: the Israelites didn’t start out very noticeable in the first place, and only contrived their “conquest” of the region in later scriptural accounts. While Dever (2001, 121-122) rejects the revisionist indigenous theory, he still catalogs the Exodus-Joshua conquest story “as largely mythical.” Not surprisingly, the precision calibration of the Biblical record with the archaeology is complicated by ambiguities in the text. For example, a pair of conflicting stories about Jabin, king of Hazor in northern Israel. Joshua 11 said Jabin and his coalition were utterly destroyed; Judges 4 has Jabin ruling the Israelites for 20 years as punishment for the people’s transgressions. Covering the traditionalist front from afar, Harding (2000, 109): “On the mountainside, under the August sun, Jerry Falwell recounted to the entering class of 1978 and his Old-Time Gospel Hour audience the story of Joshua and Jericho as history, not legend or myth, or parable. God parted the waters of the Red Sea for Moses and of the River Jordan for Joshua.” More recently, Ian Wilson (2) (1999, 64-77) relied on a debatable recalibration of the Exodus story (see note 106 below) to position the dramatic conquest of Jericho more in line with supporting archaeology. 105 See Marcus (2000, 51-77) on the various approaches, including the conventional scholarly opinion pinning the Exodus to Ramses II c. 1290 BC, and Archer (1982, 191-198) for the traditionalist 1445 BC dating. While Garrison (1968, 105-106) deemed the date of Exodus uncertain, Interpreter’s (1971, 42-44) labeled the details as “elements in a cult drama.” The revisionist Finkelstein & Silberman (2001, 48-71) think the story solidified during the 7th century BC as nationalistic propaganda for the late monarchic Judah as it came into conflict with the briefly renascent 26th Dynasty of Egypt. It was also during that time that the “deuteronomist movement” sought to reinvigorate the application of the old Mosaic Code, John Rogerson, “The Old Testament,” in Oxford Illustrated (2001, 17-18). Finally, Cline (2000, 177-187) noted how that era figured in the subsequent Armageddon story: Pharaoh Necho II slew Josiah, the last legitimate Jewish king, at Megiddo in 609 BC. Revelation appears to have merged that tradition with the general military situation prevailing under Domitian in the late 1st century AD. 106 Ian Wilson (2) (1985) jumped on the Thera eruption theory—which, like Pellegrino (1991), he correlated with Hatshepsut/Thutmose III (cf. note 141, chapter three). Unlike Pellegrino, though, Wilson (2) (1999, 14, 42-53) has been reluctant to bite the chronological bullet implied by the much earlier dating of the Thera eruption (though noting the difficulties Velikovsky and Rohl have in this department). Instead, Wilson summarily adjusted his identification of the Pharaoh of Exodus to

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Ahmose/Thutmose II (1524-1479 BC). Which only underscored how arbitrary his argument was— like some overconfident Number One Son in the old Charlie Chan movies, bursting in with a second perfectly reasonable circumstantial case hastily constructed against yet another wrong suspect. While fringe apologists like Chuck Missler take their miracles straight up and are plainly skeptical about the Thera/Exodus theory (most recently in a November 29, 2002 “K-House eNews” piece), other authors have to trim their sails more tightly. For example, although Sheler’s Is the Bible True? accepts the general framework of Historical Criticism, he held fast to the essential accuracy of the Exodus stories and Jesus’ life and deeds. Sheler (1999, 26, 43, 49-55) got over the even higher hurdles of Genesis by burying most of it below track level. Though aware of the obvious parallels, Sheler rejected the view that “the stories of creation, the flood” might have been postExile incorporation of Babylonian mythology (cf. notes 193-199, chapter three). One of his references, incidentally, was to a CD-ROM by Clifford Wilson, Sheler (1999, 262n). With sublime understatement, Sheler (1999, 48) put the controversies behind him: “It would serve no productive purpose for us to try to replicate or adjudicate all of the arguments and evidence here. We have neither the space to do that task justice nor any reasonable prospect of settling a dispute so couched in fundamental differences of viewpoint.” Though he did reserve extensive space for the interpretive camps tangling over the Dead Sea Scrolls, Sheler (1999, 125-170). 107 Strobel (1998, 51, 61-62, 97-100). This continues the pattern seen in note 96 above on Blomberg v. Karen Armstrong. Robin Lane Fox (1992, 234-239, 253-261) recounts some of the archaeological problems Strobel did not explore, such as the lack of evidence supporting the particulars of Deuteronomy; cf. Dever (2001, 100-102). Lane Fox (1992, 219-220) also commented on Werner Keller’s 1956 paean, The Bible is Indeed Correct (later renamed, and still in print as, The Bible as History). Lane Fox noted that Werner didn’t actually have much archaeology to rely on, and that the situation hasn’t improved much since. Incidentally, Ian Wilson (2) (1999) intended his work as an update on Keller (1956). For comparison, follow the “conservative” contributors to Thomas & Farnell (1998, 176, 188, 221, 234, 239, 274, 311n) as they tiptoed gingerly around which “autograph” sources are actually available for the New Testament. Or McDowell (1979, 17, 70) affirming that the Bible is full only of “harmony and agreement” and that any conflicts with the archaeological record are not “serious.” 108 See notes 166 & 184, chapter three, on the Atlantis/Lemuria/Mu lore and the Thera/Atlantis connection that most probably accounts for whatever truth there is to Plato’s congenitally misunderstood paean to what he thought constituted an ideal state. The latest installment in the Lost Continent hunt was a companion special on ABC in June 2001 hyping the release of the Disney animated feature Voyage to Atlantis. The show was true to the tradition: a mix of questionable sources (such as David Childress) and carefully edited interviews with experts that baldly misrepresented their actual opinions. The producers did supply a few new wrinkles: locating the central metropolis of Atlantis in Cuba, they attributed the destruction of their advanced society to an asteroid impact 12,000 years ago. Unfortunately, the geology of Cuba shows no evidence whatsoever for any recent cratering, Harderson (2002). 109 Jason’s voyage may have reflected trips to the Black Sea, Obregón (1980, 21-47) or Romey (2001), with Vitaliano (1973, 76) noting how the ancient tribe of Colchis was reputed to have used fleece as a placer mining sieve. But Crampton (1968, 14) thought Jason’s story also reflected contact with Britain. And James Bailey (1973, 299-307) took the same short texts whole hog and had Jason sailing the Atlantic to America. Homer’s Odyssey has been given several quite convincing (though slightly different) Mediterranean itineraries: Bradford (1963), Obregón (1980, 49-62) and Severin (1986) … while Pillot (1972) hallucinated an Atlantic route. Ashe (1962) and Paul Chapman (1973) argued that the medieval St. Brendan sailed to America—an idea supported by the test replica of Severin (1978), much as Thor Heyerdahl (1950; 1953; 1971) had with his dramatic “Kon-Tiki” and “Ra” expeditions. Unfortunately, Heyerdahl’s fascinating circumstantial case for a South American colonization of the Pacific ran aground on the details of mitochondrial DNA, which clinched the Asiatic migration route, Sykes (2001, 79-107). 110 De Costa (1901), Hovgaard (1914), Edward Gray (1930), Frederick J. Pohl (1961, 67-68; 1966), Cameron (1966, 82-95), and J. Anderson (1967) favored the Cape Cod theory of Vinland.

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Reman (1949) identified Vinland as Maine, while Enterline (1972) placed it on the western coast of Ungava Bay in Canada. Mallery (1951) and Mowat (1965) represented the minority of Newfoundland—confirmed by the excavations begun at L’Anse au Meadow in the mid-1960s, Ingstad (1964) and Nigel Davies (1979, 220-231). 111 The Yale University find described by Skelton et al. (1965) divided scholars from the start, Washburn (1971); Nigel Davies (1979, 231-232) covers its fade from prominence following McCrone’s study. But in 1996 another scientist, Thomas Cahill, challenged McCrone’s analysis, as reported variously by Charlayne Hunter-Gault’s interview with Wilcomb Washburn (at pbs.org/newshour/bb/science/map_2-13.html) and Katherine Newbegin, “Yale Researchers prove Vikings were here first” (cis.yale.edu/ydn/paper/2.13/2.13.96storyno.CG.html). Incidentally, Newbegin’s title was somewhat disingenuous, as L’Anse au Meadow had been known for 30 years, quite independently of whether the Vinland Map was authentic. Ingram (1998, 150-154) reserves judgment on the Vinland Map’s authenticity, though see McCrone’s own summary (at mcri.org/vm_shroud_update.html) and John Noble Wilford, “Study Casts Disputed Map as False Link to Vikings” (levymultimedia.com/February/0229vikings.htm). For meringue, the intensity of the Vinland Map flap was partly fueled by the umbrage of Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Michael A. Musmanno, an Italian-American who evidently took this upstaging of Columbus’ priority rather too personally, opposing the map’s authenticity up until his death in 1968. See the Pittsburgh Post-Dispatch article (post-gazette.com/regionstate/20000229mapreg4.asp) from February 29, 2000. 112 Because of the McCrone angle, Wilson (2) (1998, 199-200) highlighted the renewed controversy in his third book on the Shroud of Turin. Cf. Marvin M. Mueller, “The Shroud of Turin: A Critical Appraisal,” and Walter McCrone, “Shroud Image Is the Work of an Artist,” in Frazier (1986, 338-342, 344-345), along with the sources in note 218, chapter 3. Wilson (2) (1998, 79-83, 179-231) adamantly disputed McCrone’s Shroud findings along with the radiocarbon dating of the cloth to the Middle Ages, with Anderson (2001) tagging along. Alas, McCrone’s fraud-hunting days ended with his death in 2002, Nickell (2002b). 113 Paul Johnson (1977, 46). An intellectual follower of Paul in the 2nd century, the rich ship owner Marcion was the first notable heretic. Drawing on Gnostic dualism to lighten up the cruel God of the Old Testament, Marcion offered a radical vision of personal celibacy to keep the believer pure during that short time he expected before the parousia (Second Coming) took place, Armstrong (1993, 96-97, 100-165) and Moynahan (2002, 112-115). Chidester (2000, 44-59) located Marcion on the spectrum of early Christian thought, along with the Gnostic Valentinus and the Platonist Justin (who demoted the old gods to demons and appropriated Jewish tradition for the exclusive use of Christians). For a modern analogy, Harold Bloom (1984, 60-66) compared Marcion’s movement to the status of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in current Christianity. Going by what was said about him, Marcion functioned like a one-man Jesus Seminar, trimming down the available gospel texts based on what he thought had actually been inspired about them. Such rationalist scholarship hardly cut it with the likes of Tertullian, known for the pithy expression of his faith: “I believe because it is absurd.” Adler (1990, 18-19) translated this as an expression of the essentially faith-based nature of religious belief. See Armstrong (1993, 160-220) on Tertullian’s role in Christian thought (as well as note 150 below); interestingly, Tertullian shared with Marcion a strong parousia conviction, Carroll et al. (2000, 159-160). Exclusion and destruction of heretical documents was a busy ecclesiastical industry in the 3rd, 4th, and 5th centuries AD—mollified somewhat by deals whereby texts were deemed suitable for inclusion in the accepted canon, such as at the Council of Carthage in 419, Johnson (1977, 47-48, 55). See also note 229 below on Constantine’s book burning. Hopkins (1999, 307-308): “An important group of western biblical manuscripts incorporates heretical Marcionite prologues into the Pauline letters. This indicates that the communities which received and copied these texts of Paul’s letters first received them only after the middle of the second century, and were then indifferent to their heretical views; but presumably there were no competing texts available against which to correct/excise the heretical prologues. Put more broadly, the implication is startling but clear: for the first century of Christianity, many/most Christian house cult groups did not use a written

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account of Jesus’ life and teachings as a sacred text, and may not have had one available.” Such scholarly background didn’t surface in Sheler (1999, 19) when he alluded to Paul’s writings being possibly the earliest extant New Testament texts (50 AD). 114 See Harold Brown (1984, 87-94) and Armstrong (1993, 99-101). By AD 203 (amidst the stress of Septimus Severus’ persecution of Christians, such as Perpetua re note 150 below) Origen had “become a religious fanatic and remained one for the next fifty years,” Paul Johnson (1977, 58-59). But Origen’s “own relations with the Church were stormy” and he was “frequently attacked for propagating a false doctrine.” Origen is notable among early Christian theorists for having taken Matthew 19:12 (on becoming a eunuch “for the kingdom of heaven’s sake”) rather too seriously, castrating himself in 209, Boyer (1992, 47-48) or Funk et al. (1993, 220-221). Cf. Garrison (1968, 94-95) and Moynahan (2002, 35). Origen wasn’t entirely alone in this practice, which had spilled over into Christianity from the Cybele cult along with a variety of eastern cultic influences, Casson (1998, 88-89) and Arnheim (1984, 156-157). Cf. the selective chronology and evidence in Ronald Nash’s apologetic, “Was the New Testament Influenced by Pagan Religions” in the Christian Research Institute Journal (Winter 1994, available online at iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/cri/crijrnl/web/crj0169a.html). Augustine countered the castration trend by interpreting Matthew’s verse as allegorically as he treated the Second Coming (note 141 below). Augustine’s discomfort about eunuchs was perfectly Roman, though: Domitian objected just as strenuously, and this prejudice carried over into Christianity. By Constantine’s time, eunuchs were subject to execution; the Council of Nicaea eventually condemned self-castration in 325. See Gary Taylor (2000, 14-15, 6870, 73, 140-143, 186-197) for probably more than one might ever care to know about this subject. Whether Origen’s personal life would have appeared tragic or absurd had a 60 Minutes crew been on hand to cover his activities is hard to say. The death of his father in the arena during a persecution of Christians in Alexandria only inspired him to advocate actively seeking martyrdom, Chidester (2000, 84-86). Which brought on an element of farce: “Eager to expose himself to danger, Origen was only saved from a martyr’s death when his mother prevented him from going outside by hiding his clothes,” Chidester (2000, 84). This might be compared to the relatives of Thomas Aquinas who kidnapped him in an unsuccessful effort to keep him from following his religious inclinations, instead of becoming a lawyer as his father intended, Chidester (2000, 29). Dare one recall Wendell Bird or Phillip Johnson? One may append Armstrong (1993, 58-59) on that Old Testament zany: Ezekiel 4:15, eating bread prepared either on or with dung (though purportedly at God’s command) as a symbol of the coming starvation during the siege of Jerusalem. 115 George Smith (2000, 147n). Among the lost Origen is his Hexapla, commentaries on the Bible that St. Jerome drew on in his careful 4th century AD compilation that eventually resulted in the (less careful) medieval Vulgate Bible. “At this point we simply have to trust Jerome’s account of his sources, for no biblical manuscripts in Hebrew now survive from between the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls (unknown in Jerome’s time, of course) and the ninth or tenth century,” de Hamel (2001, 18). Of course by the 9th century Origen was regarded as partly heretical. De Hamel (2001, 95): “Origen came under suspicion of heresy in the fifth century, and many of his texts were destroyed, including his commentaries on the Bible.” 116 For instance, Celsus cropped up only once in Thomas & Farnell (1998, 67)—and that only in passing as they quoted Origen’s opinion of him from Against Celsus. Then again, even Chidester (2000, 21) was brief, alluding to Celsus concerning an AD 177 pagan view that Jesus had merely performed magic tricks. Moynahan (2002, 59) also mentioned Celsus without reference to the Origen connection. Hastings (1999) didn’t mention Celsus at all, and the sources Strobel (1998; 2000) relied on appear not to have gone out of their way to deal with him either. Strobel (1998, 51) did briefly allude to adversarial witnesses, but didn’t go into details. 117 With the KJV transliteration of Hebrew names complicating comparison, here is the more recent RSV take on Matthew 1:1-16 (with names recurring on Luke’s listing in bold): “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of

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Ram, and Ram the father of Amminadab, and Amminadab the father of Nahshon, and Nahshon the father of Salmon, and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of David the king. And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah, and Solomon the father of Rehoboam, and Rehoboam the father of Abijah, and Abijah the father of Asa, and Asa the father of Jehoshaphat, and Jehoshaphat the father of Joram, and Joram the father of Uzziah, and Uzziah the father of Jotham, and Jotham the father of Ahaz, and Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, and Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, and Manasseh the father of Amos, and Amos the father of Josiah, and Josiah the father of Jechoniah and his brothers, at the time of the deportation to Babylon. And after the deportation to Babylon: Jechoniah was the father of She-alti-el, and She-alti-el the father of Zerubbabel, and Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, and Abiud the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim the father of Azor, and Azor the father of Zadok, and Zadok the father of Achim, and Achim the father of Eliud, and Eliud the father of Eleazar, and Eleazar the father of Matthan, and Matthan the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ.” For comparison, the royal line of Solomon was explicitly traced in I Chronicles 3:10-17, which presumably would have been available to New Testament authors. Regarding She-alti-el > Zerubbabel, Matthew partially tracks I Chronicles 3:17-19 in having She-alti-el as son of Jeconiah, but apparently conflated She-alti-el’s nephew, Zerubbabel. Moreover, the Joram > Ahaziah > Joash > Amaziah > Azariah (Uzziah) > Jotham listing of I Chronicles 3:11-12 differs from Matthew 1:8-9 (Joram > Uzziah > Jotham) by three intervening generations—which Archer (1982, 316-317) overlooked in his parsed commentary. 118 The anachronistic spellings of the longer KJV Luke 3: 24-38 is even more pronounced in the pre-Abraham section (such as “Noe” for Noah). The RSV runs thus: “Jesus, when he began his ministry, was about thirty years of age, being the son (as was supposed) of Joseph, the son of Heli, the son of Matthat, the son of Levi, the son of Melchi, the son of Janna-i, the son of Joseph, the son of Mattathias, the son of Amos, the son of Nahum, the son of Esli, the son of Nagga-i, the son of Maath, the son of Mattathias, the son of Seme-in, the son of Joseph, the son of Joda, the son of Joanan, the son of Rhesa, the son of Zerubbabel, the son of She-alti-el, the son of Neri, the son of Melchi, the son of Addi, the son of Cosam, the son of Elmadam, the son of Er, the son of Joshua, the son of Eliezer, the son of Jorim, the son of Matthat, the son of Levi, the son of Simeon, the son of Judah, the son of Joseph, the son of Jonam, the son of Eliakim, the son of Mele-a, the son of Menna, the son of Mattatha, the son of Nathan, the son of David, the son of Jesse, the son of Obed, the son of Boaz, the son of Sala, the son of Nahshon, the son of Amminadab, the son of Admin, the son of Arni, the son of Hezron, the son of Perez, the son of Judah, the son of Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham, the son of Terah, the son of Nahor, the son of Serug, the son of Reu, the son of Peleg, the son of Eber, the son of Shelah, the son of Ca-inan, the son of Arphaxad, the son of Shem, the son of Noah, the son of Lamech, the son of Methuselah, the son of Enoch, the son of Jared, the son of Mahalale-el, the son of Ca-inan, the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.” Incidentally, based on the original Greek grammatical structure, the KJV regarded “the son of” as an interpolation; in any case, one may presume Adam was not regarded as “the son of God” in a literal genetic sense. Regarding textual fluidity, where Matthew appears to have lopped off a few generations (per the prior note), Luke could pull the reverse. Ross (1994, 140) ever so casually commented how Luke 3:35-36 had inserted “at least one generation, namely Cainan, between Shelah and Arphaxad, while Genesis 11 simply records Shelah as the son of Arphaxad.” (See specifically Genesis 10:22; 11:10 or I Chronicles 1:18.) Ross saw this only as suggesting that “the chronology may not be as tight as it seems”—not that Luke (or Genesis or Chronicles) might have got something wrong. Ross (1998, 54) retained his sprightly step as he reprised this paltry instance of “apparent discrepancies” in the Bible, and didn’t allude to the contradictions when he related Matthew and Luke to the Genesis and Chronicles lists, Ross (1998, 108-109). Comparing the varying lists and versions, of note also is a difference between translations: the RSV Matthew 1:3-4 (Hezron > Ram > Amminadab) versus Luke 3:33 (Hezron > Arni > Admin > Amminadab). I Chronicles 2:9-10 matches Matthew’s version, but the older KJV smoothed things out by rendering Luke 3:33 as: “Which was the son of Amminadab,

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which was the son of Aram, which was the son of Esrom, which was the son of Phares, which was the son of Judah.” Incidentally, Henry Morris (1985, 250) touched on this area, though only to assert the veracity of the ancient genealogies. “Furthermore, it is significant that the same genealogical lists of Genesis 5 and 11 are repeated in I Chronicles 1:1-4, 24-27 and Luke 3:34-38, with no indication that either the ancient Jewish historians of the early Christians had any inkling these lists were so fantastically fragmentary.” The irony of this was lost on the ICR sage. 119 Robert L. Thomas & F. David Farnell, “The Synoptic Gospels in the Ancient Church,” in Thomas & Farnell (1998, 72-74) staked out this traditional position. Parenthetically, Chrysostom was an austerity advocate who unsuccessfully bucked the trend toward episcopal ostentation, particularly in the imperial capital, Paul Johnson (1977, 100)—though cf. also note 276 below on Chrysostom’s anti-Semitism. John 7:40-42 directly affirmed the tradition that the Messiah must be of Davidic stock. But while Mark 10:47-48 and the Pauline letters (Romans 1:3 and II Timothy 2:8) concur that Jesus fulfilled this condition, only Matthew and Luke supplied the critical genealogical particulars. Cf. Hopkins (1999, 304, 376n). On the provenance front, not all of the “Pauline” letters are considered authentic by modern Biblical scholarship, Spong (1988, 107) or Hiers (2001, 217, 220, 224-225, 227-228, 231). While I & II Corinthians, Galatians, Philemon, Philippians, Romans, and I Thessalonians are consistent with Paul’s authorship, II Thessalonians and Colossians are more problematic. Later writers appear to have contributed Ephesians, Hebrews and the three Pastoral Letters (I & II Timothy and Titus, which may date fifty years after Paul, to early in the 2nd century). In contrast, Eugene Peterson (2002, 2125, 2143, 2151, 2161, 2180) did not allude to any of this uncertainty in the introductions to his contemporary language renderings of the disputed Pauline letters. Whether true inspirational authority is involved is by no means an academic question, as may be seen in notes 102 above (re Titus) & 329 below (concerning 1 Timothy). 120 Which, of course, is exactly what has happened in conventional modern scholarship. For instance, Robin Lane Fox (1992, 140-144) commented on the textual variety of “Luke” (where phrases presumed to be borrowed from the other gospels are excised or given a little extra polish). This position may be compared to Josh McDowell (1975, 273, 275), who engaged in one of the shortest conclusion hops when he drew on a 1960 authority quote from Bible scholar F. F. Bruce that “Luke’s record entitles him to be regarded as a writer of habitual accuracy.” This then allowed McDowell to conclude: “Luke proved himself to be habitually accurate.” Hayward (1985, 191) similarly stressed what “an accurate historian” Luke was. Neither McDowell nor Hayward weighed this down with examples, of course; we’ll examine some more of Luke’s “habitual accuracy” shortly. 121 Funk et al. (1993, 129, 277). Recent TV documentaries on Jesus on ABC, PBS and the Discovery channel plainly annoy conservative Christians by relying on the Jesus Seminar set for their contemporary scholarly authorities. For example, Hank Hanegraaff’s prickly response to Peter Jennings’ June 2000 ABC special The Search for Jesus (equip.org/abouthank/Point-bypoint_response.htm). Yet ironically enough, conservatives haven’t noticed how solicitous such programs were not to openly challenge the reverential status of Jesus based on controversies like the genealogy problem. Skirting this area produces some strange methodological bedfellows, including two arch opponents of the Jesus Seminar, Robert L. Thomas & Dennis A. Hutchison, in The Jesus Crisis. In a marvel of obtuse citation, three pieces by Thomas and one by Hutchison in Thomas & Farnell (1998, 25-26, 258, 320, 324-325, 329, 331, 346-347, 349-350) repeatedly alluded to modern critics without ever mentioning what was bothering them about the text! Similarly, Morris & Morris (1996a, 71) touched on the issue only to support a “genealogical-gap theory” whereby some patriarchs might have been left out (and thus slightly altering the data of creation based on cataloguing the patriarchal sequence). Bert Thompson (1995, 176) was equally foamy when he commented how Matthew was “at liberty to arrange his genealogy of Christ in three groups of 14, making some omissions, because his genealogy is derived from complete lists found in the Old Testament.” Thompson’s reference to Genesis 5 & 11 was ingenuous, since the bulk of Matthew’s list related to later personages, such as the deletions per I Chronicles. Like the Morrises, Thompson did not discuss the conflict with Luke’s genealogy—nor did McBrien (2001,

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137) when he briefly alluded to the texts. See Bailey (1993, 64-66, 71-77) on the suspected numerological aspects of Biblical genealogies, from the longevity of pre-Flood patriarchs to the “14” groupings of Matthew that Thompson alluded to—cf. Hyers (1983, 10-12) on some of the numerological themes in Genesis 7 & 12. 122 This is again a handy option for the concordances, such as Interpreter’s (1971, 610, 679), Oxford Companion (1993, 245), New Bible (1994, 908, 987) or Oxford Bible (2001, 848-849, 931). The Interpreter’s commentary on Matthew noted simply its disagreement with Luke … while the Luke section said that, “though not entirely harmonious,” there were still “many points” of agreement (not discussed). After surveying the alternative explanations (which did not include either Matthew or Luke being wrong), New Bible (1994, 987) offered that “in the absence of fuller information the problems of explanation and harmonization with Matthew remain insoluble.” Oxford Bible noted internal problems with the genealogies, attributing them to the theological purposes of the text—the contradiction issue did not arise. For comparison, the genuinely liberal Spong (1996, 132-135, 211) freely acknowledged the problems with the genealogy and birth stories but sees no problem with this for his version of Christianity. 123 Of course, there is one utterly unacceptable (though appallingly “logical”) alternative. The contradiction between Matthew and Luke on Joseph’s dual Davidic ancestry could be resolved simply by accepting both genealogies as correct … and that they reflected a hitherto unprecedented homosexual procreation between Solomon’s descendant Jacob and Nathan’s descendant Heli. Such a blasphemously gay analog to the Virgin Birth would certainly rank way below created Madagascar tenrecs as a theoretical option for modern creationists—though would Theistic Realism be able to “realistically” exclude it from consideration without invoking dogmatic authority external to the “inerrant” text itself? Ironically, a Methodological Naturalist could jump in here with smug certainty: such a queer union is physically impossible, and could therefore be excluded for purely naturalistic reasons. But remember Theistic Realism is out to reform scientific methodology insofar as it excludes the miraculous, and Matthew and Luke do say what they do say. 124 The “Mary” theory would also be more consistent with a matrilineal tradition (whereby status as a Jew was defined by having a Jewish mother) than with the gentile (and Roman) patrilineal approach (see also note 323 below). Unfortunately, “The theory that Luke really gives us the family tree of Mary rather than Joseph is improbable,” New Bible (1994, 987); Interpreter’s (1971, 679) is similar. Ian Wilson (2) (1999, 216) strolled past the tangle of issues in his brief commentary on the “differing” genealogies: Matthew and Luke had “somewhat illogically traced Jesus’s descent from David via his father Joseph, despite both birth stories insisting Joseph was not his real father.” Regarding the “seriously contradictory” accounts in the New Testament (more on that shortly), Wilson cleared the quicksand with professional ease: “With respect to Jesus’s birth stories, the sensible view is to set them aside as shaky add-ons. The one birth element that does seem definite is that Jesus’s ancestry was traceable to King David.” Given all these loopholes, no wonder Wilson could be so extravagant as in his quote above (per note 73). For contrast, McBrien (2001, 296) briefly mentioned the 2nd century apocryphal Gospel of James that supplied Mary with elderly parents (Joachim and Anne)—a story with typological echoes of Abraham and Sarah (Genesis 1618, 21). 125 McDowell (1979, 113, 201-204, 257) relied on the theological works of YEC Henry Morris to accept Luke’s genealogy as that of Mary—while taking critics of Christianity to task (ones he cited only secondarily, by the way) for jumping to conclusions without evidence! OEC Hayward (1985, 223n) was just as derivative: “Matthew gives another, totally different, genealogy. This can, however, be harmonized with Luke’s by assuming that Luke gives Mary’s line (whilst putting her husband’s name instead of her own), and that Matthew gives Joseph’s line. See any good conservative commentary.” Such may be found in Archer (1982, 316) and Revell (1990, 240) … or creationists Henrietta Mears & Guy Cramer (“Dueling Genealogies” at yfiles.com), the YEC carm.org (cf. note 169, chapter three) or Hugh Ross on his TBN cable show (June 5, 2001). Strobel (1998, 47) began his very brief coverage of the genealogy problem by noting how “Skeptics often point to them as being hopelessly in conflict.” Instead of citing any of these skeptics, though, Craig Blomberg affirmed the Luke/Mary solution for him. Scratching his head a mite (“Even if

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they might not be airtight, at least they provide a reasonable harmonization of the gospels.”) Strobel then passed the buck to Archer (1982) and Norman Geisler & Thomas Howe’s 1992 book, When Critics Ask. Chapter 2 of James Harding’s online “Encyclopedia of Biblical Errancy refuted” handed off to Glenn Miller (a computer scientist with a penchant for Sword & Sorcery fiction) who blithely deemed the “conservative” view as the majority one: “It is generally accepted (but not unanimously)” that Luke traced Mary’s Davidic ancestry. A pamphlet issued by Chuck Missler’s Idaho ministry some years ago went beyond merely accepting the Mary theory to baldly citing Luke for the claim that Heli had no sons. St. Augustine at least had the circumspection to wriggle around the problem by linking Joseph to Heli by adoption, as noted by Robert L. Thomas & F. David Farnell, “The Synoptic Gospels in the Ancient Church,” in Thomas & Farnell (1998, 69). Other apologists trawl still further afield: Brad Harrub’s 2002 “Father, or Father-in-Law?” (apologeticspress.org/rr/abdiscr13.html) asserted that “the writers of the Jewish Talmud included a passage that provided further evidence of the genealogy of Christ. This ancient text recognized the genealogy to be that of Mary, referring to her as the daughter of Heli—Hagigah 2:4.” Harrub cited p. 326 of a 1951 edition of John W. Haley’s Examination of Alleged Discrepancies in the Bible (Nashville, TN: B.C. Goodpasture). There were no references given by Arnold G. Fruchtenbaum for the same claim in a 1993 article on “The Genealogy of the Messiah” (available at jewsforjesus.org/library/issues/05-06/genealogy.htm): “The Jerusalem Talmud recognized this genealogy to be that of Miriam [Mary] and not Joseph and refers to Miriam as the daughter of Heli (Hagigah 2:4).” Fructenbaum’s authority has in turn fueled Jay Smith, Alex Chowdhry, Toby Jepson & James Schaeffer (“Cleared-Up: 101 Clear ‘Contradictions’ in the Bible!” aimed at countering Islamic criticism of the Bible, available at debate.org.uk/topics/apolog/contrads.htm) … and Wade Cox (Australian “Christian Churches of God” website, logon.org/english/s/p119.html). Not unlike Empedocles and the Cyclops (note 10 above), scholarly suspicions may be piqued by how Harrub, Fructenbaum, Smith et al. & Cox never actually quoted “Hagigah 2:4” directly. This may be due to there being nothing to quote, for the Jerusalem Talmud’s Hagigah 2:4 (which deals with ritual sacrifice, as on Pentecost) simply does not mention Mary/Miriam, Heli, Joseph or Luke, Talmud (1986, 64-68). Nor is there anything in the second chapter of the similar Tractate Hagigah from the Babylonian Talmud, Hebrew (1984, 11b-20b). Given the improbability of two sources hallucinating independently the same nonexistent “Hagigah” verse, Fructenbaum may also have relied on Haley’s 19th century apologia (recall the recommendations of Haley by Kennedy and the Passantinos in note 89 above). For some doctrinal irony, such strained evangelical and “Jews for Jesus” apologetics are of course not dissimilar to the method of the “cultic” LDS: “Like her betrothed, Joseph (a first cousin), she was of the royal line descended from David,” Newell (2000, 34). Incidentally, the Book of Mormon circumvents much potential genealogical anomaly by outsourcing the problem to unpreserved texts. 1 Nephi 6:1-2: “And now I, Nephi, do not give the genealogy of my fathers in this part of my record; neither at any time shall I give it after upon these plates which I am writing; for it is given in the record which has been kept by my father; wherefore, I do not write in this work. For it sufficeth me to say that we are a descendant of Joseph.” As 1 Nephi 20-21 was capable of extensive cribbing from Isaiah 48-49 (anachronistically via the KJV so popular when Joseph Smith was alive), the reluctance of “Nephi” to duplicate his father’s account smacks of craven editorial convenience. 126 Where the paper trail is thicker some interesting examples show up. Paul Johnson (1977, 5253) noted how gnostic Christians and later orthodox characters like Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea (a prominent cheer leader for Constantine) were very concerned about tracing exact apostolic succession back to the roots of Peter or Paul for their own particular teachings. Sometimes this involved forging lists of earlier bishops out of thin air. One interesting historical addendum: Burr (1860, 56) briefly mentioned the genealogy problem, but his scattershot approach to the topic evidently prevented him from realizing the larger difficulty posed by the differences between Matthew and Luke’s gospels. 127 This tradition is rooted in Micah 5:2: “But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from ever lasting.” Matthew 2:6 had the chief

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priests rendering this proof text as: “And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, art not the least among the princes of Judah: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel.” See Archer (1982, 318-320) and Barry R. Leventhal, “Why I Believe Jesus Is the Promised Messiah,” in Geisler & Hoffman (2001, 208-209) for some conventional Christian commentary on this point. 128 The relevant texts each comprise a full verse: Matthew 2 and Luke 2. Though Hopkins (1999, 302) noted: “The differences between Matthew and Luke are minuscule when compared with Mark and John. Neither Mark nor John mention Jesus’ miraculous birth; nor does Paul; they either did not know the story of his virginal conception or did not want to include it.” 129 Herod the Great was certainly capable of dynastic murder, including executing one wife and three of his children, though by the standards of certain Roman emperors Herod was something of a dilettante in the domestic squabble department (see note 230 below). But the Slaughter of the Innocents was so extreme that it seems odd for contemporaries to have missed it (especially the slightly later Jewish historian Flavius Josephus). Older biographies of Herod hinted that Matthew’s story might have been true, such as Perowne (1956, 172)—or brought the subject up as a pretext for pondering who the Magi might have been, as Gross (1962, 340-341) did. More recently, Peter Richardson (1996, 295-298) accepted the Herod-era nativity for Jesus while discounting most of Matthew’s particulars as debatable embroidery. For a young audience, while Green (1996, 7-11) acknowledged there was no corroboration for the slaughter tale, it did indicate how detested Herod was (permitting his villainy to be convincingly invoked much as one might have a Hitler or Stalin today). Strobel (1998, 104-105) acknowledged there was no corroboration for the Slaughter of the Innocents, but attributed this to the slow transmission of news in those days. Possibly due to his source limitations, Strobel did not catch on to the “Moses on the Nile” parallel of Matthew’s account. What all the conventional treatments missed is the unsettling “misplaced concreteness” to the story. Since God could have presumably prevented anyone from doing injury to Jesus without resorting to a Gaza vacation, one has to consider the terrible grief that must have attended all the mothers of the male children supposedly killed in this gratuitous exercise. This falls, of course, under the “why does God permit nasty things to happen” category that believers (including Phillip Johnson) and skeptics have been grappling with for centuries—and will likely continue at least so long as Hal Lindsey’s “countdown” timer is running. Boyer (1992, 147) noted how Millennialist authors have treated the carnage of Armageddon: “The ‘billions of dead’ are not flesh-and-blood human beings with families, hopes, and aspirations; they are eschatological zombies, signposts marking another stage in a sequence of familiar events.” 130 See Exodus 1:8-21 and the contextual commentary by Hopkins (1999, 303), Price (1999, 2829), Greenberg (2000, 199-203) and Oxford Bible (2001, 849-850). Besides the Moses typology aspect, Jesus’ Egyptian sojourn had a pertinent eschatological function, permitting Matthew to transform the poetic Hosea 11:1 (“When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt”) into a messianic prophecy. Matthew 2:15: “And was there until the death of Herod: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son.” While Hopkins (1999, 375n) commented that “The three-magi story is an elaboration of the story of Balaam in Numbers 22-24,” the more apologetic Kidger (1999, 13-16) downplayed the parallels between the Star of Bethlehem and the “Star out of Jacob” mentioned by the oracle of Balaam in Numbers 24:17. Interestingly, Nickell (2000b) notes how the “Moses adrift” motif figured in the recent Elián Gonzales case, where the orphaned refugee was returned to his Cuban father’s custody amid a great deal of religious and political hoopla. 131 Herod’s death is datable because of its timing near a lunar eclipse. Given that correlation, the placement of Jesus’ birth around 7-5 BC follows—and puts boundaries around attempts by modern astronomers to identify what (if anything) the Magi (if such there were) were seeing as the Star of Bethlehem. Kidger (1999) covers all the natural contenders, favoring a combination of a planetary conjunction spiced by a nova—though cf. Gardner (1999b). Faid (1993, 55-64) also opts for a natural conjunction for the Star. But given the slippery nature of the chronology to begin with, there are enough astronomical events to go around to permit just about any correlation—especially if the Matthew/Luke discordance is skipped, as Garrison (1968, 108) did. The tradition continues

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with CBN.com, reporting (21 December 2000) on a 2 BC nativity dating proposed by John Mosley of Griffith Observatory and Peter Jones of Westminster Theological Seminary. Mosley & Jones got around the Herod problem by having the Magi take long enough to make it to Bethlehem so as to arrive at the feet of the toddler Jesus. Incidentally, Bishop Ussher’s famous 4004 BC creation date reflected the scholarly resolution of Herod’s death date, Baumgartner (1999, 134). Ussher also decided that the Millennium would commence 6000 years into the earth’s history, thus in 1996. 132 Arnheim (1984, 10-11) covers the matter from the skeptical vantage. Interestingly, Michael Behe has offered Luke’s census reference as an instance of how faith might be strengthened by “archaeological” confirmation (christianitytoday.com/bc/8b5/8b5034.html). Much as with the boundaries of irreducible complexity, Behe did not indicate whether external evidence could also weaken faith. His remarks occurred in his favorable half of a joint review for Christianity Today of lawyer Dean Overman’s 1998 book A Case Against Accident and Self-Organization (Christian biologist Rebecca Flietstra offered the critical side). 133 Robin Lane Fox (1992, 28-35) offered his argument while exploring the “dry rot” undermining efforts to reconcile Luke’s census with Matthew’s Herod-era nativity. One may compare Lane Fox’s level of historical logic with the numbers games of Faid (1993, 82-93) on the timing of Passover as it relates to Jesus’ prophetic fulfillment. Strobel (1998, 47-48, 101-102) dealt with the genealogy and census problems in different chapters, and relied on separate authority figures (notes 125 above and 135 below). A third instance occurred when Strobel (1998, 184) ingenuously quoted Louis Lapides asking, “How could he arrange for his ancestry, or the place of his birth,” as though Jesus would have needed to if Matthew and Luke were doing the arranging post facto. Such compartmentalization may be thought of as a curious parallel to Josh McDowell’s multipledipping phenomenon (re note 55 above). 134 My trusty old 1958 World Book Encyclopedia ventured no birth or death dates in the heading section on “Jesus Christ”—unlike “Mohammed,” plainly listed as 570-632. Like Buddha, where the text body explained he was born “not later than 563 B.C.,” the article noted that “Scholars now believe that Jesus was born in either 4 B.C. or 6 B.C.” They left out why (the Herod element), but included Luke’s Bethlehem episode (without mentioning its conflict with the earlier dating scholars now accepted). The fluidity of the birth date necessarily complicates the timing of the crucifixion— which Strobel (1998, 35, 85) inadvertently reflected when he performed a scholarly taffy-pull by quoting Blomberg pegging the crucifixion to AD 30 … and Bruce Metzger separately putting it at AD 33. Polkinghorne (2002, 68) similarly noted only the crucifixion date (occurring in “either 30 or 33”). Huston Smith (1958, 302), Chidester (2000, 12), Hiers (2001, xii, 198, 203) and John Williams (2001, 132) opted for the Herod period birth without recognizing the dating problem. In his interesting history of The First Century, Klingaman (1990, 13, 48) disconnected Jesus’ birth in Herod’s day from the Quirinius census—cf. Lane Fox (note 125 above). Price (1999) of the Jesus Seminar displayed an ecumenical skepticism about the dubious “history” of Buddha, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad. Moynahan (2002, 1-21) skipped the dating game in his summary of Jesus’ life. Over on the pop YEC front, a December 14, 2001 segment on the Encounters With the Unexplained series on the religious PAX cable channel (hosted by Jerry Orbach and produced by the Grizzly Adams production company) used the splicing approach to the Nativity. While scholarly controversies were mentioned in the abstract, the only concrete example concerned the “virgin” mistranslation of Isaiah (note 59 above), with a statement by Michael Shermer “balanced” by Chuck Missler. Herod’s Star of Bethlehem and Augustus’ census were treated as though there were no chronological gap between them—and the genealogy problem wasn’t mentioned at all. Encounters has remained true to its producers’ creationist roots: a November 2000 episode on Adam & Eve was a paean to Young Earth creationism, though per usual contributors John Morris and Gary Parker were not identified as such. The Noah’s Ark material (including Brown’s “hydroplates” but not the Jammal vignette) was recycled for a July 2001 installment, and January 2002 saw Kent Hovind and Carl Baugh on hand to explain how humans and dinosaurs coexisted during the Flood. 135 Archer (1982, 365-366). Keller (1956, 383-384) is similar; Revell (1990, 624) dated Quirinius to 5 BC. Astronomer Kidger (1999, 52-56) incorporated the second census theory without much

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ado. In his history of Christmas celebrations, Jock Elliott (2001, 23) mentioned that the Romans conducted their census every 14 years, permitting an 8 BC date—but did not mention the Quirinius issue that would have counted against that option. Archer and Kidger at least knew the scale of the problem, mentioning the partially overlapping Syrian legates Saturninus (9 to 6 BC) and Quintilius Varus (7 BC to AD 4). But while Kidger’s focus was on the Star of Bethlehem as a calibrating astronomical event, Archer showed an amazing willingness to put words in the evangelist’s mouth: “If Luke dates the census in 8 or 7 B.C., and if Josephus dates it in A.D. 6 or 7, there appears to be a discrepancy of fourteen years.” The problem was, unlike Josephus, Luke hadn’t dated the census at all. As Oxford Companion (1993, 112) noted: “Although Luke 3.1-2 suggests no exact year, the passage seems to indicate between 27 and 20 CE as the times of John’s baptizing and of Jesus’ being about thirty years of age (Luke 3.23). Jesus’ birth would then be about 4-1 BCE.” Such historical niceties were barely touched on by John McCray while defending the hypothetical earlier Quirinius census in Strobel (1998, 101-102), prompting a conclusion that represented the peak of Strobel’s journalistic skepticism: “The matter was not as precisely pinned down as I would like.” For comparison, Oxford Bible (2001, 928-929) casts doubt on the idea of an earlier Quirinius census, while the scholarly history of Herod’s reign by Peter Richardson (1996, 301) rejects it outright. 136 New Bible (1994, 909, 984). Oxford Companion (1993, 112-113) is similar. The commentary in Interpreter’s (1971, 611, 675-676) was schizophrenic: the section on Matthew did not allude to the conflict with Luke, while the Luke analyst hoped that some future census might turn up to resolve the matter. Sheler (1999, 195-197) blithely noted how Matthew and Luke agreed on the basics (that Jesus was born in Bethlehem) despite “their apparent differences” on the details (Sheler likewise leans toward an earlier Quirinius census). Sheler also accepted that Joseph was descended from David, but without going into the further “apparent differences” of the genealogy problem. 137 See Carroll et al. (2000, 5-146) for the broader contexts of the evangelists’ belief in an impending parousia, and Hiers (2001, 195-196, 199, 201, 204, 212, 215, 222-225, 2238, 231, 239241) for the “problem of eschatology” coursing through the New Testament. James 5: 8 was succinct: “Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.” I John 2:18 is interesting because of its eschatological connection: “Little children, it is the last time; and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists, whereby we know that it is the last time.” (See note 46 above for how true that proved to be.) Paul in Romans 13:11-12 was especially antsy: “And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.” Or consider I Thessalonians 4:16-17: “For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” That Paul spoke of “we which are alive” (as opposed to “those which are alive”) would be a curious way to put things unless he weren’t describing a group living thousands of years in the future, among whom he (and all of his contemporaries) could not possibly be included. Archer (1982) dealt with these texts in his Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties by not discussing them. 138 Jesus set some messianic boundaries on the Mount of Olives in the “Little Apocalypse” (Matthew 24:3-44, Mark 13:3-37, & Luke 21:7-37). While noting that only the Father in heaven knew the exact time when the big event would take place, Jesus nonetheless dropped a hard hint. The RSV Matthew 24:33-34 reads: “So also, when you see all these things, you know that he is near, at the very gates. Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away till all these things take place.” (Likewise Mark 13:29-30 & Luke 21:31-32). Matthew’s version tends to get the most End Time scrutiny because Matthew 24:15 also has Jesus alluding to the abomination of sacrilege spoken of by Daniel 9. See for example Chuck Missler’s lectures on Daniel available at his website (where he describes Matthew’s solo reference to Daniel as occurring in a “confidential briefing” for Peter, James, John and Andrew). By putting Jesus’ stamp of approval on the whole of

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Daniel, redactors may freely correlate its numerical clues with subsequent events. Cf. notes 44 & 92 above, and note 248 (chapter three) on Jesus and Noah, Adam & Eve. But while one might take “this generation” as meaning those who see the signs (who might indeed be living millennia later), that wouldn’t square with the other tripwire offered earlier. Matthew 16:28 relates the coming events specifically to the generation Jesus is speaking to: “Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.” (Similarly Mark 9:1 & Luke 9:27.) Given the parousia convictions in the previous note, the traditionalist Archer (1982, 326-327, 338-339) vies with Lüdemann (1998, 52-58) of the Göttingen School of Historical Criticism for the fussiest dismissal of these passages. 139 Herbert Muller (1952, 170) presents the challenge: “Among the teachers of the ancient world was one who taught that behind all the gods was a supreme deity, and that the highest goods were love and selflessness. His piety was such that he was reputed to be the son of a god, though he himself made no such claim; he performed miracles, casting out demons and raising a girl from the dead; and when he died, his followers maintained that he appeared to them afterwards, and then went bodily to heaven. The teacher I am referring to was not Jesus, however. He was Apollonius of Tyana, as described by Philostratus.” Cf. also Klingaman (1990, 367-368), Hopkins (1999, 205, 363n) and Price (1999, 33-34). Christian apologist Strobel (1998, 119-120) drew on Gregory Boyd to dismiss such parallels between Apollonius and Jesus. Moving down a notch to the saints, McBrien (2001, 247-248, 296-297) more honestly recognized that such problematic tales became attached to some Christian martyrs. Two of them were Diocletian’s victims: Alban (reputedly killed in 301) and the physician Pantaleon, whose life “is clouded by legends of miraculous cures, the raising of a dead child to life, and various feats of strength.” 140 Robert C. Newman, “Progressive Creationism,” in Moreland & Reynolds (1999, 120). Newman really shouldn’t have wondered about Christian doubts. Not when you have attitudes like LaHaye (1999, 59) today: “The blessed doctrine of the imminent return of Christ, espoused by the church of the first three centuries, producing an evangelistic, consecrated, fervent church, began to change when Christianity was made the state religion.” By the way, LaHaye is co-author of the very popular “Left Behind” series of Apocalypse novels (which, if he continues churning them out up until the Rapture, means an uninterrupted flow). One may care to calibrate LaHaye’s “imminent” 300 years against Henry Morris’ picayune thirty (re note 12, chapter one). Meanwhile, while promising to give Christians “answers that make sense to the toughest of questions,” McDowell & Hostetler (1992) resolved doubts on the troubling messianic triplet (Davidic ancestry, Bethlehem birth, and non-parousia) by not discussing them at all. 141 By viewing the parousia passages allegorically, Fourth Century Christians like Tyconius, Jerome, and especially Augustine downplayed the End Times talk, Lane Fox (1986, 266-267), Baumgartner (1999, 43-45) and Carroll et al. (2000, 147-167, 185-188). Though the practice didn’t disappear completely, such as with the talented medieval composer and prophetess Hildegard of Bingen, Boyer (1992, 48-50). Some Christians circumvented the problem with the myth of the “Wandering Jew”—a benighted witness to Jesus’ declaration who had somehow remained alive in all the subsequent centuries in order to be available to fulfill things if and when Jesus ever got around to reappearing, Gardner (2000b, 274-286). 142 Funk et al. (1993, 78, 113, 208, 250, 313, 385). The Jesus Seminar employed variously colored text to indicate what proportion of their team had thought a particular passage reflected Jesus’ real opinion. The most miraculous or contentious stuff tended to get the reddest ink, representing the greatest consensus skepticism. Concerning the Tribulation days, Baumgartner (1999, 19) is relevant: “That these statements promising an imminent fulfillment of Jesus’ prophecies were kept in texts that did not reach their final form until at least fifty years later lends authenticity to them. If there had not been a strong tradition that they were Jesus’ words, they would have been changed to reflect the passing of the first and several more generations.” 143 Revell (1990, 494) and LaHaye & Noebel (2000, 237) trimmed the issue to fit the “coming attraction” scenario by commenting only on Matthew’s version of the Mount of Olives “this generation” passage. Similarly LaHaye (1999, 99-112, 140) sidestepped the distinctions between Matthew 24, Mark 13 & Luke 21 to affirm the “Rapture Before Tribulation” based on I

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Thessalonians 1:10 and Revelation 3:10. Cf. Hal Lindsey (1980, 162, 170) … or Henry Morris (re note 12, chapter one) isolating the end of days implications of II Peter and II Timothy (besides their problematic dating, per notes 119 above & 144 following). Or John Williams (2001, 136-155) discussing centuries of failed apocalypses and Polkinghorne (2002, 60-65, 80-82, 88-89) on eschatology generally … without bringing up Jesus’ imminence statements or the parousia expectations of the Evangelists. 144 Strobel (1998, 41). Cf. Carroll et al. (2000, 55-56) on the “Day of the Lord” as treated in Jewish and Pauline thought. Ironically, Strobel (1998, 49) later quoted Blomberg skating past the difficulty, concerning the “embarrassing” matter where “Jesus said in Mark 13:32 that he didn’t know the day or the hour of his return, which seems to limit his omniscience.” The compartmentalized Strobel never linked the issues. Strobel (2000, 188) subsequently sufficed with an authority quote from J. P. Moreland on II Peter 3:9: “The Bible tells us God is delaying the return of Christ to give everybody all the time he possibly can so they will come to him.” Delay, yes … but thousands of years? You can see the logical cascade implied here. Babies being born all the time, their appearance would trigger yet another postponement of the parousia to give them a chance to convert too—which means the process could not be stopped unless you totally staunched the influx of new people. To add to the difficulty, much as with some of the “Pauline” letters, Biblical scholars are uncertain of I Peter and even more skeptical of II Peter (which may date as late as AD 120-140), Hiers (2001, 235, 238). 145 F. David Farnell, “Form Criticism and Tradition Criticism,” in Thomas & Farnell (1998, 210211) will not accept any separation of Jesus as an historical personage from his Christian theological status as the Son of God. Likewise this backhand from Phillip Johnson (1997, 89): “It is as rare for a history professor to assert in professional circles that the resurrection might really have happened as it is for a biology professor to advocate intelligent design.” As with Johnson per note 69 above, imagine if he had phrased the comparison this way: “It is as rare for a history professor to assert in professional circles that the angel Moroni revealed to Joseph Smith the location of the golden plates….” 146 One may compare Johnson’s citation trail with the parallel tracks of Morris & Hayward or Hovind & Ross (notes 44, 58, 68 & 95 above). Lee Strobel (1998, 231-236) illustrated the pitfalls of going where Johnson fears to tread, offering the traditional apologetic (courtesy of Gary Habermas) concerning the appearances of the resurrected Jesus referred to in Matthew 28:8-10, 16-20, Mark 16:9-20, Luke 24:13-52, John 20:10-23, 26-30; 21:1-14, Acts 1:4-9 and I Corinthians 15. Strobel (1998, 242) advised: “Spend a few minutes to look up some of the gospel appearances cited by Habermas.” But sorting out what actually happened requires a much denser array of historical documentation (the Mark passage is deemed to be a scribal insertion, for example). Habermas flatly dismissed the idea that any of the resurrection sightings might have been hallucinations, Strobel (1998, 238-239). But in the von Däniken/Behe tradition, there was no comparison with any historical examples. The Spanish “Miracle of Fatima” in 1917 comes to mind, where large numbers of a crowd saw the sun approach the earth—but equally many didn’t. Wilson & Weldon (1978, 327) blithely dismissed Fatima as “obviously not from God, because it involved elements of the Roman Catholic Church which are opposed to the Bible.” Unger (1972, 139-140) and Notre Dame theology professor Richard McBrien (2001, 198) show how one may tiptoe past this particular “miracle.” And that’s because a willingness to let historic accounts of miracles in the door leads inevitably back outdoors to the broad moors of psychic phenomena generally (such as the levitation matter in note 99 above). 147 Re note 1, chapter one. 148 Kennedy (1997, 48). Ironically, on the next pages he chastised agnostics with Zeno’s paradox as a warning on the limits of reasoning—though Lapin (1999, 250) outdistanced that Tortoise by using Zeno to reassure families stuck in a moment of poverty that upward mobility awaited them in the long term. Norman L. Geisler, “Why I Believe Truth Is Real and Knowable,” in Geisler & Hoffman (2001, 39-45) dismisses the philosophical legitimacy of the agnosticism of David Hume and Immanuel Kant. Hanegraaff (1998, 129-133) and Strobel (1998) field the “impeccable credentials” argument. Tucker (2002, 120): “In The Case for Christ, Strobel, a former atheist,

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offers evidence as it might be presented in a court of law. Each chapter features an expert who deals with such factors as eyewitness accounts, archaeology, psychology and medicine. The book has a unique format with its reliance on experts in theology, biblical studies and medicine who ‘testify’ as they might in a courtroom—though the evidence presented is not new to those familiar with apologetics. Yet Strobel’s ‘case’ is convincing enough to persuade some skeptics.” She did not offer examples of these skeptical converts (let alone critics of these “familiar” positions). Presumably she did not mean skeptic Earl Doherty, whose rather windy (though by turns interesting) online rebuttal to Strobel is at infoweb.magi.com/~oblio/jesus/StrobelIntro.htm. 149 Not all analyses of the role of religion in education think about this problem. In his online BreakPoint commentary on “Christianity and Public Education” (October 9, 2001) Chuck Colson declared how “A good education not only means that students can learn about Christianity, it means they can learn how the Christian religion has had a positive impact on the world.” Charles C. Haynes, “From Battleground to Common Ground: Religion in the Public Square of 21st Century America,” in al-Hibri et al. (2001, 98-115) similarly advocates inclusion of religious motives and views in various courses, from history to economics. There should be no scholarly doubt as to the central importance of the Bible in the Western tradition, as Dever (2001, 281-294) attests from the inclusive “secular humanist” perspective. But what neither Colson nor Haynes considered is whether school studies of that tradition should “teach the controversy” to the extent that they examine the negative impact of Bible-based practices (such as the witch killing and slavery cases discussed later in this chapter). Moreover, although the goals of activists like Colson and D. James Kennedy directly impinge on the future of public education, none of the contributors to the al-Hibri anthology paid any attention to that Christian right constellation, or to the proposals of Phillip Johnson’s Wedge hovering off to one side. 150 Lindsey & Carlson (1973, 15). Lee Strobel (1998, 246-249), Rick Richardson (2000, 31-32) and Barry R. Leventhal, “Why I Believe Jesus Is the Promised Messiah,” in Geisler & Hoffman (2001, 214-215) follow a parallel course of reasoning when they contended that the early evangelist martyrs wouldn’t have gone to their deaths if they had believed the resurrection message to be false. (Richardson’s version came as part of the argument referenced in note 102 above.) Strobel downplayed Muhammed’s conversion, Richardson did not examine the martyrdom of Joseph Smith—and all skipped examining the motivations of the many early believers who willingly went to their deaths even though the versions of Christianity they embraced were ultimately deemed heretical. A particularly interesting instance concerns Vibia Perpetua and her slave Felicity, who were torn apart by beasts in the arena at Carthage in AD 203 as part of Septimus Severus’ persecution. Perpetua was a devout visionary follower of the heretical Montanus the Paraclete, Lane Fox (1986, 401-402). Declared an enemy of the church in 170, the Montanists were part of a trend among Christian sects to be more “austere and God-fearing,” Paul Johnson (1977, 49-52, 7072). Harold Brown (1984, 66-68) likened the Montanist position in early Christian society to that of contemporary Mormons. John Williams (2001, 137) chalked the Montanists off as a Millennialist fad that “briefly threatened to supplant orthodox Christianity.” Cf. also Boyer (1992, 46-47), Armstrong (1993, 104-105) and Moynahan (2002, 115-117). But things were more serious than that: by the end of the 1st century and through the 2nd, the majority of Christians were revivalists like the Montanists, following charismatic figures prone to heretical Gnostic ideas in an Empire battered by plagues, wars and economic decline. The very success of these sects provoked an escalating invective from church authorities, anxious to suppress them precisely because of their tendency to provoke the wrath of skittish Roman authorities. A distinct sexism also played a part, as Tertullian railed about the “impudence” of Montanist women teaching and exorcising demons and curing the sick as though they were men; cf. Paul in I Corinthians 14: 34-35 on the “shame” of women who think to speak in church (or even think). Ironically, Tertullian’s belief in the importance of personal spiritual experience ultimately overcame his initial doubts, and steered him onto a Saul/Paul conversion path to become a Montanist himself! The sect persisted for several more centuries (expecting that imminent parousia all the way) until Justinian cracked down on them in earnest in the 6th century, Baumgartner (1999, 35-39). As in other touchy spots in Christian history, apologetically inclined authors can sidestep these issues in favor of a tidy

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narrative. For example, in the section on the valiant St. Perpetua in his Lives of the Saints, McBrien (2001, 126-127) did not allude to her heretical Montanist proclivities. Similarly, although familiar with the relevant works by Lane Fox (filed under Fox in their book though) and Paul Johnson, Carroll & Shiflett (2002, 5) did not attend to the heretical doctrinal split underlying the proposition that “Women’s status in the church itself was unusually favorable.” Instead Carroll & Shiflett agreed with writers who sought to paint Paul as actually a promoter of “sexual equality.” 151 Cf. Strobel (2000, 35) with Johnson on Sagan (note 199, chapter four). For meringue, see also note 73 above on the interpretation of Near Death Experiences. Mark Hartwig, the editor of the Focus on the Family’s Teachers in Focus magazine, ran the popularity contest in a 1998 piece on the “Skewed Science” of Darwinism when he stressed that science and religion both were interested in factual matters (family.org/cforum/teachersmag/features/a0002492.html). “For example, both Christians and Muslims believe that the virgin birth of Jesus Christ is a fact. Even if hundreds of millions of Christians and Muslims doubted that claim, that would still leave billions who believe it.” Hartwig was clearly slipping a logical cog here—while the belief in the virgin birth would be an empirical observation, that can’t be automatically equated with whether the event being believed in was itself a fact (especially given the problematic character of Hartwig’s example, re note 59 above). As one of those “old Chinese proverbs” is supposed to say: “If a thousand people believe a silly thing, it is still a silly thing.” 152 Strobel (2000, 83-84). Winfried Corduan, “Why I Believe the Bible Alone Is the Word of God,” in Geisler & Hoffman (2001, 191-200) comes up with similar conclusions when “Surveying the Competition.” Cf. note 246 below re Colson & Pearcey. Rhodes (2001, 29-30) blithely lists “Compartmentalizing Conflicting Facts” among the characteristics of cults … evidently unaware of the compartmentalizing credentials of some of his sources (such as creationists Ankerberg & Weldon, Norman Geisler and Josh McDowell). Adding to the Miltonian daisy chain, Lee Strobel penned a glowing Foreward to Rhodes (2001, 9-10). An online display of literalist hypocrisy would be contenderministries.org/islam/contradictions.php listing “Contradictions in the Quran” that are as hairsplitting as anything Burr or atheists have trotted out for the Bible (note 75 above). For example, contrasting Suras mentioning only one garden in Paradise with others alluding to many. But search Contender Ministries on “Bible Contradictions” and you get the undocumented boilerplate claim that “The good news is that the Bible does NOT contain any contradictions.” Such double standards beg a quite sizable question. Apropos the whole notion of divine revelation, while there are those who claim to be on speaking terms with the Almighty, those who appear most convinced of this on the contemporary scene seem to be of the sort least likely to actually have done so. As in the “vampire” case, why this skepticism shouldn’t be applied to Moses or Paul as handily as Buddha or Muhammed is one of fundamental naturalistic philosophy that Theistic Realism would presumably rule out a priori. Interestingly, far higher on the philosophical food chain, Mortimer Adler (1990, 58-67, 76-78) also applied a double standard when it came to how mythological elements are to be approached in religious texts, allowing stories like Babel to be eased aside as metaphorical while not cutting such slack for eastern traditions. Although ostensibly not defending any particular faith, Adler ended up affirming the general priority of the monotheistic God of Abraham group of Christianity, Judaism and Islam (in pretty much that implied order of likely truth). Although philosophically a “pagan” for his adult life, it should be noted that “In 1984, following a mysterious and depressing illness, Adler made the ‘leap of faith,’ and was baptised [at age 82] into the Episcopalian Church,” Adler (2000, xxi). 153 A perfect illustration of the closed theological circuit is Norman Geisler & Paul Hoffman’s 2001 book Why I Am a Christian: Leading Thinkers Explain Why They Believe. A look at its contributors suggests it would have been more correctly subtitled “Leading Conservative Protestant Thinkers Explain Why They Believe.” Besides Geisler & Hoffman, their authors included three familiar creationist apologists (Gary R. Habermas, Josh McDowell & Hugh Ross) along with five Fellows of the Discovery Institute: Francis J. Beckwith (re Greg Koukl, note 313 below), Walter Bradley, J. Budziszewski, William Lane Craig & J. P. Moreland. The rest were: Winfried Corduan, John S. Feinberg, R. Douglas Geivett, Peter Kreeft, Barry R. Leventhal & Ravi Zacharias. A similar mix of contributors comprised the 22 “prominent Christian leaders” and “top Christian

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authors” in Scott Larson (2003): including Charles Colson, Phillip Johnson, D. James Kennedy and Josh McDowell. Now there’s nothing wrong with likeminded believers representing a doctrinal position. The problem with books like Why I Am a Christian or Indelible Ink is that they proceed as if they weren’t doing that, but rather embodying all of what it means to be a professing Christian. There was no attempt to acknowledge the existence of liberal or non-Protestant thinking, let alone even a token effort to include a few of that number (Catholic evolutionist Ken Miller comes to mind) among their gallery of acceptable pundits. But then, the disinterest also runs the opposite way. For example, the closest Keith Ward got to addressing the sizable conservative Christian community (or theology) in his 2002 book, God: A Guide for the Perplexed, was a very brief allusion to prosperous American televangalists being “so unbearably happy” as to smile too much, Ward (2002, 192). 154 Russell (1957, v). Christian apologist Meynell (1994, 35-49) took a lot longer to make the same point. Though he didn’t mention Russell, Adler (1990, 15, 19-20, 84-86) also affirmed the general “only one or none” logic. Adler (1990, 47-52) and Greenfield (1996, 183) have interesting charts showing how an assortment of religious institutions compare on primary issues, such as the nature of god or which activities qualify as “sins” (from blasphemy and murder to divorce and homosexuality). This may be compared to the squishy syncretism of Glynn (1997, 169): “The moral law is no secret to humanity. God is beyond our comprehension, but His commandments are not. Nor is there great variance in these commandments among the world’s great religions— particular ritual practices and prohibitions vary, but there is little variance in the basic moral law as understood by Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, or anybody else.” For a fuller exploration of how “little variance” occurs in those doctrines, Huston Smith (1958) is still informative. 155 Madrid (2001, 16-17). This may be compared to the Eastern Orthodox view summarized by the social historian Victoria Clark (2000, 90): “The tree is Orthodoxy, the errant branch is Roman Catholicism, the twigs are the puny Protestant religions.” None of the trunks, branches or twigs of Christianity are particularly keen on seeing their history as anything but a beeline to their own denomination. But then, they are operating from slightly different data sets: the Roman Catholic Bible accepts 73 books as canonical, compared to the 66 books of the Protestant scripture, or the 43 books used by Eastern Orthodoxy. Particularly unpalatable is the idea that the Bible might have been influenced by external religious traditions. Thus Josh McDowell (1975, 281-287) devoted a short chapter to challenging the idea that Gnosticism might have played a significant role in the early church (cf. notes 113 & 150 above for examples of that very thing). Conflating final doctrinal positions with the bumpy political process that led up to them, McDowell (1975, 287) declared “Gnosticism is fundamentally un-Christian and un-Jewish. How could it then be incorporated into Christianity.” Interestingly, Harold Brown (1984, 78-85) traced the Protestant focus on Scripture as the sole support for doctrine (independent of philosophy or tradition) back to Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons in the late 2nd century, who took aim at Gnosticism for its deviation from the written Word. Through such works as Against the Heresies Irenaeus “professionally engaged in putting down heresy and establishing the truth,” Paul Johnson (1977, 23). Cf. Adrian Hastings, “150-550,” in Hastings (1999, 29-42) with McBrien (2001, 260-261) on Irenaeus’ position in early Christian theology. 156 Shipps (2000, 102-104, 335-357) surveys the reaction of mainstream Protestants to Mormonism, and the debate over how “Christian” the LDS is doctrinally—cf. the circumspect Alan Wolfe (2003, 143-151). On this point the cult-watcher Abanes (2002, 285-290, 375-400, 451-459) is far less charitable, relating their doctrine more to 19th century occultism than to conventional Christian thinking. As for the charge that some Mormon rituals were lifted from the Masons, Newell (2000, 102) curtly fumed that these practices were sacred: “End of discussion.” Cf. Abanes (2002, 23-40). There is historic antipathy between Roman Catholicism and the LDS: the Book of Mormon aimed thinly veiled barbs at that “abominable” institution (such as 1 Nephi 13) and Catholics like Madrid (2001, 48, 50, 156-159) counter that it is the Mormons who are at theological fault.

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But as Mormonism arose in a largely Protestant America, domestic denominations have been just as quick on the draw in decrying the revealed competition. The critical summation by Rhodes (2001, 51-76) is characteristic of the current traditional evangelical Christian position on Mormonism—though Rhodes is distinctive in not including Roman Catholicism on his cultic target list. Creationist disdain for Mormonism regular emanates from Ankerberg & Weldon (note 43, chapter five), Hank Hanegraaff (decrying LDS doctrinal “perversions” on his “Bible Answer Man” show and newsletters) and D. James Kennedy’s seasonal cult assaults on “Truths That Transform.” In the strange bedfellows department: the parochial attitudes of such groups as Concerned Women of America and the Christian Coalition have fueled some tension with the Eagle Forum (founded by Roman Catholic Phyllis Schlafly), with whom conservative Mormons prefer to work, Ruth Brown (2002, 77-78). 157 Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon were seen by 19th century converts as the fulfillment of Biblical prophecies, Shipps (2000, 233-239). A wonderfully confident website piece (at jefflindsay.com) covers the “Fulfilled Prophecies of Joseph Smith.” These do not fare well under the withering fire of Abanes (2002, 267-270, 406, 461-467)—cf. also Thomas (1999). Of course, were the Mormons living back in the 4th century AD and in a position to shred the commentary of their critics as early Christians were wont to do (note 113 above), one can imagine how future believers might have approached the veracity of Mormon prophecy. As it is, Abanes (2002, 404419) had some particularly unflattering things to say on Mormon documentary revisionism. In this regard, a recent scholarly work on Mormon History, Walker et al. (2001), consisted of historiographic commentary on biographies and coverage of events in LDS Church history—not whether the Book of Mormon’s pre-Columbian tales were historically defensible to begin with. On the apologetic front, Newell (2000, 34-36, 48-56) tiptoed gingerly around the problems circling the Mormon version of pre-Columbian America. Although Newell (2000, 255-256) claimed some Native Americans were descended from the ancient Mormon immigrants, and mentioned horses being taken with them “by their own record," he offered no sources. 158 As with his sermons on Darwinism, D. James Kennedy devotes a week’s worth of airtime quarterly to exposing the unsavory “truth” about such persistent religious “cults” as Catholicism and the Mormons, but recently his approach has undergone some evolution. In the early 1990s he criticized the LDS not on the empirical anomalies of its pre-Columbian history (re note 189, chapter three) but solely on how its creed conflicts with his own subclass of evangelical Protestantism. More recently, though, Kennedy has apparently absorbed the archaeological empiricism of Strobel (1998, 107; 2000, 71). During a September 2000 “Truths That Transform” series on Biblical trustworthiness, Kennedy mentioned “the Mormon claims for all of this history of the Ten Tribes having lived in North America, and those claims have been refuted consistently by archaeological discoveries in America.” This from someone who has no problem with Brown’s “hydroplate” theory for Noah’s Flood! With delightful inconsistency (and irony) fellow Flood believer Hank Hanegraaff freely recommends Abanes’ One Nation Under Gods (rubbing shoulders on the back cover with Michael Shermer) and the “Bible Answer Man” advertised it during a week of anti-Mormon apologetics in July 2002. Hanegraaff has, of course, shown no comparable openness to criticisms of his own faith’s history or doctrinal assumptions—but then, neither has Abanes, whose website (abanes.com) offers only traditional Archer, Geisler & Strobel style apologetics. In the creationism department, Abanes lists not a single critical resource, not even the certainly theistic Kenneth Miller (1999) … but does include Hanegraaff (1998), along with Hayward (1985), Johnson (1991; 1995; 1997), Moreland (1994), Behe (1996), Ratzsch (1996), Huse (1997), Ankerberg & Weldon (1998) and Moreland & Reynolds (1999). All of which lends a distinct irony to Abanes (2002, 426-463) documenting Joseph Smith’s use of “this generation shall not pass away” rhetoric for unfulfilled Mormon eschatology—which may be compared to the Gospel writers on the non-occurring parousia. Concerning the Flood, one may note that Mormon apologist Newell (2000, 25-26) explained how LDS doctrine accepts no less literal a Flood as Kennedy or the Bible Answer Man do, though rather as a form of planetary baptism. 159 Carter (2001, 3) bounded past the implications of this: “I am not sure why it is more ‘fanatical’ for parents to tell their children that the creation story in Genesis is literally true than for the public

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schools to tell the same children, required by law to attend, that the religion of their parents is literally false.” Replace “creation story in Genesis” with “geocentrism” and you can see the problem with a younger generation weaned on Bouw or Bowden. Carter appears to be taking the position that it is not possible to establish the empirical falsity of any religious belief. But I must aver that some theological claims really can be positively disproven (from Vedic cosmology to Flood geology), and Carter needed to consider the wisdom of proscribing public schools from mentioning the contrary evidence only because it risks offending their religious sensibilities. Part of Carter’s attitude may be one of distance—his book did not address such current factors as the apologetic intersection of D. James Kennedy and Phillip Johnson (cf. note 111, chapter one). Either one believes that all religious doctrines are equally valid and true—or one accepts a standard by which at least some of them may be objectively characterized as false. The debate would then turn on which standards (theological or empirical) one would be willing to consider. As with Johnson per note 88 above, though, it doesn’t qualify to offer an ersatz “baloney detector” made of no more than cardboard and rubber bands. 160 For instance, Morris & Morris (1996c, 27) referred to “the parabiblical religions of Judaism and Islam.” Figuring out what being “spiritual” means depends (as usual) on whose ideology is doing the measuring. Thus Dave Hunt (1998, 102, 492-497) objects to the influence Sir John Templeton (“an evolutionist, pantheist, universalist, and occultist”) has had on Robert Schuller, Billy Graham, and Chuck Colson, along with detecting supposed occult influence on Pat Robertson and Oral Roberts! Or consider psychiatrist M. Scott Peck, whose The Road Less Traveled has become highly influential in the current “spiritual marketplace,” Roof (1999, 104), including the eclectic Christianity taught at Pasadena’s Fuller Theological Seminary, Alan Wolfe (2003, 178-180). While Glynn (1997, 11, 70) enthused over Peck’s incorporation of spirituality in his therapy and Gary R. Habermas, “Why I Believe the Miracles of Jesus Actually Happened,” in Geisler & Hoffman (2001, 117) invoked Peck tactically to suggest some exorcism and possession cases were real, Hunt (1998, 244-248) pegged Peck as but one more New Age heretic. For contrast, Stephen Jay Gould (1996c, 23-27) commented on Peck’s profound miscomprehension of the nature of evolutionary theory. 161 Lapin (1999, 355). But in June 2002 Lapin joined such stalwarts as Jerry Falwell in defending former Southern Baptist Convention Rev. Jerry Vines accused of slurring Islam after 9/11. Although Vines had said that “Islam is not just as good as Christianity” and that Mohammed was a “demon-inspired pedophile,” Lapin suggested Jewish organizations that criticized Vines should “think carefully about who our friends are and who our enemies are.” Cf. note 294 below, and the temperate bridge building of al-Hibri et al. (2001). How much ecumenical hugging will be allowed (and with whom) clearly depends on the group surveyed and the political milieu. These see-saws have happened before, as Harding (2000, 149-150) noted the 1982 meeting where Jerry Falwell and Francis Schaeffer shifted away from the Bob Jones style of confrontational creed-splitting to favor a cooperative evangelical front. Whether D. James Kennedy (who extolled Lapin’s book in a back cover endorsement) will tone down his fusillades against Mormons or Catholics remains to be seen, any more than Johnson’s squishy brand of creationism will square with the YEC world of Kennedy or the ICR. There is a firm tradition on the Christian far right that other religions are “demon-inspired,” such as Unger (1972, 147-173) who included Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism among the suspects (Unger did not specify which Christian “cults” were false). Tim LaHaye (1999, 264, 271-272) has progressed to the point where Judaism was left off his list, but otherwise all non-Christian religions remain “synonymous with depravity, debauchery, and a contemptibly low standard of morality,” while still affirming that the ecumenical movement is “A PLAN OF THE DEVIL.” LaHaye & Noebel (2000, 168, 277) still listed Islam among the Pagan religions with Confucianism, Buddhism and Humanism … yet also wanted to enlist “every morally concerned and informed American—Protestant, Catholic, Jew, Mormon, and Muslim” in the fight against the “common enemy” of humanism. A review at Noebel’s Summit Ministries (summit.org) suggests LDS theology will also remain a stumbling block for the doctrinally focused evangelical. 162 Recall how lightly Lapin leapfrogged from the source when it came to Ernst Mayr and speciation or to the content of the Peabody Museum (notes 136 & 349, chapter five). Lapin’s tendency to speak or write before sound introspection (or fact checking) has earned him a niche in

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cyberspace. For example, check out the Lapinisms highlighted in a 1996 compendium of “Everything I Know I Learned from Talk Radio” (at the liberal seanet.com/~billr/bloop96.htm). Lapin has figured in prayer breakfasts for conservative Congressmen over the years, and was among those theologians tendering spiritual and cultural advice to President George W. Bush early in his administration. See also note 337 below on the Council for National Policy connection. Concerning the President, the PBS Religion & Ethics Newsweekly reported on January 19, 2001 (pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week421/interview.html) that Bush “has strong ties to people such as the Rev. James Kennedy and the evangelist James Robinson. Through his political campaign work he certainly knows Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, and the African-American preachers T. D. Jakes and Tony Evans have been extremely influential.” Such connections have been building for years. Baumgartner (1999, 239-240) noted the premillennialist Disciples of Christ upbringing of Ronald Reagan, as well as the effect of “the End is nigh” mindset on Pat Robertson (who predicted nuclear war for late 1982, but has since been oscillating between pre- and postmillennialist thinking). The late sociologist Ruth Brown (2002, 183-192) recounts more of Robertson’s Christian Coalition antics. 163 Lapin (1999, 209). Ruth Brown (2002, 82) noted how popular the theme of Rome as cultural object lesson is for Christian America believers. Lapin’s version, though, is abetted by a distinct Miltonian sloppiness to his scholarship, starting with the sporadic footnoting on p. 361 to the Durant quotes: “1. Will Durant, The Story of Civilization, vol. 3 (New York: Fine Communications, 1972). And: “2. Ibid.” No page numbers, but the relevant material traced to Durant (1944, 626-627, 642-643). Not unlike Michael Denton, the direct quotes were rendered rather freely. Highlighting relevant omissions in bold, Lapin’s variation with italics and his insertions in [brackets], Durant (1944, 642) actually read: “Gradually, under Aurelian and Diocletian, the majority of industrial establishments and guilds in Italy were brought under the control of the corporate state. Butchers, bakers, masons, builders, glass blowers, ironworkers, engravers, were [all] ruled by detailed government regulations.” Durant (1944, 643) was closer for the second: “The Edict was until our [own] time the most famous example of an attempt to replace economic laws by governmental decrees. Its failure was rapid and complete.” 164 Sometimes Lapin is just grumpy. Taking his family to Expo 86 in Vancouver, Canada, Lapin noted the USSR pavilion did not mention Chernobyl, but the US exhibit definitely called attention to the Challenger disaster. Lapin (1999, 72) did not consider this a virtue: “We eagerly anticipated America’s pavilion and looked forward to instilling our children with pride in their homeland. To our dismay, this was not to be. Instead of an exhibit that celebrated America’s greatness, the entire display was a maudlin, self-flagellating memorial to our American disaster, the Challenger explosion.” Fledgling apologists Carroll & Shiflett (2002, xiii) were just as serious when they bristled over anti-Christian media bias, which included this oblique (and unreferenced) complaint: “National Public Radio calmly aired a musical satirist whose featured song mocked Catholic teachings.” If this is a veiled reference to Tom Lehrer’s hilarious “Vatican Rag” (the Harvard math prof and Fifties-Sixties humorist has appeared on NPR) they really do need to lighten up. Poking fun at the vernacular reforms of Vatican II, Lehrer thought “if they really want to sell the product, in this secular age, what they ought to do is to redo some of the liturgical music in popular forms. I have a modest example here.” Knowing of Lehrer’s sharp humor, the audience was in stitches even before he started to sing. For the curious, lyrics and tracks are available online (e.g. keaveny.demon.co.uk/lehrer/lyrics/vatican_rag.htm and wiw.org/~drz/tom.lehrer/downloads.html). One may observe, though, that the far more substantively vitriolic anti-Catholic sentiments circulating freely among certain Protestant Christians (see note 43, chapter five, and notes 47, 94, 146 & 156 above) escaped the attention of Christianity on Trial. But then Carroll & Shiflett (2002, xvii) preferred not to delve too far into such things: “We realize that irreconcilable differences separate many Christian denominations and sects; but that is a sign of their health.” After all, “The most potent hostility these days to every branch of Christianity emanates not from a rival limb of the faith, but from an aggressive secularism that seeks to confine all religion to a darkened sanctuary.”

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165

Durant (1944, 625). Prone to practical jokes at the expense of senators, Elagabalus was murdered in a latrine in 222, whereupon his cousin Severus Alexander got the job (by then also fourteen at the time). His upbringing was at least more dignified—though with no less bossy a mother, who banished Alexander’s wife when it appeared she was getting in the way of her influence. 166 Durant (1944, 626). Cf. Michael Grant (1993, 125-126)—also notes 114 & 139 above on Origen’s flexibility and Apollonius of Tyana. 167 A digression on imperial job security: while Septimus Severus ruled 18 years, his son Caracalla was assassinated after only 6. One’s card could get punched for some mighty parochial reasons, such as the mid-3rd century Aurelian, murdered 5 years into his reign by a secretary who didn’t want the boss to know he’d been filching petty cash! The later Diocletian stood out from the crowd by serving a whopping 21 years, sharing power under the co-emperor system he instituted to spread the burden of an unwieldy bureaucracy significantly aggravated by his own policies. After Diocletian and his partner retired, however, the system of groomed “divine right” successors promptly collapsed as rival claimants jockeyed for position until Constantine tidied everything up into a suitably Christian autocracy. 168 See note 349, chapter five. The Romans took the value of inheritance out to its logical limits by preferring only inherited wealth—“uninherited wealth bestowed no rank,” Paul Veyne, “The Roman Empire,” in Veyne (1987, 130). This meant that snobbish Romans were unimpressed by the social contribution of wealthy ex-slaves, such as those lampooned by Nero’s friend Petronius in his novel Satyricon. Cf. Arnott (1970, 258-259), Michael Grant (1970, 51-52), Paul Veyne, “The Roman Empire,” in Veyne (1987, 63, 85, 131-132), Meltzer (1993, Vol. I, 183-186) or Casson (1998, 35-36, 57, 61-62). Incidentally, after Constantine made it legal in 321 for the Church to receive inheritances, the institution took on something of the character of ambulance chasing. It eventually reached the point where “the emperor Valentinian was forced to instruct Pope Damasus to forbid clerics from loitering outside the houses of spinsters and widows in the hope of picking up a bequest for themselves or their church,” Moynahan (2002, 100). More of Damasus’ interesting tenure as Pope is covered re note 302 below. 169 None of the Bible era cultures can be said to represent the essentials of “free market capitalist enterprise.” Making a profit was understood, but the idea of investing capital in the expectation of dividends over the long term was not a hot concept in the ancient world. In those days true wealth was considered to be land, a fixed commodity that put limits on the sort of economic development that is based on technical innovation (note 224, chapter three). For example, Ambrose (Bishop of Milan from 373-397) actively condemned trade and considered private property a bad idea, though he thought riches in the right hands could be useful, Paul Johnson (1977, 107). Such antienterprise prudery was no more helpful than the general Roman view, where commerce was indulged in as a way to maintain landed estates, but tempered by some amazingly convoluted social prejudices about what constituted “work,” Paul Veyne, “The Roman Empire,” in Veyne (1987, 117-159). For example, “Senators did business but were not in business; appearances were preserved,” Veyne (1987, 129). Like the smug “scientific” eugenicists described by Ryan (2002, 41-42), Romans saw poverty as a personal failing (Aristotle thought anyone who “worked” couldn’t ever be truly “happy”). “The ancients did not scorn labor; they did scorn those who were compelled to work in order to live,” Veyne (1987, 136). While philosophical idleness was considered a virtue, compassion was not—Romans thought that a sign of weakness. Cf. Nussbaum (2001, 364-366). They did value clemency, however, but less as an independent ideal than as a property reflecting on the beneficence of the one showing that mercy. Where Christianity made a notable contribution was in bringing some new parameters to the moral landscape. Christians at least accepted labor as no character defect (think of Peter the fisherman), and they actively valued compassion—though this virtue didn’t really manifest itself in a humanitarian way until the 18th century, affecting especially the “heart-religion” of Evangelicalism, Turner (1985, 69-72, 88-90). Christian philosophy also cut across class lines to appeal to people (such as free laborers and slaves) that the more elitist traditional pagan cults could not, Paul Johnson (1977, 95-96). Indeed, as Armstrong (1993, 91) noted, “It was not until the end of the second century that highly educated

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pagans became Christians and were able to explain the new religion to a suspicious pagan world.” One of these educated converts was Origen’s teacher, Clement of Alexandra (c. 150-215). 170 Meltzer (1993, Vol. I, 204) noted that agricultural workers had been sliding into a functional serfdom starting with the policies of Diocletian. Michael Grant (1993, 86-99) related Constantine’s wider solidification of hereditary castes to these bad economic policies of long standing, further aggravated by an extravagance that often required crippling taxation. Underneath it all, the Roman propensity for social illusion (where rectitude operated in the theater of public display only to serve social purposes) may have been the ultimate source for both their rise and decline. Once you can accept the idea that an emperor with absolute power was only ostensibly the “first citizen” of a functioning Republic, the Romans embarked on a long delusional experiment in imperial pretense. In that case, the Roman Empire’s “fall” was all but unstoppable by the time Nero killed himself in AD 68. All the social and cultural institutions that tolerated lunatic emperors just as easily as competent ones were in place by then, making the remaining centuries a cycle of gradual deterioration. Arnott (1970) offers a useful treatment of the cultural side of this process. As for Gibbon’s Enlightenment idea that Christianity actively contributed to the decline of Roman power, Durant (1944, 667-668) acknowledged that there was a small element of truth to that, but maintained that Rome “was an empty shell when Christianity rose to influence and invasion came.” Grant (1993, 223) offers a similar assessment. Incidentally, Durant served as the historical consultant on the opulent 1964 epic The Fall of the Roman Empire, which covered the ups and downs of the same “spoiled brat” emperor Commodus that Ridley Scott dealt with less perceptively in Gladiator. 171 Schaeffer (1985, xvi) for the “amenable” quote. An apologist could draw on the parable of the “ten pounds” in Luke 19 (on interest-bearing bank accounts versus hiding money in napkins)— though this was leading up to Luke 19:27 which appears to recommend the execution of enemies who would not be ruled over by Jesus. The closest any of the contributors got was far more general than that, in an excerpt from a 1982 book by economic columnist Warren T. Brookes, “Goodness and the GNP” (pp. 30-31, 36-38). One was an invocation of Jesus to reject “the selfpity, helplessness, or ingratitude” that might stand in the way of the plucky self-determination essential for economic improvement. The other was a strained attempt to link the past with present economics by saying how Moses “spurned the comparative comfort and security of the Egyptian ‘welfare state’ (and its bondage)” to pursue the better life “of milk and honey” offered by God through hard work in the Promised Land. A contrasting perspective courtesy of Armstrong (1993, 48): “All three of the God-religions have shared the egalitarian and socialist ethics of Amos and Isaiah. The Jews would be the first people in the ancient world to establish a welfare system that was the admiration of their pagan neighbors.” For additional irony: in their apologetic fervor, Morris & Morris (1996c, 81-84) went on about Social Darwinism to the point where they started sounding anti-capitalist. But this shouldn’t be a complete surprise. Boyer (1992, 94-96, 107, 250, 257-264, 289, 319-320) noted the distinct anti-capitalist streak in 19th century and some 20th century premillennialist thinking, drawing on a deep well of skepticism that views any effort to better our lot without God’s bootstrap as “at best misguided and at worst inspired by the devil.” (For some millennialists, the Second Coming promised a vague Utopian arrangement that reminds me most of the ambivalent attitude the Star Trek series have taken on how “money” is supposed to operate in the Federation.) Modern Christian capitalists are of course perfectly capable of viewing their market practices as embodying their theology—an illustrative example would be Business Buy the Bible, the title of Cook (1997). Which may be ironically compared to how Stuart Kauffman’s evolutionary dynamics have been as usefully applied to business (note 216, chapter five). 172 Lapin (1999, 217) was far too busy pummeling his philosophical adversaries to bother with the actual history of capitalist development: “The atheist himself recognizes that, to be true to his credo, he must reject the free market because it is appointed by a God in whom he does not believe. The world still awaits a society that has embraced atheism and also operates a successful free market. That this has not happened is no coincidence, but rather a consequence of the spiritual nature of money." From that metaphysical perspective Lapin cannot see how genuinely revolutionary free market entrepreneurial capitalism is, taking as its credo: if it works better, do it!

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This attitude is very much at odds with Tradition, where you’re supposed to stick to the old ways regardless of its comparative utility. As for how Western economic tradition got changed, Paul Johnson (1977, 312-318) surveys the gradual development of the “Protestant ethic” after the 14th century. There was no obvious correlation with Christian philosophy, since Luther was no more pro-commerce than the Catholics (disallowing usury until the 17th century). Calvinists were an exception to this, allowing the charging of interest, but Johnson argues their major contribution to the economic revolution was inadvertent: supporting a strong educational system that eventually flowered in a burst of independent thinking. The religious wars sparked by the Reformation played another tragically ironic role, as emigrant business communities disrupted by the conflict became the leaders of the new capitalism. These were people who mainly wanted to be left alone, whose “antipathy to highly institutionalized and highly clericalized Christianity of any kind” inspired an ethic of the outsider. Indeed, “Capitalism could not expand in a total Christian society, whether it was Catholic or Calvinist,” Johnson (1977, 317). Although familiar with Paul Johnson’s work, none of this commentary surfaced in Carroll & Shiflett (2002, 22) when they discerned the “roots” of capitalism in Christianity thus: “A market economy thrives in a culture of invention and creativity. This too was a distinctive gift of the Christian West, which flowered in its first full glory during the medieval era.” During which time, of course, market economies were just chock-ablock, weren’t they? Cf. D’Souza (2000, 118-123). 173 Some branches of modern Christian thought are perfectly happy with this autocratic tradition, by the way. Boyer (1992, 247-248) noted how “suspicion of democracy has long been part of the premillennialist worldview.” Interestingly, a 2000 paper by Nancy Pearcey (arn.org.pearcey/np_creationmyth0801.htm) on “The Creation Myth of Modern Political Philosophy” diagnosed what ails the modern state without mentioning democratic traditions at all. Omitting the last few redundant centuries of civic theory, she recommended a return to the “classical and medieval view” that governance ought to be only by “people of special wisdom or virtue.” Pearcey didn’t go into the details of how modern societies were supposed to detect such attributes, but taking her “lead from Genesis” she defines the political community as “part of the created order.” Whether this means a Justinian should be preferred over an Andrew Jackson, she didn’t specify. Cf. Jean Bethke Elshtain, “Faith of Our Fathers and Mothers: Religious Belief and American Democracy,” in al-Hibri et al. (2001, 39-61) … and also note 72 above on the Rushdoony-North version of what constitutes politically sound Biblical exegesis. 174 Lapin (1999, 156). A concrete application of Lapin’s view of historical processes occurred when Toward Tradition ran an ad in the New York Times on November 13th, 2001 that (according to Lapin’s punchy advance e-mail précis) “may be prove to be a [sic] historic importance.” According to Toward Tradition, a “secularized America” has ignored “the patterns in history” that led up to the September 11th terrorist attacks. Pressing the “design” argument out to its geopolitical limits, the ad claimed that “Certain mechanisms are built into the fabric of the world, ensuring that a country that turns away from God will unwittingly lower its own defenses. It’s not a punishment. It’s how reality works.” We “secularized” Americans have supposedly lost not only our “courage” and “confidence,” but even the ability “to recognize evil” and “what it means to believe in something so deeply as to be willing to die for it.” Showing again how ideas necessarily have consequences, the apologetic myopia of Toward Tradition disastrously misrepresented both the deep strengths of the American character and the tactical lessons to be learned from the extremism of bin Laden. An obvious historical parallel: the United States also miscalculated the resolve and ingenuity of the Japanese prior to Pearl Harbor, but one could hardly attribute that lapse to an overly “secularized” America. 175 D. James Kennedy’s annoyance with the “gay agenda” is a common theme of his mailing literature. Colson & Pearcey (1999, 32, 472) reflect the same attitudes by restricting their brief comments to rowdy gay activists and Disney’s gay-friendly employment and marketing policies. From the End Times fringe, Hunt (1998, 330-333) offers the cliché position opposing homosexuality as unhealthy, perverted, and unbiblical. Kent Hovind’s lectures express certainty that a belief in evolution allows all sorts of degeneracy (from homosexuality to incest) as the dreaded New World Order takes hold. Such concerns also run through LaHaye & Noebel (2000),

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with LaHaye (1978) providing the full litany. The creationism connection surfaced most directly at the “Rally for Family” website (eaglescoutrally.org) where their “Trading Post” recommends exactly three resources: a pair of homophobic videos and James Perloff’s antievolution book (see note 254 below). It should come as no surprise that the Christian community is split fairly clearly along conservative versus liberal political lines here, as reflected in the essays collected in Balch (2000) or the surveys by Ruth Brown (2002, 85-87, 107, 117-120, 126-127, 143-144, 172, 210215) and Irvine (2002, 156-186). Cf. the brief Moynahan (2002, 720), the archetypal liberal treatments of Spong (1988, 196-207) or Mondimore (1996), and the traditional Dallas (1992) or Madrid (2001, 150-154). How these positions play out in the civic arena is not always clear-cut, however. For example, the critical Mac Donald (2000, 43-60) outlines an AIDS policy that is neither particularly gay-friendly nor congenial to the Johnson/Duesberg quarter (re note 44, chapter four). Charles C. Haynes, “From Battleground to Common Ground: Religion in the Public Square of 21st Century America,” in al-Hibri et al. (2001, 115-119) reports on how civil dialogue on gay rights issues can be conducted. Finally, Good et al. (2000) and Smith & Drake (2001) propose how homosexuality should be approached in secular biology education. 176 A brief review of Roman attitudes on sex (Parental Guidance Suggested) … Like most societies whose understanding of natural biology and psychology were rudimentary, the Romans found variation in sexual orientation difficult to conceptualize. Thus Ovid’s Ars amatoria (the Art of Love) “dealt exclusively with heterosexual love; unlike the Greeks, Roman society did not hold pederasty in high regard, and Ovid seems to have had no use whatsoever for homosexuals,” Klingaman (1990, 72). As with their economics, though, the Romans measured sexual behavior along social lines, rather than as purely moral issues, Lane Fox (1986, 341-352). For example, it was more objectionable for two citizens to have gay sex than for a citizen to perform the same acts with slaves or foreigners. This may be compared with Spong (1988, 139-142), who noted how gang raping in ancient Canaan appeared to be directed at strangers as a way of exerting control through humiliation (this was more serious for men, as raping women was less noteworthy since they were considered more as property). Which illuminates the curious details of the Sodom story (re note 115, chapter four) along with a similar incident in Judges 19:22-25. Sexual puritanism and attitudes about homosexuality in ancient Rome relate to ones pertaining today in Latin cultures: that “homosexual” acts are defined as exclusively receptive. “To be active was to be a male, regardless of the sex of the passive partner,” Paul Veyne, “The Roman Empire,” in Veyne (1987, 204). Segal (2001, 41-42) noticed a similar attitude in Islamic culture. Thus those “homosexuals” deported by Severus Alexander may have been chiefly male prostitutes who had been on the delivery end of anal intercourse. In practice, the Romans could overlook youthful gay flings, provided one eventually settled down in a solid monogamous marriage to affirm the public virtues. This is why political rivals routinely tossed charges of homosexuality at one another, from the waning Republic of Caesar and Antony to the imperial gossip mongering orbiting hedonists like Caligula and Nero. A final digression: there appears to have been only one clearly gay emperor, Hadrian … whom Durant (1944, 413-422) had nothing but praise for incidentally, as the “most brilliant of the Roman emperors” (Durant did not allude to Hadrian’s sexual orientation, however). Hadrian’s “long time companion” was his former slave, Antinous (c. 110-130). When Antinous drowned (whether by accident, murder or suicide is unknown), Hadrian was so distraught he built a city in his honor (Antinopolis) and sprinkled the empire with monuments devoted to his memory. Hadrian even had a constellation named for him: tucked under Aquila, it remained on star charts at least into the 17th century, Ridpath (1988, 137-138). 177 There are only three main passages in the Old Testament that deal with homosexuality: Leviticus 18:19-30 & 20:13, Deuteronomy 23:17-18, and of course the venerable Sodom & Gomorrah incident from Genesis (note 115, chapter three). Spong (1988, 143) noted the Deuteronomy example was a mistranslation, referring to ritual temple prostitution and not generally to homosexual conduct. Cf. Garrison (1968, 97). There is a similar disapproving trio in the New Testament, but all via Paul: I Corinthians 6:9-10, Romans 1:24-27, and the pseudo-Pauline I Timothy 1:10-11. Cf. the apologetic Soards (1995, 15-24) with the critical Spong (1988, 135-155) or Hill & Cheadle (1996, 44-46, 68-76) on the biblical material and the varied social ends to which

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these have been put. Spong (1991, 109-120) ventured still further, considering Paul’s apparent self-loathing and speculating whether he may have been a repressed homosexual and perhaps an epileptic. The early Christian world tended to follow the attitude of Plato, that only the fear of God could stop homosexuality in the ideal state. Such attitudes in turn fell on a much broader spectrum. Martin Goodman, “The emergence of Christianity,” in Hastings (1999, 22) noted of the early Church: “Thus Christians espoused an unusually rigorous attitude towards sex, praising asceticism, and strongly opposing homosexuality and extramarital fornication, abortion and infanticide, while the fierce Christian disapproval of divorce was unique.” (The Protestant Reformation and Henry VIII would adjust that divorce matter, of course.) Toss in some sexual hang-ups (like those of St. Bernard per note 244 below) and one can see how uncomfortable early Christians would be with the Romans, one of the most openly lewd cultures (where penises appeared as decorative motifs in household items, like door chimes). Compare Colin Spencer (1995, 67-78, 82-91) here with Keith Hopkins’ A World Full of Gods—and especially Hopkins (1999, 321-324) on the prickly issue of Jesus’ sexuality (his apparent closeness to Mary Magdalene) and early Christian unease with such thoughts. McBrien (2001, 290-291) presents the traditional hagiography of Mary Magdalene. For contrast, in the 19th century when polygamy was still church doctrine, the Mormons brought Jesus into the fold by claiming several wives for him, Abanes (2002, 307). 178 LaHaye (1978, 147) commented matter-of-factly on Jesus’ not mentioning the homosexuality issue in the Sermon on the Mount (where “he adjusted Old Testament Law”): “Because it was not a common problem in that day in Israel (stoning then kept it to a minimum), he did not address it directly.” LaHaye did not venture whether this practice ought to be resumed. Then again, Archer (1982, 126-128) ingenuously restricted his commentary on Leviticus to banal trivialities (such as whether rabbits chew cud) and Hiers (2001, 47-49) chose to highlight the brighter side of Leviticus, such as references to “love of neighbors (19:18) and strangers (19:34) and to justice.” Moynahan (2002, 450) noted that the Spanish Inquisition took Leviticus quite seriously, executing homosexuals along with the heretics, which allows us to wonder how a truly “biblical” legal system might function today. Leviticus’ many curiosities (re notes 54 on zoology in chapter one and 193 on cannibalism in chapter five) pale next to the draconian cascade of 20:9-16, recommending the death penalty for disrespectful children along with proscribed sexual behavior (from homosexuality and adultery to incest and bestiality). Cursing or striking parents already warranted execution per Exodus 21:15, 17, by the way. The problem with such a position is trying to isolate just what was to be retained in a Christian society and what could be discarded. LaHaye’s description of the Sermon on the Mount as having “adjusted” the Law was putting it rather mildly. After assuring everyone how he had not come to “destroy the law” but to “fulfil” it, Jesus then spent the next couple of dozen verses (Matthew 5:17-44) parsing the traditional provisions every which way. One curiosity of the “did he really mean to say that?” stripe occurs at the end of Matthew 5:22: “whoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.” This does put rather a tailspin to Psalms 14:1, or Jesus’ own phrasing whilst spaking to the multitude in Matthew 23:17. Cf. the hyper-skeptical McKown (1993, 62-65, 87-88) or Lüdemann (1998, 87-95) on Jesus and Paul’s various revisions of Mosaic practice. No wonder ecclesiastical bodies have frowned on the laity trying to figure things out for themselves—there are simply too many statements that can be drawn on to serve virtually any theological position, as Hill & Cheadle (1996) chronicled. 179 LaHaye (1978, 114). Religious gays would strenuously disagree, of course, though even Roman Catholic Andrew Sullivan (1995, 25-29) concurs on the historically unfavorable tone of scriptural references on this point. Tucker (2002, 147-148) dodged the implication of religious gays by treating homosexuality as only a “lifestyle” choice (rather than as part of a larger issue of what constitutes natural sexual orientation and to what extent the Bible’s rules on the matter should pertain today). Hank Hanegraaff has said gay churches were actually “homophobic” because they didn’t “love” gays enough to tell them the unvarnished truth about their sin. (December 17, 2001 “Bible Answer Man” show, prompted by an appearance on “Politically Incorrect” by John Shelby Spong, who advised another guest that the Bible included such unsavory beliefs as slavery and the killing of gays.) In this “love” department, Rick Richardson (2000, 35-39) is aware of how the

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assorted homosexual passages in the Bible might turn off potential gay converts (duh). But Richardson (2000, 97) is not about to give in on the “homosexual agenda” that “would remake our society and confirm autonomous human ability to determine human identity without regard to God, which we cannot affirm. But how can we lead with love?” Aye, there’s the rub! 180 Although ostensibly differentiating between homosexual behavior (a sin) and same-sex feelings, LaHaye (1978, 65) insisted that “No one is born homosexual, but if enough of the wrong components are present, he will gradually develop a predisposition toward it.” LaHaye (1978, 77) comes down squarely on the “nurture” side of the nature/nurture polarity: “Melancholy Temperament + Permissive Childhood Training + Insecurity about Sexual Identity + Childhood Sexual Experiences + Early Interest in Sex + Youth Masturbation and Sexual Fantasizer.” Which is pretty much where the behaviorist position was back in the 1920s, when the promiscuous Bertrand Russell adopted John Watson’s “scientific psychology” as a model for child rearing. Keeping emotional contact to a minimum and trying to shape behavior as though there were no innate personality and instincts, Russell demonstrated just how pathetically wrong that protoSkinnerian approach was by managing to screw up most of his extended family’s lives. This was particularly true for his first son John (both gay and prone to schizophrenia). Like many at the time, Russell thought homosexuality was the result of bad parenting—though, regarding his dreadful example, that may well have been true. As described in Monk (2000), Russell was a brilliant but ultimately tragic character, whose “quite colossal vanity” and fear of personal madness left “a long trail of emotional wreckage” around him. Methodologically, Russell was also too impatient to follow things through carefully enough to arrive at sound foundations for most of his views, and ended up producing “sloppy and ill-considered” lectures and “hack journalism” packed full of insubstantial witticism. His nuclear disarmament activity was capped by a surreal period as flack for Che Guevara. 181 A typical listing of “Notable Gays & Bisexuals” is given at homosexual.com/famous.html. Like many Internet postings, there is no documentation for the inclusions. From a scholarly point of view, this puts it in the same potentially problematic category as the sites that carry the “Spencer Jones” space travel quote (note 15 above). 182 Tchaikovksy’s homosexuality has been known long enough for it to have settled into scholarly circles, such as Osborne (1977, 343-347). When the composer is a tad less familiar it is also possible for their proclivities to be accepted without too much fuss—for example, Teachout (1998) regarding the quite open homosexuality of Francis Poulenc. Or it can be ignored … as Colson & Pearcey (1999, 450) did when they recommended composers “who have faced the challenge of standing against the tide of a secular culture and who give a powerful witness to a Christian truth in their own century. For example, among twentieth-century composers who have created musical masterpieces reflecting their Christian faith is Francis Poulenc, who was a witty playboy of French music until a friend’s death plunged him into despair and then a profound religious experience, which inspired his music from then on.” Had they known just how much music Poulenc wrote for his longtime lover, the baritone Pierre Bernac, they may have been less charitable toward his equally heartfelt devotion to Roman Catholicism. Handel provides another case in point. His Messiah is so revered a fixture on the religious music scene—as reflected, for example, in Federer (1999, 277-278)—that the very idea of its composer being gay provoked conniptions from Linton (1997). A trenchant survey of how the scholarly evidence stacks up in such instances (as well as the parallel issue of feminist musicology) may be found in Alex Ross’ “A Female Deer? Looking for Sex in the Sound of Music” (at linguafranca.com/9407/ross.html). 183 Digression alert: Star Fleet Eyes Only. While Phillip Johnson may pigeonhole the Federation as a hotbed of “modernist and postmodernist” thinking (note 263, chapter four) when it comes to sexual orientation Roddenberry and the current producers failed to make good on their professed sympathy for a tolerant view of gay rights. Over the years several characters (especially on Voyager) were rumored as gay breakthroughs—but by the time each new series hit the air all ended up unequivocally straight. Given how Roddenberry used the series for social commentary just as avidly as Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone, this is probably due primarily to an unwillingness to offend a sizable block of viewers (conservative Christians being just as entertained by Star Trek as secular

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humanists). There is, of course, the inevitable website devoted to this controversy: webpan.com/dsinclair/trek.html. Certainly in respect of general social equality, the Trek zeitgeist has been thoroughly internalized by the culture, so that by the time of the recent spin-off series no one gives black or women lead characters even a passing glance. But apparently the gay issue remains sufficiently controversial that Star Trek has skirted close to it only rarely. In the Next Generation series, Commander Riker fell for a woman whose species had long ago abandoned heterosexual intercourse in favor of asexual reproduction. Her culture now regarded heterosexuality as morally repugnant, and when her lapse is revealed she is subjected to treatment that restores her “normal” asexual orientation. Besides nipping another Riker romance in the bud, this aspect of the episode worried some gay activists, who noted its echo of the notion that it is possible to “cure” homosexuality (re note 196 below). Lesbian relationships were touched on (sort of) a few years later on Deep Space Nine when the symbiont Dax (residing by then in a female host) encountered the spouse of the previous male host. Their briefly renewed affections were restricted to only that one episode, though, and Dax eventually hooked up with the Klingon Worf … which brings up a whole different topic: interspecies liaisons. These have provided some major Star Trek plot lines, starting with the half-human Spock and extending through to DS9‘s perpetually randy laissez faire capitalist Ferengi barkeep, Quark (who consistently hit on the pulchritudinous females of virtually any bipedal species other than his own). Charges of “bestiality” have not (so far) been flung at these character developments, however. 184 Victoria Clark (2000, 333-341). Massie (1967, 195-196) noted the monastery of Verkhoturye was used to segregate heretical sectarians, most of whom were the Khlysty, who reached religious rapture through sex orgies and flagellation. Rasputin’s considerable sexual appetites were usually straighter but still promiscuous, incidentally. From a Marxist perspective, the Revolution would occur as the next step in the most advanced capitalist countries, such as Germany or Britain—not in an agrarian backwater like Russia. But World War I changed that political equation. The effect of the Great War did not figure in the shorthand apologetics of Ankerberg & Weldon (1998, 35-36): “Significantly, at the time of Marx’s death in 1883, his ideas had made little or no impact. Marxist philosophy seems to have gained little ground historically until evolutionary theory had been sufficiently accepted, providing a scientific basis for denying the existence of God and supplying a drastically revised view of man’s nature and the historical process. Thus, in some ways, Darwinism appears to have been a key agent for bringing about ideological changes for fostering the growth and application of communist theory.” Their historical grip on the path of evolutionary acceptance is a little weak here also, at least insofar as the scientific community was concerned. As noted re note 14 of the Introduction, Darwinian theory had reached a plateau of popularity before the turn of the century, where it remained for about a generation until the neo-Darwinian synthesis jumpstarted things from the theoretical end. 185 Cf. Neil Miller (1995, 204-208). In this regard one may note Richard Lewontin’s ongoing concern over evolutionary psychology turns partly on its exploration of human male promiscuity. As James Schwartz noted in a November 1999 online Lingua Franca piece (“Oh My Darwin! Who’s the Fittest Evolutionary Thinker of Them All?” reprinted at Steven Pinker’s website): “Lewontin, who married his high school sweetheart and can to this day be seen walking hand in hand across Harvard Yard with her, takes a much harder line. ‘I’m a man, and I don’t go around screwing young girls,’ he says. ‘I’m human, and so I have to be explained.’” The puritanical slant of orthodox Marxism is on widescreen display in Stanley Kubrick’s film of Howard Fast’s novel Spartacus, which got the most from a trenchant script by Dalton Trumbo (his first public credit after having been blacklisted during the 1950s for his communist leanings). Spartacus’ abortive slave rebellion was a natural subject for Marxist ideology (Khachaturian wrote a stolid ballet about it during the heyday of Stalinist “socialist realism”) and the approved political pecking order is reflected directly in the characters’ sex lives. It is only the megalomaniacal bisexual patrician “Crassus” (Lawrence Olivier) who hits on his slave “Antoninus” (Tony Curtis) in what now seems a downright tame tub scene cut from the original version of the film by nervous 1960 censors. By comparison, the egalitarian “Gracchus” (played, ironically enough, by the gay Charles Laughton) was a graciously promiscuous heterosexual, while the oppressed slaves were unambiguously

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straight and monogamous. Indeed, the budding relationship between Kirk Douglas’ title character and the slave “Livinia” (Jean Simmons) is arguably among the most touching depictions of innocent love ever put on film. Some cinema marginalia: apart from the ideological content, Spartacus was pretty typical when it came to truncating the history on which it was supposedly based. For example, the creepy personality of Olivier’s “Crassus” was far more like that of the earlier dictator Sulla than the social-climbing real estate speculator Crassus. See W. V. Harris, “Spartacus,” in Carnes (1995, 40-43) on further historical liberties taken by Fast and Trumbo. 186 See the articles on Latin America, Africa and Europe in Oxford Illustrated (2001, 316-355) for an introduction to Liberation Theology. Michael Barkun’s Disaster and the Millennium explored how feelings of anxiety, questioning, and suggestibility during times of social upheaval or disaster can result in people abandoning “the values of the past and place their faith in prophecies of imminent and total transformation,” Barkun (1974, 6). “In point of fact, there seems to be no essential difference between the conversion experiences of conventional religion and those of a ‘political religion’ such as communism: both demonstrate phenomena of suddenness, totality of conviction, and reversal of past attitudes,” Barkun (1974, 98). Paul Johnson (1977, 257) noted that medieval Millennialist eschatology “was basically the same as Marxist historical determinism, and had the same mesmeric fascination.” Cf. the very disparate crew: Monod (1971, 167-169), Moynahan (2002, 669-670) and Keith Ward (2002, 154-156). Baumgartner (1999, 5): “Early Christianity is the prototype, the template of millennial cults, which, consciously or not, follow the pattern Jesus established. Except for the Jewish movements that predate Christ, it is rare to find eschatological cults rising out of religions that Christianity did not influence to a considerable extent.” This extended to secular ideologies, from the French Revolution to Fascism and Marxism, as well as American abolitionism and anti-colonial movements in the Third World. Thus the Nazis functioned as millennialist Social Darwinists, Baumgartner (1999, 210). 187 Carter (1993, 72). Interestingly, in her discussion of Baptist internecine squabbling, Ruth Brown (2002, 162-164) noted that the fundamentalist takeover of the SBC in the 1990s had the effect of slowing its growth! For contrast, in furtherance of their mission to protect “the churches in this apostate hour,” the distinctly conservative “Way of Life” hailing from Port Huron, Michigan (wayoflife.org/fbns/liberalsbc.htm) warns how the SBC is shot through with insidious liberalism. 188 Johnson (1995, 46-47). 189 Recall Johnson’s transmogrification of Niles Eldredge’s take on human evolution (per note 215, chapter four). Much like Duane Gish not defending Flood Geology in Creation Scientists Answer Their Critics, there was a disingenuous quality to how Reason in the Balance touched on these “sexual politics.” Johnson (1995, 152): “Unmarried and same-sex couples, for example, are entitled to tolerance. When the question is not what a rational society should tolerate but what it should affirmatively encourage, however, the first priority must be to encourage stable marriages and good parenting.” Which all sounds ever so utilitarian. Except Johnson must know that those who actually object to statutory acceptance of such partnerships (for purposes of inheritance, hospital visiting rights, etc.) do not base their argument on any purely practical social outcome. They do so because they view marriage as a religious sacrament, which ought not to be applied to relationships their doctrines do not countenance. Interestingly enough, Johnson (1995, 36) briefly alluded to Mormon polygamy—but made no attempt to decide whether that now-banned practice might have served “stable marriages and good parenting” just as well as it reputedly did for Biblical polygamists like Moses or Solomon. 190 Johnson would appear to share his convictions with at least John Morris. In a May 1990 “Vital Articles on Science/Creation” (BTG No. 17b) the Young Earth creationist asked, “What is the Connection Between Homosexuality and Evolution?” Well … “Evolutionary schools provide fertile ground for homosexuality.” But more specifically, “nearly all-homosexual leaders are evolutionists, and when pressed for justification of their homosexual life style and behavior, homosexual leaders almost always refer to evolution.” Morris didn’t identify any of these “leaders,” by the way—or how many he had surveyed to arrive at his “nearly all.” But then, neither had Johnson. Frankly, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn of a high incidence of evolutionary

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opinion among gay activists—but whether this also merely correlates to a sound scientific education is quite another matter. 191 Wendy Northcutt (2000, 103-105) noted this from the perspective of her Darwin Awards, that concerns more willful extinction due to vaulting stupidity (such as lighting a match to inspect an oil barrel). Winners “contrive to eliminate themselves from the gene pool in such an extraordinarily idiotic manner, that their action ensures the long-term survival of our species, which now contains one less idiot,” Northcutt (2000, 2). Although the Darwin Awards are a popular humorous entertainment, they do tend to trivialize what is still a matter of people dying (even if stupidly). On the technical side, they probably overestimate the likelihood that human dumbness turns on genetic characters. For example, if there are idiotic memes (and that may be a redundancy) then the Darwin Awards could owe their frequency to Lamarckian rather than Darwinian selection pressure. 192 A survey of evolutionary opinion here is quite revealing. Although incest taboos and gender roles came up in Leakey & Lewin (1977, 224-237), homosexuality itself was not discussed by either Leakey & Lewin (1977; 1992). Nor did the subject come up in Johanson & Edgar (1996). When it does arise, the reductionist view is not particularly popular: Wright (1994, 384-386), Eldredge (1995, 214), Avise (1998, 154, 250n) and Blackmore (1999, 135-147) all expressed skepticism about any simply adaptive explanations. Eldredge suspects homosexuality originated due to the quite human “decoupling of sexual from reproductive matters”—Marks (2002, 110-117, 156-157) offers a similar analysis, with an emphasis on the problematic character of genetic and twin studies. Judson (2002, 143-151, 252-253) surveys the various arguments and draws on Chippindale et al. (2001) to suggest a role for reciprocal effect (where a gene that is highly deleterious for one sex can still be sustained because it is just as beneficial for the other sex). Ehrlich (2000, 194-198) is willing to stake out a multi-factor approach, though with genetics playing only a minor part. Matt Ridley (1993, 263-265) noted the role of testosterone and brain development here. Cf. Rita Carter (1998, 70-76) on how sexuality is very much a brain activity (and whether there might be in some sense a “gay brain”). Psychiatrist Satel (2000, 223-225) takes the middle ground that human sexual orientation probably falls along a spectrum from inborn proclivity to social choice, and recommends both sides in the nature/nurture debate cool off until the science can clarify what is going on. On the philosophical side, a November 1984 article in Natural History by John Maynard Smith, “Science and Myth,” reprinted in Eldredge (1987, 222229), faulted some gay activists for misunderstanding Darwinian theory by demanding evolutionists see “gayness” as somehow playing “an essential and creative role in evolution.” Maynard Smith related this to the mistaken view that scientific theories should (or could) be normative in the first place, as though discrimination would be acceptable even if it were true that “gays are unfit because they do not reproduce.” Over on the cultural policy side, Edward Stein (1999) covers the political undercurrent in the scientific and social debate over the nature of homosexuality. Stein considers sexual attraction so variable that particular labels of sexual orientation are merely social constructs. Given the survey of human sexual practices in Jolly (1999, 234-256), Stein’s position is not unreasonable. 193 The scientific data suggest the involvement of some genetic component, though certainly not an overriding one. Spong (1988, 67-89) surveyed the argument from his liberal vantage. More recently, LeVay & Hamer (1994) argued for a primarily biological basis, while Byne (1994) noted the many problems with that view; both articles are reprised in Scientific American (1999, 171194). A genetic predisposition for male homosexuality might be passed along through the maternal line, Natalie Angier, “Report Suggests Homosexuality Is Linked to Genes,” in Wade (1998, 214217). The X-chromosome and even mitochondria may put their two cents in too, Matt Ridley (1993, 279-280) or Horgan (1999, 152-153). Incidentally, fundamentalists LaHaye & Noebel (2000, 148) relied on secondary newspaper accounts of this “gay gene” debate, not realizing that the lack of a specific gene for that orientation would not automatically validate their opposing view that homosexuality was purely a volitional act. An important datum concerns twin studies. Though the sample sizes have been fairly small, it does appear that if an identical twin is gay, roughly half of the sibling twins share that orientation. That it is not 100% shows that this is no simple case of genetic determinism. But the concordance rate drops abruptly when you look at

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fraternal twins, and even further for siblings generally, which is consistent with genetics playing some role. Similar relationships show up when a genetic component is important but not strictly defining. For obvious clinical reasons, physical disorders have got the most extensive studying so far, such as schizophrenia (found together in identical twins 40-60% of the time, while the figure drops to only 17% for non-identical twins) or alcoholism, Greenfield (1996, 171) and Jolly (1999, 267-268). Likewise, Specific Language Impairment (SLI) shows an 80% coincidence among identical twins, but only 35% for fraternal twins, Pinker (1994, 323). The pattern even holds for something so benign as pitch perception (67% identical twins, 44% fraternal), Holden (2001b) on Drayna et al. (2001). 194 The ultimate guide to this sexually explicit venue is the wickedly funny Judson (2002), offering lovelorn advice to a host of critters (such as when it is appropriate to eat your mate or why it is perfectly understandable for some males’ genitalia to explode after copulation). Matt Ridley (1993, 234) has wryly noted our own sex patterns have an avian character: like ibis, swallows and sparrows, we are mainly monogamous with common adultery. But that’s pretty bland compared to some fish. Several species (such as the scalefin anthias Pseudoanthias squamipinnus and the Japanese goby Trimma okinawae) have only one male—but should that breeder exit the scene, one of the females will turn into a male, Dusheck (2002, 57-58). In the case of T. okinawae, the replacement will even switch back again should a larger rival from another breeding population happen by. Dugatkin (2000, 144-147) thought such piscine transsexuality odd enough—until Schlupp et al. (1994) came along with a topper. The Amazon molly Poecilia formosa of central Texas is a hybrid of two sexually reproducing cousins (P. latipinna & P. mexicana). The result is a population of females who reproduce through asexual parthenogenesis … except they still need the attention of a male to get them excited enough to do it. With no males of their own species at hand, they hit on the guys from the related latipinna. Now squandering their sperm on the lesbian formosa would seem a particularly unproductive (if not dumb) behavior. In an evolutionary environment, selection would therefore have to be finding some advantage for the latipinna side. And that’s what Schlupp’s team found when they looked more closely. It turns out that the latipinna females find those promiscuous males who chased after the formosa ladies highly attractive, which explained how this piscine ménage à trois has been sustained. Cf. Gamlin & Vines (1986, 238-239) or Schilthuizen (2001, 30-31, 61-62) on the ecological context of parthenogenetic forms like the mollies, aphids, and even some reptiles, and Rouzine et al. (2003) on the broader population dynamics of asexuality. Eukaryotic species that turn asexual appear to be highly derived (and liable to extinction), though there is some evidence for an ancient lineage of asexual rotifers, Welch & Meselson (2000), Judson (2002, 212-232), David Welch et al. (2004) and Jessica Welch et al. (2004). Grossniklaus et al. (2001) survey the current state of research into the genetics of asexuality in plants—in their case, reproducing by apomixis (mitiotically derived single cells). Concerning aphids, Simon et al. (2002) noted how sexual cycles are sustained among some aphid species because of a developmental bottleneck: to survive in colder climates requires the production of cold-resistant eggs, which apparently their biology precludes in a parthogenetic context. Habitat adaptation appears also to play a role in the repeat appearance of asexuality in California walkingstick species, Law & Crespi (2002). Another form of asexual reproduction is by fissioning (paratomy), such as in the annelid naidid worms and the hydra (cf. note 103, chapter two). Bely & Wray (2002) report on their research suggesting that paratomy is only the most recent stage of a long process of evolutionary exaptation, drawing on embryonic developmental genes co-opted for body part regeneration that ultimately permits direct budding of offspring. Fortunately there is no chance that humans can ever slide down such a road, due to a developmental constraint of our own: mammals are prevented from engaging in such asexual tricks due to “gene imprinting,” where certain tissues rely on one or the other parental gene selectively—thus requiring two to tango, Maynard Smith & Szathmáry (1999, 84) and Mark Ridley (2001b, 221-225). 195 See Emily Lyons (1997), Zimmer (2001g, 229-256) or Ryan (2002, 197-206) for surveys, and varying perspectives by Edward Stein (1999, 179-189), Jolly (1999, 270-273) and Judson (2002, 187-195, 233-234). Burt (2000) or Mark Ridley (2001a,b) cover the mutation angle; Matt Ridley

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(1993, 150-152) or Zimmer (2000c, 162-176) the parasitical aspect, drawing on the late William Hamilton. Galindo et al. (2003) offer molecular confirmation for the “coevolutionary chase” with further implications for the speciation process, but Otto & Nuismer (2004) caution that species interactions generally don’t favor sexual combination. Thus the Red Queen hypothesis, although supported in some situations, cannot be the whole story for the origin of sex. Useful reviews and discussion of unresolved issues have appeared in Trends in Ecology & Evolution and the Journal of Evolutionary Biology. The TREE articles include Hurst & Peck (1996) as overview; Ebert & Hamilton (1996) on the parasitical side; Jacob (1996) on sexual dimorphism in the brain; Judson & Normark (1996) on asexual taxa; and Thornhill & Gangestad (1996) on human sexuality (cf. note 415 below on Thornhill). The JEB provide commentary re West et al. (1999a,b) by Birky (1999), Brookfield (1999), Butlin et al. (1999), Crow (1999b), Falush (1999), Gouyon (1999), Kondrashov (1999), Kövér & Szathmáry (1999), Lenski (1999), Michiels et al. (1999), Nürnberger & Gabriel (1999), Redfield (1999), Rice (1999) and Seger (1999). Interestingly, Behe (1999b, 34) dismissed the parasitical coevolutionary theory of sex obliquely via Stahl et al. (1999) arguing against a simple “arms race” in plant resistance—cf. Hines & Marx (2001) re Bergelson et al. (2001) & Vance & Vaucheret (2001). The spread of novel alleles that have to be acquired in a specific order appears to be slowed (but by no means stopped) under sexual reproduction, Kondrashov & Kondrashov (2001); cf. Cui et al. (2000) and Tüzel et al. (2001). Maynard Smith & Szathmáry (1999, 79-93) note the possible role of “uniparental inheritance of intracellular organelles” in originating sex—such as mitochondria, as explored by Mark Ridley (2001b, 154-158). Which means the legacy of endosymbiosis gets in the act again (Behe et al. take note). Incidentally, if you want to set a potential “authority quote” alert, Maynard Smith & Szathmáry (1999, 92) remarked: “It is interesting that the Bible gets it right. Males were the first sex: females were secondary.” Given how complicated bacterial “sex” can be (involving five different types), Dorion Sagan & Lynn Margulis, “The Riddle of Sex,” in Margulis & Sagan (1997, 283-294) argue that animal meiotic sex was selected by evolution because of the complexity it allowed, not for the sexuality per se. Cf. Tenaillon et al. (2000) on the conflict between bacterial conjugation and the spread of mutator genes, and Bergstrom & Lachmann (2003) on instances where slower evolving species can gain advantage due to the quirks of population dynamics. It may be of relevance that sexual recombination appears to have entered the eukaryotic picture about 2 billion years ago, about when oxygen levels were beginning to climb. 196 Reparative Therapy (RT) consists of a combination of prayer, abstinence … and a measure of wishful thinking, since a hefty majority of these highly motivated subjects didn’t eradicate their same sex attraction. Studies appear every few years or so from organizations devoted to this claim, such as the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuals (NARTH). Cf. Irvine (2002, 175-176). Conservative columnist Cal Thomas extolled the “clinical, observable facts” of one such study in September 1997, which appeared to indicate a quite effective 87% success rate in reorienting sexual attraction. But a strong dose of tactical statistics played a role here, with bundled or vague categories elevating the apparent success rate. When the content of categories like “exclusively or almost entirely” are teased apart, it turned out that as few as a dozen people (1.5% of the 860 subjects) could have shifted to produce the observed effect. Similar problems afflict a far smaller sampling of 200 self-advertised ex-gay men and women undertaken by Columbia University psychiatrist Robert Spitzer (not the anthropic president of Gonzaga University, from note 255, chapter five). As Spitzer had been instrumental in getting the American Psychological Association to downgrade homosexuality from a mental disorder in 1973, coverage of his May 2001 apostasy sparked a predictable range of reactions, from the skepticism of analysts like Robert Isay of Cornell to the approving nods of conservative Christian groups. RT boosters range from the superficial apologetics of a cassette interview with Spitzer offered at family.org.resources.itempg.cfm?itemid=2357 to the lengthier (though still critically lopsided) treatments at narth.com/docs/spitzerrelease.html, or the more peripheral cultureandfamily.org/report/2001-05-18 or newdirection.ca/research/. Meanwhile, mainstream

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media sounded a temperate tone by offering both the pros and cons of Spitzer’s study (examples such as abcnews.go.com/sceti…g/Daily/News/sexualorientation010508.html or the cable msnbc.com/news/570656.asp). Gay activists homed in on the study’s skewed methodology (such as ngltf.org/new/release.cfm?releaseID=389, indegayforum.org/articles/varnell65.html or q.co.za/2001/2001/05/10-gayornet.html)—cf. also religioustolerance.org/hom_exod2.htm. As with the 1997 NARTH study, categorical lumping disguised a problematic success rate. For example, 89% of men and 95% of women where bothered “not at all” or “only slightly” by “unwanted homosexual feelings.” Yet 89% of the men and 63% of the women also professed not to be free of “homosexual indicators” (such as “same-sex attraction”). Even when viewed through the most beneficent lens, RT studies fail to contradict the idea that for most people (straight or gay) sexual orientation is cast in concrete by puberty. 197 Mortimer Adler (2000, 93-94) in The Great Ideas series remarked on how “evolution is one of the things which has emancipated man from religion, from the belief that God created man in His own image with a special dignity and a special destiny, including divine rewards and punishments. Let me repeat that: including divine rewards and punishments.” This may be compared to Morris & Morris (1996c, 79): “Men and women may be prone to all sorts of violent and selfish behavior, but this is because of sin in their hearts, not animals in their ancestry. It needs to be condemned and judged, unless first repented, forgiven, and forsaken—not coddled and justified on the basis of evolutionary presuppositions, as even the courts have been so quick to do in recent decades.” 198 Desmond & Moore (1991, 249). Continental Europe was in even worse shape, of course, with revolutionary movements surging in 1830 and 1848, leading to repressive monarchial reaction and the disintegration of Spanish colonial America into corrupt independent states. The evolutionism of Darwin’s grandfather Erasmus was criticized on similar moral grounds, Gruber (1974, 46-50)— such as future Prime Minister George Canning disparaging those who dwelt on “The wrongs of Providence, and the rights of Man.” Cf. also Desmond & Moore (1991, 223-224) on the contrasting views of Richard Owen and the post-Beagle (but pre-Malthus) Darwin on the import of “living atoms.” The conservative Anglican Owens “denounced transmutation as subversive and anti-Christian: it would submerge man in a brutal quagmire, destroy his responsibility—and the atheist agitators showed where it would all end. (Owen met this street threat in a more immediate way. He drilled with the Honourable Artillery Company, the urban gentry’s own volunteer regiment, which backed up the police during riots.) Bestializing man was reprehensible; people were not super-apes. To destroy mankind’s unique status by stretching the life-force was like throwing muskets to the rabble. But Darwin, with his reforming Unitarian circle, treated nature’s self-development quite casually. Apes failed to frighten him; the brutalization threat passed harmlessly overhead. What angered him was quite the reverse, the arrogance of those who put mankind on a pedestal.” This social context of Darwin’s recoil from Christianity was not reflected when Johnson (2000, 182-183n) touched on the subject. Nor has it set well with the agnostic Ruse (2000, 57-58), who dismissed as “silly nonsense” the idea that Darwin might have felt some guilt over his part in the furtherance of the demotion of God. Then again, Ruse also averred that James Moore proceeds “from a Marxist perspective that sees England on the verge of revolution.” As will be seen further below, the Darwinian landscape has been as much a battlefield for Left and Right as a habitat for the evolving “class struggle” of Mammalia and Aves. 199 Crews (2001b, 51). Cf. Hargrove (1986) & Ecker (1990, 57-58, 84-85, 110-112, 168-169, 177) on how creationists view “evolution” in moral and theological terms. Kossy (2001, 182-183) noted the popular creationist chart showing the good fruits of the Christian Tree versus the bad fruits falling from the Evolution Tree. Harding (2000, 216) assessed the ICR Museum version when she visited it in 1987; further tours are on hand at the Talk.Origins Archive, Stix (1997) and Pennock (1999, 46-50). Such attitudes are not new, as Larson (1997, 97) noted of William Bell Riley’s World’s Christian Fundamentals Association (WCFA), which characterized evolutionary theory as “unscientific, anti-Christian, atheistic, anarchistic, pagan, rationalist.” (Cf. note 273 below.) While Riley’s “hand-picked successor” Billy Graham ignored the evolution issue, adopting the progressive Old Earth creationism of Baptist theologian Bernard Ramm, Larson (1997, 261) and Numbers (1992, 184-185), the old WCFA attitude lives on in Creation Science. Henry Morris

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(1972, 75): “Evolution is the root of atheism, of communism, nazism, behaviorism, racism, economic imperialism, militarism, libertinism, anarchism, and all manner of anti-Christian systems of belief and practice. A solid faith in a personal, sovereign Creator, on the other hand, leads to a strong sense of responsibility before God, and therefore eventually to an awareness of one’s need for a personal Saviour.” Morris (1963, 24, 83) was similar (though including “and ultimately Satanism” in the latter list); Morris kept up the litany in Morris & Parker (1987, 19). Morris & Morris (1996c, 195) ratcheted up the team rhetoric: “Furthermore, as shown in this book, evolutionism has provided the pseudo-scientific rationale for nearly every deadly philosophy and evil practice known to man! By all that is right and good in this world, and by God’s Word, evolution simply cannot be true, and Christians ought to oppose and repudiate it in all of its disguises, not compromise with it.” Answers in Genesis’ Ken Ham (1998,78) contrasted a stack of blocks labeled CREATION, GOD’S WORD, LAWS, MARRIAGE, STANDARDS, and MEANING OF LIFE with EVOLUTION, MAN’S OPINION, LAWLESSNESS, HOMOSEXUAL BEHAVIOR, PORNOGRAPHY, and ABORTION. One of the slides in David A. Prentice’s 1998 Sunday school course (“The Bible vs. Evolution”) features a similar juxtaposition; aimed at high school age and adults, it is distributed by the Origins Resource Association (originsresource.org), a Louisiana-based YEC group formed in 1980 to support the state’s “Balanced Treatment Act.” For baroque splendor, the apocalyptic LaHaye (1999, 322) itemized “evolution, psychiatry, illuminism, Nietzcheism, socialism, communism, liberalism, and Nazism” among the “evil forces and concepts” engendered by “Satan’s attack on humanity.” 200 Johnson’s “Weekly Wedge Update” response for October 9, 2001 quoted Crew’s paragraph complete (though with some redundant ellipses, apparently inserted for dramatic effect). Crews’ review concerned the problematic features of efforts to “reconcile” God and evolution, running from liberal church enclaves to the Darwinian contributions of Stephen Jay Gould (1999a), Kenneth Miller (1999) and Michael Ruse (2001). Sounding not unlike the way D. James Kennedy might have phrased it, Johnson translated these issues into absolutist terms: “The bottom line of Crews’ argument is that those church councils are composed of fools, and the scientific bodies, of liars.” No … just people whose faith (sacred or secular) isn’t immune to rationalizing in a pinch. William Dembski wore a similarly focused pair of reading glasses in a January 23, 2002 posting at the Discovery Institute website on “Shermer’s Cozy Delusion: A Response to Shermer’s ‘The Gradual Illumination of the Mind’ (Scientific American, February 2002)” when he decided that Michael Shermer claimed not only “that the scientific evidence overwhelmingly vindicates Darwinism,” but “that anyone who objected to it in [sic] on design-theoretic grounds is motivated solely by religious considerations. What evidence does Shermer cite for this claim? None. The fact is that most of my colleagues in the intelligent design community (me included) started out as entirely comfortable with Darwinian evolutionary theory. Only when we started trying to fit the theory to the evidence did we give up on it. This is well documented in our books.” It is certainly true that many ID proponents (including Dembski) bristle at the suggestion that they are stealth creationists—cf. Palevitz (2002). But establishing that ID advocates had gone through an honest to goodness Darwinian phase is more difficult to establish by Dembski (1998d; 1999a), Behe (1996) or Wells (2000a). We do at least have Shermer (2002) himself, though, to tell us what Shermer had in mind about Shermer’s opinion of creationist motivation. He had written this: “It is no coincidence that most evolution deniers are Christians who believe that if God did not personally create life, then they have no basis for belief, morality, and the meaning of life. Clearly for some, much is at stake in the findings of science.” The conflation of “most” and “some” with “anyone” is a curious slip for a mathematical logician like Dembski to have made. 201 A review by Edward Oakes (2001, 50) praised Johnson’s “respect for rules of evidence,” especially concerning his “favorite passage” criticizing evolutionary psychology. Oakes (2001, 48) identified Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and “Stephen” Pinker as among those who “dupe the public” with their scientific arguments that lead folk away to atheistic materialism (more on the problems Oakes had with The Wedge of Truth next chapter). Johnson (2000, 118) grumped that “Steven Pinker’s study of mind and morality is a swamp of confusion, but he is also a central figure in evolutionary mind-science with a large and enthusiastic following.” Cf. the 1998 replay of the

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Gould-Dennett “food fight” (note 270, chapter four) at bostonreview.mit.edu between Pinker and some obtuse evolutionary critics, Jeremy C. Ahouse & Robert C. Berwick. 202 Johnson (2000, 111-114). Addenda on references: Ferguson (1998, 21) cited Michael Kelley (“Arguing for Infanticide”) and Steven Pinker’s rejoinder (“Arguing Against Infanticide”) in the Washington Post (respectively November 6 & 21, 1997). Pinker’s website reprints his Post response (www–bcs.mit.edu/~steve/washpost.html). Johnson started off by eviscerating Pinker’s evidential base (Johnson’s excerpts are again in bold). Pinker (1997b, 52): “Neonaticide, many think, could only be a product of pathology. The psychiatrists uncover childhood trauma. The defense lawyers argue temporary psychosis. The pundits blame a throwaway society, permissive sex education and, of course, rock lyrics.” The next paragraph is where the first Pinker quotation occurred: “But it’s hard to maintain that neonaticide is an illness when we learn that it has been practiced and accepted in most cultures throughout history. And that neonaticidal women do not commonly show signs of psychopathology. In a classic 1970 study of statistics of child killing, a psychiatrist, Phillip Resnick, found that mothers who kill their older children are frequently psychotic, depressed or suicidal, but mothers who kill their newborns are usually not. (It was this difference that led Resnick to argue that the category of infanticide be split into neonaticide, the killing of a baby on the day of its birth, and filicide, the killing of a child older than one day.)” The paragraph following placed this in a critical context: “Killing a baby is an immoral act, and we often express our outrage at the immoral by calling it a sickness. But normal human motives are not always moral, and neonaticide does not have to be a product of malfunctioning neural circuitry or a dysfunctional upbringing. We can try to understand what would lead a mother to kill her newborn, remembering that to understand is not necessarily to forgive.” 203 Johnson (2000, 114-117). Pinker’s response to Ferguson (“A Matter of the Soul”) appeared in The Weekly Standard letters for February 2, 1998 (erratum: the IUD prosecution quote had italicized “Homo sapiens”)—Pinker (2002, 129-133) briefly alluded to Ferguson and Intelligent Design. The final Pinker quote is very like Pinker (1997a, 64). The “previous chapter” reference to scientific opinion on religion concerned Larson & Witham (1999), and the Gould allusion was to the NOMA (“Non-Overlapping Magesteria”) argument of Gould (1999a). Johnson (2000, 84-104) devoted his fourth chapter to criticizing such attempts to demark religion from a science given authority over verifiable knowledge (dropping en route some educational footwear quoted in note 370 below). Johnson (1998, 75-76) and Huston Smith (2001, 70-72) are similar. Gould’s attempt to push the warring factions apart is not a new one, nor has it resolved old debates. The Arabic philosopher Averroës laid out a similar demarcation argument in the Middle Ages, which Aquinas opposed as suggesting a conflict between reason and faith that would undermine the Unity of Truth, Adler (1990, 24-27). Cf. Turner (1985, 189-194) on the 19th century tendency to equate science and knowledge—a view more often offered by people who knew comparatively little science. Unfavorable critical reaction to Gould’s NOMA argument included H. Allen Orr in the Boston Review (October/November 1999) and Tom Flynn (1999). Durm & Pigliucci (1999) offered contrasting reviews (pro & con) for Skeptical Inquirer. Whereas psychologist Durm was pleased with Gould’s argument and presentation, biologist (and unapologetic atheist) Pigliucci found the book “badly written, condescending, and misleading.” The misleading part concerned the idea that the core principles of religion and science really weren’t in conflict (Pigliucci drew on Richard Feynman here, incidentally). Insofar as science fosters doubt and empirical investigation, Pigliucci finds this at odds with any religion based on dogma and revelation: “It is hard to see how those attitudes can logically coexist in the same brain.” Likewise George Smith (2000, 181): “The chief difference between science and theology is not one of doctrine, but one of attitude and method.” While Gould’s NOMA hopes to establish “a respectful, even loving concordant” between science and religion, Weinberg (2001, 68) is less conciliatory: “I am all in favor of a dialogue between science and religion, but not a constructive dialogue. One of the great achievements of science has been, if not to make it impossible for intelligent people to be religious, then at least to make it possible for them not to be religious. We should not retreat from this accomplishment.” For comparison, none of the thirty contributions to the scholarly anthology Ferngren (2002) on Science & Religion tackled the epistemological issue of whether a belief in inerrancy represented by

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its very character an irrational aspect of Christian theology that in at least that respect puts the methodology of apologetics at the opposite pole from the necessary empiricism of natural inquiry. 204 Pinker (1997b, 54) touched on this very point: “It seems obvious that we need a clear boundary to confer personhood on a human being and grant it a right to life. Otherwise, we approach a slippery slope that ends in the disposal of inconvenient people or in grotesque deliberations on the value of individual lives. But the endless abortion debate shows how hard it is to locate the boundary.” Some conservative religious critics fail to get that far. In a 2000 piece titled “Evolution’s No Excuse for Rape” (at boundless.org/2000/features/a0000236.html) Roberto Rivera claimed that Pinker’s “now-famous—or infamous” article had “argued that society should not treat mothers who kill their newborn children the same way it treats those who kill older children and adults.” What Pinker (1997b, 54) had said is that societies already treat it differently, not that they necessarily ought to: “Most observers sense the desperation that drives a woman to neonaticide. Prosecutors sometimes don’t prosecute; juries rarely convict; those found guilty almost never go to jail. Barbara Kirwin, a forensic psychologist, reports that in nearly 300 cases of women charged with neonaticide in the United States and Britain, no woman spent more than a night in jail. In Europe, the laws of several countries prescribed less-severe penalties for neonaticide than for adult homicide.” 205 This from someone who would not defend Wedge compatriot Michael Behe’s methodology from Miller or Pennock (as noted in the last chapter), even though Johnson had a whole book in which to do it. Compared to the shorter treatment of human evolution, and the even more cursory reptile-mammal transition and Cambrian Explosion sections, Johnson’s rhetorical stamina in the Pinker episode seems to run inversely proportional to the missing background information. Given that, one is tempted to think if Johnson penned a really comprehensive treatment of a subject it would disappear right off the page (having no length at all). 206 Ferguson (1998, 16). The “Conjecture solidifies into facts” quote concerned Ferguson (1998, 21), objecting in particular to Pinker’s use of Martin Daly and Margo Wilson’s 1988 work on Homicide, which contended human infanticide might be “the desperate decision of a rational strategist allocating scarce resources.” Daly & Wilson highlighted studies of the !Kung San culture of the Kalahari Desert (a stressed environment if ever there was one) where infanticide runs at a comparatively high 1.2% (6 out of 500 infant deaths) … “all of six” Ferguson disparaged, as though infanticide needed to be ubiquitous before it could be considered as a behavioral indicator. Ironically, general murder rates for such societies also tend to run above those of “urban jungles” like New York or Los Angeles, Pinker (2002, 56-57)—though dwarfed by the conspecific killing rates found in nature, which run thousands of times higher, Dennett (1995, 478). Ferguson (1998, 22) was also especially bothered by Pinker’s drawing on Daly & Wilson for the generalization that our putative ancestral hunter-gatherers would have shared with the !Kung San a tendency to nurse children longer (for two to four years). Cf. Marks (2002, 169-172) for perspective on how !Kung San culture had been simplified by some sociobiologists in a Rousseau-like quest for living analogues to our evolutionary past. 207 Ferguson (1998, 18) bristled at the idea that humans might find especially attractive those habitats that resemble our ancestral savanna habitat. Cf. E. O. Wilson’s view that “human nature” was set back in our African savanna past, reiterated in his preface to the 2000 edition of Wilson (1975, viii)—and the relevant caveats of note 71 (chapter five). The scholarly point is that Ferguson insisted Pinker offered no citations for this claim, and that it contradicted our own experience (where people are just as likely to enjoy mountains or the sea). Except Pinker (1997a, 581n) had given a specific source: Jerome H. Barkow, Leda Cosmides, and John Tooby, editors of a 1992 Oxford University Press work, The Adapted Mind. Ferguson evidently didn’t spot this documentation because Pinker’s end notation system organized cited works by the page they applied to in the main text (not at all uncommon in certain forms of scientific writing, especially for a general audience). The specific comment on the savanna theory arose on the second page of that section, which meant there was no repeat reference to The Adapted Mind because it had already been listed. Beyond that, Pinker (1997a, 376) had not been entirely convinced by this argument, but offered it only as a possible interpretation. Not that Ferguson couldn’t have criticized Barkow

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et al.—though only at the risk of sounding a lot like Stephen Jay Gould (1997b; 1997c, 10755). Or diving into the technical issues from a Lewontin-friendly cognitive position, as Piatelli-Palmarini (1994, 186-195) does on the “base rate” theories of Cosmides & Tooby. For some context, Dugatkin (2000a, 124-128) explained that the evolutionary psychology idea about seemingly maladaptive human behavior being a holdover of our hunter-gatherer past lies (ironically enough) at the opposite pole from the memetic position of the Blackmore/Dawkins camp. Evolutionary psychologists also tend to see the brain as a collection of “domain specific” specialized modules, rather than as a universal learning instrument. 208 The first two Pinker quotes indicate Johnson had read the original: the first one opened with the “it” that Ferguson (1998, 21) left out, while Ferguson didn’t use the second quote on maternal disposing of sickly newborns at all (more on that below). But the remaining quotes tracked Ferguson very closely. The third quote matched the one in Ferguson (1998, 23) exactly. Johnson slightly shortened the fourth passage compared to Ferguson (1998, 21), but kept the identical texts (including ellipses) for Michael Kelly’s Washington Post fret and the longer “ethical theory” Pinker (1997a, 55-56) passage following. The “science and morality” quote from Pinker (1997a, 55) occurred on Ferguson (1998, 20)—incidentally, Johnson’s sole footnote for the section was attached to this point, and it was incorrect: “See Pinker, How the Mind Works, n. 7.” The remaining quotes were from Pinker’s rejoinder to Ferguson, where Johnson perforce flew solo. Incidentally, the brief reprise of his criticism of Pinker in Ferguson (2001, 35-36) did not allude to the MIT pundit’s rejoinder. But then Ferguson’s 2001 piece was aiming at a larger political target: complaining about the comparative popularity of evolutionary psychology among right wingers, while left wingers retain their ideological skepticism about “nature versus nurture.” That has been true even on the pages of The American Spectator, where excerpts from Matt Ridley’s book Nature via Nurture appeared as Ridley (2003b). This time around Ferguson added some comments on Peter Singer, whose views on infanticide, euthanasia and abortion really are like those that he was accusing Pinker of holding. For a good Halloween scare, read Singer (2000, 160-164, 186193). Cf. Arnhart et al. (2000, 23-28), where Larry Arnhart reflected on the “intellectual confusion among conservatives” over Darwin that Ferguson was grumping about, and defended “the goodness of Darwinism as sustaining a conservative view of human nature and moral order.” 209 Per notes 189 (chapter two) & 222 (chapter four). The suffocatingly tight adherence to Ferguson’s lead also sheds light on what we could see going on with Martin Eger’s shredded Kitcher creationism quote (re notes 109-110, chapter one). Having read what he apparently wanted to be true (that evolutionists were objecting to “creationism” on largely a philosophical pretext), a confirmation of page numbers was all Johnson would have needed. That the Wedge measures the appropriateness of a source largely by its apologetic convenience popped up again in Johnson (2000, 77-78). “In the National Post of Canada [for August 19, 1999] Philip Mathias wrote that he had graduated some years back from London University after studying chemistry, physics, mathematics and evolutionary biology. His experience is that ‘I have tried to debate evolution with many scientists, and their reaction is always the same—at first, the discomfort felt by a believer faced with the unbeliever, and then, when the light dawns, contempt for somebody they believe to be a religious nut.’ This reaction goes a long way toward explaining why there are so few persons with careers in mainstream science who are willing to challenge Darwinism.” Johnson skipped the part where Mathias said that he believed “even less in creationism, which teaches God created each species by miracle at different stages in the history of the world.” Having not encountered Mathias’ views before, late in 2000 I undertook some online investigation. I found excerpts from Mathias’ piece in a smorgasbord of articles on evolution plopped oddly under “CLINTON’S ROGUES GALLERY” (at alamo-girl.com/034442.html). I also contacted Mathias via the NP to find out his actual views. It turned out Mathias hadn’t known that he’d been quoted in The Wedge of Truth—meaning Johnson had never thought to look into whether Mathias’ experience with contemptuous Darwinists could be fairly spun into an object lesson on the summary intimidation of gifted scientific spirits. Mathias hadn’t really kept up on the explosion of recent fossil and biological information (his chemistry degree was in 1958, and thus about the time Johnson’s scientific education was petering out in high school). Had Johnson thought to consult

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the source more directly, he could have learned further that Mathias had tried reading Johnson’s Darwin on Trial, but found it “ill-disguised pseudo-creationism, and flaccid analysis at best. Most unsatisfying in terms of intellectual rigour.” 210 Burke (1984, 26). Much as Johnson with Pinker, Morris & Morris (1996c, 79) latched onto Burke (1984, 29) as evidence that evolutionists actually accept infanticide, rather than merely trying to understand where it might have come from. The Morrises focused on Burke’s observation that “Charles Darwin noted in The Descent of Man that infanticide is ‘probably the most important of all checks’ on population growth throughout most of human history.” 211 Hrdy (2001, 58). Occasional maternal infanticide is known among chimpanzees, though, as noted by Pusey et al. (1997), with commentary by Wrangham (1997). Dunbar & Barrett (2000, 81, 161) note lemur infanticide and tamarin behavior respectively. Regarding practices by the human branch of the primates, an illustrative case concerns the prevalence of infanticide and infant abandonment among the rural poor of China during the 12th & 13th centuries, Gernet (1959, 148149). Part of the evolutionary biology equation involves paternity: chimpanzee infanticide tends to involve bastard children, but that situation dramatically changes with the bonobos, where infanticide (or physical aggression) is unknown. Ironically, this appears to be due to the bonobos’ considerable promiscuity, as there is more genetic risk to bastard infanticide when it is difficult to determine paternity (and thus whether the infant being removed might actually be your own). It is interesting that the more peaceful Bonobo also follow the “make love not war” motto, engaging in sex in public (including homosexual couplings) almost at the drop of a stick as a way of defusing social tension. See Savage-Brumbaugh & Lewin (1994, 109-117), Pennock (1999, 44), Dunbar & Barrett (2000, 197), Anne E. Pusey, “Of Genes and Apes: Chimpanzee Social Organization and Reproduction,” and Frans de Waal, “Apes from Venus: Bonobos and Human Social Evolution,” in de Waal (2001a, 23-30, 34-36, 51-54, 60-68, 257-258n), or Zimmer (2001g, 254-256)—but also the stickler for details, Marks (2002, 175-176). De Waal (2001a, 50): “The art of sexual reconciliation may well have reached an evolutionary peak in the bonobo.” Jolly (1999, 175-176) tags them as “undeniably the sexiest of the primates,” while Jennifer Lindsey (1999, 83) decided that, “Indeed, bonobos are the only great ape believed to mate just for sheer entertainment.” 212 Burke (1984, 31). Infanticide is hardly the only instance where moral judgments intersect naturalistic investigation. Teicher (2002) notes the antisocial (though still adaptive) behaviors triggered by severe childhood stress (sexual and psychological). Understanding that process by no means requires society to stop trying to discourage child abuse (or condone the aggressiveness of those so abused). An even more curious case where risky behavior may relate to biology concerns the brain parasite Toxoplasma gondii, Zimmer (2000d,e) and Sapolsky (2003). A close relative of the Plasmodium malaria protozoan, its gene ring reminiscent of endosymbiotic plant chloroplasts. Its primary hosts are rats and cats—and to facilitate the jump from former to latter Toxoplasma suppresses the rat’s normal (and prudent) tendency to avoid cats. Because of our own proximity to felines (and kitty litter) Toxoplasma has taken up residence in about a third of human beings, which has caused a few toxicologists to wonder whether some of our own “stupid and foolhardy” behavior might be due to the wee beastie’s psychotropic effects. The exact mechanisms responsible for such extraordinary effects will probably take some time to pin down, since there are unknowns even about the more mundane microbiology of Toxoplasma’s parasitical cycle, as detailed by Black & Boothroyd (2000). Roger Highfield in The Sunday Telegraph (August 10, 2000, smh.com.au/news/008/10/pageone/pageone6.html) noted further instances of parasitical organisms manipulating their host’s behavior to facilitate their own propagation. Such as the wasp that reprograms the web making of the spider it is devouring to provide a handy anchor cable for its pupal stage once the host has been digested—or the liver fluke that induces one of its intermediate vectors (an ant) to climb up onto exposed grasses and suicidally wait there to be eaten by grazing cattle. Then there’s the bacterium Wolbachia, meddling in the sex lives and gender of a host of invertebrates, Schulenburg et al. (2000), Hurst & Randerson (2002), Zimmer (2002d) on Tram & Sullivan (2002), Werren (2003)—though note Weeks et al. (2002) for perspective. Ain’t nature wonderful? Cf. notes 191 above & 36 (chapter four). Even suicidal behavior can be adaptive, such as when male spiders offer themselves up for dinner, thereby lessening the females’ likelihood of

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mating with rivals, Andrade (1996) and Judson (2002, 95-104). Incidentally, John Alcock cited Andrade’s findings in a stinging criticism of Stephen Jay Gould in the April/May 2000 issue of Boston Review (available online at bostonreview.mit.edu/BR25.2/alcock.html). 213 Bruce Chapman, unsuccessful Washington state gubernatorial candidate and founder of the Discovery Institute, expressed precognitive outrage over Pinker’s November 2, 1997 New York Times Magazine piece in the October 21st Seattle Post-Intelligencer (available in the Discovery Institute online archive). Chapman complained that Pinker had made “no mention of evil, of the wanton breaking of a religious or moral code.” He ended with a populist jibe: “It’s a geneticallydetermined, instinct-driven desire to punch Professor Pinker in the nose. Now don’t blame me; studies show that you should blame my hunter-gatherer ancestors.” 214 Over on the YEC side, Chittick (1984, 114) was just as certain of his ethical landscape: “Moral standards derived from the Bible have given the highest standard of morality the world has ever known.” Unfortunately he offered as apologetic evidence for this only a quote from a hostile witness, Stephen G. Brush (a physicist and historian of science whom Chittick labeled as “a historian”) concerning how some wanted creationism in the schools because they view evolution as the root of immorality. “They may be right about the historical correlation between acceptance of evolution and erosion of traditional moral values, but this does not prove that one caused the other,” Brush argued. Chittick took that as “Brush is forced to admit that there may indeed be a correlation between acceptance of evolution and a decline in traditional moral values. Apparently, however, he is not willing to grant that one caused the other.” There may also be a correlation between the “erosion of moral values” and the popularity of touch-tone telephones … Chittick had quite resolutely failed to get Brush’s logical point here. The confusion of “correlation with causation” is unfortunately not restricted to Chittick and creationism; Goertzel (2002) labels many modern econometric studies (such as on gun control, capital punishment and homicide rates) as “junk science” for that very reason. 215 This is a common theme in Pinker’s argument on moral reasoning, such as that in Pinker (1997a, 55). Interestingly, Carter (2001, 137-138) referred to this issue via an analogy from the Broadway musical Damn Yankees, where the devilish Mr. Applegate waxed nostalgic for “the good old days” when the rack was in fashion. But I have always found that number ironic for a different reason: as bad as Applegate’s examples were, even Jack the Ripper seemed horribly blasé for the 1950s compared to the monumental atrocities of Hitler and Stalin. That period context may have been why the song steered clear of vignettes too topical for good taste. 216 Johnson (2000, 165-166). He didn’t elaborate on who might have actually advanced such a deconstructivist argument. Instead he quoted John Searle (Mind, Language, and Society, New York: Basic Books, 1998, p. 35) saying that if proof of God did come along, this datum would be added as yet another observable feature of the natural universe. That Johnson mistook Searle’s empiricism as a preemptive disregard for the factual or ethical precepts of Christianity indicates how small a logical cubicle the Theistic Realism fortress really is. Interestingly, Searle’s example is relevant to an equally abstract assessment of the role of religious convictions in public life given by Islamic feminist Azizah Y. al-Hibri, “Standing at the Precipice: Faith in the Age of Science and Technology,” in al-Hibri et al. (2001, 77). “God is not a private option added to their beliefs but the very center post of these beliefs. Take God out, then their system is hollow, rendering it extremely vulnerable. This state of affairs is akin to that of asking secularists to restate their views after adding to them one simple assumption, namely, the existence of God. Clearly, that one simple assumption will wreck havoc on their worldview, forcing them to reshape their arguments and remold them in ways that would be oppressive to them.” Only this matter was far from “simple,” since the degree of havoc to be wrecked on any particular secularist worldview could depend at least a little on which version of “God” one were postulating, but al-Hibri did not investigate that aspect of her comparison. 217 Johnson (1995, 36-37, 221-222). Not everybody thought our religious revivals were such a swell thing at the time—see the contrasting contemporary opinions quoted in Gatell & McFaul (1970, 46-58). More generally, Robert Bruce Mullin, “North America,” in Hastings (1999, 416457) surveys the history of Christianity in America from Colonial times to the present.

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Although 9 of the 13 colonies had established churches at the time of the Revolution, only about 7% of the people were active members in them, Ruth Brown (2002, 17-18), noting also that Massachusetts was the last of the states to disestablish, in 1833. The advantages of a disestablished American religion were stressed by Jean Bethke Elshtain, “Faith of Our Fathers and Mothers: Religious Belief and American Democracy,” in al-Hibri et al. (2001, 39-61). In summary (p. 45): “By diminishing the official power of religion, Americans appeared to have enhanced its social strength.” Parenthetically, Martin E. Marty, “Introduction: Faith Matters,” in al-Hibri et al. (2001, 24): “Alfred North Whitehead once said that the history of Western philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato. Elshtain might be ready to remark that the history of the observing of American democracy is a sequence of endnotes to Tocqueville.” Cf. Bishop (1999) on multinational surveys of religious beliefs. Stephen Carter (2001, 42) takes the spirit of decentralized American religion especially to heart when he advised: “The religious voice, as I have argued, should always be welcome, its words taken seriously, respected, and honored, even if, in the end, the society chooses to go another way—but, at the moment the prophet begins to relish that welcome, the power of prophecy begins to drain away.” 219 See Ayers (1991) and Kenneth Greenberg (1996) on the curious legacy of antebellum dueling, including its connection to slavery and the subsequent social pathology of modern gang warfare— cf. Pinker (2002, 428-431). Much like the Romans (whose culture they often admired), for Southern gentlemen appearance was everything. Thus it didn’t really matter if you were a liar or smelled like a skunk … it only mattered that no one ever openly accuse you of lying or stinking. Contemporary observers who came from cultures where underlying facts meant more than social appearance (such as Benjamin Franklin and de Tocqueville) struggled to comprehend the quarrelsome propensity of Southerners. As examined by Ayers and Greenberg, the contrasting concepts of Southern “honor” and Northern “dignity” were clearly cultural values. About the only “religious” variable was the Puritan influence on Yankee self-control. Ayers (1991, 107): “Where honor celebrated display, the ideal Puritan called for restraint. Where honor looked outward, the Puritans looked inward. Dignity also steadily gathered strength in the antebellum North because it was inextricably tied to the transformations of society and personality that accompanied the development and growth of a culture built around business.” Regarding the positive impact of Christianity, cf. note 169 above on compassion. The contrast also pertains at a personal level, such as with geologists Steno and Woodward (note 17 of chapter five) or Las Casas and Sepulveda over Spanish slavery (discussed in chapter seven). 220 Johnson (1995, 197). In one sense this is a social counterpart of Johnson’s freeform typological view of nature—except operating by a sort of dialectic inversion. Whereas Johnson can spot static “types” wherever he wants to, with complete flexibility unimpaired by any morphological precision, he obviously considers irrational tribalism a bad thing, and so something that cannot be a subset of his own religious tradition. It must therefore be due to the antithesis, the dreaded scientific materialism. Running on that logic, specific examples of irrationality and tribalist excess (of a sort we’ll be investigating shortly) would only get in the way, much like actual invertebrates or elephant trunks in the taxonomical realm (as chronicled in chapters four and five). Glynn (1997, 149-153) similarly positions tribalism as something that can infect Christianity, but is not part of its core inspiration. 221 Johnson (1998a, 177-178), reviewing “Frederica Mathewes-Green’s Facing East: A Pilgrim’s Journey into the Mysteries of Orthodoxy (HarperCollins, 1997) and Not of This World: The Life and Teaching of Fr. Seraphim Rose (Fr. Seraphim Rose Foundation, 1993)” in Books & Culture (September/October 1997). Glynn (1997, 155-156) similarly affirmed that “As best as we can tell, the very early Church, the pre-imperial Church, embodied the New Testament values to a remarkable degree.” The new religion spread so quickly partly because “the early Christians were such nice people,” but that spirit was countered after the Edict of Milan pressed the official Church into bureaucracy and politics. Glynn did not mention such fractious pre-Constantine Christians as Origen, Tertullian or Marcion. Such roseate views are hardly a new development in Christian apologetics. In an 1889 essay on agnosticism Thomas Huxley (1896, 286) commented: “There is a widespread notion that the ‘primitive Church,’ while under the guidance of the Apostles and their

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immediate successors, was a sort of dogmatic dovecot, pervaded by the most loving unity and doctrinal harmony.” 222 Per note 113 above. Paul Johnson (1977, 22, 43) noted how most of early church history (such as the compilations of Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis in the early 2nd century) comes down to historians filtered through Eusebius. While he was (for his time) a learned man and “not unaware of his own deficiencies,” Michael Grant (1993, 4-5) lamented that “Eusebius was not only a mediocre stylist but a depressingly unobjective historian. Despite his occasional touches of scholarly caution, and his refusals from time to time to believe improbabilities and lies (notably in the matter of Constantine’s ‘vision’), he falsified the emperor into a mere sanctimonious devotee, which he was not, and showed himself guilty of numerous contradictions and dishonest suppressions, and indeed erroneous statements of fact, or untruths. For, even if not deliberately fraudulent, Eusebius was indifferent to precision, for example in relation to chronology, and his quotations from sources are often inaccurate and garbled.” Which may be compared to the comfortable Thomas & Farnell (1998, 53): Eusebius “records that he exerted great effort to be honest and objective in using the best and most reliable of the primary sources available to him.” Cf. note 102 above on appeals to self-affirming authority. 223 The absence of direct provenance for Biblical stories is apparent once you start asking commonsense questions. For example, Josh McDowell (1979, 223-225) remarked that “Matthew makes the following observations” in chapter 27 concerning events at the tomb and the guards’ tale to the priests. But Matthew never claims to have been present at the tomb or in Pilate’s conference room to observe any of this, so from whom did he obtain these private conversations between the guards and the priests? For that matter, who were the “saints” whose bodies were purportedly resurrected during the earthquake that Matthew 27:51-53 claimed took place as Jesus died on the Cross. Although they subsequently “appeared unto many” in town, whatever happened to them? Was their resurrection permanent or only temporary? There would be some dandy eyewitnesses to interview on the Wayback mission … as well as some seismic readings to look over to corroborate that portentous earthquake. McDowell also noted how the enemies of Christ “were silent” as though he had reviewed the official C-SPAN transcript of who did or did not say what about any of this in 1st century Jerusalem. Hank Hanegraaff’s critique of the ABC Jesus special (re note 121 above) illustrated another facet of Christian apologetics: buttressing belief in the Gospel stories because “antagonistic eyewitnesses would have easily discredited their accounts if they were saying untrue things” and that “There was no time for legend or false stories to creep in.” But would contemporary eyewitness objections have been believed? Hanegraaff ironically illustrated exactly this pitfall in his contemporary acceptance of Austin’s view of the Grand Canyon and impermeability to doubts about Gish (notes 40 & 44 above). Compilers like Luke therefore needed to be only no more on top of things than Hanegraaff for the flame of religious conviction to burn away any lingering uncertainty. 224 Regarding the doctrinal differences that sparked those schismatic conflicts, Phillip Johnson (1998a, 173) declared that “I’m all for vigorous debate on a proper occasion, but first I want to celebrate the treasure that we hold in common.” Whether this “proper occasion” will occur before or after he examines Probainognathus or the Flood in front of critical evolutionists or historians remains to be seen. Like Johnson, Focus on the Family’s Tom Minnery (2001, 19-25) also treated unpleasantries like the Crusades and Inquisition only to a later church that had veered away from Christianity’s inherently reformist character. LaHaye (1999, 65) operated under a higher historical compression ratio than Johnson or Minnery, but traced a similar arc: “The light that Jesus Christ entrusted to His Church all but flickered out during the Dark Ages and was not rekindled until the days of the Reformation.” These busy centuries were largely irrelevant to LaHaye, who decided the “dark” in the Dark Ages meant “the program of merging paganism with Christianity.” 225 By the second half of the 2nd century Christianity had expanded enough that local “cult” variants could be very popular, especially among intellectuals. They tended to be sincere and extreme (recall Origen from note 114 above)—or the cynic philosopher Peregrinus, who (despite the Greek satirist Lucian’s derision) became a convert in Palestine and cremated himself at the end of the Olympic Games in 165, Paul Johnson (1977, 49). Such variety didn’t seem to pose too

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much of a problem until the 2nd century, by which time “most Christians were born into the faith rather than converts,” as covered by Martin Goodman, “The emergence of Christianity,” in Hastings (1999, 21-23). Meanwhile, the eastern churches had managed to steer clear of these extremes, so that by 235 they had become a major force in the growing religion, Armstrong (1993, 105). While this would eventually necessitate a political solution, so long as they were considered an antisocial cult by the authorities there was little the church could do to crush doctrinal disputants. Moreover, one of the reasons why the early church posed such a threat to paganism was precisely because it spread without using force. Though Robin Lane Fox (1986, 422) commented ironically that, “During their years of persecution, Christians are not known to have attacked their pagan enemies: they shed no innocent blood, except their own.” Once Christianity became the state religion, though, that equation would change—and quickly. 226 Baumgartner (1999, 42). Paul Johnson (1977, 93) noted the Montanists and Donatists held rabblerousing mass meetings, and were not averse to bribing conversions when there was enough money. Given the politics of the Republic and Empire, this sort of thing was quintessentially Roman—though regional and political rivalries also played a part. Founded in the 2nd century, the Carthaginian church resisted Roman authority (secular as well as religious) with just as much vigor as Hannibal centuries before. Not unlike Ireland in more modern times, their resentment was aggravated by the many absentee Roman landlords who owned latifundia in the region (where some took up residence after the fall of Rome). The Donatists were an especially dogmatic bunch of separatists, even writing in Punic rather than Latin, Johnson (1977, 82-85). Cf. the contrasting coverage of the Donatist controversy in two coincident Princeton University Press publications: Stark (2003, 36-38) and Zagorin (2003, 26-33). 227 Chidester (2000, 96-97). Constantine didn’t press too far with persecution, knowing how ineffective that could be (Donatists were often quite avid for martyrdom), Michael Grant (1993, 164-167). While the Donatists outlasted Constantine, in 347 they ran into a murderous government commission of “state violence” under Count Macarius, Paul Johnson (1977, 83-84). 228 The Arian movement was a popular amalgam of Platonism and Origen that disputed the notion of creation ex nihilo as well as the formula for the constitution of God. What pressures went on behind the scenes at Nicea in 324-325 can only be partly known today, but only Arias and two others refused to sign the Nicene Creed. This first ecumenical council marked the shift from acceptance of all forms of Christianity (but not paganism) to toleration for only one form of Christianity. See Durant (1944, 657-661), Harold Brown (1984, 104-143), Armstrong (1993, 107113), Michael Grant (1993, 167-176), Chidester (2000, 98-104) and Moynahan (2002, 119-123) for a sampling of treatments. Given the conflict between the monotheistic roots of Judaism and the triune God promoted by Constantine, it was difficult to avoid sliding into heretical beliefs one way or another. This was especially true in the eastern church, where the ambiguities of Greek caused more trouble than in the Latin west, Brown (1984, 127-131). Ironically, this dispute eventually helped ease the acceptance of Islam in the east, Paul Johnson (1977, 89-93). 229 Paul Johnson (1977, 87-88). Michael Grant (1993, 180) noted Constantine also ordered the works of the pagan scholar Porphyry burnt. Arias himself didn’t make martyrdom, dropping dead in a latrine while still under the cloud of official censure. Like today’s controversial figures, Athanasius inspired petty allegations against him—where he got into trouble with Constantine was in trying to restrict church membership (at odds with the imperial policy of incorporating a compliant Christianity into his political corner), and the emperor threatened Athanasius with exile in 328. The Synod of Tyre actually condemned the bishop in 335, though he ended up back in the thick of things thanks to the intervention of the non-Christian Emperor Julian (see note 239 below). A reality check: as indicated by Athanasius re St. Anthony and demonology (note 42 above) this was hardly a period of enlightened rational discourse. For contrast, the hagiography of Athanasius versus the Arians in McBrien (2001, 186-188, 254, 308-309, 371-373) put the Arians alone in an invariably unpleasant light, such as noting that it was an Arian woman who killed Eusebius in 379. And for some ironic meringue, Richard B. Westfall, “Isaac Newton,” in Ferngren (2002, 156) noted how “Newton did not think of Athanasius and his cohorts in the fourth century merely as mistaken. Rather, he regarded them as criminals, who had seized Christianity by fraud and perverted it as they

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pursued selfish ends, even tampering with the Scriptures to insert trinitarian passages that he could not find in versions earlier than the fourth century.” 230 Paul Johnson (1977, 69). Cf. Michael Grant (1993, 82, 102, 107, 149-150, 185) … and note 284 below on demonic belief in early Christian thought. Like Tiberius degenerating during his isolated years on Capri, Constantine grew less attractive with age, ending up as a bloated yet effete puritan terrorizing his court. That such people ran empires as often as they did is one more argument for the existence of an active free press and an informed population willing to take their political reality straight up and do something about it within a context of honest representative government. 231 MacMullen (1984, 50). Given the record of Caligula (who liked to humiliate senators and their wives) and Nero (who tended to murder relatives who might be rivals for his throne) that was saying something. Michael Grant (1993, 109): “Constantine’s behaviour is inexcusable by any standards, and casts a blot on his reputation. Being an absolute autocrat, he believed that he could kill anyone.” His victims included not only his eldest son, but later the second wife who’d talked him into it, Grant (1993, 111-115). For contrast, Moynahan (2002, 89-98) painted a fairly benign view of Constantine. 232 MacMullen (1984, 44). See Robin Lane Fox (1986, 609-662) or Michael Grant (1993) on Constantine’s rise to power and influence on Christianity. For just such reasons, not everybody has been happy with the impact of Constantine. Hunt (1998, 408-409) represents the End Time position: “Most of the corruption of the church can be traced to the supposed conversion of Constantine to Christianity. This remarkable event could only have been a master strategy of Satan. Constantine married Christianity to paganism and opened the door of the Church to a massive occult invasion.” LaHaye (1999, 73) went even further, extending his suspicion of Constantine’s state religion to voicing doubts about the compromises of some Reformation churches. Over on the scholarly side, Stark (2003, 33-34) is also critical of Constantine’s contribution to early Christianity. 233 Although not numerous, Christianity at the start of the 4th century was nonetheless pervasive, having spread among a large number of churches throughout the empire, and perhaps doubling the number of believers over the preceding half century. Cf. the map of Christian churches in Lane Fox (1986, 274-275, 317) and his guestimation of 2% of Romans being Christian in 250. Christianity appears also to have been more popular in rural areas than in the great cities, paralleling the similar image of pastoral suburban community presented in The Robe. By growing independently of city life (and remaining wary of its secular temptations) the roots of Christianity could survive the decline in urban culture during the Middle Ages. But that same process of grassroots evangelizing guaranteed a level of regional sectarian variety to fuel centuries of heresy and persecution. Paul Johnson (1977, 86): “At one time in a single Phrygian town there were churches run by Montanists, Novatianists, Encratites and Apotactites or Saccophori, all of them forbidden sects. Scattered throughout the imperial territories there were varieties of Christian Enthusiasts, priest-deserters or vacantiui, catenati or long-haired, chained ascetics, fanatic robber monks and great numbers of heretical groups. By the 390s, Filastrius, the elderly Bishop of Brescia, who had spent his entire life collecting information about heresy, had compiled a list of 156 distinct ones—all, it would seem, still flourishing.” 234 Paul Johnson (1977, 67-68). See Casson (1998, 90-92) on Mithraism, which rose to prominence late in the 2nd century AD. Cf. Michael Grant (1993, 134-136, 221-222) … also notes 114 above on Augustine and the Cybele cult, and 239 below regarding Julian the Apostate. Casson (1998, 21): “The biggest event of the year was the Saturnalia, the pagan holiday that underlies Christmas. By the second century A.D. it had grown from one to seven days in length, lasting from December 17 to 23. Schools were closed, gifts were exchanged, and it was the season to be jolly. Everyone, children included, was allowed to play gambling games, no slaves could be punished, and the height of fun came when these exchanged places with the masters and were themselves waited on, reclining in style in the triclinium.” 235 MacMullen (1984, 86-101) had no difficulty in filling a chapter on “Conversion by Coercion.”

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Paul Johnson (1977, 258). According to Johnson (1977, 43), “Heresy was another Judaic gift to the Christian Church, where it soon began to flourish mightily.” Reflecting Judaic sensibilities, the Christian version influenced mid-1st century debate with the hellenized Pauline branch of the church. While the destruction of Jerusalem prevented heresy hunting from flourishing in Jewish thought, there was no comparable brake for Christians, especially when they became a protected religion. Robin Lane Fox (1986, 31-32) usefully explored how Christians and Jews differed from “pagans” (a Christian slang term for a civilian, someone not a soldier in the army of God) in having a creed and doctrine along with the cultic practices. Christianity really mattered to the “faithful” (another new term in the Christian vocabulary) in a way it never had (or could) for pagans, who regarded “faith” as a rather uneducated attitude. Such emotionalism was only a distraction when it came to the cultural utility of cultic acts as a mirror of (and reinforcement for) the stability of the status quo. Indeed, as Armstrong (1993, 91-92) noted, one of the things that especially offended conservative Roman sensibilities about early Christians was their open flaunting of tradition (including that of their Judaic roots as well as those of the Roman state cults)—cf. note 286 below. 237 Paul Johnson (1977, 95). See also Adrian Hastings, “150-550,” in Hastings (1999, 52). Cf. Harold Brown (1984, 180-181, 194) with McBrien (2001, 259-260) on Ephesus, the guiding role of Cyril of Alexandria, and the eventual reaffirmation of his position as orthodoxy at Trullanum in 680-681. One factor in the doctrinal disputes of the time concerned the old dictum about the value of real estate: “Location, Location, Location.” When Constantine decided in 330 to build his “New Rome” in the Greek Christian east, it symbolized how the new imperial order was turning away from the old Rome with its long pagan history (though not without its closet Mithraics, like Constantine himself). As the west fragmented into rival feudal kingdoms, medieval Christianity there became “a fragile vessel,” Paul Johnson (1977, 125-264). Which meant the “Papal absolutism” Phillip Johnson alluded to en passant was increasingly irrelevant to how church councils settled doctrine for the east. “The ecclesiastical conflicts of the fourth and fifth centuries were in point of fact to a large extent due to the attempts of the Church of Alexandria to prevent Constantinople from ousting it in the pecking order of episcopal power,” Adrian Hastings, “150550,” in Hastings (1999, 39). Cf. Moynahan (2002, 123-127). Incidentally, Nestorian Christianity wasn’t stamped out entirely: a Persian branch spread to China in the 7th century—and had a brief heyday under (oddly enough) Mongol patronage in the 13th century, Gernet (1959, 215) and Moynahan (2002, 188-190). 238 There was an anti-Semitic element to Constantius’ campaign too: in 339 he decreed that Jews could not own Christians as slaves, Meltzer (1993, Vol. I, 223). Cf. David Davis (1984, 89-91). There was apparently no reverse prohibition on who Christians could own (see notes 327-329 below). An additional vignette from Constantius’ tenure: in 338 the reputed remains of Luke were transferred from Thebes in Greece to Constantinople, and some time later removed to a church in Padua, Italy. Recent radiocarbon dating and mtDNA analysis indicate the body could have been that of Luke—it is of the proper era and regional DNA configuration (Syrian or possibly Turkish), Vernesi et al. (2001). 239 Paul Johnson (1977, 72): “There was no systematic persecution of Christians before the second half of the second century.” And even until around 250 AD, Romans persecuted Christians on a piecemeal individual basis rather than targeting the institution comprehensively. Some Roman officials found this looser situation conveniently lucrative, as they ran what amounted to a protection racket to extort bribes from wealthy believers. It was only when Christianity had grown into a rival power base in a declining Roman world that “Toward Tradition” emperors took to stamping out the whole lot, culminating in the last-ditch intensity of the Great Persecution (AD 305-312)—albeit tinged with “an air of desperation,” Johnson (1977, 74). See Arnott (1970, 288305), Lane Fox (1986, 419-492, 596-608), Chidester (2000, 75-90) or Moynahan (2002, 69-81) on Christianity’s turbulent experience with Roman authority. Cf. also Michael Grant (1993, 127-128) on the role superstition played on both the Christian and pagan sides and Hopkins (1999, 109-121) on the mythic structure of the martyr tales. There was one brief attempt to return to paganism after the Edict of Milan, under Constantine’s nephew Julian (the Apostate) from 360 to 363, Moynahan (2002, 105-107). One of the reasons 236

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Julian gave for withdrawing military support for Christianity was to end the persecution of heretics (granting freedoms for all sects in this way might thereby sow internal dissent). That of course was the last thing orthodoxy had in mind, and after Julian died on a military campaign in Persia they returned to the business of stamping out heresy. Ironically, Julian’s revocation of exile for religious reasons allowed Athanasius to get back into the picture, leading to the Synod of Alexandria in 362, and then the Second Ecumenical Council in 381, when Christianity was made the only acceptable form of worship, Chidester (2000, 91). The eastern co-emperor during the Second Council was the pious fanatic Theodosius I, whose many edicts on heresies ranged from confiscation of property to executions, Zagorin (2003, 23-24). 240 See Paul Johnson (1977, 97-98) and MacMullen (1984, 81-85, 97-99). Christian monasticism also presented a challenge to the increasingly worldly church, and not always in a particularly attractive way. Johnson (1977, 94): “The monks were often formed, or formed themselves, into black-robed squads for the execution of the Church’s business, first to smash up pagan temples, later to rampage through the streets and basilicas in time of doctrinal controversy. Monasticism attracted misfits, bankrupts, criminals, homosexuals, fugitives, as well as the pious; it was also a career for raw peasant youths who could be drilled into well-disciplined monkish regiments to be deployed as an unscrupulous bishop might think fit.” Moynahan (2002, 138-143) covers the eccentric side of the monastic urge, such as the fashion for pillar-sitting inspired by Simeon the Stylite in the 5th century. 241 The Orthodox east has gone through a see-saw of toleration and violence fully in keeping with their cyclical view of history—an “Orthodox time” that feeds off old grudges and injustices, as though Northern Ireland were spread over a whole region. Victoria Clark (2000, 3-43) identified two main trends in Orthodoxy since the split with Rome in 1054: the otherworldly monasticism of the Hesychast movement, and the lethal nationalistic ethnicity of Phyletism (especially in Bulgaria). The long shadow of Phyletism extends to the recent activities of Radovan Karadžic in Sarajevo and Slobodan Miloševic in Belgrade: that you had to tolerate a few war criminals on the way to generating proper Orthodox saints. Ironically, this “survival of the fittest” ethic went all the way back to the Byzantine monarchy: since emperors ruled by divine blessing, the very fact of their success justified whatever means it took to get there. There has also been the usual element of historical revisionism, such as the “great victory” spin Serbs put on the 1389 Battle of Kosovo, where the Ottomans crushed the Serbian Prince Lazar. The Ottomans actually showed the Orthodox Church far more tolerance than Rome would have (though the massacres when the Turks took Constantinople in 1453 showed what they were capable of in a pinch). Clark’s survey included the “violent allergic reaction in Orthodox Europe” to “the new gods of consumerism and democracy—the West’s cure-alls for post-Communist ills.” Here the currents of tradition and belief run deep: “A mind can close the circle like this but a heart can stay open,” Clark (2000, 415). Such attitudes may not play out against Phillip Johnson’s critique of worldly materialism in quite so sanguine a way as the Wedge strategy imagines it. For example, Clark (2000, 81, 303) quoted a distinctly politicized Orthodox Serbian nun who regards America as a Satanic country out to rule the world, and the dissident Father Dmitri in Russia pining for the lost autocracy as he complains about democrats and Jews out “to destroy the internal construction of a person.” 242 See Harold Brown (1984, 213-217), Mary B. Cunningham, “The Orthodox Church in Byzantium,” in Hastings (1999, 77-81) and Chidester (2000, 207-208). The parallel in Keys (1999, 50-51, 64-67, 154-155) is relevant: in the stressed aftermath of the 6th century Sumatran volcanic eruption Romans felt they were suffering the punishment of God, new forms of Jewish and Islamic messianism arose, and the Buddhist Left Way engendered its own form of escapism. Leo’s empire may be thought a continuation of this fallout: the Middle Eastern and African provinces were being rapidly devoured by the Islamic expansion, and a volcanic eruption in the Aegean in 726 may have been seen as a further bad omen. In this regard, Armstrong (1991, 432-434) noted how Christian scholars attributed the success of Islamic conversion to the employment of false miracles (though cf. also note 238 above). Once a superstitious mind comes to think God had forsaken Orthodoxy, it was only a matter of time before something like the icons fell into the crosshairs as a source of trouble you could at least get your hands on. But the Iconoclast controversy illustrated more than

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just why “Byzantine” has the connotation it does. The degree of animosity on both sides was so intense that historians have found it difficult to sort the facts from the propaganda. For example, non-Iconoclasts nursed a variety of horror tales about icon makers having their hands chopped off or eyes put out. Not unlike the influential Severan sisters, another of those strong imperial women played a pivotal role in the cycle of intolerance. Irene, the wife of Leo IV, was a devout protector of the icons and their makers. Her Lady Macbeth side manifested after her dissolute son sided with the Iconoclasts in order to became emperor as Constantine VI in 790: when Irene later regained the upper hand she had Constantine blinded. 243 Mary B. Cunningham, “The Orthodox Church in Byzantium,” in Hastings (1999, 93). In the Catholic West, meanwhile, the papacy was taking on all the institutional distemper of Herod or Nero on a bad day. Moynahan (2002, 243): “If patriarchs were servile, a string of pontiffs were degenerates. Nicholas the Great was the last pope to be canonized for almost two hundred years. The period of the first millennium was a time of papal depravity and fear of apocalypse. John VIII, elected in 872, was beaten to death by his own attendants; of the forty-one popes and antipopes who followed him, a third had unnatural deaths, by strangulation, suffocation, or mutilation. Stephen VIII had his ears and nose cut off, and was never again seen in public; the Greek antipope John XVI lost his eyes, nose, lips, tongue, and hands.” 244 Paul Johnson (1977, 243-250), Kimball (2002, 161-165) and Moynahan (2002, 222-264) present concise summaries of the Crusades; see Armstrong (1991) for more detail—or Jones & Ereira (1995), the companion volume to the very effective A&E cable documentary on that topic. Incidentally, “Jones” is Terry Jones, late of the Monty Python troupe, who also hosted the series— a display of “terrible history” according to the apologetic Catholic historian Madden (2002, 14). By the way, the sacking of Constantinople in 1202 that Phillip Johnson mentioned as the Christian nadir (re note 221 above) took place after Venice found Innocent III’s Fourth Crusade was over in Egypt before they had a chance to join in the fun. Rather than waste a perfectly good fleet and army, they attacked Byzantium instead to cart off everything not nailed down. The odd ways religion, politics and psychology interacted may be seen with the ascetic St. Bernard who launched the Second Crusade. Armstrong (1991, 223-224): “It is often true that the people who are not involved in a holy war tend to be more creative than their territorially minded brethren. We have seen that this is true in Judaism and in 1146 it was also true of Christianity. Indeed, Bernard’s crusading religion seems barren. Not only was his crusade a disaster but he thwarted creativity at home. As a Cistercian he disapproved of beautiful architecture and would have had no time for Chartres Cathedral; he destroyed Abelard’s intellectual movement, and even his mysticism was elitist and exclusive and only for Cistercians. Francis of Assisi would later bring spirituality to the people, and the friars would replace the Cistercians as the leaders of Europe in the thirteenth century.” Armstrong (1991, 229) added: “Bernard himself illustrates the sexual neurosis of the period. He was a dedicated misogynist in a long tradition of Christian misogyny and was so unable to cope with his sexuality that, when his own sister came to visiting him wearing a new dress, Bernard flew into a violent rage and called her a filthy whore and a clod of dung." Institutional neurosis won out in 1215 when Catholicism banned married clergy and mandated celibacy, Armstrong (1991, 244)—though given the centuries of ecclesiastical carousing leading up to it, such as noted by Stark (2003, 41-44), the policy may have been necessary. Cf. Moynahan (2002, 270) on Bernard’s love poetry to God. 245 The Cathars were Manichean dualists, believing there was an eternal battle between the god of good in heaven (God) and the god of evil (Satan) who ruled over the earth. The Cathars thus represent the distant echoes of the Zoroastrian beliefs that had been rippling through the philosophical landscape for centuries (cf. note 248 below). See Robbins (1959, 244-245), Harold Brown (1984, 249-261, 275-278), James Burke (1999, 196-198), Moynahan (2002, 279-285) and Stark (2003, 53-58) on the Albigensians, Bogomils, Cathars and Waldensians, whose offenses included activities as trivial as wanting to read the Bible in the vernacular. Brown particularly saw the Cathar persecution as a dry run for the bigger show of the Inquisition. Zagorin (2003, 36) also cautions: “There is no reason to think that heretics were more tolerant than their persecutors; had the followers of popular heresies possessed the power, they would surely have abolished the

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Catholic Church and hierarchy and imposed a religious order of their own.” By the way, the point man for the Cathar campaign in France was a boy: in 1229 the fifteen-year-old King Louis IX of France (later St. Louis), Armstrong (1991, 456). Louis led the last two Crusades (in 1248 and 1270, during which he died). Although responsible for some wonderful architecture, such as the island castle of La Sainte Chapelle, the anti-Semitic Louis “often behaved in a cruel, simple-minded, petty way,” Armstrong (1991, 435-436). Much as he had with the Arians (note 229 above), the details of the Cathar suppression in McBrien (2001, 155-156, 317-319) balanced Catholic apologetic concerns. He noted that the 1208 “murder of the papal legate unleashed a brutal reaction in the form of a crusade.” Just how brutal he didn’t say (but see note 252 below). The Dominican order arose as a reaction to the Cathars, and McBrien highlighted the fate of Peter of Verona (1205-1252). The son of Cathar parents, Peter had joined the Dominicans around 1220 (the same age as the enthusiastic Louis). Eventually appointed inquisitor of Milan, Peter’s efforts against the Italian Cathars “aroused much animosity and he was assassinated, along with a Dominican companion on his way from Como to Milan on April 6, 1252. One of his assailants later repented of his crime and his heresy and became a saintly Dominican lay brother.” Cf. Moynahan (2002, 276-278) on the order’s founder Dominic, as well as note 300 below on other monastic hobbies, including witch hunting and assassination. 246 Jones & Ereira (1995, 215)—cf. note 236 above. Nor have such attitudes disappeared. Colson & Pearcey (1999, xi): “Only Christianity offers a way to understand both the physical and the moral order. Only Christianity offers a comprehensive worldview that covers all areas of life and thought, every aspect of creation. Only Christianity offers a way to live in line with the real world.” Colson & Pearcey (1999, 369): “In fact, it is only Christians who have a worldview capable of providing workable solutions to the problems of community life.” Colson & Pearcey (1999, 395): “For only the Christian worldview provides the moral foundation essential to preserving free economic systems; only the Christian worldview provides a high view of work that gives meaning and dignity to human labor.” (Cf. notes 169-172 above.) Perhaps this mantra would have come across as way less smug if their 500-page book had been more thoughtful about establishing that other religions and philosophies really were such inherent failures. For example, Colson & Pearcey (1999, 136138) committed a category mistake by contrasting compassionate admonitions in Matthew 19:19, James 1:27 and Luke 10:30-37; 25:36 not with relevant Hindu scripture but with the brutal practices of one modern Indian prison. Thus did Colson & Pearcey not establish that Hindus were any more or less prone to hypocrisy as Christian torturers were in the Inquisition—cf. William Woods (1974, 43-46) on the presence of clerics and doctors during the interrogation of Father Dominic Gordel in 1631 (“not for the squeamish”). See also note 351 below on situational ethics. 247 Cf. Benedicta Ward & G. R. Evans, “The medieval West,” in Hastings (1999, 146): “Medieval Christianity’s greatest failure may perhaps be seen in what was, for a time, its striking and indeed successful characteristic: the power of the papacy to unify the Church and direct every aspect of society.” On this matter of demonizing one’s opponents, one may as well note the hyperbole of Margulis & Sagan (1997, 278): “Suffering philosophical distress, physics-worshipping neoDarwinists must reject autopoiesis and its attendant life-centered biology with the same zeal with which the Spanish true church, guarded by its Inquisitors, rejected the mescal- and peyote-eating religions of the Native Americans.” Of course, some Native American cultures were into ripping people’s beating hearts out to keep the sun rising—the Inquisitors were even more offended by that. 248 Paul Johnson (1977, 112-122). See McBrien (2001, 349-353) or Carroll & Shiflett (2002, 1-2, 12-15) for more sympathetic versions of Augustine’s life and legacy, minus the parousia and heresy issues—and Moynahan (2002, 144-155) for a quite evocative portrait of the unsettled times in which he lived. Augustine did recommend a path of comparative leniency by suggesting heretics shouldn’t be put to the rack or burned, but merely beaten with rods, Johnson (1977, 116)—an echo of Proverbs 23:13-14, incidentally. See also Zagorin (2003, 24-33). It may be psychologically relevant that Augustine spent his youth as a high-living playboy and follower of Manichaeanism, a syncretic mix of Christianity, Buddhism and Zoroastrianism founded by the Persian Mani (AD 216276). Cf. Moynahan (2002, 118-119). The Manicheans suffered terrible persecution under

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Diocletian (before his moving on the Christians)—and in 297 the Egyptian Manicheans were burned at the stake along with their texts, Michael Grant (1993, 128) and Armstrong (1993, 126127). Persian Zoroastrians hounded Manicheans at the same time, and the sect continued to be suppressed under Christianized Rome (I am reminded of the imitative persecution cycles of our own time, such as Hitler inspired by Stalin imitating Hitler disposing of political rivals). The fate of outsiders like the Manicheans may also be seen as rehearsals for the later Inquisition, Lane Fox (1986, 561-571) and Hopkins (1999, 262-279). An offshoot of Persian Manichaeanism spread to China, where they flourished for some time along the central Pacific coast, inspiring a revolutionary sect (the “Demon Worshippers”) during the 12th century, Gernet (1959, 208-209, 215). 249 Armstrong (1991, 26). Cf. Moynahan (2002, 240-243) as well as notes 177-178 above. 250 George Smith (2000, 183-184). Of course, LaHaye (1999, 59) had no trouble identifying who wore the White Hats in Reformation history: “Some outstanding products of that period are John Wycliffe, John Hus, Savonarola, and many others who earned their martyr’s crown because they refused to give up their adherence to the Word of God and Christ Jesus the Lord.” While the early reformism of Wycliffe had an honest heroism to it, the Reformation eventually proved just as susceptible to fanaticism and excess as the papal authority they opposed. Cf. Paul Johnson (1977, 267-328), Harold Brown (1984, 301-302, 311-328, 342-356), Baumgartner (1999, 81-99), Chidester (2000, 306-310), Moynahan (2002, 295-323, 334-337, 361-397) and Stark (2003, 6368). When the apocalyptic Dominican revolutionary Girolamo Savonarola briefly ran Florence he was known for burning obscene books and paintings (of the sort that lure less prudish tourists today) as “vanities.” There was a process of escalating extremism for factions like the German Anabaptists, abetted by Luther and Calvin’s propensity for hurling charges of heresy at one another. Johnson (1977, 290): “If both Lutherans and Calvinists (as well as Catholics) actively persecuted antinomian extremists, they also opposed and hated each other.” A particularly revealing vignette concerns Calvin’s duplicitous baiting of the “Basque Erasmian polymath Michael Servetus,” Johnson (1977, 289-290). Though Johnson’s book was cited elsewhere, Stark (2003, 127) did not note him when accusing Servetus of “poor judgment” for “foolishly” going to Geneva and his death. Cf. Zagorin (2003, 79-80, 93-144) on Sebastian Castellio’s contemporaneous outrage over Servetus’ betrayal. Zagorin (2003, 80) described the chilling insouciance of Calvin’s response to such criticism: “Calvin maintained that none but simple, ignorant people and malicious hypocrites and libertines who hated the Christian religion would deny the justice of punishing heretics with the sword.” Luther’s equally matter-of-fact recommendation of genocide for opponents found fertile application during the senselessly brutal Thirty Years’ War, Gould (1996b). The fracas began with the “Defenestration of Prague” in 1618: “Local Protestants, justifiably enraged when the very Catholic King Ferdinand II reneged on promises of religious freedom, stormed Hradcany Castle and threw three Catholic councilors out of the window and into the moat.” Apropos LaHaye’s list of heroes above, defenestration appears to have been a local Bohemian tradition of religious homicide: “Jan Hus, burned for heresy in 1415 and claimed by later Protestants as a precursor, inspired the initial defenestration of Prague in 1419,” Gould (1996b, 23). Parenthetically, see Alcock (2001, 143-147) for a somewhat astigmatic commentary on Gould’s article from the evolutionary psychology camp. 251 Kennedy (1997, 116-118). LaHaye (1999, 272-275) framed the issue solely as persecution of the Protestant Reformation, with no mention of any reprisal violence. A summary of Lee Strobel’s apologetic books for Crystal Cathedral Ministries (hourofpower.org) by Lydia P. Boyle accepted Strobel’s tertiary authority: “a leading expert on church history, Dr. Woodbridge points out that while atrocities have been done in the name of Jesus, people who had lost their spiritual way did them.” In the book Phillip Johnson heartily recommended, Hanegraaff (1998, 27) took the same approach: “It is significant to note that some of the Crusaders and others who used force to further their creeds in the name of God were acting in direct opposition to the teachings of Christ. The teachings of Osborn and others like him, however, are completely consistent with the teachings of Darwin.” The Bible Answer Man offered no examples of these “some,” no indications of which teachings of Christ they were purportedly violating—or indeed any references on the Crusades or

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the history of Christian violence at all. McDowell & Hostetler (1992, 34) invoked a reductionist straw man to similar effect, setting up the “Racist Myth” that Jesus was white as a way to pigeonhole centuries of Christian intolerance: “The Crusades. The Inquisition. The pogroms of tsarist Russia. The importation of slaves to the New World. The Racist Myth has contributed to many of the most hideous crimes and cruelties of history.” While anti-Semitism played varied roles in the Crusades and Inquisition (as we’ll see below), the Russian version was not racially based in the sense McDowell & Hostetler implied. “That this antagonism was religious rather than racial was repeatedly illustrated by cases of Jews who gave up their faith, accepted Orthodoxy, and moved freely into the general structure of Russian society,” Massie (1967, 100n). Cf. George Smith (2000, 80-82) on Christian hypocrisy concerning persecutions. The ability to distance one’s ideology from its unpleasant effects is by no means a preserve of conservative Christians, of course. Some Japanese have been as unwilling to come to grips with wartime atrocities (such as the “Rape of Nanking” in 1937 China) as any Holocaust Denier, Shermer & Grobman (2000, 231-237). 252 While 15,000 Cathars (young and old) could be slaughtered in one year (1209) the whole process was so haphazard that the Inquisition came about from 1180-1230 as a codification of practice, Paul Johnson (1977, 251-255). Roughly 10% of those accused by the Inquisition were killed; life imprisonment was more common, with shortened sentences if they denounced others. Prison overcrowding led some local authorities to burn more people than they were required to. Johnson (1977, 255): “The system was saved from utter horror only by the usual medieval frailties: corruption, inertia, and sheer administrative incompetence.” But to be frank, I find playing numbers games when it comes to human suffering not merely misleading but nauseating. Is the Terror of the French Revolution more or less “tolerable” because ten times as many people perished when the Paris Commune was ruthlessly suppressed in 1870? The Thirty Years’ War that devastated central Europe left a third of Germans and Bohemians dead, and both Catholic and Protestant armies engaged in horrible and indiscriminant violence, including torture (cf. note 248 above). That our modern century has been able to apply industrial techniques to such cruelty doesn’t in the least let the violence of past centuries off the hook. When Romans persecuted Christians this was vile and unacceptable—and so too was the similar violence directed at heretics by the Christian world in the centuries to follow. 253 Madrid (2001, 16-165) played a definition game, framing the discussion in terms of explaining how many people were mistaken in thinking the Inquisition was out to convert non-Catholics, when it was only to secure the faith of believers. Moynahan (2002, 285-287) also treated the Inquisition as a horrible aberration, “at war with the nature of Christianity itself.” Owen Gingerich, “The Copernican Revolution,’ in Ferngren (2002, 102) takes some points for sheer nonchalance when he observed of Giordano Bruno: “While the reasons for his condemnation as a heretic were many and complex, his dalliance with the Copernican doctrine gave pause to many Catholics when he was burned at the stake in 1600.” Yes, that would tend to give one pause, wouldn’t it? Cf. the equally glib Stark (2003, 127) dismissing Bruno as “a renegade monk, a Hermetic sorcerer, and something of a philosopher”—or Barr (2003, 290n) laconically noting Bruno was “burned at the stake” for theological not scientific heresies without venturing an opinion whether the Church had any legitimate right to hold such powers of coercion in the first place. Concerning the theological angle, though, Madrid’s textual “evidence” justifying the Inquisition was certainly threadbare: Matthew 10:12-15, 18:15-18, Mark 6:11, and Numbers 25: 1-8—but mainly quoting Deuteronomy 17:2-7 on how transgressors were to be stoned. Cf. Steve Allen (1990, 113-117) or Michael Shermer, “Let Us Reflect: How a Thoughtful, Inquiring Watchman Provided a Mark to Aim At,” in Kurtz (2001, 328-330) on the ethical deficiencies of Deuteronomy. Likewise, the grim post-Exile context (re note 105 above) of Deuteronomy 23:13 noted by Spong (1988, 31): “The enforcement of the law moved Judah into one of the uglier phases of her national history. Racial purists organized vigilante squads. Bloodlines were checked. Tensions ran high, as the inquisition tore families apart. Personal suffering was extreme. It was an opportunity to destroy political enemies. Banishment was automatic if the authorities could not be convinced of racial purity.” See also Spong (1991, 71-74) on Deuteronomy, Ezra and Nehemiah. It should be noted that the sort of ideas that many modern liberal Christians like Spong might hold (such as

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questioning Mary’s virginity or the authority of church hierarchy) could get you killed back in the 16th century along with Bruno, such as a freethinking Italian miller named Domenico Scandella (a.k.a. Menocchio) executed by the Inquisition in 1599, Chidester (2000, 348-350). 254 Insofar as the ICR represents a nexus of creationist belief, it is noteworthy that a third of the Morrises’ final volume of The Modern Creation Trilogy was devoted to exposing the “Corrupt Fruits” and “Deadly Social Philosophies” inspired by evolution. This reprised long-held views and methods (especially the elder Morris’ addiction to tactical authority quoting). See Morris & Morris (1996c, 85-91, 105-117) specifically on Nazism and Marxism. Such views freely circulate in the conservative Christian media. For example, a 2000 piece by “Boston Radio’s VOICE of REASON” (chuckmorse.com/evolutions_dirty_secret.html) affirmed that “The Theory of Evolution provides the moral justification for the modern Socialist movements which include Nazi, Communist, and Humanist.” Morse drew on Tornado in a Junkyard, a 1999 book by Young Earth creationist James Perloff, whose other interests include exposing the activities of the Council on Foreign Relations and explaining how New Deal communists helped engineer Pearl Harbor (several articles at thenewamerican.com/tna/2001/06-04-2001/vol1mp12.htm). Not unlike Phillip Johnson mining the New York Review of Books, Perloff took aim (worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=23765) at Time magazine’s coverage of human evolution, Lemonick & Dorfman (1999; 2001) and Gould (1999d). Perloff trod familiar ground (including the obligatory Piltdown/Nebraska Man allusion) along with the characteristic inability to appreciate how limited (though perfectly valid) fossil information is interpreted àla Cuvier. Cf. the Old Earth creationist crossfire of Rana Fazale, Richard Deem & Hugh Ross (reasons.org/resources/apologetics/humanevolution.html) on Lemonick & Dorfman (1999), and Adam Crowe’s critical No Answers in Genesis! posting of “The Case Against Perloff” (home.austarnet.com.au/stear/case_against_perloff_ac.htm). Chuck Morse’s secondary grip on contemporary evolutionary theory showed as he agreed with Perloff that “Birds did not turn into reptiles, which, did not then turn into mammals, which, in turn, did not turn into man.” Ironically, Hanegraaff (1998, 98) quoted Henry Morris quoting Elie Schneour of the Southern California Skeptics Society about how the abortion controversy ultimately relates to the “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” issue. Schneour’s quotation claimed that human embryos progressed “through being something of a protozoan, a fish, a reptile, a bird, a primate and ultimately a human being.” Sorry for pro-creationist Morse or anti-creationist Schneour, but no evolutionist thinks reptiles evolved from birds, or that humans had any birds in their ancestry to “recapitulate.” And if Hank Hanegraaff had known as much about evolutionary theory as he thinks he does, he might have spotted the gaff too. Cf. Richardson & Reiss (1999) on the use (and misuse) of human embryological data in the abortion controversy. 255 Henry Morris (1963, 94) sported the more traditional Red-baiting look when he alluded to leftwing astronomer Harlow Shapley as “frequent sponsor and joiner of Communist front organizations.” See Ortega (2002) for a discussion of Shapley’s liberal politics and his run-in with the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) after WWII. Stark (2003, 185-186) also highlighted the socialist and Marxist Darwinists. Over on the complexly irreducible side: seeing Darwinism as a hotbed of Marxism, Behe in Arnhardt et al. (2000, 28) jabbed at “John Maynard Smith, the prominent evolutionary theoretician and Marxist.” Here Behe seemed somewhat behind the curve, as Maynard Smith would be more accurately described as a former Marxist, who has grown progressively more reductionist through the years. Cf. note 216 (chapter five) with Maynard Smith (1998, 42-45) on the link between belief in self-organization and left-wing politics in developmental biology. Though the idea also surfaces on the right wing via Adam Smith in economics—ironic, given the conservative economic agenda of the Discovery Institute, of which Behe is a Senior Fellow (up until very recently their website seemed more concerned about privatizing the Social Security system than promoting Intelligent Design). Socialism and pacifism had considerable attraction for intellectuals in general after the Great War, of course, but contrarian pugnacity appears to have contributed as much to Maynard Smith’s attitude. As quoted by Weiner (2000, 78): “I was at Eton, where I was not very happy. The school had virtues—it taught me mathematics very well. But it was really anti-intellectual, it was snobbish, it was arrogant; it just

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wasn’t a pleasant atmosphere. There was one person whom my schoolmasters would speak of with real hatred, and that was J. B. S. Haldane. He was also a socialist, an atheist, a divorcé, and a Marxist. I remember thinking, ‘Anybody they hate so much can’t be all bad. I must go and find out about him.’” 256 The source for this particular brouhaha was British evolutionist Lambert Beverly Halstead, who was convinced that the “Marxist” roots of cladism undermined belief in Darwinism by somehow promoting punctuated equilibrium, and thereby giving aid and comfort to creationism! This appears to have been related to a long-running feud Halstead had with R. S. Miles, head of public services at the LNHM. See Wade (1981), Eldredge (1995, 101-103), Gee (1999, 150-153) and Gould (2002a, 984-985, 1007, 1016-1017). Gould, incidentally, wasn’t very impressed with the British Museum exhibit. Meanwhile, Phillip Johnson (1991, 134-140) fielded the Halstead affair to affirm how “Darwinism is more controversial among scientists than they realized.” Characteristically, Morris & Morris (1996c, 115-116) picked up on the flap without explaining how any of this related to cladism. 257 Hovind has dropped such nuggets in his 1996 creationism tape, and in an August 1999 interview on Chuck Missler’s radio show (audio clips available at this writing at Missler’s website). In his early 1990s squib warning of the New World Order “Illuminati” (re the Zodiac source per note 40 above) Hovind referred to “The ACLU (The American Communist Lawyers Association, no, I’m sorry, it’s the Anti-Christian Lawyers Association)”—thus having some difficulty differentiating “A” from “U” in the acronym. More fallout of Hovind’s fractured grammar and scholarship will turn up next chapter concerning recent Intelligent Design efforts to “teach the controversy” over evolution. 258 Some Gould potshots are fast and lean: Lubenow (1992, 246) casually referred to him as “an evolutionist Marxist,” while Ferguson (1998, 20) sufficed with: “Gould himself, as Dennett points out, is a self-described Marxist, and has been known to criticize other scientists in explicitly political terms.” Henry Morris played “spot-the-lefty” several times in Morris & Parker (1987, 7, 22, 201), commenting on “Gould’s fellow atheist and Marxist at Harvard, geneticist Richard Lewontin” (true enough in Lewontin’s case) and citing the “socialist” and “evolutionist” Jeremy Rifkin. But other jabs at Gould turn on deeper miscomprehension of the theoretical issues. Gould had long thought about whether general theories account for large-scale evolutionary phenomena (see note 270, chapter four). Mass extinctions would be one example, where an understanding of why they took place as they did might resolve the seemingly chaotic ebb and flow of taxonomical turnover. However much such thinking may be considered consistent with Marxist philosophy in one form or another, as Gould critic Conway Morris (1998, 11-14) maintained, this is still putting the cart the wrong way around. Whatever ideology one may care to defend or assail, there would be a need to deal with such evolutionary laws only insofar as those principles happened to be true—in which case, live with it. Over on the ICR side, Morris & Morris (1996b, 278) were oblivious to such considerations when they fumed: “Nevertheless, Gould is here retreating again to his Marxist faith that chaos and destruction, in some utterly mystical way, somehow generate order and a better society.” Cf. Henry Morris in Morris & Parker (1987, 245). Sunderland (1988, 123) pressed farthest in confusing the “revolutionary” features of punctuated equilibrium as a scientific hypothesis with the overturning of social authority, claiming that Gould & Eldredge “apparently feel that Marxism is a viable political system which they prefer.” For comparison, Eldredge (2000, 149) describes himself as being no more than just “politically left.” Cf. also Ecker (1990, 60-61). 259 Lapin (1999, 34-35). Not atypically for Lapin, there were no references; I cannot declare whether Lapin’s report of Gould’s interior decorating habits is more accurate than his bulletin on the Peabody Museum (note 349, chapter five). 260 Morris & Morris (1996c, 113). Morris & Morris (1996c, 104) declared of Marxism: “This philosophy also was squarely grounded on evolutionism, though perhaps more aligned with Lamarckianism or (more recently) punctuationalism, than with neo-Darwinism.” Morris & Morris (1996c, 107-109) covered the purported Marxist affinities of punctuated equilibrium. In the “science” volume of Morris & Morris (1996a, 67): “If the system of flood geology can be established on a sound scientific basis, and be effectively promoted and publicized, then the entire

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evolutionary cosmology, at least in its present neo-Darwinian form, will collapse. This, in turn, would mean that nearly every anti-Christian system and movement (communism, racism, humanism, libertinism, behaviorism, and all the rest) would be deprived of their pseudo-intellectual foundation.” The version in Morris (1985, 252) is “nearly” identical (with only that one word added to the second line in the 1996 version). 261 Johnson (1998a, 147), reviewing Todd Gitlin’s “The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America Is Wracked by Culture Wars (Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt, 1996)” in Books & Culture (September/October 1996). Glynn (1997, 145-148) offers a similar swipe at postmodernist excess, attributing it to reason having been “freed from divine guidance.” Cf. the prescriptive recommendation of “Darwin for the Left” by Singer (2000, 273-282) because of recent findings that altruism can be generated from neo-Darwinian selection (more on that idea below). It is interesting to contrast Johnson and Glynn’s monochrome views of leftist criticism with Pinker (2002, 289-305). Or with evolutionary ecologist Paul Ehrlich (2000, 123) on the legacy of Stalinist misappropriation of science (“behaviorism gone berserk”) and its rejection of genetics: “Indeed, the antibiological views of the Stalinists and many far-left radicals were truly mind-boggling. I well remember a discussion in the 1960s in which I tried to explain to several leftist students the biophysical constraints on the efficiency of photosynthesis. The response was, ‘That depends on whether you use fascist-capitalist photosynthesis or people’s photosynthesis’.” Ehrlich (2000, 372n) added: “Today, those radical students are doubtless tenured deconstructionist professors in departments of English language and literature.” 262 Cf. note 186 above, where scholars have shown no difficulty in spotting the “obvious implications” of the concordance between religious and political conversion that Johnson managed to miss. Though there is one rather telling difference between how political ideologues have invoked “evolution” in their thinking and how Christian extremists over the centuries have employed the Bible. Both treat their resources as though they were Holy Writ. But the difference—and it is a big one—is that The Origin of Species isn’t purporting to be Holy Writ, and thus should never be treated as such. Unfortunately, the Bible has no such convenient loophole. It is openly supposed to be the creator’s personal viewpoint, and thus a resource any inquisitor ought to be able to call upon with complete clarity and confidence. 263 Regrettably, the historical record indicates that even the ghastly scale of 20th century totalitarian genocide was not unprecedented. Without apparent Darwinian oversight of any sort, forty million people died during the suppression of the Taiping Christians of southern and central China, Chidester (2000, 440-446). There had been increasing unrest among Chinese religious sects since the late 18th century, but the Taiping rebellion that “nearly toppled the dynasty” before being crushed in 1864 was “the first major uprising inspired by Christianity,” C. K. Yang, “The Role of Religion in Chinese Society,” in Meskill (1973, 657-658). Cf. note 248 above. Suppressing dissidents (especially those who paid open allegiance to powers higher than the state) was a dynastic sport the Chinese took very seriously, and which Mao would give a communist turn in the ferocious Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. In the “rowdy” department, one may compare the irrational intensity of the Red Guards, noted by John Meskill, “The Revolutionary Period: The Quest for Unity,” in Meskill (1973, 336-338), with the Donatist Circumcellions (or those frolicking monks of note 240 above). 264 Downtrodden Russian peasants often thought their conditions couldn’t have been due to the Little Father’s policies or intentions—and that they would surely be redressed were only the Tsar made aware of their plight. That was the spirit of the ill-fated march on the Winter Palace in 1905 that ended with the “Bloody Sunday” massacre, Massie (1967, 101-104). The march was led by a priest who was also an informer (part of a misfired secret police project to keep radicalism from turning into opposition to the monarchy). Such naïve hopes would attach just as easily to a later Little Father: true believers a generation later refused to give up faith in Stalin’s good will even as they were being shipped off to some frozen gulag. Cf. also note 184 above on the contingent impact of Rasputin and WWI on the course of Russian history. 265 One can very easily approach the history of Marxism as though it were a religion (re note 186 above). Defenders of the true faith disagreed strenuously over doctrine in great councils, but it

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wasn’t until Marxism had the power of a state behind it as an official cult that disagreements at home and abroad could be (and were) ruthlessly squashed. The role Darwinism played in all this is more equivocal. That Stalinists could so easily adopt the claptrap “evolution” of Lysenko (note 119, chapter one) indicated that many communists were “evolutionists” only in the same sense that Constantine was a “Christian.” Looking over the scholarly survey by Carew Hunt of what went on in the communist councils over the years, the scarcity of dialectical appeals to natural evolution is noteworthy. Darwin functioned more as an iconic analogue than a technical inspiration, Carew Hunt (1963, 64). Engels thought Marx had done for human history what Darwin had for the organic world—not that Marx had somehow applied Darwinist principles directly. Carew Hunt (1963, 42): “Yet the conclusions which Hegel may have drawn from his [dialectic] system in no way affect the fact that it constitutes a revolution in thought comparable with Newton’s law of gravitation and Darwin’s theory of evolution.” True enough, at least in terms of its political effect. But if such shoulder rubbing is a fault, where does that leave Michael Behe (re note 50, chapter four) when he claimed that the discovery of design in nature (via irreducible complexity) “rivals those of Newton and Einstein, Lavoisier and Schrödinger, Pasteur, and Darwin.” 266 The typological reasoning of Adler (2000, 95-96) backed his Great Ideas series into an adjacent philosophical corner this way: “But suppose that humans were superior to other animals only in degree, that humans were higher animals and other animals were lower animals. Then if humans being higher animals and other animals being lower justifies humans in treating other animals as means, then by the same principle of justice if there are superior races of humans, they would be justified by that difference in degree in treating inferior races as things, exploiting them, enslaving them, even killing them. In fact, if man differs from man only in degree and man from animal only in degree, then by the principles of justice we have no defense against Hitler’s doctrine of superior and inferior races and the justification he would give for the superior to enslave, exploit, and kill the inferior.” Quite a conflation of conditionals here, for on what basis could it be decided that one race was “superior” to another? And even supposing that Darwinists would embrace such logic, how would this account for those generations of pre-Darwinian Christians who managed to enslave and murder their fellow man even while believing then to be separate from brute animals? 267 Trinkaus & Shipman (1993, 217-218) and Ryan (2002, 32-46) provide brief overviews of eugenics beliefs, and Ritvo (1997, 114-130) recounted the pre-Darwinian side. Though he later framed his beliefs in Darwinian terms, German nationalist Haeckel apparently favored active selection (including infanticide) but no birth control (at least for the right people) early in his thinking, Thompson (1988, 51, 56). See also Finkelstein (2001) on the racial recapitulationism proposed by naturalists apart from Darwinist veneer, and Gould (2002a, 512-514) or Ryan (2002, 42-43) on the eugenics views of the influential evolutionist R. A. Fisher. 268 Ritvo (1997, 119). In this respect animals appeared to have been naturally “brighter” than some Victorian pundits were. Inbreeding avoidance is an important element in facilitating genetic diversity and minimizing the effect of recessive genes, Pusey & Wolf (1996), Anne E. Pusey, “Of Genes and Apes: Chimpanzee Social Organization and Reproduction,” and Frans de Waal, “Apes from Venus: Bonobos and Human Social Evolution,” in de Waal (2001a, 20-2, 55-56), and Judson (2002, 169-186). For mammals in particular, Jolly (1999, 95-96) noted suggestive evidence that mice and humans accomplish this by picking mates with differing MHC genes (that’s the immune system component in one of Behe’s “irreducibly complex” five, re notes 104-105, chapter four)— literally smelling out the distinction. Incidentally, Edward Wilson (1998, 173-180) regards incest taboos as “the fullest test of the genetic fitness hypothesis.” He noted the “Westermarck effect” (the avoidance of sexual relations with individuals known in early life, delineated in 1891 by Finnish anthropologist Edward A. Westermarck) has since been affirmed among all social primates. Dismissing the old Freudian Oedipus complex explanation for such behavior, Wilson suggests it will eventually be discovered to have a fully genetic basis. 269 Cavalli-Sforza & Cavalli-Sforza (1993, 227). Cf. Olson (2002, 179-183) and Pinker (2002, 152-158). Darwin’s number-obsessed cousin Francis Galton coined the term “eugenics” in 1883— while his search for objective personality identifiers helped lead to fingerprinting, James Burke (1996, 228-230). The “scientific” philosophy of eugenics didn’t start to settle in until the new

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Mendelian genetics seemed to supply a physical foundation for it. Darwin’s son Leonard became president of the Eugenics Education Society, and the eugenics movement reached a peak during the 1920s. The eugenics movement also coincided with the antievolution crusade, such that liberal evolutionary eugenicists squared off against conservative Christian opponents of meddling with nature. The Scopes textbook (Hunter’s Civic Biology) explicitly supported eugenics (cf. note 20 of the Introduction), and eugenicist Charles B. Davenport played a peripheral role in the Scopes trial via one of his science articles. Interestingly, some of the scientific witnesses lined up for the defense (such as Osborn) found eugenics critic Darrow as objectionable as Bryan, Larson (1997, 27-28, 115, 135). Cf. the trenchant assessment of Marks (2002, 268-272). Stephen Jay Gould’s compelling 1984 essay on the prejudiced underpinnings of eugenics-inspired sterilization laws (where an unwed mother was conveniently deemed “imbecilic”) was recently reprinted as a memorial article, Gould (2002b). 270 Rudacille (2000, 82). Teddy Roosevelt’s presence may be compared to Rev. Kennedy’s name dropping (note 64 above). The chilling survey by Black (2003) chronicles the theoretical founders of American eugenics like Charles Davenport, from its appeal for Darwin’s son Leonard, philanthropic operations like the Carnegie Institution and the Rockefeller Foundation, and statesmen who should have known better (including Winston Churchill and Oliver Wendell Holmes)—through to the enthusiasm with which IBM lobbied to get the contract to supply the Nazis with Hollerith punchcard processors to facilitate their racial hygiene records keeping. While eugenic thinking shadowed the philosophy of H. G. Wells, it also made it into the Bible-influenced Oneida community, Gardner (2000c, 259-262) and Kossy (2001, 117-154). Ryan (2002, 38-40) noted the influence of the anti-Irish William R. Greg. And let’s not forget Bertrand Russell, who (besides his flip racist and sexist views) advocated eugenics for the mentally unfit. Monk (2000, 104-106) suggests this reflected Russell’s dread of insanity; “As far as he was concerned, to become insane was virtually to lose one’s status as a person.” For the record, OEC William J. Tinkle (co-founder of the Creation Research Committee with Walter Lammerts) was one of the few creationist eugenicists, even as late as 1939 (by which time many mainstream geneticists had backed off from it), Numbers (1992, 222-223). Racial “science” still has proponents, such as Roger Pearson’s “Institute for the Study of Man” insisting that multiracial and multicultural societies were somehow “a reversal of the evolutionary process”— which he appears not to understand very well, Shermer (1997, 245-251). The ID-friendly Raelian movement (re note 360, chapter five) is also “IN FAVOR OF EUGENICS” (see rael.org/int/english/raelspeaks/body_raelspeaks_index.html). Canadian psychologist J. Philippe Rushton promotes theories of race and brain size at his “Charles Darwin Research Institute” (charlesdarwinresearch.org). Critics include ferris.edu/ISAR/Institut/pioneer/rushton2.htm, fair.org/extra/9412.rehabilitation-of-racism.html … and evolutionary psychologists John Tooby & Leda Cosmides (at psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/rushton.html). Rushton’s backers include the Pioneer Fund (home.att.net/~genophilia/pioneer.htm), Reed Irvine’s Accuracy in Media (aim.org/publications/weekly_column/2000/04/12.html & briefings/2000/20July2000.html), “Stalking the Wild Taboo” (lrainc.com), and David Duke, late of the KKK, fielding a Rushton piece at duke.org/library/innate/rushton_brainsize.html. Politically conservative anthropologist Vincent Sarich has also weighed in on racial theories (a brief survey of publications and the controversy is at anthro.mankato.msus.edu/information/biography/pqrst/sarich_vincent.html). Cf. the curious treatment of Sarich by Phillip Johnson (“The Creationist and the Sociobiologist: Two Stories About Illiberal Education”) from the July 1992 California Law Review (available at arn.org/docs/johnson/twostories.htm). The “Creationist” in Johnson’s piece was Phillip Bishop, a University of Alabama exercise physiologist who got into trouble over using his class as an opportunity to invite students to after-hours religious instruction. Johnson stressed Bishop’s skepticism about Darwinian explanations for the human body, but Bishop and Sarich were mainly used as kindling to light his customary bonfire of godless vanities like moral relativism (more on that issue below). Bishop’s apologetic utility apparently won out over Sarich, as Johnson fielded Bishop sans Sarich a few years later in “What (If Anything) Hath God Wrought? Academic Freedom and the Religious Professor” (in the September/October 1995 issue of Academe, the

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journal of the American Association of University Professors, reprinted at arn.org/docs/johnson/aaup.htm). Johnson also added a web link reference to the piece in a slightly revised version of his Hillsdale speech (re note 253, chapter four) which has been distributed by Hank Hanegraaff’s Christian Research Institute as Statement DE-382. Incidentally, the CRI version notes the speech was originally given in November 1992—rather than in 1993, as Johnson’s 1998 introduction has it. The litigation itself (Bishop v. Aronov) has played a role in church-state litigation over the years. It was cited in the 1997 brouhaha of an Alabama judge’s courtroom posting of the Ten Commandments (jlaw.com/briefs/alabama1.html) and a 1998 defense of NEA funding rules (csulb.edu/~jvancamp/doc22.html). Bishop also figured as precedent in a more blatant 1998 case of classroom evangelism (covered at laws.lp.findlaw.com/getcase/3rd/case/981936p.html). Proponents of religious freedom statutes (H. J. Res. 184 in 1996, house.gov/judiciary/2178.htm) and amendments (H. R. 5078 in 2000, puaf.umd.edu/courses/puaf650/House%20Bill.htm) have bandied Bishop as well. The case also surfaces as an example in education guidelines (uncc.edu/unccatty/classrmcases.html or dist.maricopa.edu/legal/dp/inbrief/academicfreedom.htm, and the Anti-Defamation League, adl.org/religion_ps/expression.asp). Cf. the commentary by The Federalist Society (fedsoc.org/Publications/practicegroupnewsletters/religious%20liberties/rl010202.htm). 271 Fritz Stern’s The Politics of Cultural Despair remains a classic treatment of the roots of Nazi ideology. Stern (1965) highlighted three core influences: the mysticism of the German Religion proposed by Paul de Legarde (1827-1891), the comprehensive anti-modernism of Julius Langbehn (1851-1907), and the vision of a Dritte Reich advocated by Arthur Moeller van den Bruck (18761924). For a good three quarters of a century before Hitler took power there had been a constant philosophical drumbeat for a return to a mystic German past, where a near-divine “secret emperor” would protect the agrarian volk from the baneful influences of political liberalism and rationalist science and technology. Concerning the role evolutionary thinking played in the Nazi mythos, the Prussian aristocrats who pined for the Good Old Days before Weimar naturally took to the rugged eugenics version of Darwin promoted by his cousin Francis Galton—especially when given an absolutist philosophical gloss by Nietzsche, Padfield (1990, 32-34). The subtle difference in direction (evolution as working toward human perfection rather than backwards to a lost ideal) was reflected in Alfred Wallace, whose “idea of selection was the environment eliminating the unfit, rather than a cut-throat competition among individuals,” Desmond & Moore (1991, 468). But where “liberal” Social Darwinists believed in the progressivity of evolution, the Nazis focused (all too literally) on the selectionist angle as a way of restoring the imagined Aryan purity. McMenamin (1998, 280) called attention to the special vitalist forces (of a sort considered superfluous today) that infused the Nazi evolutionism of paleontologist Karl Beurlen. As for Hitler himself, to the extent that he was an “evolutionist” at all, McIver (1988b, 114-115) classified him as a Lamarckian. This is consistent with 19th century racist evolutionism (re notes 14 & 54, chapter five). Thomson (1988, 57) is relevant: “The simple-minded genetics of Haeckel and his Monists were thus scientifically wrong. However, this did not, in Germany, contribute to a discrediting of racialist thinking.” For marginalia: in a further swipe at Stephen Jay Gould, Conway Morris (1998a, 10) offered the flaccid influence of Otto Schindewolf’s gloomy “Spenglerian cyclicity” (where organisms evolved the seeds of their own destruction). In Conway Morris’ view, “A rather sinister combination of autodictat and adherence to a flawed philosophy led German paleontology into a cul-de-sac of sterile macroevolutionary speculation and an anti-Darwinian attitude that persisted for many years after the overthrow of the Nazis.” 272 If Skeptical Inquirer had been in business back when the Nazis were getting started, whole issues could have been filled tracking their pseudoscientific philosophy. All too much of it reads like the script for Raiders of the Lost Ark—except with no redeeming happy comic book ending. The silly “root race” cosmology of Helena Blavatsky (note 166, chapter three) found its way in via Anthroposophist Rudolf Steiner, as filtered by the Nazi theoretician Alfred Rosenberg. Rosenberg had a knack for homing in on the preposterous. Shermer & Grobman (2000, 81-82) noted Rosenberg popularized the faked anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion in the years after WWI. In 1930 Rosenberg’s book The Myth of the Twentieth Century followed Steiner’s ideas by

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locating Atlantis safely in the Nordic north, which in turn inspired a series of trance paintings on the Lost Continent exhibited in Berlin. After the Nazis took power these views achieved official recognition with the founding of the Deutsches Ahnenerbe (“German Ancestral Heritage”) Museum in 1935, with one of the leading Atlantis theorists, Hermann Wirth, as curator, Nigel Davies (1979, 173). Gardner (1957, 37-41) and Padfield (1990, 17-171) noted how the Nazis flirted with the screwball WEL cult (Welteislehre, “world ice doctrine”) that viewed the cosmos as being governed by a struggle between the sun’s heat and ice in space; cf. de Camp (1970, 86-89). There was also a smattering of reincarnation and Hinduism to Nazi philosophy, Padfield (1990, 402-403), along with a heavy dose of occult pseudoscience in their racism, Kossy (2001, 12-15, 71-101). Chidester (2000, 495-512) and Moynahan (2002, 679-682) commented on the codependency of the “German Christian” movement and the Nazis, as anti-Semitic Christians cuddled up with what was actually the anti-Christian paganism of Nazi cult mythology (cf. note 221, chapter five). 273 Stein (1988, 51). Morris & Morris (1996c, 62, 162) cited Stein (1988, 56) on Haeckel & Marxist excess, but not as a spur to investigate the origins of Christian anti-Semitism. Indeed, antiSemitism was not discussed in Morris & Morris (1996c, 95-104) on racism and the Bible, which attributes racism exclusively to “evolutionary” thinking—thus implicitly ruling out non-evolutionary Christian racism. Hank Hanegraaff (1998, 24) similarly declared “evolutionism is racist” without examining the history of bigotry in Christian society … and D. James Kennedy’s Coral Ridge Ministry show (May 22, 2002) relied on Ken Ham to declare the Bible free of any taint of the racism that supposedly occludes evolution. David Prentice’s creationist Sunday school lecture & slideshow (re note 199 above) confidently summarized: “Evolution says that some races are more highly evolved than others; Creation says that the ‘races’ probably diverged after the Tower of Babel.” Not a scintilla of evidence was offered for either claim—which one may compare to evolutionary psychologists Kurzban et al. (2001) plainly affirming that the discernment of racial distinctions is a remediable cultural accretion, not an inherent feature of our evolved cognitive architecture. Though Ramachandran & Blakeslee (1998, 170-171) do suggest some aspects of the racist mindset may owe something to neurology (noting the obsessive Fregoli syndrome). As for the traditional spur to racial prejudice, skin color, anthropologist Nina Jablonski and her geographer husband George Chaplin recently showed this owes a great deal to ultraviolet light, which cuts folate (a vital member of the vitamin B group) while enhancing vitamin D levels. The “racial” occurrence of skin color thus reflects a geographical gradient for UV exposure, tempered by the variable of dietary vitamin D access (as through fishing), Kirchweger (2001). For some historical perspective, Larson (1997, 44) noted the “ominous” aspects of William Bell Riley’s antievolutionary crusade: “By the thirties, he warned of an ‘international Jewish-BolshevikDarwinist conspiracy’ to promote evolutionism in the classroom, and praised Adolph Hitler’s effort to foil such conspiracies in Germany. The Ku Klux Klan—an organization Bryan despised— supported antievolution laws for much the same reason, adding Roman Catholics to the list of coconspirators.” Concerning more recent creationism, articles by Richard Trott and Jim Lippard at the Talk.Origins Archive (“Creationism Implies Racism?”) explore some of Henry Morris’ lesserknown theories on the genetic predispositions of “Hamite” races and the undercurrent of antiquated racial typing among some traditional creationists. Dr. Dino offers parallel mixed messages: while Hovind’s website restricts himself to assailing the Aryan mythology given under “Hitler’s Hit List: a look at evolution and bigotry,” Des Griffin’s anti-Semitic Fourth Reich of the Rich is offered for sale in another section. Griffin sees Jewish bankers behind communism, but with a curious cover showing a swastika arising beside the Empire State Building. Cf. the Southern Poverty Law Center Summer 2001 Intelligence Report, (splcenter.org/intelligenceproject/ip-4r10.htm) for more on Hovind’s anti-Semitic reading recommendations. 274 There was a revealingly inconsistency about the Nazis’ application of prejudice (re note 289, chapter five). For example, they opposed abortion (for Aryans) but positively recommended it (for Jews), Padfield (1990, 191-192). SS Chief Heinrich Himmler was an especially vile bundle of hatred, despising Jews, Bolsheviks, homosexuals, and Catholic priests (whose celibacy he suspected was a cover for homosexuality). Shermer (1997, 221) quoted a distinctive bit of Himmler’s hairsplitting racial logic recounted in Padfield (1990, 186-191): that Himmler thought the Romans’

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persecution of early Christians was commendable because these converts had been Jews, whom he considered commensurate with the communists he was suppressing in 1937. The ability to clump hated categories together is regrettably not an extinct feature of the ideological mindset. About 20 years ago I knew a member of a conservative Catholic sect (one which refused to accept recent “liberal” Vatican rulings as legitimate) who not only regarded Pope Paul VI as having been invalidly elected—he insisted Paul VI was a Jew and a Communist besides. Since this fellow was equally certain that evolution was false, this particular clump of prejudice could not possibly be attributed to poor Darwin. Marty (2000, 18) quoted a wise saying from longshoreman-philosopher Eric Hoffer (from pp. 89-90 of his 1950 book, The True Believers: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements): “Mass movements can rise and spread without a belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.” 275 During a long complaint about Jewish non-belief, John 8: 44 fumed that “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do.” Paul in II Corinthians 11 is less graphic but still testy. See Hill & Cheadle (1996, 20-23) for a brief survey of Christian anti-Semitism, noting that the Evangelical Lutheran Church officially repudiate Martin Luther’s bigoted views only in 1994. For contrast, in distancing Christianity from any taint of racial intolerance, the quiz section for McDowell & Hostetler (1992, 34) highlighted only John 4:1-26 (concerning how the faith was open to all)—not the texts or the history which suggested a less benign tradition was running on a parallel track. Likewise the quote-mining Federer (1999, 404-406) offered an assortment of reverential utterances from Luther, but none pertaining to anti-Semitism or sectarian fanaticism. Cf. Moynahan (2002, 49) noted that “The Gospel of Peter, written about A.D. 150, also defended Pilate in order to heighten the guilt of the Jews. It was ultimately condemned, not for this, but because its claim that the crucified Jesus ‘remained silent, as if in no pain’ smacked of the heresy that Christ was immune from human suffering.” 276 Adrian Hastings, “150-550,” in Hastings (1999, 41). Massie (1967, 100n) noted that “AntiSemitism, an endemic disease in Russia, stemmed from the oldest traditions of the Orthodox Church.” An indicator of how quickly anti-Semitism grew to prominence was the influential Bishop Ambrose, who forced Emperor Theodosius (no stranger to fanaticism, per note 239 above) to stop the restoration of a synagogue at Callinicum on the Euphrates, burned down in 388 by Christians at the instigation of their bishop. Ambrose also promoted the superstitious veneration of relics, and curbed the physical persecution of pagans (whom he preferred to debate with) while accelerating the appropriation of their temples, Paul Johnson (1977, 103-110) and Harold Brown (1984, 100). Moynahan (2002, 108): “Christians were forbidden to marry Jews; Church councils legislated against social contact with them, and the greatest of Christian orators, John Chrysostom, the ‘golden-mouthed,’ delivered a passionate series of homilies against them in 388 in Antioch.” Cf. Kimball (2002, 134-136). Chrysostom earned sainthood by the way, though the hagiography in McBrien (2001, 371-373) did not allude to the “golden-mouthed” John’s anti-Semitic tendencies. See also note 238 above. Such prickly topics were again bypassed in the historically myopic Carroll & Shiflett (2002, 1011), which preferred to buff Ambrose’s moral armor as one of those “stiff-necked clerics” who helped “check secular authorities in the Christian world from seizing the kind of suffocating, unimpeded power that rulers elsewhere usually enjoyed.” Instead of addressing the Callinicum massacre, though, Carroll & Shiflett noted only a later incident which had also earned Ambrose’s disapproval: “The spark was lit in 390 by a mob in Thessalonica that murdered an officer of the garrison. When Theodosius heard of it, he reacted with fury, ordering a wholesale reprisal. Roman troops set upon a large crowd assembled in the circus, and in a breathtaking massacre, slaughtered upwards of seven thousand.” There were no references. As the account in Johnson (1977, 104) only briefly referred to the officer as a “barbarian army commander” and gave no total casualties, Carroll & Shiflett must have relied on some other source. While still typically Roman in its violence, the details of the fracas were rather more complicated than Carroll & Shiflett’s version. Moynahan (2002, 109) is especially vivid: “In 390 a circus mob lynched the governor of Thessalonica; he had arrested a very popular charioteer for the attempted rape of an officer and refused to release him to take part in an important series of races. Theodosius tricked the rioters

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into returning to the circus and had seven thousand of them massacred.” As for the “goldenmouthed” Bishop of Constantinople, he appeared once in Carroll & Shiflett (2002, 148), concerning his interest in founding hospitals: “Although no modern judgment of Chrystostom can ignore his vicious anti-Semitism, the fact remains that his dedication to the poor reaped lasting benefits.” Presumably at least insofar as non-Jewish poor were concerned. 277 Keys (1999, 41-46, 66, 80-81, 133, 137-138, 141-146). Recall that these events were taking place in the unsettled aftermath of the volcanic eruption posited in Keys’ scenario. See notes 228229 above on the Arian heresy. The political situation prevailing as the Persians pressed on Antioch was, to say the least, unsettled, Moynahan (2002, 163-164). Keys (1999, 81-82) described Phocas, a homicidal centurion who had taken over the Roman Empire in 603. An enthusiastic Catholic, Phocas escalated the persecution of the monophysite heresy (that Jesus was exclusively divine, and not simultaneously fully human and divine) that was in the majority in Mesopotamia, Syria & Egypt. With the Persians seen as more tolerant liberators by the Jews, a bitter revolt broke out in Antioch’s Jewish quarter. The uprising was subsequently quashed, but not before their persecutor (the patriarch Anastasius) was taken prisoner and forced to eat his own testicles, then dragged through the city streets and executed. One can imagine how all this would play on today’s satellite news channels. Meltzer (1993, Vol. I, 224) noted that the Jews in Visigoth Spain also revolted in the 7th century, which led to their enslavement as punishment. Though freed centuries later by the invading Muslims, they suffered several massacres until an edict of 1148 required they either convert to Islam or face death if they remained, Stark (2003, 49). 278 Keys (1999, 81). 279 Paul Johnson (1977, 246). 280 Baumgartner (1999, 60). Armstrong (1991, 71-74) and Moynahan (2002, 229-230) noted how Peter the Hermit’s anti-Semitism fueled the initial massacres of the late 11th century (many Jews chose martyrdom rather than play the converted roles eschatological fanatics had planned for them). Paul Johnson (1977, 257-264) related this to the social turmoil of egalitarian peasant revolts and aristocratic repression. Cf. Madden (2002, 15-16) defending Church innocence via their official condemnations of anti-Jewish attacks, and the pro-Jewish sentiments of such as St. Bernard (whose obsessions were elsewhere, per note 244 above). Madden did not mention the influential firebrand Joachim of Fiore (died c. 1202), a confidant of Richard II “the Lionhearted” on the Third Crusade, but eventually branded a heretic, Johnson (1977, 257), Harold Brown (1984, 266-267), Boyer (1992, 51-52) and Carroll et al. (2000, 188-190). Armstrong (1991, 231-232, 262-263) highlighted several factors intensifying English anti-Semitism: the weird cult of “Saint” William (an English boy whose murder was blamed on the Jews) and the fanning of Joachim-style bigotry when Richard II (ironically not himself an anti-Semite) was the first English king to join a Crusade. Chidester (2000, 286-287) surveys how Germans responded to the Black Death in the 14th century (from massacring Jews to the heretical flagellant movement). The decline of Moorish power in Spain during the Crusades period offered fresh opportunities for anti-Semitism there. Netanyahu (1995) traced the institutional roots of the Spanish Inquisition to envy against the political success of the “conversos” (descendants of Jews forcibly converted late in the 14th century) who had risen to high royal office. Cf. Kimball (2002, 148-150) and Moynahan (2002, 441-452). One should recall that with the unification under Ferdinand and Isabella, the fateful Columbus year of 1492 also saw the complete expulsion of Jews from Spain—a datum overlooked by Federer (1999, 115, 522) when he double-dipped identical quotes under “I” for Isabella and again in “Q” for Queen Isabella. Most of the expelled Spanish Jews emigrated to the Ottoman Empire, interestingly enough, James Burke (1999, 101-105). With the Moors and Jews out of the Iberian picture, the inquisitorial system (which was under the control of the crown, not the Church) turned against new threats closer to theological home, like the Reformation. Though with a huge colonial empire to defend, religiosity took a backseat to political expediency: “The essence of the Counter-Reformation, therefore, was Spanish power. It was not a religious movement,” Johnson (1977, 298). 281 Ankerberg & Weldon (1998, 30). A sampling of apologetic rationalization may begin with Strobel (2000, 204-217), tiptoeing carefully past a lot of Christian violence and bigotry (including

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anti-Semitism) with the attitude that things were more complicated if you looked closely—true enough, except that Strobel didn’t look too closely. Such compartmentalization was also in evidence when Rick Richardson (2000, 39, 121-122) listed some of “what believers have done” (racism, sexism, homophobia, the Crusades, religious wars) but did not relate any of that to his brief invocation of the “God-centered” Luther. This may be compared to Garrison (1968, 54-55, 223-226) who acted as though European anti-Semitism only appeared after 1000 AD—and extolled Luther’s contribution to Bible translation (but not Germanic anti-Semitism). Carroll & Shiflett (2002, 113-114, 120-121) briefly acknowledged Christian anti-Semitism in a chapter (pp. 112-138) devoted mainly to disconnecting Hitler from Christianity (cf. note 272 above), highlighting the heroism of clerical resisters like Martin Niemoller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and defending Pope Pius XII’s actions during the Holocaust. Interestingly, Carroll & Shiflett did not bring up the Haeckel/evolution connection (which they certainly could have, per note 54, chapter five). Rabbi Daniel Lapin’s own brand of historical tunnel vision surfaced anew in a May 7, 2002 commentary (nationalreview.com/comment/comment-lapin050702.asp) on the recent spurt of European anti-Semitism. On the premise that “Europe is now a secular land, having shed its former Christian faith,” Lapin pegged the current problem to a cultural conflict between “that of the Koran, allied with the believers in no God, violently challenging the civilization of the Bible, of Christianity and Judaism.” How Europeans managed the “seemingly unkillable hatred” of antiSemitism back when they weren’t so secular Lapin didn’t venture. 282 Liberal “inclusive” Bibles retranslate passages to eliminate sexism or anti-Semitism in a way that James Dobson or Jerry Falwell decry, Thuesen (1999, 152-153). Yet even without tidying up the text, conservatives suffer from a “survival of the fittest” reductionism whereby their acceptance of the current ethos is a reflection of its very success. Thus in his 1993 Taylor debate (leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/docs/craig-taylor9.html) William Lane Craig was asked about the unequal treatment of women in the Bible. “I’m not sure I understand the question, but it sounds to me like it’s more a question of Biblical interpretation than a question of ethical values. I mean, if people in the past have misinterpreted what the Bible says, and now they interpret it more accurately, that’s just a matter of gaining better interpretative principles. Or conversely, if perhaps people in the past interpreted it correctly, and we, under the pressure of the spirit of the times, have misinterpreted it today, then that’s just again a failure of interpretation. I don’t see that that affects the objective validity of what the original author had to say.” The questioner followed up with the obvious: that the very occurrence of cultural reinterpretation meant there was no “objective” position. Craig refused to get on that relativist bus, but still didn’t realize that’s where he’d stopped at: flipping inconvenient Biblical tradition aside as improper interpretation as though the texts were infinitely elastic. Allowing “is” to dictate “ought” in this way is the “naturalistic fallacy” (alluded to in note 15 of the Introduction)—a most curious situation for an absolute morality to be in, where the doctrine is supposed to flow unequivocally (if not effortlessly) in the other direction. Not that creationists are the only ones to engage in glib moral reading of texts, as Segerstråle (2000, 208-213) noted of leftwing opponents of sociobiology (particularly Stephen Chorover’s 1979 criticism, From Genesis to Genocide). 283 Wendell Bird (1989, Vol. 2, 224-229). For some example of what “other” faiths he had in mind, Bird (1989, Vol. 2, 269) later detected “evolution doctrines” in the musty movements of Theosophy and Anthroposophy, as well as the more recent Scientology. Henry Morris (1985, 179180) likewise admitted that “for the most part” modern evolutionists didn’t accept the racism of Darwin or Huxley. Which of course begged the question of whether even Darwin or Huxley accepted the form of racism attributed to them or how this related to beliefs in the larger (and certainly Christian) culture (one may catch the chain of evidence linked to note 210, chapter five). In the “guilt by association” department, Morris & Morris (1996c, 87) fielded a particularly popular authority quote from Sir Arthur Keith (1946, 230): “The German Fuhrer, as I have consistently maintained, is an evolutionist; he has consciously sought to make the practice of Germany conform to the theory of evolution. He has failed not because the theory of evolution is false, but because he had made three fatal blunders in its application.” The Morrises cut Keith off at that point, leaving Keith’s explanation of what he meant dangling. These “blunders” were:

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“forcing the pace of evolution among his own people” by raising “their warlike passions” … mistaking “the evolutionary value of power” beyond self-defense … and (the “greatest mistake”) failing to realize how these actions would force Germany’s neighbors to respond. Keith was thus thinking of “evolution” in only the most superficial social sense, not making any biological argument (let alone one that would fly in today’s scientific climate). Ankerberg & Weldon (1998, 32) and Hanegraaff (1998, 28, 169n) didn’t get even far enough to truncate Keith’s reasoning, though, as they quoted only the first sentence of his remark (Hanegraaff did so secondarily via p. 86 of Henry Morris’ 1989 book The Long War Against God). 284 Ankerberg & Weldon (1998, 29). Some of Ankerberg & Weldon’s willingness to saddle “evolution” with whatever they find morally or culturally objectionable may have come from their absorption of creationist literature. For example, Lubenow (1992, 184-189) drew equally tidy moral boundaries around the 1984 attempt to transplant a baboon heart in a dying infant— subsequently reprised by Ankerberg & Weldon (1998, 20). According to Lubenow, this pitted “a devout Seventh-Day Adventist” creationist surgeon against animal-rights protestors who believed “Baby Fae was just an animal, the product of the evolutionary process, and as such she had no right to live at the expense of the life of a baboon.” Sounding very much like Ankerberg & Weldon, Lubenow (1992, 188) concluded: “While it is difficult to prove that evolution is largely responsible for this equating of human and animal rights, it is more than coincidence that all of the animal-rights advocates who have expressed themselves publicly on the subject are evolutionists.” Lubenow didn’t specify how big that sample was, but in any event the equation of human with animal rights can and has been embraced and opposed by a number of philosophies, evolutionary and otherwise (cf. notes 14, 278 & 287-289, chapter five). 285 Unger (1972, 119). Under the section on “Historical Evidence” supporting the existence of demons, Unger (1972, 10) alluded to the “fact” that all religions believe in “Satan and demons.” There is a persistent subculture of Christian demonology, especially in Catholicism (which has had a liturgy of exorcism since 1614), though mitigated somewhat by the fashions of culture. Rodewyk (1963), Sheed (1972) and Malachi Martin (1976) reflect the Catholic tradition; Cruz (1973), Philpott (1973) and Tennant (2001) a range of evangelical interpretations—and Ebon (1974) provides a parapsychological interpretation. Cf. Martin Ebon, “The Exorcism Fad,” in Ebon (1976, 193-197) or Nickell (2001a) on the questionable particulars of the 1949 exorcism that inspired the 1973 thriller The Exorcist. All this must be distinguished from the sociology of satanic cults that (like vampirism) can exist whether or not there really are demons. While the Jesuit Rodewyk (1963, 25) acknowledged that “Biblical references to possessions are almost entirely limited to the New Testament” (Old Testament ones being “of a secondary or peripheral nature”) he didn’t examine whether this reflected the superstitious Greco-Roman culture more than real demonic infestation. F. M. Catherinet, “Demoniacs in the Gospel,” in Sheed (1972, 121-137) was similarly circumspect. See Robin Lane Fox (1986, 326-330) on this “darker side” of early Christianity (including how often a belief in the presence of demons and their exorcism figured in the conversion of pagans). 286 One may also ponder the approved list of paranormal gifts of the Spirit in I Corinthians 12:8-10, which might just as easily get one burned at the stake if you didn’t watch out. That this difficulty hadn’t been resolved in the Age of Aquarius was illustrated by our old pals Wilson & Weldon (1978, 272, 293, 307) who couldn’t make up their minds whether demons could acknowledge Jesus as Savior or not. Referring to a message received by automatic writing: “The entity claimed that his message was ‘in the Name of the Lord Jesus, our blessed and exalted Lord and Savior.’ Remember, demons can use Scripture also, as Satan did, and do know Christ is Lord.” So Wilson & Weldon set down this infallible way to test the Spirits: “He must acknowledge that Jesus is Lord, and that salvation is available only through the blood of Jesus Who died to give us forgiveness of sins. Any spirit denying these doctrines is of the Devil.” Only that obviously didn’t apply when they mentioned another demonic entity that “claimed to believe in Jesus Christ as Savior and that the Father had sent them to her.” Philpott (1973, 108-109) tied himself in similar knots concerning testing demons who seem able to lie despite the indications of I John 4:1-3 and I Corinthians 12:3.

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Faid (1993, 117). Faid’s numerological stunts were alluded to above in notes 46, 58 & 133. As for the history, Faid may have been confusing The Robe version, as Caligula is not known to have persecuted any Christians—though his relationships with the Jews were far from tranquil, Anthony Barrett (1989, 182-191). Durant (1944, 650) noted that early Christians interpreted “the collapse of the Empire as the prophesied prelude to the destruction of ‘Babylon’ and the return of Christ.” In this regard, while McBrien (2001, 266) offers the conventional take on the fire of Rome, Michael Grant (1970, 154-161) and Klingaman (1990, 298-301) suggest a factor exacerbating Nero’s ruthless scapegoating of Christians may have been that End Time enthusiasm of some believers. Seeing the destruction of the Eternal City as a welcome fulfillment of what they may have taken to be the unfolding parousia, a few could have actively hindered fire fighting efforts. Even more ironically, other than Nero, the tendency was for incompetent emperors to show considerable tolerance for Christianity (recall Lapin’s poster emperor Severus Alexander). It was the able ones Christians usually had to worry the most about, Durant (1944, 646-656) or Chidester (2000, 75-90). While the practical (and gay) Hadrian showed toleration, the Stoic (and straight) Marcus Aurelius considered the Christian willingness to be martyred a display of unseemly exhibitionism! And while he allowed an official toleration, his personal antipathy towards Christians permitted some nasty persecutions to go on during his watch, Michael Grant (1960, 2) and Arnott (1970, 302), such as that leading to the notable martyrdom of Justin in 165, McBrien (2001, 221-222). The urge to find scapegoats was probably aggravated by the stress circa AD 177 of barbarian tribes pressing in on an empire already weakened by the natural affliction of plague and the engineered one of brainless inflationary monetary policy sapping the energy of a backward slaveholding economy. 288 Boyer (1992, 49): “Twentieth-century prophecy popularizers often portray God as a cosmic playwright stage-managing a vast melodrama, shifting about a huge cast of puzzled and unwitting actors. Augustine offered a different metaphor: God as composer and conductor, history as an indescribably lovely musical work, unfolding for the sheer pleasure of its human listeners.” Boyer (1992, 312-316) later noted the belief among prophecy analysts that history could only be properly understood when seen through a proper Biblical lens. But figuring out the script in light of “satanic” influence can prove nettlesome. The section on “Satanism” in Rhodes (2001, 316) called attention to “historical facts” such as “According to Matthew 2, Joseph, Mary, and Jesus had to flee to Egypt because Herod ordered the slaughter of all male children, hoping to kill Christ in the process (vv. 13-16). The account in Matthew does not mention the involvement of Satan, but it was nevertheless a satanic act. (See Rev. 12:4-6, which seems to support the idea that Satan sought Jesus’ death following his birth.)” Cf. note 129 above. Like Faid, Tim LaHaye (1999, 51) frames history as though he had copped a peak at the devil’s “to do” list: “Satan unleashed a violent attack on the church in an effort to obliterate it, for it became evident to him that the apostolic church, because of its faithful preaching of the gospel, had become a serious threat to his worldwide godless empire.” On the next page LaHaye listed the major Roman persecutions of Christians and a few of the main martyrs—but not one word on whether early Christians may have been capable of a few persecutions themselves (with or without satanic urging). One can imagine how history teaching in the Theistic Realism era could be revolutionized by such attitudes. 289 Ankerberg & Weldon (1998, 26). 290 Hal Lindsey (1976, 6). Anthony Flew, “Skepticism About Religion,” in Kurtz (2001, 375-387) noted the same ability to juggle a loving but homicidal god in the ideology of Islamic fundamentalism—a belief system capable of some rather explicit violence. 291 Here a few observations are in order on the character and demographics of Hell. Rhodes (2001, 295) sums up the traditional picture: “The Scriptures use a variety of words to describe the horrors of hell—including fire, fiery furnace, unquenchable fire, the lake of burning sulfur, the lake of fire, everlasting contempt, perdition, the place of weeping and gnashing of teeth, eternal punishment, darkness, the wrath to come, exclusion, torments, damnation, condemnation, retribution, woe, and the second death. Hell is a horrible destiny (see, for example, Matt. 25:31-46; Jude 7; Rev. 20:14).” Turner (1985, 142-143) noted how uncomfortable 19th century humanitarian Christians were with this picture, and 20th century apologists have offered their own twists. Strobel (2000, 287

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169-194) relied primarily on J. P. Moreland to assure him that Hell didn’t involve physical torture after all, but only an eternal separation from God. Polkinghorne (2002, 136-138) is similar. Hugh Ross and William Lane Craig field a more traditional (and Byzantine) position. Ross (1996, 188, 190-191) mixed “tough love” with misplaced concreteness: “Hell is a place people choose. While the people in hell will despise their torment, they have demonstrated their preference for it over eternal fellowship with God and with all who love the Light. For them, the experience of such fellowship would be far less tolerable than the torment of hell.” As for torture: “We can only begin to imagine what evil could be expressed by those from whom the restraining influence of God the Spirit has departed. The unleashing of individuals’ full potential for cruelty and all manner of evil could make hell vastly more horrible than God designed it to be. The worst thing about hell might be the company its inhabitants must keep. But God will keep in check the horrors these individuals could inflict on one another by immobilizing them, distracting them sufficiently with some kind of pain or discomfort.” Ross explained that especially wicked “rebels against God’s authority” like Hitler might require more of this loving distraction than less annoying ones like Albert Schweitzer. Craig similarly declared in a 1994 debate with Ray Bradley (“Can a Loving God Send People to Hell?” at leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/docs/craig-bradley0.html) that “those who are in hell are not innocent. They are there because they have deliberately chosen to reject God and because they have failed to live up to the demands of his moral law. Therefore their condemnation is just.” And besides: “God would let people out of hell if they would repent and believe in Him, but in fact they freely choose not to.” Hank Hanegraaff offered a similar characterization of Hell in answering a questioner on the October 14, 2002 edition of the “Bible Answer Man.” It is peculiar enough to suppose that a loving omnipotent deity couldn’t think of any better way to keep the inmates of a Hell of his own design from pestering one another without gratuitously inflicting physical torture. But apart from interviewing the inhabitants of perdition, how Ross, Craig or Hanegraaff proposed to confirm their state of mind begs comprehension. One would think that an atheist would find their predicament a rather good indicator that the traditional “send you to hell if you don’t believe” God actually existed after all—and that repentance under such circumstances would be a quite reasonable response to this expansion of their empirical database. Conversely, the only people who could possibly remain “rebels” under those stressful but conclusive circumstances would be those who were incredibly stupid. One may contrast such wussy modernism with the gutsier medieval sentiment noted by Moynahan (2002, 287): “Gregory the Great had said, cruelly, that the bliss of the elect in heaven would not be perfect unless they could look across the abyss and see the torment of those in eternal fire.” 292 The Hanegraaff broadcast was on January 29, 2002. While Archer (1982, 390-392) lightly glossed the hardening matter, Hiers (2001, 24) filed it away under the issue of the uncertainties of “theodicy” without exploring its “information distortion” aspects. 293 Edward Wilson (1998, 59). 294 Many American Muslims were deeply offended by the extremism of Osama bin Laden, as a September 23, 2001 editorial noted (post-gazette.com/headlines/20010923jihad0923p5,asp). Belt (2002) concisely surveyed the diversity of modern Islam and its varied history for National Geographic. Cf. the treatment of Islamic views on justified force in Huston Smith (1958, 248250), the varied meanings of “jihad” (literally a struggle) in their culture noted by Kimball (2002, 173-178), and the mixed record of Islamic conquest prompted by the “holy war” aspect of the term, covered by Moynahan (2002, 156-190). 295 Kendrick Frazier, “From the Editor’s Seat: Thoughts on Science and Skepticism at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century,” in Kurtz (2001, 31). For a topical illustration of the sort of thinking that Frazier is warning of, one can hardly do better than the broad but also exasperating melange of conspiracy-minded reporting (ironically titled You Are Being Lied To) edited by Russ Kick. With a terribly bad sense of publication timing, Ali Abunimah, “The Truth About Terrorism,” in Kick (2001, 115) expressed severe doubts that bin Laden might be “operating a vast, international terrorism network.” Then again, Michael Parenti was on hand to question the Bosnian “Ethnic Cleansing Hype” and Cletus Nelson sought to expose the Oklahoma City “Truck-bomb Hoax” (pp. 51-55, 139-142). The political section stuck closer to terra firma with radical but still rational

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media critics from the left (such as Jeff Cohen of FAIR) and right (Howard Bloom taking on the “Media Elite” and Jim Martin revealing “What I Didn’t Know About the Communist Conspiracy”). A scathing piece on the POW/MIA issue by Sydney Schanberg (known for his reporting on the “Killing Fields” of Cambodia) revealed “The War Secrets Senator John McCain Hides” (pp. 8894). Christianity got some barbs too, with Earl Lee taking aim at the Gablers’ textbook campaigns (pp. 73-74, 81) and reprinting an old anti-Christian piece (see note 75 above). But the “scientific” punditry was thoroughly lopsided, treating William R. Corliss (“There Is So Much That We Don’t Know: Selections from the Science Frontiers Book and Newsletter”) as though he weren’t an unqualified oddity-monger (questioning the Big Bang as well as evolution, pp. 318, 321). Michael Cremo’s contribution on paleoanthropology was cited in note 381, chapter five. 296 Colson & Pearcey (1999, 200). 297 Paul Johnson (1977, 517). Bork (1996, 295) quoted this passage with approval on the page following his jab at evolution (re note 40 of the Introduction). Over on the reformist Islamic side, Azizah Y. al-Hibri, “Standing at the Precipice: Faith in the Age of Science and Technology,” in alHibri et al. (2001, 83) sounded a lot like Bork and Paul Johnson in stressing the anchoring role of faith in the public square. She related the Old Testament and Koran stories of Satan’s temptation of Adam & Eve to the modern secular urge to become as gods through science and technology (though without indicating whether she considered that Edenic couple essentially fictional characters in a moral lesson). But the more serious flaw concerned al-Hibri’s acceptance that “History provides numerous examples of how religious individuals or institutions have used their beliefs as a tool to accumulate power, a purely selfish materialist goal.” In positioning the abuse of religion external to the theology in this way, she was skirting the question of whether any disreputable practices could be traced to inherent doctrine. 298 Polkinghorne (2000, 48-49). One might note, though, that there would be four more Crusades through that century before the authorities started heeding St. Francis’ advice. But then the Church hadn’t shown any haste in curtailing the “threats of exile and dungeons” the prominent St. Hilary of Poitiers warned about back in 365, George Smith (2000, 82). Cf. Andrew Hastings, “150-550,” in Hastings (1999, 41) and Chidester (2000, 120) on Hilary. Nor would the church hierarchy be open later on to the moral outrage of Bartolomé de Las Casas over slavery in Conquistador America (discussed next chapter, note 40). Much like an unguided Darwinian immunological system, the Christian process of moral compass correction seems to run both haphazardly and slow. Incidentally, Boyer (1992, 52-53) noted how Joachim of Fiore’s ideas influenced the formation of monastic orders like the Franciscans, who expected Fiore’s post-Antichrist Age of the Spirit to arrive in the eschatologically meaningful year of 1260 (see notes 47 & 280 above). Cf. de Hamel (2001, 156) on the spurt of Apocalypse manuscript production during the antecedent 1250s. St. Francis also represented the pacifist undercurrent in Christ’s teachings, which surfaced in disparate heretical venues (such as the Waldensians and Hussites), Kimball (2002, 157-158, 164-165). 299 Glynn (1997, 149). Ian Wilson (2) (1999, 247) quoted a slightly different version attributed to Chesterton’s 1910 book What’s Wrong with the World (p. 36): “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.” This is the version that appears in Federer (1999, 103, 728n) drawing on Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. This reminds me of the similar dodges of other all-encompassing ideologies, such as the unrepentant Marxist, forever jettisoning the bad results of each new experiment in Scientific Socialism as having improperly applied the infallible dialectic. Or how freely believers in the paranormal generate post hoc rationalizations to explain away failures in faith healing or precognition, Barry Karr, “Never a Dull Moment,” and Susan Blackmore, “Why I Have Given Up,” in Kurtz (2001, 51-53, 88-92). 300 Exodus 22:18. The RSV, NIV, New Living & New American Standard translations use sorceress instead of witch. Leviticus 20:27 is less narrowly sexist: “A man also or a woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with stones: their blood shall be upon them.” See Today’s Parallel Bible (2000, 176-177, 274-275) for comparative versions, and Oxford Bible (2001, 83, 104) for some obliquely bland commentary on the Exodus/Leviticus admonitions. Prompted by the fuss among some Christians over the witchcraft elements in J. K. Rowling’s widely popular Harry Potter book and film series, Melanie

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Cooper resolved the issue for her fellow Mormons by using Joseph Smith’s personal translation of the KJV “witch” as “murderer” (lds.about.com/library/weekly/aa071200c.htm). This sort of tactical rationalizing would hit two birds with one stone for cult-watchers Caryl Matrisciana (carylmatrisciana.com) and Richard Abanes, critics of Mormonism and Harry Potter. Matrisciana’s version was featured by Chuck Missler’s K-House eNews for June 24, 2003; she also co-authored The Evolution Conspiracy in 1991 with the ditzy Roger Oakland (cf. note 223, chapter three). A digression here on the very different reaction of some evangelicals to the idea that J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy embodies Christian principles. Examples include “Tolkien’s Theology of the Ring: Lord of the Rings—A Christian Classic?” (christianity.about.com/library/weekly/aa123001.html) and Greg Wright’s review of The Two Towers film at the Hollywood Jesus website (hollywoodjesus.com/lord_of_the_rings_2.htm). Jim Ware’s December 2001 “Finding God in The Lord of the Rings” appears at Focus on the Family (family.org/pplace/pi/lotr/A0018586.cfm), and the resultant book co-authored with Kurt Bruner has been promoted at Hank Hanegraaff’s Christian Research Institute. Part of an intellectual Christian movement that rejected the trendy secular Marxism afflicting so many British literati in the mid-20th century, Tolkien helped convert C. S. Lewis (who went on to pen his own more overtly Christian redemptive trilogy, The Chronicles of Narnia). Lewis remains a highly influential Christian apologist, as evidenced in the comments collected by Scott Larson (2003). Interestingly enough, Witham (2003, 124) quoted Phillip Johnson explaining how a 1959 reading of Tolkien’s trilogy and C. S. Lewis when he was an English major “prepared my imagination for everything that came later.” See also Scott Larson (2003, 144). Because Tolkien considered all myths as potentially reflecting the “true myths” of Christianity, he could dump almost anything into the story, and did. Both Harry Potter and Frodo Baggins go through exciting adventures against an evil force, during which they learn lessons of friendship, bravery and personal sacrifice. Why such evil exists isn’t explained in either venue, which is understandable for the secular Potter, but hardly acceptable for a Christian worldview having quite explicit concepts of fallen angels and man pertinent to the theodicy issue. Indeed, “religion” plays no notable role in either series: no one visits shrines or cathedrals to pray, or performs explicit theological rituals. In this respect Potter’s world and Middle Earth have less religious content than Robert E. Howard’s sword-and-sorcery classic Conan series, which was thick with cults and religious fanaticism. For a modern secularist, what really unites Potter and Rings is a blithe reliance on the reality of sympathetic magic (wherein talismans have paranormal attributes and knowing the right incantation can cause material things to happen). Researching this point, I discovered that in a February 18, 2002 posting for Christianity Today Michael G. Maudlin came to much the same conclusion as I had (“Saint Frodo and the Potter Demon” at christianitytoday.com/books/features/bccorner/020218.html). Indeed, Maudlin went farther than yours truly by noting that, if anything, Tolkien’s influence on occult beliefs is more tangible and worrisome than Harry Potter’s, given that none of Rowling’s readers seem to actually believe in any of the magic lore that figures in the story—whereas the Ring Trilogy did help grease the cultural skids for the Dungeon & Dragons role-playing game phenomenon. Similar wary religious takes on Tolkien and Potter appeared in a July 13, 2002 piece, “Lord of the Rings: True Mythology” (leaderu.com/focus/tolkien.html) and Berit Kjos’ “Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings: Truth, Myth or Both?” (crossroad.to/articles2/rings.htm). Cf. Lynn Clark (2003, 24, 42-45, 68-69), noting the Rowling and Tolkien fuss, and relating interest in the books to a teen-empowerment oriented media environment. Another aspect of the debate concerns which religious candle Tolkien and Lewis were lighting: both were devout Roman Catholics. That is all to the good for Catholic apologia, such as “The Lord of the Rings—A Catholic Epic” at catholicqanda.com/LOTR.html, which further cited Toni Collins’ “Harry Potter: Agent of Conversion” (envoymagazine.com/harrypotter.htm) to demonstrate the anti-Catholic insults and general occult propaganda supposedly lurking in Rowling’s books. For fundamentalist Baptist Logos Communication Consortium (of Oak Creek, Wisconsin) it is precisely Tolkien’s resolute Catholicism and occult/mythical bent that bothers David W. Cloud (“Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings” at logosresourcepages.org/rings.htm). Other

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topics at the website include the “Harry Potter Problem,” the inevitable “Homosexual Agenda,” and a jab at “Enviornmentalism” (sic). 301 Paul Johnson (1977, 117) and Moynahan (2002, 86-88). If Priscillian’s trial and torture were anything like the sort of 17th century travesties George Burr (1914) so methodically catalogued then it was unlikely to have set high standards for just cause. 302 Adrian Hastings, “150-550,” in Hastings (1999, 42). See also Moynahan (2002, 50, 100-102). Damasus’ Milanese rival (known as Ursinus, the Bear) was already the fourth antipope—part of an ongoing process of regional rivalry in the West that paralleled the Alexandria-Constantinople axis (note 237 above). Damasus served as Pope from 366 to 384 (thus longer than Severus Alexander had been Emperor), and is also the patron saint of archaeologists. Several sanitized versions of Damasus’ career are available in such online Catholic directories as catholic.org.uk/directory/saints and the more extensive newadvent.org/cathen/04613a.htm. Cf. McBrien (2001, 497-499). A further note on the superstitious tenor of Damasus’ Rome: St. Jerome commented how the holy ascetic Hilarian was responsible for many conversions to Christianity by more successfully blessing horses, stables and racecourses than the pagan competition, Lane Fox (1986, 19). This would be in that period tartly described by Casson (1998, 97): “Within two centuries Isis had succumbed to the Virgin Mary, Asclepius and Serapis had yielded their powers to healing saints, and architects were building churches with columns cannibalized from Apollo’s or Jupiter’s crumbling temples.” 303 Just how many “witches” were executed in Europe is still something of a scholarly uncertainty. The Inquisition evidently disposed of 30,000 during the period 1450-1600, permitting Robbins (1959, 179-180) to estimate 200,000 were likely executed in Europe during that overall period. The fatality estimates began to shoot up during the inflationary 1970s, reaching the stratosphere with a nine million figure in William Woods (1974, xvi). Subsequent scholarship has deflated that, so that the discussion of heretics in Chidester (2000, 255-274) reflected an even more conservative 100,000 number. Resolving the full scale and character of the witch trials is complicated by the same scholarly problem obscuring the history of early Christianity. Woods (1974, xvi): “So far as I know, not one document belonging to the witches themselves has survived. Perhaps the documents never existed. As I pointed out earlier, the evidence comes solely from the prosecutors, and prosecutors are generally blind in the eye. Even a cursory glance at their evidence reveals that they often did not even know what enemy they were trying to attack. Heretics, political dissidents, common criminals, and a host of maundering old women were all caught in the same net.” 304 See Shermer (1997, 100-106) for a concise summary of witchcraft crazes and the social and psychological causes offered to account for them, Moynahan (2002, 479-503) for the story within the context of Christian history, and Boyer & Nissenbaum (1974) for a detailed analysis of the 1692 Salem witchcraft hysteria. Interestingly enough, misdiagnosis of mental illness appears not to have played a significant role in the witch hunts, as noted in a 1984 essay by Thomas J. Schoeneman, “The Mentally Ill Witch in Textbooks of Abnormal Psychology: Current Status and Implications of a Fallacy” (lclark.edu/~schoen/bookwitchtext.html). Monastic turf wars did shape the process in Spain, as Paul Johnson (1977, 310) noted how a 200-year-long feud between the Jesuits and the Dominican Inquisition led to a grisly division of labor: “In Spain, orthodoxy hunted Jews but very rarely witches.” That activity was left to the Jesuits (who were pro-Jewish). “The Jesuits were a striking case of a highly educated and strongly motivated élite allowing the stresses of religious conflict to confuse their moral values,” Johnson (1977, 305). Johnson was not referring to the Jesuits’ witch hunting, however, but to their approach to religious war: beyond the idea of applying violence against heretics in the first place, the Jesuits were also open to selective assassination of Protestants, especially of the leadership. The early Mormons also appeared to have encouraged bands of enforcers (such as the “Danites”) who were not above bumping off opponents, at least according to Abanes (2002, 151-154, 191-192, 234-250). This is an issue modern nations still have to grapple with (though often the decision rests more on the practical considerations of not starting a cycle of official assassination rather than any moral qualms about killing enemies outside the traditional confines of the battlefield). 305 See Michael J. Harner on “The Role of Hallucinogenic Plants in European Witchcraft, “ in Harner (1973, 125-150) and Caporael (1976) or Ingram (1998, 138-149) on the ergotism theory of

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the Salem witch outbreak. Rye was one of the major food crops of 17th century New England, and it was long known that the ergot fungus produced some rather potent compounds—including one later refined as LSD. 306 Thus Mortimer Adler (1990) on Truth in Religion never examined the issue of Biblical inerrancy or its questionable progeny (such as witchcraft and heresy trials). While Garrison (1968, 39, 5556) tiptoed rather gingerly over the implications of Old Testament witchcraft law, Archer (1982, 181) was more directly evasive by listing Exodus 22:18 once—and without mentioning the capital offense context. Other treatments simply omit the subject: the closest Hiers (2001, 130n) got to the witchcraft injunction was Exodus 22:21-27. The topic arose only backhandedly in Carroll & Shiflett (2002, 41, 182), referring to an abolitionist who “had been among the judges of the unfortunate Salem witches” and that the Salem “leaders believed in witches, admittedly, along with nearly everyone else of that era.” The matter they didn’t explore was the belief in witches of another era, that of the author(s) of Exodus and Leviticus. About the closest Federer (1999, 433434) got to the subject in his cataract of Christian authority quotes were the brief biographical bits on Increase and Cotton Mather (contemporaries of the Salem witchcraft trials). 307 Lapin (1999, 50, 61, 261-267). Schroeder (1997, 18) was equally selective: “Unlike abstract concepts of faith, biblical religion has a track record that can be evaluated. As Paul Johnson articulated so incisively, the Bible is the earliest identifiable source of the great conceptual discoveries essential for civilization: equality before the law, sanctity of life, dignity of the individual, individual and communal responsibility, peace as an ideal, love as the foundation of justice.” But only those virtues and practices? Reminiscent of D. James Kennedy and company (notes 72-73 above), Schroeder (1997, 202) later used “whole shebang” logic to hitch his trimmed Old Testament morality to archaeological evidence for the existence of Ur and (more problematically) Joshua at Jericho. “If these provable claims are true, then perhaps those biblical claims that can’t be proven, such as the benefits for respecting a neighbor, not bribing, not cheating in business, are also true. After all, they all are found in the same Bible.” A QED net that would just as surely snare Exodus 22. 308 Morris & Morris (1996c, 159-160). Craig S. Hawkins essays on “The Modern World of Witchcraft” and “Witnessing to Witches” for the Christian Research Institute Journal (Winter/Spring & Summer 1990, available online at iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/cri/crijrnl/web/crj0064a.html, crj0069a.html & crj0070a.html) similarly discussed the issue in terms of relating Christianity to modern witches. There was no direct mention of the historic practice of witch persecution, and Biblical passages were briefly cited only insofar as they condemned the general practice of consorting with spirits. Thus Hawkins cited Leviticus 19:26, 31; 2:6 … but not the death penalty verse 20:27. Hawkins was able to riff off the considerable revisionism about the nature of European witchcraft that has played out ever since Murray (1931) proposed that it represented a pagan religious tradition (the old Horned God) rather than a demonic reaction to Christian practices. From there it was only a short step to the assembly of a feminist version of witchcraft that (like the occult tarot or the pseudo “druids” who frolic around Stonehenge every solstice) eventually came to be considered the “real” thing. Toss in some understandable outrage over the high proportion of women who were accused and killed and you have all the ingredients for a self-sustaining subculture, especially when merged with the trendy university proponents of the Mother Goddess mythology of ecofeminism, such as that critically dissected by Thornton (1999, 177-214). 309 Dembski (1999a, 45). Glynn (1997, 150) examined neither the Scriptural passages relevant to witch-hunting nor the actual tradition of persecution before deciding: “Those who burned witches and heretics in later centuries were repeating exactly the ‘sin’ that killed Jesus.” And Barr (2003, 65-66) disingenuously asserted that Biblical monotheism swept away all the “capricious beings” of paganism (furies and such) without investigating the tradition of demonic possession (see note 285 above). In a similar spirit of rationalization, Stark (2003, 201-288) also did not address the Biblical injunctions on witch killing in his argument that the European witch hunts “were the result of reason and logic applied to a false premise.” Stark (2003, 287) did note that Islamic law had a death penalty for sorcery, though unaccompanied by any notable witch hunting in their culture.

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Incidentally, Stark (2003, 222-223, 288, 305, 339, 342) fielded an ironic connection of witchhunting with Christian abolitionism, but rested on only two examples: the 16th century French philosopher and jurist Jean Bodin (a closet atheist, as Stark acknowledged) and the 18th century Salem trial veteran, Samuel Sewall (a Puritan). Cf. Zagorin (2003, 48-49) on Bodin’s position among proto-humanists. 310 Francis J. Beckwith, “Why I am Not a Moral Relativist,” in Geisler & Hoffman (2001, 19-20). Beckwith is an associate professor of philosophy, culture, and law at Trinity International University. His one citation was not a compendium of scholarly insight on the history or theology of witch hunting: “See C. L. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 26.” Unfortunately for Beckwith’s hypothetical legalist example of segregated witch sections, I am personally aware of at least one Christian who is willing to entertain the idea of a proper Biblebased society reviving the Old Testament witchcraft law, with of course an appropriate attention paid to defining what constitutes a witch. Whether the process would turn into the scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (where an innocent accused got a “fair” conviction based on her being lighter than a duck) may be put in the same legal bin as Pennock’s “demon lettuce.” 311 The evangelist Nicky Cruz (1973, 107) and apologist Strobel (2000, 209-210) also hit on the Salem case instead of the much longer European tradition of witch and heretic hunting, as well as the overall process of how rationalist skepticism entered the picture. Although he obviously had no basis to decide how many (if any) accused witches really were into devil worship, Cruz concluded: “All of which does not make witchcraft right. The fact that it was wrong to kill suspected witches does not mean it’s right to pray to the devil. The pendulum of history swings from one extreme to another. I’m convinced that the execution of witches three centuries ago is no more dangerous an extreme than today’s permissive acceptance of them as harmless dabblers in the occult.” It should be noted that Cruz (1973, 57-58) mirrored the syncretic interests of the Aquarian Age by lumping under the “occult” an alphabet soup of non-evangelical activities: astrology, Buddhism, fortune telling, Hare Krishna, Hinduism, magic, meditation, reincarnation, Satan worship, spiritualism, witchcraft and yoga. The “witches are misunderstood pagans” approach was just getting into full swing during that period, by the way, as reflected in popular treatments from the entertaining Tindall (1975) to the pompous ghost-hunting Holzer (1969; 1973); Lyons (1970) specifically covered what seemed at the time a burgeoning American Satanist subculture. Unger (1972, 178) fumed at the time: “England is witnessing a revival of the occult that threatens to engulf it in the spiritual darkness of the Middle Ages.” Of course, that was before Margaret Thatcher. 312 Burr (1914, 5) quoted Joseph Glanvill, a young Oxford theologian who wrote in 1661 how a denial of “Spirits, or Witches” was a view of cagey atheists who “dare not bluntly say, There is no God.” Similarly Woods (1974, 89) quoting 17th century Scottish scholar George Sinclair that if people stopped believing in witches, then “farewell all religion, all faith, all hope of a life to come.” And for the skeptically inclined of those times, finding a way to believe in the miraculous netherworld could act as a hook on which to peg a general faith. Or at least that’s how the preface to Richard Baxter’s The Certainty of the Worlds of Spirits put it in 1691: “finding that almost all the Atheists, Sadducees, and Infidels did seem to profess that were they but sure of the Reality of the Apparitions and Operations of Spirits, it would cure them,” Burr (1914, 98). Parenthetically, George Smith (2000, 205-206) noted how the Enlightenment rejection of miracles as superstition had at least one foot in the Protestant denial of the many “miracles” that had grown up around the Catholic tradition. 313 LaHaye & Noebel (2000, 38). Cf. note 177 above on LaHaye’s position that the Old Testament rules remain in effect unless specifically overridden by the Sermon on the Mount—and how inevitably selective he had to be in applying the principle. Cult-watcher Rhodes (2001, 14) attributed the growth of “cultic” activity partly to “A majority of people holding to moral relativism.” Rhodes also complained about that unspecified but “significant number of impotent and lifeless Christian churches” who have spawned “indifference, lack of commitment, spiritual dryness, doctrinal immaturity, and biblical illiteracy among members.” This was symptomatic of the Jeremiad tendency among conservative evangelicals to see America as an unequivocally “Christian” country that nonetheless remains never quite Christian enough.

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Johnson (1997, 90-91). But instead of looking into a few of those “barbaric cruelties” practiced specifically by Christians, and the theological justifications offered for them at the time, Johnson immediately turned to the contemporary social diseases of Carl Sagan and Star Trek (note 263, chapter four). McDowell & Hostetler (1992, 92-94) and Francis J. Beckwith, “Why I Am Not a Moral Relativist,” in Geisler & Hoffman (2001, 15-29) are just as vague. Add the quick potshot of Colson & Pearcey (1999, 21) including moral relativism on their list of the fruits of “naturalism” (along with multiculturalism, pragmatism, utopianism, and a “this-world perspective”). There will be more on sorting out “is” and “ought” below (but see also note 282 above on the “naturalistic fallacy”). Incidentally, Beckwith’s occasional collaborator in moral philosophy is Gregory P. Koukl (cf. note 358, chapter five, on Michael Behe’s theologically slippery position). Hank Hanegraaff’s operation in turn heartily recommends Koukl & Beckwith’s insights on moral relativism, as on the “Bible Answer Man” (May 21, 2002). 315 Lapin (1999, 72, 328). Lapin clearly had his Kulturkampf binoculars fixed on the sort of political correctness commented on by Rudacille (2000, 11): “Christopher Columbus, Isaac Newton, Louis Pasteur, and Thomas Jefferson are now viewed equally, in some, quarters, as the bearers of tainted gifts.” Jefferson for his slaveholding, Pasteur among animal rights advocates, Columbus for Native Americans, and Newton for feminist science—though Sandra Harding regrets having described Principia Mathematica as a “rape manual,” Nemecek (1997, 100). See Sara Miles and John Henry, “Gender,” in Ferngren (2002, 369-372) for a short survey of feminist views of science. 316 Even within a framework of absolute morality, where human slavery is deemed inherently immoral, there are still relative ethical measurements that may be drawn. While Jefferson and George Washington both saw slavery as a looming threat to the integrity of their “all men are created equal” republic, neither stopped owning slaves while they were alive, Kolchin (1993, 77-79, 88-89) or Berlin (1998, 127, 257, 268-269). Cf. Thornton (1999, 220). Where Washington gained a slight moral edge is how he arranged to free the Mt. Vernon slaves in his will … while Jefferson didn’t, because his attachment to acquiring the latest books, fine wines, and construction of Monticello kept his estate too much in debt to permit even this posthumous atonement. Though Kenneth Greenberg (1996, 66-67) noted that some slaveholders freed their chattel not out of moral duty but as part of the peculiar Southern attitude of control (see note 219 above). For students of historical “what if” games: there is further irony to consider what might have happened in the absence of a successful American Revolution. It is possible that slavery would have been abolished in the American colonies as the British did during the 19th century. But that may have resulted in a moral tradeoff over the longer term as European monarchies blundered ahead with no American experiment to act as a prod to representative democracy. For further irony, one may consider how slavery was conducted in the Islamic world, Segal (2001, 5-10). Muslims treated slaves somewhat more leniently than in the Christian West partly because Islam never especially encouraged the sort of market capitalism that (for a time) treated black slaves as cogs in a ruthless profit machine. Yet the failure to generate a robust capitalism also insulated Islamic society from the “constitutional secularism and democracy” that eventually outgrew slavery to engender a new society based on freedom and untrammeled intellectual inquiry. Though even today, a repugnant debt slavery still persists in many areas of the world, Bales (2002). 317 As usual, some creationists haven’t wrestled with this logic because they skip the relevant history lessons. McDowell (1975, 147-148) left slavery out of his survey of Christian ethics, as did Morris & Morris (1996c) in their foray into Society and Creation. Glynn (1997, 154) mentioned that “slaves were legally defined as property or chattel” in the ancient world—but didn’t investigate the Biblical track record on it. And although Schroeder (1997, 81-82) referred briefly to the “barbarity of Rome” and to “the perverted democracy of Greece” that was built on human slavery, and cited Exodus and Leviticus dozens of times, somehow he managed to overlook all the slavery passages (cf. note 307 above). 318 Colson & Pearcey (1999, 386-387). There were no references apart from the scriptural ones. Strobel (1998, 166-169) offered a similar treatment. Relying on Donald A. Carson (of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School), Strobel skipped lightly over Old Testament instances of slavery. We 314

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were told that Jesus’ purpose wasn’t “to overturn the Roman economic system” anyway, and Christian changes to the heart eventually brought slavery to an end (mentioning British abolitionism rather than the more troubling American experience). The difficulty for Christian apologists trying to extract too much mileage from the history is that a similar defense could be offered for how slavery was conducted in the Islamic world, Segal (2001, x-xi, 3-12). 319 Quoting Abraham Kuyper’s 1996 book Christianity: A Total World and Life System (p. 14), Colson & Pearcey (1999, 131) transformed expectation into fact: “Consequently, the Christian worldview ‘condemns not merely all open slavery and systems of caste, but also covert slavery of women and of the poor.’” Rick Richardson (2000, 47) likewise telescoped some fifteen inconvenient centuries into: “Jesus believed all people matter to God. That’s why Christians ran the Underground Railroad before the Civil War and why new Christian movements have often been led by women.” Minnery (2001, 113-116, 141-160) is similar. Such historical housecleaning may be compared with the “liberal” Polkinghorne (2000, 63) on the Bible: “Inevitably it expresses attitudes (to women, genocide and slavery, for instance) which we cannot endorse today.” Though Polkinghorne didn’t address how a revelation from God could have got so many fundamentals askew either. Cf. Ronald Potter (2000) in Christianity Today. 320 Robin Lane Fox (1986, 295). The RSV text of I Corinthians 7:20-24 gets the point across more clearly: “Every one should remain in the state in which he was called. Were you a slave when called? Never mind. But if you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity. For he who was called in the Lord as a slave is a freedman of the Lord. Likewise he who was free when called is a slave of Christ. You were bought for a price; do not become slaves of men. So, brethren, in whatever state each was called, there let him remain with God.” Cf. John 8:32-36 on this metaphysical meaning of “slavery”—and I Peter 2:18 admonishing slaves to be submissive to their masters, good or bad (3:1 offered parallel advice to wives re their husbands, Christian or not). Hiers (2001, 230-231) notes the same of the slavery references in Philemon. This attitude was reprised during the Great Awakening when American evangelists sought to lead all heathens to Christ, teaching and converting slaves—not freeing them, Kolchin (1993, 55-57) or Berlin (1998, 60-61, 138-140, 171-173, 189-190, 272-273). Incidentally, Paul’s opening line referred to a particular “state” one was to remain in: I Corinthians 7:17-19 explained that circumcision ought not to be considered a defining requirement for the Christian offshoot of Judaism. See Paul Johnson (1977, 3-5) on the Apostolic Conference that wrestled over circumcision c. AD 49, variously reported by Paul in Galatians and Luke in Acts. And for ironic meringue, Lane Fox (1986, 296): “After the Jewish revolt of 132-135, the Emperor Hadrian restricted the circumcision of Gentiles, a practice whose prime victims, presumably, had been the pagan slaves of Jewish owners. The circumcision of slaves had played an important part in the spread of the Jewish faith and the conspicuous numbers of Jewish freedmen.” 321 Hanegraaff (1998, 169n). For background, Revelation 18:12-14 concerns how “the merchants of the world shall weep” due to a decline in commerce occasioned by the fall of Babylon (usually taken as a metaphor to be substituted with Rome or some other contemporary surrogate). Besides slaves, product lines that will suffer include luxury goods (pearls, silk), handicrafts (vessels of ivory, wood, brass, iron, marble), animals (horses, sheep), and foodstuffs (cinnamon, wine, “fine flour and wheat”). Since slaves were listed merely as another commodity, would Hanegraaff also conclude that the bible “never condones” the use of cinnamon sticks in holiday wine drinks? 322 See Meltzer (1993, Vol. I, 175-181) on Judaic slavery etiquette. Citing specifically Exodus 21:26-27, the traditionalist Revell Concise Bible Dictionary (1990, 506-507) affirmed that the Mosaic Code “protected slaves from harsh treatment.” New Bible (1994, 109-110) offers a similar treatment of Exodus 21. 323 Paul Veyne, “The Roman Empire,” in Veyne (1987, 61). Exemplars of this “humanitarian” side of Roman philosophy were the Stoic Seneca, the author Petronius (cf. note 168 above) and apparently even their patron Nero (!). But the “Toward Tradition” Senate found such fuzzy headed attitudes dangerously liberal, and enacted especially punitive slave laws in the mid-1st century as a result, Michael Grant (1970, 109-110).

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324

Robin Lane Fox (1986, 299). See Lane Fox (1986, 295-303) and Meltzer (1993, Vol. I, 206224) on slaves converted to Christianity and the accommodations the early Church made with slavery. Cf. Moynahan (2002, 60-62) on Christian acceptance of slavery. Commenting on Tertullian’s 4th century, Lane Fox (1986, 296): “The greater slavery was man’s slavery to his passions. As if to prove it, pagan slaves continued to show up in the ownership of Christians, even of Bishops.” 325 Hanegraaff reiterated his view of Biblical slavery in his 2001 reaction to Spong’s “Politically Incorrect” appearance (re note 179 above). Replaying this “unbelievable” distortion of Scripture and suggesting Spong might be “senile,” Hanegraaff did not mention the Exodus provisions or the Leviticus text (re note 178 above) Spong could easily have cited had any of Bill Maher’s guests cared to cavil. When maintaining that “slaves are to be protected” under the Biblical code, Hiers (2001, 46, 130n) cited only Exodus 21:20 and verses 26-27. These were exactly the same passages Glenn Miller gave when he mined Exodus to similar effect in his piece on Old Testament slavery (Christian-thinktank.com/qnoslave.html). Even Oxford Bible (2001, 83) gets into the insouciance act, noting the similarity of the Exodus rules to the Mesopotamian code, but not alluding to verse 21. And the scholarly Stark (2003, 328) declared that “Jews were prohibited from enslaving other Jews” and “Death was decreed for any Jewish master who killed a slave.” He then quoted Exodus 21:26-27, but not verses 2 & 20-21 which explicitly permitted Hebrew slave ownership (he may have misunderstood the implications of kidnapping of slaves, re note 329 below) and did not require the execution of slave killers. These modern treatments are thus no improvement over the baseline equivocation of Archer (1982, 86-87, 149). A few recent translations of the Bible resolve the difficulty by creative grammar, as indicated by the parallel renderings available at online Bible sites (such as bible.gospelcom.net or blueletterbible.org) or in Today’s Parallel Bible (2000, 172-173). For example, the New Living Translation gives verse 21 as “If the slave recovers after a couple of days, however, then the owner shall not be punished, since the slave is the owner’s property.” The New International Version similarly has recovery on the mind, having the slave getting up in their version. The NIV was the basis for The Student Bible that an acquaintance showed me recently. Their 21:20-21 was: “If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a direct result, he must be punished, but he is not to be punished if the slave gets up after a day or two, since the slave is his property.” The latest edition of the NIV has drawn critical fire for its liberties of translation, though not apparently for the Exodus matter. Their concerns swirl around gender-neutral terminology, especially in the New Testament (for example “The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood” at cbmw.org). 326 Kolchin (1993, 130) and Berlin (1998, 150). Of course the enforcement of Antebellum slave killing statutes left much to be desired, but that is a social defect shared by the Judeo-Christian culture generally. Glenn Miller’s extended analysis of New Testament slavery practices (Christianthinktank.com/qnoslavent.html) showed a parallel with Donald DeYoung’s circumventing the Biblical flat earth (note 105, chapter one). Miller spent 60% of his discussion changing the subject: explaining how enlightened Roman servitude was compared to the American brand. He cited no sources directly on the particulars of American slavery, however. But neither Roman nor Christian slaveholding practices noticeably improve Miller’s apologetic. Consider Lane Fox (1986, 323): “if Christian women beat their maidservants to death, so an early council of Spain decided, they were to be punished with several years’ denial of communion. The mild scale of punishment was hardly less revealing than the existence of such sinners. We should remember, however, the words of Plutarch and Galen’s friends, that it was worse to batter a door than a slave and that a lashing was appropriate, so long as it was not administered in anger. Rational pagan philosophy was capable of even greater heartlessness.” One may also wonder whether the Christian woman’s maidservant had lingered on a few days per Exodus 21:21. Towards the end of his defense of New Testament slaveholding Miller brought up another potential red herring: wealthy Christian converts freeing huge numbers of slaves as part of their conversion, such as the Roman prefect Chromatius emancipating his 1400 slaves during Diocletian's reign. But here a broader historical context suggests Chromatius may not have been quite so magnanimous, since by then (note 170 above) it

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was becoming increasingly difficult to leave one’s workplace even if technically “free.” A comparable ambiguity prevailed about manumission in antebellum America, where the practice could complement slaveholding rather than conflict with it, Berlin (1998, 279). 327 See Segal (2001). David Davis (1984, 5-51) explored how the many local traditions of slavery in the Greco-Roman world played out in the Islamic societies that replaced them. “Ironically, by enslaving or converting so many blacks and by imposing a barrier to Europe’s direct knowledge of sub-Saharan Africa, Muslims contributed to Christian ignorance, mythology, and the tendency to identify blacks with Christianity’s mortal and ‘infidel’ enemy,” Davis (1984, 39). Incidentally, a Qur’an text search for “slave” at islam.org brought up suras that tended to deal with slaves more as tokens that reflected on the slaveholder, not unlike the old Roman idea of “clemency” (note 169 above). Thus a believer who accidentally killed another believer might free a believing slave as one option in recompense (4:92)—or free a slave as a penalty because the owner reneged on a divorce obtained under Zihar (58:3). Regarding slaves requesting a price be set for them to buy their freedom, the slave owner was advised to agree to it … provided the owner found good in them (24:33). By contrast, an advocate of the absolute immorality of slavery would consider the individual’s worthiness to be irrelevant—let alone the triviality of the slave’s symbolic value as a bargaining chip in divorce or murder cases. 328 Meltzer (1993, Vol. I, 45). The pacifist (and far from mainstream) Quakers were among the earliest Christian groups to object to slavery, but only fitfully until well into the 18th century, as many prominent Quaker families had been quite active in the slave trade. Cf. Carter (2001, 83-89) with Moynahan (2002, 545): “Quakers became prominent in the trade, with families such as the Wantons, Richardsons, Claypoles, and Framptons sailing from Newport, Rhode Island, and carrying slaves from the West Indies to their own city of Philadelphia.” Then there is the more oblique Carroll & Shiflett (2002, 34): “The Quakers, who had refused to participate in slavery from the 1680s on, were among the first to the barricades.” They then mentioned two Quaker meetings from the 1780s. For awhile in the late 18th century Methodists and Baptists in the upper South appeared open to following the Quakers into religious abolitionism, but the lucrative expansion of cotton growing eventually derailed such ethical evolution, Kolchin (1993, 69, 94-96). See David Davis (1984, 107-279) for a thorough survey of the rise of abolitionism in 18th and 19th century Europe, and Kolchin (1993, 143-148), Chidester (2000, 402-405) and Moynahan (2002, 604-607) on how Christian ambivalence toward slavery in America from the 18th century on affected the development of African-American churches. Not incidentally, more than just religion inspired the Quakers to condemn slavery: it was also seen to violate those natural economic laws that were predicated on the free choices of labor, Kolchin (1993, 67-68). 329 See Meltzer (1993, Vol. I, 37-45) and David Davis (1984, 84-101) on Jewish slave holding and trading, including the role of emigrant Spanish Marranos Jews in the Dutch colonial era. Exodus 21:2-6 set a six-year limit for Hebrews enslaved for debt, while Leviticus 25:44-46 allowed the purchase and inheritance of “heathen” slaves. Cf. Exodus 21:16 & Deuteronomy 24:7 on the death penalty for man stealing, and Leviticus 25:10, 39-42, & Jeremiah 34:8-11 on freeing slaves during the fiftieth year jubilee cycle and by royal decree. Fugitive slaves were to be given sanctuary according to Deuteronomy 32:15-16, though that was in a context of maintaining the purity of the “assembly of the Lord” when encamped on military campaigns. There may also have been a practical tactical effect to encourage the oppositions’ slaves to flee, much as the Emancipation Proclamation initially freed only those slaves in Confederate states then in rebellion against the Union. This context of “man stealing” versus indentured servitude is relevant to Hanegraaff (1998, 29) citing I Timothy 1:10 to show “that slavery is as repugnant to God as murder and adultery.” 1 Timothy 1:9-10 reads: “Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers or mothers, for manslayers. For whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there by any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine.” The RSV translated the 10th verse as “immoral persons, sodomites, kidnappers”—which thus relates it to a particular subset of slavery, not to a rejection of the general principle that people can be deemed property under certain conditions. Incidentally, the

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contemporary language version by Eugene Peterson (2002, 2162) paraphrased the text to shreds, rendering it as those “who defy all authority, riding roughshod over God, life, sex, truth, whatever!” 330 Pro-slavery militancy rose in the South proportionally to what was perceived as Northern moralist interventionism, Kolchin (1993, 181-199). “Religious idioms pervaded the pro-slavery literature, in part because Protestant ministers played a leading role in the defense of slavery and in part because such language was well calculated to appeal to antebellum Southerners,” Kolchin (1993, 192). Similarly, Gould (1981, 68-72) noted that American supporters of slavery relied only slightly on the “scientific” polygenism of Northern racists, preferring Biblical arguments. Hill & Cheadle (1996, 3-9, 64-65) summarize Biblical justifications both for slavery and its abolition, as well as the relation of racially based slavery to “Ham’s curse” of Genesis 9:20-27. Cf. Garrison (1968, 236). An informative parallel case concerns how slavery operated in the Latin world, where the Roman Catholic Church eventually came to favor manumission, Meltzer (1993, Vol. II, 82-83, 100-102). Reflecting the continuation of traditions going all the way back to ancient Rome, Cuban slaves could buy their freedom with comparative ease in the 18th century—while in Brazil, Benedictines, Carmelites, Dominicans, Franciscans and Jesuits continued to manage large estates with slave labor. “Most were said to treat their slaves well, giving them religious training and rarely selling them. But one Carmelite friar, it is recorded, was so hated by his slaves that they cut him up into small pieces,” Meltzer (1993, Vol. II, 82). Cf. also Berlin (1998, 210-214, 313) on manumission practices in Louisiana under the restrictive French Code Noir, the later (somewhat) more open Spanish coartación, and subsequent curtailment under American jurisdiction. 331 Reprint in Wish (1960, 102). Blessed (or afflicted) with a brilliant mind, Fitzhugh was as uncompromisingly critical of Northern labor practices as any Marxist. While Southern conservatives balked at Fitzhugh’s ingenious logic to extend slavery to white labor, they did concur on the manifest virtues of their system, Kolchin (1993, 187, 194-196). “This comparison invariably concluded that slavery produced a humane, orderly, and conservative social order, one far superior to that based on the dangerous experiment in free labor under way in the North and in England, an experiment that inevitably led to class warfare, social disintegration, radicalism, a spirit of selfish individualism, and a reckless enthusiasm for one new faddish idea after another,” Kolchin (1993, 194-195). Such attitudes contributed to the different philosophical trends relating to religion. Turner (1985, 206): “Was it coincidental that in the South—where church leaders had shied away from social reform, had less thoroughly incorporated sympathy for suffering into their moral teachings, had indeed at times seemed willfully callous to the plight of the poor and the black—the theodicy problem seemed to press less hard, and unbelief took root later and more shallowly than in the North?” 332 See Kolchin (1993, 201-237) on the disintegration of slavery in the South—though, of course, not the underlying culture of racial stereotyping or economic disparity that were not resolved under Reconstruction. 333 Cf. Tom Wicker, “If Lincoln Had Not Freed the Slaves,” in Cowley (2001, 152-164). One can interpret any favorable outcome as the result of divine intent (see note 316 above for further grist for the “what if” mill). But Kenneth Miller (1999, 234-239, 272-274) noted a problem with such reasoning: where do you stop? When Hull (1991) voiced similar concerns in a critique of the new “design” movement, Phillip Johnson (1993, 210) countered with: “That is a caricature of theistic rationality, of course. Theists do not throw up their hands and refer everything to God’s great plan, but they do recognize that attempts to explain all of reality in totally naturalistic terms may leave out something of importance.” Spoken like someone who stays at the wading pool end of D. James Kennedy’s turbulent swimming hole (e.g. note 40 above). Incidentally, Johnson didn’t comment on Hull (1991, 486): “The God of the Galápagos is careless, wasteful, indifferent, almost diabolical. He is certainly not the sort of God to whom anyone would be inclined to pray.” Cf. Haught (2001, 99-109). Larson (2001, 217-218) noted how real creationists refine the natural landscape to suit their convictions: “Those who reject a Darwinian viewpoint still can see a special providence in the Galápagos simply by overlooking the waste and indifference Hull sees there. One glance at the mural in the Loma Linda schoolyard [on Santa Cruz Island in the Galápagos] proves

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this. The Adventists’ painter depicts happy creatures harmoniously exalting their creator without a shade of competition or shadow of death.” 334 Colson & Pearcey (1999, 137, 400). Devout Christians actively participated in the slave trade as well as its abolition, Moynahan (2002, 537-550) 335 Cf. D’Souza (2000, 250-251) on Lincoln’s sentiments. Incidentally, followers of abolitionfriendly Joseph Smith had an easier time here: there was an explicit prohibition on slavery conveniently included in the Book of Mormon (Alma 27:9). Though the overall racism and segregationist sentiments of Mormonism up until the mid-1970s is far less attractive, Abanes (2002, 355-373). Ironically, William Lane Craig reflected a similar “higher law” logic when he rebutted philosopher Richard Taylor in a 1993 debate (leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/docs/craigtaylor4.html): “we intuitively recognize that things like the Crusades and the Inquisition and priests’ abusing children are morally wrong.” It is interesting that Craig selected examples from the Catholic tradition, rather than closer to theological home. Looking over several of Craig’s debates on the existence of God and the nature of morality, this was the closest he got to thorny subject of Bible-based violence. It also begged the topic of the debate: “Is The Basis Of Morality Natural Or Supernatural?” More on that shortly. 336 Carter (2001, 84-85, 91). Of interest to the selectivity of the apologetic case: Leviticus 19:18 (“thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself”) occurred in the same Old Testament that accommodated slavery. 337 LaHaye & Noebel (2000, 240). Incidentally, in 2001 Wheaton College’s Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals identified LaHaye as the “most influential leader” in the movement. See the online article by Julie Foster (June 2, 2001) for the conservative Christian (and creationist) news service, worldnetdaily.com, and Ruth Brown (2002, 167-174) on LaHaye and the Concerned Women for America’s support for the Nicaraguan contras during the Reagan years. LaHaye & Noebel’s connection to the conservative culture also includes the secretive “Council for National Policy” that LaHaye formed with T. Cullen Davis and Nelson Bunker Hunt in 1981 to counteract the bugaboo Council on Foreign Relations. A critical website (ifas.org/cnp) lists the CNP’s membership: besides LaHaye & Noebel, Wendell Bird, Chuck Missler and Henry Morris are members, along with creationist ministers John Ankerberg, James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Bob Jones, D. James Kennedy, and Pat Robertson (with his legal satellite, Jay Sekulow). Familiar names from the Very Conservative camp are there too, like Bob Dornan, Gary Bauer, Jesse Helms, Alan Keyes, and Phyllis Schlafly … but also Gary North, R. J. Rushdoony, and their one-time associate Howard Ahmanson. Heir to a considerable savings & loan fortune, Ahmanson and his wife Roberta have supported quite a few Christian and conservative operations financially over the years, from Rushdoony’s theocratic Chalcedon to the more conventional Claremont Institute (on whose board Wheel of Fortune host Pat Sajak sits). See ashbrook.org/events/lecture/1999/sajak.html for a 1999 address Sajak gave at Ashland University on media accuracy. As for antievolution … a recent grant of $2.8 million has underwritten the Discovery Institute’s anti-Darwinian crusade through 2003. One indicator of how cozy the Ahmansons are with the DI set is indicated by Phillip Johnson (1997, 5) having dedicated Defeating Darwinism “To Roberta and Howard, who understood ‘the wedge’ because they love the Truth.” Coverage of this matter includes Steve Benen, “From Genesis to Dominion: Fat-Cat Theocrat Funds Creationism Crusade” for Americans for Separation of Church & State (July/August 2000, au.org/churchstate/cs7003.htm). Peter Gegenheimer’s “The Discovery Institute” Billions Against Biology” (rnaworld.bio/ku/edu/ID-into/sect2.html) offers a variety of related links. Walter Olson’s “Invitation to a Stoning” (November 1998) appears at the free market reasononline (reason.com/9811/col.olson.html)—which Olson ironically noted had received considerable funding from Ahmanson. Another critical item shows up at the Claremont Institute site (claremont.org/old/camplin/mikerose.ctm): Mike Rose’s “With Friends Like These”—this may have been included much as obdurate articles are offered at ARN. An online Baptist news service featured Karen L. Willoughby’s “Discovery Institute emerging as force in creation, public policy” (May 15, 2001) also noted Ahmanson’s DI funding (baptist2baptist.com/BPArticles/Discovery/discovery.html). More CNP connections came in July

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2002 when a Toward Tradition press release announced the formation of a new “American Alliance of Jews and Christians” that would “promote Jewish-Christian partnership.” To be jointly led by Daniel Lapin and the CNP’s Gary Bauer, the AAJC founder list represented a gallery of CNP notables (Dobson, Falwell, Robertson, Pastor Rick Scarborough & John Uhlmann) along with Chuck Colson, film and culture critic Michael Medved (a Toward Tradition board member) and several concerned rabbis. Scarborough’s “Vision America” (vision-america.org) recommends likeminded Christians get involved in politics (both individually and as congregations). Critic Don Wilkey (“A Christian Looks At the Religious Right” at detnet.com/wilke/enough.htm) noted Scarborough’s ties to the John Birch Society and the popularity of his book Enough is Enough (published by Falwell’s Liberty Press) promoting an American theocracy. Scarborough turns up also as a speaker at the Worldview Weekend conferences (worldviewweekend.com) that promotes the Christian America perspective. Two of their most popular authors are Ken Ham & Josh McDowell, by the way, while other featured participants include the agile apologists Norman Geisler, David Jeremiah & David Noebel. Another speaker is Kerby Anderson, President of Probe Ministries, a group with its own connections to the creation/evolution squabble, as we’ll see next chapter. 338 Jean Bethke Elshtain (professor of Social and Political Ethics at the University of Chicago Divinity School) disconnected the troubling antebellum theological caboose from the other direction in “Faith of Our Fathers and Mothers: Religious Belief and American Democracy,” in alHibri et al. (2001, 58-59). Elshtain used the slavery example to show how historical controversies could be taught in schools: “One can ask what textual distortions, ellisions, excisions, and selective use or abuse of history are required in order, for example, to draw upon the New Testament for a defense of chattel slavery even as other Christians decried slavery as a sin, and it is this latter interpretation that carried the day. Looking closely at such examples, one can readily see that this is by no means a case of two equally valid interpretations and one just opts one way or another depending on whether one is a good or bad person. Rather, one can readily see that those who found support for race based chattel slavery in the New Testament systematically bowdlerized the message of Jesus of Nazareth in order to make the message fit with the institution they sought to defend. The best response to such claims is to go to the New Testament itself and to show how such distortions had occurred.” There were no more citations here than in LaHaye & Noebel, which made it rather difficult to determine how “readily” these conclusions could be seen by someone not sharing contemporary ethical presumptions. Some of Elshtain’s method here may have rubbed off from his associates at The Wilberforce Forum (wilberforceforum.org), a Washington, D.C.-based “Christian worldview institute affiliated with” Chuck Colson’s “Prison Fellowship” revivalist operation. Elshtain is one of the main Forum members, along with William Dembski and Phillip Johnson, with Fellows including apologetic figures like J. P. Moreland, J. Budziszewski, and Roberto Rivera (re note 284 above). 339 Falwell’s comment occurred in 1993 on his ”Perspectives” radio show; see note 18 (chapter five) on Gish & Galileo. Scottish Episcopalian Old Testament scholar Christopher Seitz, “Sexuality and Scripture’s Plain Sense: The Christian Community and the Law of God,” in Balch (2000, 182n) trod adjacent ground when he rejected a comparison between abolitionism and gay rights as reform movements opposing comparably traditional prejudice and practice. “The analogy to slavery does not hold up, on closer scrutiny, in spite of its rhetorical appeal. First, there is a failure to distinguish between forms of debt service in antiquity—some of them arguably a social good and dealt with in unique ways within Israel and the early church—and kidnapping, that is, the captive and forced servitude of populations in war or other situations of economic power, harshly displayed. In the American South, the latter form of slavery sought approval from Christian interpreters on the grounds of a Scripture at fundamental odds with it and was finally defeated on these very grounds. Homosexual activity, incidentally, was intimately tied up with various forms of slavery in the Greco-Roman World.” Seitz offered no citations. His concluding argument may be compared to the mileage Lubenow (1992, 95-96) thought to get out of the subject, by attributing the notion of slavery to the “pagan” idea of the Great Chain of Being (which in Lubenow’s universe was the “setup” for evolution). Lubenow (1992, 187) sideswiped the issue again from another angle:

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“Some animal-rights groups are akin to terrorist organizations that advocate violence, including threats on human life. Their reasoning is that just as it took violence to abolish human slavery, violence is also necessary to free enslaved animal species.” Besides not pondering the slavery issue, Lubenow also missed the obvious parallel with the violent fringe of the Pro-Life community, which recruits the abolitionist precedent to similar ends. 340 Stringfellow’s 1856 “Brief Defense of Slavery” may be read in its entirety at the University of North Carolina archives (docsouth.unc.edu/church/stringfellow/stringfellow.html). Stringfellow was particularly exhaustive in mining the Old Testament for illustrations of how accepted (and acceptable) slaveholding was. Cf. Moynahan (2002, 550-552). Strobel (2000, 202) skirted this prickly past by quoting John Woodbridge acknowledging “that early Southern Baptists had badly erred concerning the issue of slavery.” But that still left dangling how such an error could have been made—unless the Bible hadn’t been as clear-cut as modern ethical consideration demands. Other works did not even get that far. While over thirty Christian abolitionists were indexed by Federer (1999, 845), not one quote was mined on the Christian defense of slavery. Similarly the apologia on “Christianity and Slavery” in Carroll & Shiflett (2002, 24-53) and “God’s Justice: The Sin of Slavery” in Stark (2003, 291-365) rightly applauded the often courageous role of Christians in the abolition movement (such as William Wilberforce) but did not mention the likes of Stringfellow. Nor did those three works discuss the views of non-theist abolitionists like Darwin or Huxley (note 10, chapter five). Indeed, Carroll & Shiflett (2002, 79) mentioned Darwin and the “parson-baiting” Huxley only for their part in inspiring “a frontal assault on religious belief.” Most ironically, Carroll & Shiflett (2002, 28, 42) never answered their own rhetorical question on Southern pro-slavery attitudes: “If slavery was good enough for Abraham, how could it not be part of God’s plan?” Meanwhile, Carter (2001, 86) referred briefly to antebellum “preachers who believed slavery to be consistent with, or even required by, God’s will.” Cf. also Carter re note 187 above on Southern Baptists and gay rights … and Wise (2002, 9-19, 234-240) comparing the slavery debate with current concerns over animal rights. Chidester (2000, 531) noted Falwell’s defense of apartheid in his discussion of recent South African Christianity. Because conservatives like Falwell fitted Nelson Mandela and the radical ANC into a general communist conspiracy, questions about the murky ethics of apartheid took the back seat of a restricted-seating bus devoted to Cold War geopolitics. Cf. Ruth Brown (2002, 128) on Falwell’s part in a campaign to defend the tax exemption of segregated Christian academies. 341 A Three Alarm digression alert (at least for those readers not as enamored of minutia as I am). Arthur C. Clarke proposed his motto some years ago as a suitably wry counterpart to the Mystery Writers of America’s double entendre: “Crime Doesn’t Pay … Enough.” Which reminds me of the distinct similarity between the philosophy underlying early science fiction and mystery writing, not unlike the SF-fantasy parallel of note 237 (chapter five). Both genres implicitly affirm that the universe is orderly in a way that may be apprehended through reason. But there is also a moralistic yen for justice no less than the naturalistic quest for knowledge. Thus Isaac Asimov’s “Robot” novels were framed as murder mysteries, and Anthony Boucher proudly operated in both the mystery and SF realms back in the “Golden Age” of mid-20th century fiction. Many classic SF films have also relied on the detective motif as the scaffolding for their plots: from the FBI agent helping to hunt down the giant ants in Them! to Charlton Heston’s shocked 21st century policeman finding out the cannibalistic truth behind Soylent Green. Both films likewise openly reflected the social concerns of the time (besides worrying about the mutation effects of atomic testing, Them! had a progressive attitude toward women scientists for the 1950s, and Soylent Green was of course an apocalyptic warning about the dangers of overpopulation and pollution twenty years later). 342 Strobel (2000, 17). Interestingly, Geisler affirmed “God’s Moral Perfection” In “Why I Believe the God of the Bible Is the One True God,” Geisler & Hoffman, (2001, 88-89) not by offering examples of God’s perfect moral deeds directly, but by a string of proof texts extolling God’s perfection. Of course, instances like II Samuel 22:31 fall in the thick of the ambiguous morality explored in notes 77 above and 346 below. William Lane Craig fields the same apologetic as Geisler and Strobel. For example, in a 1998 debate with philosopher Edwin Curley (available at

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www-personal.umich.edu/~emcurley/rebuttals.htm), Craig allowed that “Divine command morality could still be true even if it has the deleterious consequences that Dr. Curley ascribes to it. But are the premises, in fact, true? Well, I think not. First, it is not the case that God is liable to command anything. God’s commands flow necessarily from his own nature and character, which is essentially loving, holy, compassionate, just, and so forth. And thus, his commands are not arbitrary, but reflect God’s own morally perfect nature.” He did not suggest any specific scriptural examples to illustrate this, but went on to affirm that “God’s commands are stable and steadfast.” 343 Geisler’s argument on Biblical genocide is spread across Strobel (2000, 118-124). Before pressing on to the details, though, a few notes are in order concerning Strobel’s wide-eyed reliance on Geisler, and the extent to which he could detect if Geisler were diving off the deep end. Strobel (2000, 126) quite casually quoted Geisler on the original herbivory of animals in Paradise without recognizing its relation to the scientifically preposterous YEC cryptozoology covered in chapter three. Nor did Strobel show any indication that he had looked into Geisler’s surreal performance at the 1981 Arkansas creationism trial (note 27 of the Introduction). In addition to lampooning Geisler’s testimony on demonic UFOs, Gene Lyons, “Repealing the Enlightenment,” in Montague (1984, 359) was struck by his hermeneutics: “The most profound part of Geisler’s testimony was his attempt to prove that the ‘Creator’ of the universe and life mentioned in Act 590 was not an inherently religious concept. After citing Aristotle, Plato, and one or two other classical philosophers who supposedly believed in a God or gods without worshipping them—albeit not as creators of the world ‘from nothing’—Geisler offered his most thundering proof: the Epistle of James. He cited a line of Scripture to the effect that Satan acknowledges God, but chooses not to worship Him. ‘The Devil,’ he said, ‘believes that there is a God.’ Whee! If Geisler has not yet squared the circle in his meditations, he has at least, well, circled it. Who would have thought one could prove the Creator a nonreligious idea by means of hearsay evidence from Beelzebub?” Cf. also note 14 (chapter five) on Wendell Bird’s similar efforts to distance “abrupt appearance” theory from religion, and note 102 above on the more general temptation of Biblical circularity. Incidentally, there doesn’t appear to be a fitting text in James (1 John 2:22 is closer to the bill). 344 The sacking of Jericho in Joshua 6:21 is similar: “And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.” (And cf. Joshua 11:20 re note 292 above.) Numbers 31:15-18; 32:35 reported that after the defeat of the Midianites, Moses ordered all of their male children and non-virginal women killed; the virgins (32,000 of them) were retained as captives. Pondering a deserving fate for the hated Babylon, Psalms 137:9 hit on infanticide: “Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.” Ezekiel 9:5-6 offered a similar vision of slaughter. Hiers (2001, 54): “The herem, or the sacred destruction or slaughter of the indigenous peoples of Canaan, also is stipulated in order to prevent apostasy that might result from contact with them. The herem is a recurrent theme in Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic History. To what extent it accurately represents ancient Israelite practice is uncertain. Judges 1:27-35 and some other texts suggest that it was not carried out systematically. Certain related neighboring peoples were to be tolerated but excluded from the Israelite community (23:3-8).” That’s as judgmental as Hiers got in this department. For contrast, Armstrong (1991, 13-15) related the attitude of purifying violence to the “return to Zion” tradition that would increasingly focus on the restoration of a Jewish homeland with Jerusalem as its capital. Ideas have consequences. 345 In her summary of Strobel’s books, “Lee Strobel: An Inquiring Mind Led Him to Christ” (hourofpower.org/interviews/lee_strobel.html), Lydia P. Boyle affirmed Geisler’s “context and understanding. Geisler points out that there were hundreds of years of warning, and that these groups were corrupt and grossly immoral and that they had to be eliminated so that the Israelites could survive.” Incidentally, the “Hour of Power” is the ministry of televangelist Robert H. Schuller, whose lavish Crystal Cathedral was designed by architect Philip Johnson. Archer (1982, 142-143, 157-159, 245-246) also had no trouble rationalizing the herem tradition as the “radical surgery” necessary to eradicate people “hopelessly infected with the cancer of moral depravity.” As for the Lord taking life whenever he saw fit, one may note Numbers 16:32-36, when Moses and his congregation were ordered to stone a man to death for gathering sticks on the Sabbath Day. A

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stickler for rules, that YHJH. For another case of the dangers of taking social hygiene too literally, though, recall note 271 above. 346 Ross (1998, 139). Similar sentiments were reprised in his radio broadcast for June 16, 2001 (available at the RTB archive). Ross did not locate the former cities of iniquity, and offered only one note, in the first paragraph on the Bible identifying animal abuse by evil humans. This listed Exodus 21:28-29 (a strain for his point, being the ox-goring incident quoted above) & Leviticus 20:15-16 (specifying the death penalty for people and animals engaging in bestial intercourse). Whether this was an actual problem or Leviticus was expressing his own anxieties is unknown without a Biblical Kinsey Report. Certainly the Biblical author is concerned over who is supposed to have sex with whom, along with guidelines on cleaning up after seminal discharges, described at length in Leviticus 15:1-33. The “limits of defilement identified above” referred to Ross (1998, 136), which listed the order in which said defilement supposedly “begins and spreads” (along with their scriptural justification). It starts with the sinner, according to Romans 7:8-11. It then spreads “to his progeny” per Exodus 20:5 (this was an example of cursing unto later generations, which may be compared to similar draconian judgments in Isaiah 14:21 or II Samuel 21:1-9). Ross’ defilement pecking order then moves on to “soulish animals” (the genocidal example of Joshua 6:21), then to “his material goods” per Numbers 16:23-33 (where defilement comes from touching the wrong thing). And finally “to his inhabited land” based on Leviticus 18:24-28. Even accepting the texts as other than superstitious twaddle, why Ross thought they could be strung together as though they represented an ethical processing sequence is another of those mysteries of “Reasons to Believe” creationist exegesis. 347 Armstrong (1991, 8). In Deuteronomy 7:1-2 God promised the Jews the land of seven major nations, and told them to show no mercy in conquering them. The standards were broader when attacking peoples beyond the promised seven—in their case, the alternative was to surrender for forced labor or face destruction. Deuteronomy 20:10-18 detailed these protocols: “When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it. And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open unto thee, then it shall be, that all the people that is found therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee. And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it: And when the Lord thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword: But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself: and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the Lord thy God hath given thee. Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations. But of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth; But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee: That they teach you not to do after all their abominations, which they have done unto their gods; so should ye sin against the Lord your God.” Cf. also Joshua 8:24-25, 28 & 11:21-22. Such ideals percolated through European culture, from the Song of Roland to the demonization of the Muslims as “pagans,” Armstrong (1991, 63-64). Moynahan (2002, 246) noted how the crusading Knights Templars and the cheerleader St. Bernard (re note 244 above) followed the precedents set down in Deuteronomy. This may be compared to the spin control of Carroll & Shiflett (2002, 86-96), who did not discuss the Old Testament principles of warfare being applied by at least some Christian armies, even in their en passant reference to the Templars and Bernard (p. 93). On the up side, the “liberal” Spong (1988, 32-37) and the non-religionist Wright (2000, 330) both called attention to the competing voice of tolerance in the Bible represented by the book of Jonah. 348 Cf. note 171, chapter five, on Star Trek V’s position in the pantheon of science fiction religiosity. Keith Ward (2002, 208) was a tad more charitable toward the “heroic humanism and optimism” of the Star Trek philosophy, noting that it’s enthusiasts were at least thinking about “an important part of the religious world.” 349 The strange tale of Samson in Judges 14-16 reads like the Hatfields & McCoys meet Till Eulenspiegel. Samson was smitten with a Philistine woman, which puzzled his parents—but not the

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Lord, who was evidently “seeking an occasion against the Philistines” who were then running Israel. At this point the omnipotent Creator of the Universe could have skipped a lot of fuss and simply vaporized the Philistines, but instead we got “One Wedding, Two Fires, and a Lot of Funerals.” At the nuptial party, Samson suckered some Philistines into a wager of 30 linen and 30 festal garments that they couldn’t solve a riddle—one he unfairly based on information only he knew (a nest of honeybees he found living inside a lion he had recently slain). When his dinner guests understandably failed to crack this conundrum, the poor losers decided to extort the solution from Samson’s bride by threatening to burn her and her father’s house unless she wheedled the secret out of him. Which she did, but no great loss to Samson, as “the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him” then: he went down and killed thirty men in the village, resourcefully using their garments to pay the forfeit. Meanwhile, spotting how upset Samson was over his bride’s lapse in domestic loyalty, his Philistine father-in-law had upped and traded her off to Samson’s best man (but did offer the hero an even prettier sister as trade-in when he came asking about her later). By now Samson was itching to do some “mischief” to the Philistines, which consisted of arson and animal abuse: he caught 300 foxes, tied their tails together, attached some lit torches, and set them off into the Philistine grain fields, which burned up along with their olive orchards. The Philistines discovered who was responsible for this jaunty prank—but rather than attacking the supernaturally strong Samson directly, these firebug-prone delinquents set his wife and father-in-law on fire instead. All this escalating revenge got Samson pretty fired up himself, and he commenced smiting the lot of them “hip and thigh with great slaughter.” Samson continued to show his poor judgment of girlfriends when he immediately fell for another Philistine of questionable character, Delilah— who participated in an even more contrived scheme to learn the secret of his marvelous strength. She kept asking him about it … he kept giving wrong answers … and even though it ought to have been obvious to them both that something was suspicious about the others’ behavior, neither seemed to notice. The story concluded with Samson stupidly spilling the real beans about the curious correlation of his strength and hair length, followed by the dramatic sheering, blinding, and temple toppling that provided Cecil B. DeMille with a nice vehicle for Victor Mature. While Hiers (2001, 58) described Samson as “the physically powerful but mentally and morally negligible hero,” the humorless Archer (1982, 165-166) did not appreciate the many preposterous features of Samson’s activities. 350 There is a report in Acts 8:39-40 of the Spirit of the Lord sweeping up Philip the evangelist in just that flashy way, to the evident astonishment of the prominent eunuch he had just baptized at a desert oasis. According to the story, Philip was next spotted preaching on the Mediterranean coast. While on the topic of storytelling, and what to do when trying to manage a situation within the limits of a moral imperative, I am reminded of the problem faced by our messianic science fiction emissary Klaatu in The Day the Earth Stood Still (re note 171, chapter five). Having to devise a clever (but non-violent) way to demonstrate to earth’s inhabitants and leaders the awesome power of their robot police force, he temporarily neutralized electrical generation all across the planet, while ingeniously exempting such ethical hazards as hospitals or airplanes in flight. One might expect an omnipotent deity to be at least as resourceful as the screenwriters at 20th Century Fox. 351 Spong (1988, 114-115) noted how the Mosaic Law appears to have been intended to cover how Jews were supposed to treat other Jews. Beyond those confines, the commandments against lying, thieving or killing functioned not dissimilarly to a secular humanist situational ethics (cf. note 347 above). For comparison, James 2:10-13 is unabashedly absolutist. Glynn (1997, 150) resolved the problem with a wash of befuddlement: “The God of the early books of the Hebrew Bible continually instructs the leader of the Hebrews or ‘the Lord’s anointed’ to attack villages and slaughter all the inhabitants. There is clearly a confusion taking place at this much earlier stage in human history, where the experience of God is more completely submerged in the imperatives of a culture and its will to survive. Part of what is ‘modern’ about the New Testament is the sharp separation drawn between culture and God.” Was Glynn suggesting that the Hebrews engaged in genocide because God was unusually inept about communicating his intentions? Or that New Testament morality wasn’t to be applied to the culture?

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352

While the antievolutionary Christian mindset readily attributes the nice things to God (and the bad to Satan), that isn’t how the Old Testament tended to see things. In a truly monotheistic universe, everything is by God’s say-so (or at least ought to be if he’s firmly in charge). Isaiah 45:7: “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.” Lamentations 3:38: “Out of the mouth of the most High proceedeth not evil and good?” Amos 3:6: “Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?” Christian apologists resolve this problem in a variety of ways, from Archer (1982, 179-180) tiptoeing gingerly past the Old Testament texts … to Ross (1998, 56) retiring to New Testament terrain: “The Bible reveals that Satan and his followers, or demons, introduced evil before Adam and Eve rebelled in Eden. We can infer from Romans 8 and Revelation 20-22 that God created the universe for the purpose of conquering all evil once and for all. This does not necessarily imply that there was evil before the creation of the universe, only that God was cognizant of its coming.)” Or Colson & Pearcey (1999, 194): “God is good, and his original creation was good. God is not the author of evil. This is a crucial element in Christian teaching, for if God had created evil, then his own essence would contain both good and evil, and there would be no hope that good could ever triumph over evil.” Ironically, their endnote touched on just how this change in opinion had come about. “Such a philosophy was held by an ancient Persian religion called Manichaeism, which taught that good and evil are both eternal principles, locked in an eternal conflict in which neither would ever triumph,” Colson & Pearcey (1999, 507n). Thus they had under their noses some of the evidence that disparate traditions helped transform the conception the unitary Hebrew God into its triune Christian counterpart (see note 248 above). Boyer (1992, 213) noted how the “telling ambiguity” of Biblical evil unfurls in apocalyptic thinking: “Taken as a whole, the genre sees Jews as victims of both God’s loving judgment and Satan’s hatred. While some writers say God will unleash the invasion foretold in Ezekiel 38 to punish the Jews for worshipping Antichrist, others view it as Satan’s revenge for their refusal to bow down to the Beast!” Cf. LaHaye (1999, 249) assuring his End Time readership that one of the reasons for the Great Tribulation would be “to break the stubborn will of the nation of Israel, who will confess her national sin of rejecting the Messiah and plead for His return.” 353 At other times a curiously practical economic calculus has come to the fore, as Hopkins (1999, 124) noted of the development of institutional Christianity: “Since sin could not be eradicated, it might as well be exploited. The careful stratification of different degrees of apostasy (voluntary/forced; thought about/done; sacrifice/incense only; official/martyrs’ certificates) was an initial stage in the flotation of a new moral economy of sin and penance. Over time, the Church gradually elaborated an effective list of sin prices. To put it crudely, the Church marketed sin, and expanded into guilt.” 354 Similar “blame the victim” reasoning featured in Strobel (2000, 122-123) when Geisler touched on Elisha’s response to teasing. II Kings 2:23-24 reads: “And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.” While the RSV translates “little children” as “small boys,” the sense of the passage is the same in both versions. Not unlike his expeditious supply of chronology for Luke (re note 135 above), Gleason Archer (1982, 205) transformed this into an encounter with a vicious gang of youths—which path Geisler followed, adding that they were taunting Elisha as a leper. Thus fearing for his very life, Elisha’s safety required the thugs to be preemptively mauled. In the “misplaced concreteness” department, apparently God chose not to employ less intensive defenses: from paralyzing the teasers … to erecting a force field around Elisha. But then we need to note this incident occurred after II Kings 1, when God bristled over the ailing King Ahaziah of Samaria’s plan to consult Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron, on his future health instead of appealing to the God of Israel. The Lord commanded Elisha’s mentor Elijah to intercept the king’s messengers to the rival deity, and when the king found out he sent a captain and 50 soldiers to fetch this presumptuous fellow from his hilltop. Elijah had God confirm his special prophet status by incinerating the intended escort—along with the second hapless team sent

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after them. The captain of the third squad understandably fell on his knees, pleading for mercy … whereupon an angel of the Lord informed Elijah that he should agree. (Due perhaps to the depletion of heavenly firebombs?) Elijah then traveled without further incident to inform the king that he would not recover on account of his improper advances to Baal-zebub—which you might think he could have done in the first place, and skip all the “collateral damage” (102 dead flunkies). Elijah subsequently ascended into heaven via a chariot of fire (II Kings 2:11-12). The Elijah toastings are similar in motivational dynamics to the far more ostentatious disposal of the “Rebellion of Korah” in Numbers 16. On that occasion thousands of people were supposedly sucked into holes in the earth, incinerated by fire, or killed by plague before the Lord’s dander simmered down. 355 Weinberg (2001, 68). See Kimball (2002) for an unsettling compendium of examples When Religion Becomes Evil. One may add that secular surrogates like Marxism or Nazism are perfectly capable of putting up some stiff competition here. Weinberg’s comment may be contrasted with the upbeat pastoral focus of Eugene Peterson (2002, 405) remark on the book of Judges: “God, it turns out, does not require good people in order to do good work. He can and does work with us in whatever moral and spiritual condition he finds us.” (Cf. notes 344 & 349 above on some of the lessons offered in Judges.) 356 In case one may think the issue of Biblical genocide is a dead letter, e-mail press releases from Toward Tradition (Sep. 13 & Nov. 30, 2001) found in the Amalek story “an apt Biblical model for the situation at hand” following “911”. Lapin argued that the campaign against terrorism in Afghanistan should not be conducted under “Just War” principles, but instead be guided by the Torah example where, “while loving peace, God sometimes commanded Israel to wipe out an enemy, including women and children!” Jerry Falwell also briefly stuck his foot in his mouth (not for the first time) by suggesting that part of the blame for the World Trade Center attack lay with “the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians.” Cf. Jim Nesbitt (newhouse.com/archive/story/1a092601.html) in his commentary on how “Many American RightWing Racial Extremists Applaud Sept. 11 Attacks.” 357 Johnson is not alone in his attribution of ulterior motives to Pinker. Bruce Chapman’s Seattle P-I piece on Pinker (note 213 above) hit the same note: “The way you corrupt a civilization’s moral standards is seldom by frontal attack.” And more generally, presidential hopeful Alan Keyes put all “dogmatic” evolutionists under his suspicious lens in a June 22, 2001 lecture on “Evolution, Creation and Restoration” for the Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation, a club of British Young Earth creationist Catholics (theotokos.org.uk). Keyes subsequently decanted his main talking points for two WorldNetDaily articles (7 & 14 July); speech and prose are posted at Keyes’ declaration.net. The Kolbe peroration ended with the solemn warning that “evolutionary theory is the natural ally of all those forces that seek to undermine and destroy the traditional structures of our society,” including even “human freedom and self-government.” Keyes represents the absolute distillation of Robert Bork-style opposition to evolution: stirring rhetoric inspired by an intense conviction unaccompanied by even the slightest trace of supporting evidence. 358 Cf. Ruse (2001, 129-142) on how Darwinian logic intersects the long-standing problem in Christian theology concerning the existence of pain and suffering (touching on issues raised back in chapter four, such as re note 115). The diversity of moral philosophy among evolutionists may be thought of as a practical instance of Gould’s NOMA dichotomy (re note 203 above), where scientific reasoning and religious convictions inevitably involve different motivations and standards of evidence. Larson (2001, 198, 218-219) noted a particularly ironic example of this apropos David Lack, who “converted from agnosticism to Christianity in the same year that his classic book on Darwin’s finches appeared.” Lack represented a mode of thought where inspiration to faith was obviously not deemed contingent on a rejection of Darwinism. Indeed, if anything, Lack was more traditionally Darwinian. As noted by Borrello (2003, 555), “Lack’s work had skewed the lessons of the synthesis from neo-Darwinism (that is population level explanations of evolution) back toward more Darwinian (organism level) explanation.” More recently, Todd (1999) reflected a similar NOMA-style restriction of scientific investigation to naturalistic phenomena (which Phillip Johnson complained of in his May 7, 2001 “Weekly Wedge Update”). Johnson didn’t quote

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Todd’s adjoining comment: “Of course the scientist, as an individual, is free to embrace a reality that transcends naturalism.” 359 Segerstråle (2000, 376) discerned three “basic strategies among evolutionary biologists when it comes to” tackling values. “The first strategy is to keep science separate from values.” Richard Dawkins represents that approach. “The second strategy actively connects science with values: you criticize science you don’t like or you do scientific research that corresponds to your values.” Many of the politically motivated critics of sociobiology are to be found there. “The third also connects science with values, but in a more intricate and proactive way: it involves choosing or developing theoretical approaches with seemingly desirable social implications.” She noted Gould and Lewontin among the third group. Interestingly, E. O. Wilson appears to be oscillating between the first and third approaches. Moving onto science and religion, Segerstråle (2000, 399) discerned a similar tripartite approach: “separation, confrontation, and merger.” Gould and Maynard Smith would represent the former, Dawkins and (to some extent) Carl Sagan the second, and E. O. Wilson (sort of) for the latter. 360 Strobel (2000, 79-81, 151, 250-251) quoted William Lane Craig and others that the existence of morality requires the existence of God. Craig contributed his own précis in “Why I Believe God Exists,” in Geisler & Hoffman (2001, 74-80), and a fuller exposition of the logical details in a 1997 paper, “The Indispensability of Theological Meta-Ethical Foundations for Morality” (leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/docs/meta-eth.html). Craig’s is a valiant circular effort to rest the existence of absolute morality on the existence of God—and then use the existence of the absolute morality to prove the existence of God. Similar views are offered with less varnish by Francis J. Beckwith, “Why I Am Not a Moral Relativist,” in Geisler & Hoffman (2001, 26-29). Online treatments include Michael Bauman, “No God, no Good” (at summit.org), Gregory Koukl’s “Monkey Morality: Can Evolution Explain Ethics?” raking Wright (1994) over the coals for Hanegraaff’s Christian Research Institute (at equip.org), and John C. Eastman’s August 2001 editorial, “Morality Without God?” (ashbrook.org/publicat/oped/eastman/01/religion.html) for the Ashbrook Center. Lapin (1999, 108) takes honors for turgidity: characterizing secular Americans as “spiritual parasites, living off the life force of others” who embody Judeo-Christian ethics. Though one should note that the more doctrinal End Times set would leave devout Jews like Lapin off at least the first bus. Operating under the assumption that only Christians supply the moral glue for society, all social hell is supposed to break loose once the leavening faithful are plucked from the scene, as Boyer (1992, 257-258) noted of premillennialist books and films on the post-Rapture world. Such a philosophy carries a self-fulfilling flip side: if you guide your moral compass exclusively by your faith, what happens if that faith is weakened or lost? Apostates are left up the moral creek without a functioning paddle (cf. notes 362 & 379 below). 361 Johnson (1998, 183), in a Books & Culture review (July/August 1997) of J. Budziszewski’s 1997 InterVarsity Press book, Written on the Heart. On this theme, Discovery Institute fellow Benjamin Wiker (2001, 13) sounded a bit more upbeat when he commented on Arnhart et al. (2000): “Natural law doctrine only makes sense in a universe governed by a benevolent Creator.” Wiker didn’t specify why this couldn’t also apply to a capricious or malicious creator. Such conclusion jumps are not an isolated phenomenon in the Christian antievolutionary canon. Over on the End Times fringe, Lindsey & Carlson (1972, 91-92) distilled Desmond Morris (1967, 23) into “the idea that since man is no more than an animal, he should act like one.” Though cf. note 275, chapter five, on Simpson re Simpson. Similar chimes were rung (and rung and rung) in Alan Keyes’ Kolbe speech (note 357 above). 362 See notes 2 & 38 above for the connections to Dembski’s demarcation of ID’s purview. The tendency to shift “rapidly to great moral questions” when the subject started out ostensibly as “science” represents a “long standing tradition” among American evangelicals, Mark A. Noll, “Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism,” in Ferngren (2002, 274). Recent expositors of the moralistic slide argument include John Omdahl, who can’t even conceive of moral laws or behavior if we came about as “basically random events and random happenings,” as quoted by McMurtrie (2001, A9). Alan Keyes affirmed in a 2000 essay on “Evolution and the Family” how “moral significance” had to be rejected “once it is denied that any will or moral being informed the creation

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of our bodily natures.” (Keyes’ July 14 WorldNetDaily piece cited in note 357 above.) Over at the Access Research Network, psychology professor Paul Nesselroade opined as guest “Wedge Update” contributor on “ID and Human Cloning” (January 13, 2003): “If our starting point is the belief that human life was accidental and brought about solely by the impersonal forces of natural selection and random mutation, then, any purpose or meaning for life has to be assigned by us, chiseled out of the void of meaninglessness with out own hands.” Along the way Nesselroade took a swipe at Michael Shermer: “The human ‘cost’ associated with both fine-tuning the cloning process (animal cloning rarely results in birth and virtually all of those born have serious abnormalities and/or die early) and creating life expressly for sacrificial purposes, may be considered unfortunate, but can hardly be considered wrong. That’s why the Darwinist Michael Shermer, commenting in a recent L.A. Times article, can unashamedly endorse ‘[running] the cloning experiment [to] see what happens.” Alas, ARN pulled a “Garrett Hardin” by providing a link to Shermer’s article, allowing readers to find out that the main theme of Shermer’s piece (January 2, 2003) was to affirm that worries over human clones being exploited ought to be moot. Clones would be just as human (and therefore deserving of precisely the same legal protection and moral consideration) as people born the old-fashioned way. At no time had Shermer suggested that botched cloning or cloning “for sacrificial purposes” was acceptable either legally or ethically—see also his position in Shermer (2003). 363 See note 123 of chapter one (and Johnson’s insouciance on this matter). 364 In print Johnson (2000, 187n) is all directness: “If Christians have nothing to say that they can defend in public on the highest intellectual standards, then it is doubtful whether what they say in private is more substantial than quackery.” This was an explanatory note to Johnson (2000, 166): “Christians have something of value to say to people about their personal and spiritual problems.” Yet if you try to get Johnson to commit himself on specific issues (from inerrancy to Noah’s Flood) he promptly clams up (cf. notes 86-88 above). I find it unbelievable that Johnson, methodical legalist that he is, has no opinion on traditional doctrinal issues—but if he has, he steadfastly refuses to say what they are. Indeed, such subjects appear never to have even arisen between Johnson and inerrancy and Flood believer Kennedy at the “Reclaiming America for Christ” conference, where the pair endeavored to pool their resources only to “thoroughly discredit Darwinism,” as a Kennedy aide coyly put it to me in an e-mail. Instead, both Johnson and Coral Ridge Ministry played the Skinner/Johnson Gambit by saying those questions were addressed in The Wedge of Truth. Which, of course, they weren’t. Similarly, there is no hint of Johnson’s endorsement of Hank Hanegraaff (let alone Cremo & Thompson)—one only spots those when inside the club. For comparison, Morris & Morris (1996a, 169-177) are considerably more explicit about their evangelical goals. 365 As Johnson’s remarks were taken directly from the audio track of Kennedy’s March 2000 radio broadcast, punctuation and emphasis are my own efforts to approximate his delivery. Atheist George Smith (2000, 17-18) represents the opposite tonality from the Wedge choir: “To say that atheism is credible is to suggest that the atheist may be right; to say that the atheist may be right is to suggest that the Christian may be wrong; to say that the Christian may be wrong is [to] suggest that faith may be an unreliable guide to knowledge; to say that faith may be an unreliable guide to knowledge is to suggest that each and every tenet of Christianity should be reexamined in the light of reason—and from here all hell breaks loose as the process of deconversion rushes headlong to its logical destination.” Smith’s attitude is also light years removed from another polarity on the apologetic circuit, the heartfelt but head-scratching exploration of apostasy offered by Ruth Tucker (2002). Really prominent skeptics like former fundamentalists E. O. Wilson or Michael Shermer did not show up in her treatment. Instead, a Richard Milton-class yen for “mystery” and “paradox” and “ambiguity” plainly assisted in managing her own doubts, Tucker (2002, 12, 64-66, 200, 212213, 216-218). 366 For the record, Hare Krishna has long supported many of the same positions as Biblical creationists, opposing abortion, premarital sex and homosexuality. Judah (1974) covered their activity back before a flurry of scandals racked ISKON, chronicled by ex-member Muster (1997): “drug dealing, weapons stockpiling, deceptive fund-raising, child abuse, and murder” (back cover blurb). All of which would seem to place ISKON outside the “Big Tent” of ID … though one can

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never tell, given how the Wedge has avoided laying down methodological or doctrinal standards that run the risk of stepping on anyone’s spiritual toes. The result is often a smorgasbord that keeps potential discord at the margins. For example the JAN/FEB 2001 activity summary of the American Scientific Affiliation (toolcity.net/~dfeucht/JANFEB01.htm) operates on a different wavelength than anything you would hear from one of D. James Kennedy’s “Creation Week” broadcasts. But because each corner of the ID movement sees (or cares to see) only their private selection of support, all can cheer on the “progress” the Wedge seems to be making through the limbo between them. Unfortunately, when skeptics step back for a look at who are finding cover under that Big Tent, the picture is far less reassuring. Cf. Keith Lankford’s 1999 Doubting Thomas feature on “The Wedge: A Christian Plan to Overthrow Modern Science?” (freethoughtweb.org/ctrl/archive/thomas_wedge.html). 367 The paragraph breaks in Johnson’s “Reclaiming America” speech are my own, for clarity. Since Johnson uses Truth with a capital T in Defeating Darwinism (re note 261, chapter four), in deference to that convention I capitalized his references to those of a Biblical bent. 368 Regarding John 1, one may compare his more oblique allusion in the text quoted in chapter three (re note 299). Incidentally, Dawkins (1986, 1) actually wrote: “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” While the quote was accurately rendered in Johnson (1993a, 46), by the time he addressed Kennedy’s bunch he appears to have settled into a fairly standard spiel. His May 13, 2001 speech at the Evangelical Free Church in Hershey, Pennsylvania (available at ldolphin.org/ntcreation.html) again began with John 1, and interpolated “by a creator” into his Dawkins reference. The whole point reminds me of a similar caveat actually added to the final paragraph of Darwin’s Origin of Species in later editions (in that case evidently to please the family). As Dawkins was anxious to affirm, living biochemistry is indeed very complicated, and examples like the ones Behe emphasized might be designed. But it was quite another matter for Johnson to imply that the “purpose” of these proposed designer systems had been pinned down too. As seen in the chapter on Intelligent Design, such tags were precisely what Behe was not interested in identifying, nor have any other ID creationists advanced to that teleological Go ahead of him. What Johnson’s remarks do reinforce is why Richard Dawkins is a rhetorical target to be preferred over working out such matters as the typology of the reptile-mammal transition. Judged historically, the “purpose” of Probainognathus would appear to have been to make Darwinists contented, but I don’t think that’s quite what Johnson had in mind. 369 It would seem an extraordinary leap from bacterial flagella to sin, but that’s one theological relay Henry Morris or Kent Hovind might easily contribute a few batons to. More questionable is how a belief in the naturalistic evolution of sauropods disallows one considering positively the divinity of Christ, but that is the tenor of Johnson’s argument. By translating “Darwinism” into an algorithm whereby theological questions are inherently “meaningless,” Johnson backs himself into the wrong corner. As seen above concerning inerrancy and the messianic credentials problem (and again on slavery and inquisitions), atheists and agnostics do not require materialism (let alone methodological naturalism, or any hitchhikers like Darwinian evolution) to justify taking potshots at the internal inconsistencies of the Bible. 370 The Wedge of Truth touched on a few of these “other detailed issues.” Johnson (2000, 157159) decried the “naturalistic standards” that fail to approach Jesus in the way he would, “which is why our educational planners consider it enormously important that school children learn about evolution but entirely unimportant whether they learn enough about Jesus to evaluate his claims. When the naturalistic understanding of reality finally crashes and burns, however, the great question Jesus posed will come again to the forefront of consciousness. Who should we say that he is? Is he the one who was to come, or should we look for another?” The other shoe dropped with a thud: “As a Christian I have answers to those questions, and of course other people will have different answers. The Wedge philosophy is that the important thing is to get the right questions on the table, and that task requires that we invite any and all answers for a fair hearing.” Johnson (2000, 187n) supplied but one footnote for this argument: “The questions ‘Who do men say that I am?’ and ‘Who do you say that I am?’ are recorded in Matthew 16:13-16, Mark 8:27-29 and Luke 9:18-20.” As with his similar preaching to the converted at Kennedy’s gathering, Johnson didn’t

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say whether those questions are all you need. But they do suggest that the “fair hearing” that he proposes public schools give to pondering the divinity of Jesus will operate by roughly the same standard as seen in Darwin on Trial. 371 McMurtrie (2001, A8) quoted Paul A. Nelson saying how every mention of ID in academic circles, even critical ones, is a boost for their movement’s credibility. But in light of Johnson’s Wedge strategy there is more than scholarly validation going on here. Recently Phillip Johnson’s ARN “Weekly Wedge Update” has taken to pigeonholing debates with evolutionists as to how their exchanges contribute to the legitimization of ID (postings for November 13 & 19 and December 2, 2001). Regarding a debate between William Dembski and unapologetic atheist Massimo Pigliucci at the New York Academy of Sciences in November 2001, Johnson contrasted “Mr. Nice Guy” Dembski with Pigliucci’s “heavy-handed performance.” In Johnson’s view, “The audience of elderly rationalists was against Dembski but not rude, and they were doing the Lord’s work by insisting on having the debate despite the misgivings of the more politically-minded leaders of the NYAS.” This suggests that each ID academic appearance functions in a theatrical sense to provide one more step towards the theological goals of the Wedge. All this is consistent with the putative Discovery Institute Wedge six-year game plan circulated online (freethoughtweb.org/ctrl/crsc_wedge.html), to establish the ID credibility by 2003 through academic publication and changes in education curricula, after which the big task of cultural renewal can proceed free of materialist impediment. Cf. James Still, “Discovery Institute’s ‘Wedge Project’ Circulates Online” (infidels.org/secular_web/feature/1999/wedge.html) and also Lankford’s critical piece (cited at the end of note 366 above). 372 This parallels Johnson’s reaction to my views on the reptile-mammal transition (covered in chapter two) and Ken Miller in the PBS online debate (chapter four) in deciding what people believe without paying too much attention to what they actually say. Cf. Price (1983, 12) on creationist “projection.” Consider also Notre Dame’s noted Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga (whose approach to methodological naturalism is remarkably similar to Johnson’s). His essay on “Methodological Naturalism?” (ucsb.edu/fscf/library/plantinga/mn/MN1.html, MN2 & MN3, and a slightly shorter 1997 version at arn.org) began by taking issue with a 1990 Science article by Herbert Simon on the evolutionary origin of “altruism.” As the ucsb version put it, “This article is concerned with the problem of altruism: why, asks Simon, do people like Mother Teresa, or the Scottish missionary Eric Liddel, or the Little Sisters of the Poor, or the Jesuit missionaries of the 17th century, or the Methodist missionaries of the 19th—why do these people do the things they do?” Leaving aside the issue of less altruistic religious behavior (as in notes 300 & 330 above), the main problem was that Simon hadn’t been asking that question—indeed, Mother Teresa and the rest weren’t even mentioned. Instead, Simon (1990, 1665) was “concerned with fitness, altruism, and selfishness only in the genetic meaning of those terms.” In that clearly restricted sense, Simon explored how “docility” (“in its dictionary meaning of ‘disposed to be taught’”) could produce a “bounded rationality” whereby they accepted the social goal of assisting others apart from how it affected their own genes’ success. Such a process could occur quite naturally among our own species, drawing on principles already observed in the behavior of other social animals (see notes 381-382 below). Simon (1990, 1668) commented briefly on the implications his model had for understanding economic and political behavior: “Many other troublesome issues of public goods can be explained in the same way—contributions to charity and volunteer work being important examples. Of course other motives may also help to cause these behaviors. People may volunteer in order to make useful acquaintances. There are many possibilities, but no reason to rule out altruism as an important motivation.” Even though Simon had not decreed that people couldn’t have other motivations besides the particular form of altruism he was modeling, Plantinga insisted on criticizing him as though he had (“as when he says Mother Teresa and people like her suffer from bounded rationality”). 373 The 1994 Johnson-Provine debate at Stanford on “Darwinism: Science or Naturalistic Philosophy” was obtained from the ARN website. Provine and Johnson are friends, incidentally, which lends further irony to their meshing yin/yang philosophy.

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374

Kenneth Miller (1999, 189). Other critics of creationism who noticed the Provine-Johnson isomorphism and beyond are Eldredge (2000, 135, 137, 148, 153, 206n) on Richard Dawkins, and Ruse (2001, 98-110) on the anti-Darwinian side of Alvin Plantinga. Morris & Morris (1996a, 97101) also find Ruse and Provine useful philosophical foils—but set them against a far more restrictive guide than Johnson’s Wedge, such as the disdain Morris & Morris (1996a, 106-107) show for OEC compromisers like Hugh Ross (1994). Farther out in the apologetic hinterlands, a Catholic apologetic site (family lifecenter.net/html/combat-campus-curses.html) offers Johnson’s debate with “William B. Provide” [sic] on the “RESOURE LIST TO COMBAT CAMPUS CURSES.” Ruse (2001, 219) noted an ironic polarity to the debate over morality and ethics, as “the most conservative Augustinian thinker” crossed paths with Darwinism: “Both Darwinian and Christian are worried about being locked into actions by fate or blind law or something of this nature. And both Darwinian and Christian can find ways forward, showing that the concerns are genuine but that real solutions lie at hand, ready to be taken. Darwinian and Christian have much to learn from each other on this, as on earlier problems.” Cf. also Miller (1999, 208-213) on the weak scientific underpinnings of the “Faustian bargain” of ontological materialism. 375 Pinker (1997b, 54) had already stressed the inherent ambiguity in the quest for moral rules, in one of those passages Ferguson had not commented on (and therefore one Johnson’s parasitical apologetics skipped). “One predicament is that our moral system needs a crisp inauguration of personhood, but the assembly process for Homo sapiens is gradual, piecemeal and uncertain. Another problem is that the emotional circuitry of mothers has evolved to cope with this uncertain process, so the baby killers turn out to be not moral monsters but nice, normal (and sometimes religious) young women. These dilemmas we will probably never resolve, and any policy will leave us with uncomfortable cases. We will most likely muddle through, keeping birth as a conspicuous legal boundary but showing mercy to the anguished girls who feel they had no choice but to run afoul of it.” 376 In at least this area, Pinker’s caution is not that dissimilar to the NOMA sensibilities of Gould (1999a, 66): “But science can say nothing about the morality of morals. That is, the potential discovery by anthropologists that murder, infanticide, genocide, and xenophobia may have characterized many human societies, may have arisen preferentially in certain social situations, and may even be adaptively beneficial in certain contexts, offers no support whatever for the moral proposition that we ought to behave in such a manner.” Or Gould’s Introduction to Zimmer (2001g, xiii): “In principle, the factual state of the universe, whatever it may be, cannot teach us how we should live or what our lives should mean—for these ethical questions of value and meaning belong to such different realms of human life as religion, philosophy, and humanistic study.” 377 See note 220 (chapter five) on the Edge reference and the use to which Johnson put it. A scholarly observation: one good way to avoid jumping to faulty conclusions is to slow down, in order to carefully examine the evidence being offered for a position, along with the philosophical implications attending both sides. Johnson appeared not to have read the Edge exchange very thoroughly, but he clearly had plenty of time to evaluate Pinker’s New York Times Magazine piece (which appeared late in 1997). 378 It is interesting that when Dawkins got his turn at bat he promptly changed the subject, to how the “illusion” of a unitary mind came about in an evolutionary sense. And so did Johnson in the chapter five quote (re note 220), bypassing the context question and Pinker’s reply in favor of quoting Dawkins and Pinker supposedly disposing of free will. Pinker’s subsequent book The Blank Slate was devoted to defending the complexity and naturalness of human nature, with Pinker (2002, 269-280) specifically on the issue of morality. 379 Such distinctions are completely lost on ideologues like Colson & Pearcey (1999, 137): “Of course, Christians often fail to follow their own convictions. But when believers are selfish, they are acting contrary to their own beliefs. By contrast, when secularists are compassionate, they are acting contrary to the internal logic of their own worldview.” They acknowledged that “wellmeaning secularists can show compassion, give generously to charities, and offer help to the downtrodden and the needy,” but insisted “they act on solely subjective motives.” Which is

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interesting to compare to atheist George Smith (2000, 231): “Whatever religious people may say about the divine source of their moral beliefs, in practice they often give priority to their moral principles,” and thus “implicitly accept the possibility of an ethics without God.” And “Happy Heretic” Hayes (2000, 96): “moral codes can be, and certainly have been, formulated using careful reason alone, with no religious appeals of any kind.” 380 Adler (1985, 108-127; 1990, 86-88), Sagan (1997, 183-191) and Singer (2000, 10-11, 15-16, 321). Parenthetically, Singer’s philosophizing has drawn the favorable attention of such troopers as Chuck Colson and Michael Medved (garnering reading recommendations at their respective websites). Interestingly, Konrad Lorenz (1974, 45-46) also alluded to the possibility of an innate “sense of justice.” Though cf. Scholz (2002) on the limitations of Lorenz’ conception of “innateness.” 381 Cross-cultural studies of children have tended to bear this out. Damon (1999, 76) noted a survey comparing Hindu-Brahmin children in India with their Judeo-Christian American counterparts. Although some of their sensitivities were clearly culturally derived (“such as eating forbidden foods or using improper forms of address”) there was still an underlying commonality. The study found “both groups of children thought that deceitful acts (a father breaking a promise to a child) and uncharitable acts (ignoring a beggar with a sick child) were wrong.” These reflected “core values—benevolence, fairness, honesty—that may be necessary for sustaining human relationships in all but the most dysfunctional societies.” Damon (1999) traced how moral behavior emerges with maturation, as inborn elements like empathy (cf. note 228, chapter five) and a sharp eye for inequity (the “That’s not fair!” complaint) are mapped into the individual’s particular cultural matrix. Nørretranders (1991, 244-247) and Allchin (1999, 354) have also noted the Golden Rule of applied reciprocity concerning the evolutionary origin of ethics. Nørretranders explicitly related permutations of it (“Do unto others…” versus “Do not do unto others…”) to the ramifications of Benjamin Libet’s conclusion that “We can control our actions but not our urges.” Nørretranders (1991, 247): “The problem with Judaism is that it permits an inner cruelty that the consciousness cannot really control, because it lets out more from inside than we are conscious of. For example, through body language. The problem with Christianity is that it demands an inner goodness but demands it of our consciousness, which has no ability to manage what happens inside a person’s mind. Together, the two problems indicate that a radical revision of fundamental moral issues will come onto the agenda in the wake of the recently emerging understanding of the significance of consciousness.” 382 Edward Wilson (1975, 106-129) laid out the biological evidence for group selection theory, arguing that it not only explained altruism in nature (via kin selection) but “predicts ambivalence as a way of life in social creatures.” Drawing on the work of George Williams, William Hamilton (kin selection) and Robert Trivers (parent-offspring conflicts), Wright (1994, 116) concluded that, “Together, these ideas explain much about human family life, including sibling love, sibling rivalry, and the tendency of parents to favor some children over others.” Mayr (2000, 83-84) was referring to kin selection when he noted that “Darwin provided a scientific foundation for ethics.” See also Pinker (2002, 241-268). Things are not actually so clear-cut as that, as even the structure of eusocial insect and mammal behavior is not simply reducible to kin-selected altruism genes, Alonso & Schuck-Paim (2002) and Griffin & West (2002). Cf. Haught (2001, 29-33) and Mayr (2001a, 256-260), as well as note 372 above on the distinctions of Plantinga v. Simon. Recalling note 211 above on the darker side of cooperative breeding, it is interesting that one of the variables affecting the behavior of the cooperatively breeding Seychelles warblers is the extensive infidelity of their females, Richardson et al. (2003). An indication of how recent so much of this research is (and the reactive character of antievolutionists) may be seen by the survey of evolutionary ethics and sociobiology in Strahler (1987, 501-506), which said very little about creationist responses to this literature, but a lot about criticism of it within the evolutionary community. 383 The “Prisoner’s Dilemma” consists of a situation where freedom can be gained either by steadfastly affirming one’s innocence or by ratting on an accomplice—the dilemma comes in that both lose if they implicate each other. Dennett (1995, 479) noted that the winning strategy here is tit for tat: do unto others as they do unto you. One may comment that this approach can also spiral

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in the opposite direction (as in Bosnia recently or that long-standing fight over who gets dibs on Jerusalem). On the sociobiological front: the revised Dawkins (1989, 202-233) added a new 12th chapter on the Prisoner’s Dilemma, and Wright (2000, 337-343) covers the subject in an appendix. See Dugatkin et al. (2003), Huck et al. (2003) and Ono et al. (2003) for some recent theoretical wrinkles on group selection and natural cooperation. Ryan (2002, 239-256) gives it an endosymbiotic context. Establishing that such reciprocity occurs in the wild hasn’t been easy, though recent confirmation has been obtained from a study of blue jays, Mesterton-Gibbons & Adams (2002) re Stephens et al. (2002). An even more refined heuristic, the Ultimatum Game, further illustrates how fairness can emerge naturally in social systems such as ours, Nowak et al. (2000) and Sigmund et al. (2002). Although the Discovery Institute’s Wiker (2002, 35) objects to such reasoning as “absurd” scientifically (and thus morally pernicious), game theory has proven a most useful way to investigate the evolutionary emergence of fair play. Various modes of action and reaction can fuel a feedback loop leading to the emergence of cooperative behavior—including a desire for revenge and the effect of punishment, Sapolsky (2002) and Bowles & Gintis (2002) re Fehr & Gächter (2002), and Boyd et al. (2003). On the more benign side, Bekoff (2002, 120-132) noted the possible development of morality from play, involving the merger of fairness and empathy when conducted in complex social interactions. Indeed, nature seems to have less of a problem playing by game theory rules than critics like Wiker allow, such as the variously spotted lizards whose mating dynamics follow the evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS) seen in (of all things) the rock-paper-scissors game, Maynard Smith (1996) re Sinervo & Lively (1996). John Maynard Smith, “Equations of Life: The Mathematics of Evolution,” in Farmelo (2002, 207-208) commented: “For a theorist, there is a special satisfaction when an animal is found doing something that has been predicted by theory but seemed too strange actually to occur.” For some additional irony, the abstract of Dugatkin et al. (2003, 67) noted that “The models we develop are general in nature, but were inspired by the evolution of antibiotic resistance in bacteria.” There are quite practical implications of this. For example, colicinproducing strains of E. coli (which cannot coexist with rivals and tend to out-compete them) nonetheless “promote, rather than eliminate” their competitors because the whole bacterial environment settles into a rock-paper-scissors equilibrium, Kirkup & Riley (2004). Cf. Phillip Johnson expounding on the supposed lack of implications of bacterial resistance in note 110 (chapter four). 384 Foster & Young (2001)—cf. Marsh & Kacelnik (2002) on decision-making among starlings. 385 Nørretranders (1991, 271) put his oar in the water with an interesting reformulation of ethics and philosophy in terms of the I/Me dichotomy. The philosophy of law: “I take responsibility for my Me.” Therapy: “I accept my Me.” Social relationships: “I accept you.” Personal relationships: “My Me accepts you.” Spirituality: “I know my Me.” And Courage: “I trust my Me.” For my own pithy contribution to this parlor game, see note 391 below. 386 See note 64 above for references on James’ view of pragmatism “as a way of doing philosophy.” As Menand (1997, 63) dryly put it: “We wake up one morning and find ourselves in a new place, and then we build a ladder to explain how we got there. The pragmatist is the person who asks whether this is a good place to be. The nonpragmatist is the person who admires the ladder.” Cf. also Adler (1990, 22-23) on Jamesian pragmatism. Incidentally, Bertrand Russell’s 1925 essay, “What I Believe,” essentially begged the question of morality and ethics by taking a utilitarian approach (that “right” and “wrong” are determined by looking at the probable consequences), Russell (1957, 56-60). The 2000 version of the Humanist Manifesto drafted by Paul Kurtz (1999) embodies a similar practical toleration, while sidestepping the thorny philosophical question of absolutes in section V on “Ethics and Reason.” 387 Johnson (1995, 135). For some further irony, Robert M. Bowman, Jr., “Strange New Worlds: The Humanist Philosophy of Star Trek” (Christian Research Institute Journal, Fall 1991, available at iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/cri/cri-jrnl/web/crj0147a.html) was utterly oblivious to this philosophical problem when he took to task the Federation’s “Prime Directive” philosophy. “In their zeal to avoid the absolute ethical demands of a moral God, Roddenberry and other humanists

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prefer to absolutize toleration except sometimes (not always) where it conflicts with their humanistic ideals of common sense and individual liberty. The result is often more puzzling than enlightening.” By the way, Bowman did not contrast the “incoherent” ethics of Star Trek’s humanism with concrete Biblical examples of “absolute ethical demands” (such as in Deuteronomy per note 347 above). 388 William James’ 1897 essay “The Will to Believe” is again apt. “When, indeed, one remembers that the most striking practical application to life of the doctrine of objective certitude has been the conscientious labors of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, one feels less tempted than ever to lend the doctrine a respectful ear,” James (1992, 468). 389 James (1992, 533-536). He adroitly squashed the “naturalistic fallacy” along the way: “Thus the evolutionist foundation of ethics is purely objective only to the herd of nullities whose votes count for zero in the march of events,” James (1992, 531). 390 Edward Wilson (1998, 238). A born-again evangelical in his youth, Wilson (1998, 238-256) explored the appealing opposites of the transcendentalist and empiricist traditions. As unwilling to embrace transcendentalist “certainty” as William James was, Wilson (1998, 247) leans toward the empiricist position that “Ethical codes are precepts reached by consensus under the guidance of the innate rules of mental development.” Wilson (1998, 241): “While this conception is relativistic, in other words dependent on personal viewpoint, it need not be irresponsibly so. If evolved carefully, it can lead more directly and safely to stable moral codes than transcendentalism, which is also, when you think about it, ultimately relativistic.” 391 There is something to be said, though, about the principle of nuisance. One might argue that a good guideline for life and society is: “Try to enjoy yourself, but don’t make a nuisance.” Hitler may well have been enjoying himself (though even that’s debatable) … but by any reasonable standard he violated the nuisance standard big time. In this sense a “nuisance” could also be considered someone who obdurately violates the Golden Rule. It would also have implications for society, since not every political, economic or technological policy would be equally useful in promoting the ability of people to enjoy themselves (without being a nuisance). This idea will be explored more below … and in chapter seven concerning the fallout of historical and scientific illiteracy in the educational world. 392 Moral absolutists have no trouble spotting the absurd consequences of no absolute morality, such as Francis J. Beckwith, “Why I Am Not a Moral Relativist,” in Geisler & Hoffman (2001, 2122). That may be contrasted with the circumlocutory stance of Blackmore (1999, 147-174): “I suggest that kindness to animals can easily take hold because it fits well in people who are already infected with altruism memes. They see themselves as kind people and have an investment in continuing to do so. The way they behave makes them more likely to be imitated, and so kindness to animals spread.” All well and good, but in the spirit of B. F. Skinner (re note 117, chapter one) without an absolute standard of some sort there would be nothing more or less admirable about kindness to animals than cruelty to animals (or people)—just a differing meme. 393 Ironically, Richard Dawkins et al. could have got past this hurdle had they extended the logic of scientific objectivity to the moral dimension. Something like the old saw about there being no atheists in foxholes, Dawkins (1995, 31-32) reduced the deconstructivist view of science to a flip remark on the hypocrisy of a cultural relativist in an airplane at 30,000 feet. Being there at all would mean aerodynamics, propulsion, metallurgy, etc. could not be merely social constructs. Alcock (2001, 82) heartily approved of Dawkins and Maynard Smith for opposing such untenable relativism. Dennett (1999) tramped about as close when he defended objective truth against the assault of postmodernists like Richard Rorty. 394 Provine declared how “intellectually satisfied” he was once he discarded “the fairy tale that I believed when I was a kid. Life may have no ultimate meaning, but I sure think it can have lots of proximate meaning. Free will is not hard to give up, because it’s a horribly destructive idea to our society. Free will is what we use as an excuse to treat people like pieces of crap when they do something wrong in our society. We say to the person, ‘you did something wrong out of your free will, and therefore we have the justification for revenge all over your behind.’ We put people in prison, turning them into lousier individuals than they ever were. This horrible system is based

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upon this idea of free will.” Whether Provine would call the police if someone had broken into his house to appropriate his belongings for their own proximate ends, he didn’t say. 395 See Bertrand Russell (1957, 11-12), Pennock (1999, 330-331) and Singer (2000, 8-9) for a range of comments on Plato’s argument. Mark I. Vuletic fields Plato in a 2001 essay, “Is Atheism Consistent With Morality?” (infidels.org/library/modern/mark_vuletic/moral.html). 19th century natural theology seems not to have hit on the idea that an absolute morality could exist apart from God, though evolutionary arguments for utilitarian morality began to be used from mid-century on, Turner (1985, 229-232). Interestingly, the survey of Christian ethics by Ruse (2001, 157-169) also skipped the implications of Plato and Russell. 396 In his chapter on “Ethics Without God,” George Smith (2000, 227-237) touched on the Platonic Dilemma (though not specifically by that name) along with the history of the theological debate. He noted the “natural philosophy” position of Thomas Aquinas (that God necessarily wills goodness because it’s built into the universe, and so cannot contradict his own design by acting otherwise) and the opposing Protestant Reformation “voluntarist” view that deems whatever God wills to be “good” … and obeyed. Chittick (1984, 35) concisely reflected the latter perspective: “Truth is what God says it is.” Not that Aquinas is popular in all theological circles: LaHaye & Noebel (2000, 107-108) regard him as a founding intellect of humanism … though Wendell Bird (1989, Vol. 2, 273) was willing to allow that St. Thomas had “taught a form of creation.” Ironically, Chittick was also trying to play Gödel’s theorem to end-run moral uncertainty by placing God as the absolute reference point—clearly not appreciating that he was simply moving from one undecidable proposition (a transcendent morality) to another (the existence of a particular God). More recently, Barr (2003, 26, 211-219, 279-288) drew on Roger Penrose’s restatement of John R. Lucas’ argument that Gödel’s establishment of levels of undecidability in mathematics (and our ability to appreciate the truth of that) proves that the human mind couldn’t be restricted to the material brain. This supposed that a natural mind would have to function like a computer program, running exclusively off rigorous internal deductions. The flaw in this reasoning is the presumption that analog heuristic “rules of thumb” don’t also play roles, permitting decision making on the basis of unconscious emotional or even stochastic inputs. 397 Christian apologists are less keen to explore this area than they are to defend absolute morality generally. When asking “Isn’t secular morality enough?” Catholic apologist Meynell (1994, 12-32) skirted around the dilemma to suggest the answer is no. Michael Tooley mentioned the Platonic issue en passant in a rebuttal during his 1994 debate with William Lane Craig on the existence of God (available at leaderu.com), but Craig didn’t specifically respond to it in his rejoinder. Craig did get around to Plato in “Why I Believe God Exists,” in Geisler & Hoffman (2001, 77-78), but tried to wriggle around the problem the same way Plato sought to, by equating God with the Good (which of course is by axiom, not deduction). Craig unconsciously invokes the God  morality assumption in his essays and debates with skeptics. The version in his 1997 piece (cited note 360 above): “On the theistic view, objective moral values are rooted in God. God’s own holy and perfectly good nature supplies the absolute standard against which all actions and decisions are measured. God’s moral nature is the locus and source of moral value. He is by nature loving, generous, just, faithful, kind, and so forth.” Keith Ward (2002, 85-96, 114-117, 222-224) also circuited the issue of whether a divinely ordained transcendent morality is on any firmer ground than one relying on a pragmatic footing. Ward (2002, 98-99) did aver that “the sort of religion the Hebrew prophets taught gives to morality an absoluteness, a compassion, a power and a hope which is simply not available to secular morality.” As with Craig, the example of the Amalekites did not appear on Ward’s cue sheet. 398 This argument of course presupposes the reality of a degree of free will as explained in the last chapter concerning the implications of Benjamin Libet’s research (e.g. re note 267). Cf. the gymnastics of William Provine (note 394 above) with Adler (1985, 145-155) on the philosophical necessity of free will. 399 Polkinghorne (2000, 12). 400 The lack of practical predictability in evolution doesn’t mean you can’t profitably apply rules of thumb to particular scenarios. This even applies to hypothetical cases, such as Dougal Dixon

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(1988b; 1990) or Ward (2001) on where dinosaurs could have gone without the K-T extinction or what might be in store for future human evolution. Dixon served as a consultant on “The Future is Wild,” an interesting extrapolation of possible future evolution aired on the Animal Planet cable channel New Years day 2003. Much as Cowley (2001) does concerning history, such exercises hone the intellect by requiring the theorist to apply the principles and assumptions of their discipline. This proviso is also what can separate good science fiction from dreck: it is difficult to plausibly speculate on a “what if” without taking a firm stand on “what is” as well as “what can be” (cf. note 2, chapter five). It is also a quite effective way to smoke out underlying philosophical attitudes, as was seen regarding the cultural dyspepsia of Dixon’s Man after Man (note 58, chapter five). See note 430 below for why this level of applied thinking is far from being purely academic. 401 Interestingly enough, Ku et al. (2000) found that a dose of Lamarckian learning could dislodge some neural network evolutionary search programs when they become “stagnant at local optima.” Which might offer a clue as to how consciousness (however it appeared in our hominid ancestors) could spark a selective feedback loop. As for the extent of “idea space,” in a mundane sense the number of possible thoughts is indeed infinite. And I don’t mean a common garden-variety “countable” first order infinity either—such as the set of integers (1, 2, 3, etc.) or fractions. I mean the abyssal second order infinity of the real numbers (which includes irrationals like  or the square root of two). Equivalent to a first order infinity to the first order infinity power, the set of reals is “uncountable” in a way the number of integers or fractions alone aren’t. See A. Moore (1995) for a short introduction to transfinite mathematics, and Barrow (2000, 50-52, 156-163) for some relevant observations on “Hilbert’s Hotel” (showing how one “counts” infinite sets) and the world of “surreal” numbers derived (quite literally) from “nothing”! Getting back to enumerating ideas… If one imagines a set of file folders, each devoted to at least one observation about any single number, you can see that in principle the whole file cabinet would have to be at least as comprehensive as the uncountable infinity of the reals. 402 Of course, not all regions of idea space might be effectively accessible to a particular individual or culture, if only for reasons of technical contingency (such as not being able to build a particle accelerator to illuminate the finer details of matter). But refined thought experiments can still outpace the hardware, as when Newton conceptualized earth satellites before rocketry or when Einstein pondered the consequences of traveling close to the speed of light without actually having the capacity to do so. This turns Arthur C. Clarke’s famous Third Law on its head: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” Clarke (1972, 139). But once a culture reaches the level where it can produce scientifically credible science fiction, for all practical purposes no technology can ever be mistaken for “magic”—only as a technology whose principles we happen not to be familiar with (yet). See note 107, chapter five, for the rough edges of Clarke’s First Law. 403 Edward Wilson (1998, 147-148). “The genetically inherited traits are not memes, not units of culture, but rather the propensity to invent and transmit certain kinds of these elements of memory in preference to others,” Wilson (1998, 150). This is what Martin Seligman and other psychologists have described as “prepared learning,” and which sociobiologists such as Wilson regard as usually an adaptive process. Paul Ehrlich (2000, 308-317) also holds the line against a universal ethics, though contending that our ethical judgments are language dependant and require empathy. Evolutionary psychologist Alcock (2001, 193-195) dodged the moral bullet via a disavowal of the naturalistic fallacy: that science can only describe “a neutral explanation for human social endeavors, not a justification, not a moral prescription, not a normative declaration about what ‘ought’ to be.” 404 See note 117, chapter four. Segerstråle (2000, 361): “The conclusion, then, is that Wilson in Consilience has a rather unusual interpretation of the nature of the Enlightenment quest. For him, this quest is primarily about the unity of knowledge, not about such things as universal standards of truth, justice, and morals, or about Reason in science and human affairs. Those who disagree with him, again, do not doubt the truth of science, but see scientific truth as a limited one, which has to be supplemented with other Enlightenment truths.” Marks (2002, 272-284) is equally critical of Wilson and Dawkins for trying to apply scientific rationalism without a proper consideration of its

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limitations (especially apropos questions of purpose or morality). Cf. also the exchange in Zygon by Stephen Pope (2001), Hefner (2001) and Edward Wilson et al. (2001). 405 Cf. Segerstråle (2000, 268) on Wilson’s cultural laundry list, and the rather more useful Brown list from 1989-1991 in Pinker (2002, 435-439). 406 One might argue that it is the business of a properly advanced culture to think about such things. On dietary rules, for example, one could take the position that food taboos should not be based on mere tradition. The primary principle of dining should be to eat what tastes good to you (and isn’t seriously bad for you, at least in moderation). But you could add two ethical provisos: never eat a species to extinction (an environmentalist consideration) and don’t eat any conscious beings (a Lincolnesque reciprocity rule: “As I would not be eaten, so I would not be the eater”). Identifying self-awareness returns us to the animal rights quandary, of course, but no one said moral reasoning would be a piece of chocolate cake (so to speak). Further more refined distinctions could also be made concerning “taste” versus “preference”—an issue that we’ll get back to next chapter regarding multiculturalism and music. 407 Robert Wright (2000, 320-321) gets a runner-up prize for his equally weird analogy of nonconscious zombies doing art or television shows. Wright may be thought of as representing the sort of glib conclusion jumping Steven Pinker has been accused of (note 207 above). For example, Wright (1994, 174-176) highlighted the findings of a 1989 paper by Charles B. Crawford, B. E. Salter & K. L. Lang on “Human Grief: Is Its Intensity Related to the Reproductive Value of the Deceased?” in Ethology and Sociobiology, Vol. 10, pp. 297-307. A caption proclaimed that “Evolutionary psychologists have gathered evidence that the amount of grief parents feel over the loss of a child varies from case to case in accordance with Darwinian theory.” Wright (1994, 175): “The results, plotted on a graph, show grief growing until just before adolescence and then beginning to drop.” Wright didn’t supply sufficient detail to indicate how the one conclusion could follow so cleanly from the other, even presuming the study’s method and data base were adequate to relate “grief” to an index of reproductive value. 408 As covered in the “food fight” back in chapter four (note 270). 409 In stressing the importance of an integrated cognitive map of consciousness, Merlin Donald (1991, 145-146) indicated how insects have a problem: “Animals without centralized nervous systems, like insects with ganglionic nervous systems, are incapable of true coordinated actions, because each appendage is under local control. The legs, for example, each work in parallel, and no part of the insect’s nervous system has information on the state of all the legs. Therefore, an insect deprived of a leg may circle endlessly, where a more sophisticated creature, like a mammal, would drag itself with novel locomotor action patterns to its destination.” This is certainly consistent with Damasio (1994, 236-244), who related the human sense of “self” at least partly to our whole body image. Cf. Singer (2000, xvii) suggesting that human ethics on violence were not based on an immortal soul but on differences in our desire. But human desires are the outcome of our conscious mind interacting with our emotional feedback. 410 Ironically, Lapin (1999, 78-79) used ants as a metaphor for regarding America as an organism, rather than as individuals. Cf. notes 273-274, 280 & 285 of chapter five on the constraints of AI. Then there’s the nuclear warhead in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, transformed into an innocuous pot of petunias by the Infinite Improbability Drive. Shortly before hitting the ground and being smashed to pieces, the flowers thought “Oh no, not again.” The film version noted that “Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that, we should know a lot more about the universe than we do now.” The humor of the whole scene derives of course precisely from our inability to conceptualize how a bowl of petunias could ever be aware of anything. Though cf. note 219, chapter five, on conscious thermostats. 411 Monod (1971, 173-179) grappled with similar issues (such as the necessity for moral axioms, and following a Jamesian pragmatism in considering the application of ethics as a reflection of their ultimate meaning) but showed no awareness of the decidability question. Though one may also note that even with Plato and Gödel on hand, Rottschaefer (2001a,b) and Drees (2001) had about as much trouble homing in on the problem as Wilson’s Consilience or Monod’s Chance and Necessity. Segerstråle (2000, 362-364, 366-368) examines the limitations of Wilson’s attempt to

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derive moral messages from nature, and how this puts him in the teleological tradition of Teilhard de Chardin (especially in preserving natural ecosystems as part of a transcending biophilia). Cf. the 2000 preface to Edward Wilson (1975, viii): “Conservation, I have long believed, is ultimately an ethical issue. Moral precepts in turn must be based on a sound, objective knowledge of human behavior.” 412 See Dawkins (1998, 97) for a very brief statement of his position. His chapter on the brain was illustrative: a fairly abstract discussion of computer analogies and visual skills, leading up to Dawkins (1998, 283): “The problems raised by subjective consciousness are perhaps the most baffling in all philosophy, and solving them is far beyond my ambition.” Cf. note 245, chapter five—and also Wright (1994, 53), skirting past the implication of consciousness just as lightly. For someone as aggressively opinionated as Dawkins, such lacunae seem as strained as Phillip Johnson’s studied muteness on the Flood. But Dawkins is not unique in this area; Paul Davies shows a similar exasperating mix from the anthropic quarter. Davies (1983, ix) affirmed how “science offers a surer path to God than religion.” Yet Davies (1983, viii) also pointedly made “no attempt to discuss religious experience or questions of morality”—the very areas where the “God” hypothesis would seem particularly germane. Davies (1983, 1-8) then spent the first chapter (“Science and religion in a changing world.”) contending that religious experience was no sound way to arrive at true statements—a shaky stance to take without an examination of the nature of religious experience and belief. 413 Horgan (1996b, 116-119) offered a particularly unflattering assessment of Dawkins’ approach to subjects he disapproves of. Segerstråle (2000, 401) homed in on Dawkins’ avoidance of all sources of human solace, characterizing his relegation of myths, legends and religion to “viruses of the mind” as advocating “a sort of meaning vacuum.” In this area, at least, Dawkins exhibits all the telltale traits of Zeno-slicing. For contrast, Goodwin (1994, 30-32) and his interview in Brockman (1995, 87-89) slid off in another direction: sounding like a Kulturkampf creationist, he suggested Dawkins’ “selfish gene” was a play on the traditional Fall and Redemption, functioning for Dawkins as a form of Darwinized religion. Then there’s Berlinski (2000, 310), who briefly alluded to the evasions and character defects of the “superbly reptilian Richard Dawkins.” 414 Recognition of this can affect how science education is to be conducted. Because of the central importance of morality in the creationist worldview, Douglas Allchin (1999) recommends biting the bullet and teaching morals and the evolutionary theories on their origin. Not doing so has only reinforced creationist qualms based on ignorance of the data. When students were acquainted with the evidence (such as that on kin selection) Allchin found them more responsive to the general evolutionary framework. In a similar vein, Loving & Foster (2000) and Simon (2001) indicate the usefulness (if not necessity) of addressing religious and philosophical issues in science and general education. Simon noted how moral issues cannot be avoided, but are often covered haphazardly in education. She recommended an infusion of debate at all levels, rather than opting for isolated Moral Issues electives. Her focus was more on the broader existential and moral questions (such as why evil exists); proposals for a biology course touched on bio-ethics and ecology rather than the creation/evolution debate (which came up only peripherally, and without contextual citation). See Simon (2001, 144-179, 181, 183, 189, 234). 415 A lightning rod even bigger than Pinker’s infanticide article arrived with Randy Thornhill & Craig Palmer’s A Natural History of Rape. These rather doctrinal evolutionary psychologists argued that rape was primarily an adaptive act of men otherwise denied sexual outlets, as opposed to the more recent view of rape as a psychological assertion of power. Though Thornhill & Palmer (2000) were hardly condoning rape, they struck raw nerves by suggesting women should avoid dressing too provocatively lest they provoke the male’s natural propensities. Among the many evolutionary critics of this position was Jerry Coyne (firm opponent of Behe’s Black Box) who bluntly called their argument “bunk.” Coyne & Berry (2000) subsequently fired gaping holes through the book’s evidential undercarriage, Zimmer (2001g, 281-282)—though creationist Nancy Pearcey was not willing to cut evolutionists much slack here. In “Darwin’s dirty secret” (available at both arn.org and discovery.org) Pearcey suggested critics like Coyne & Berry overlook “that the facts are irrelevant” as Darwinists are caught on the logic of their own theory. According to

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Pearcey, “The only way out of the dilemma is a change in assumptions, a return to the view that life was designed and morality really does rest ‘on God’s will.’” (This skirts the same logical fallacy described re note 362 above.) One may compare the wary home court position of evolutionary psychologist Alcock (2001, 206-215) or Pinker (2002, 161, 359-371) with the conservative sociological subtext of their work explored by Sophia Collins in “Redrawing Rape: Boundary work in Thornhill and Palmer’s ‘A Natural History of Rape’” (at apieceofus.org.uk/pieces/essays/sophiadiss.shtml). Meanwhile, Maggioncalda & Sapolsky (2002) were very circumspect about drawing inferences on the nature of human rape when they reported on the apparent adaptive advantages of forced copulation among some orangutans. Cf. also Judson (2002, 105-121) on aggressive sex in the animal world. 416 Johnson (2000, 106-107)—by the way, Johnson (2000, 73-75) decried hyperbole and sarcasm (at least insofar as it emanated from evolutionists). Notes in Johnson (2000, 184n) referenced the original edition of The Selfish Gene for the “teach generosity” quote, which is still in Dawkins (1989, 3). Incidentally, Dawkins prefaced the statement with: “Be warned that if you wish, as I do, to build a society in which individuals cooperate generously and unselfishly towards a common good, you can expect little help from biological nature.” Cf. Wright (1994, 151): “The enemy of justice and decency does indeed lie in our own genes.” The idea “that the universe is hostile to human life and values” was also the view of Thomas Huxley, as noted by George C. Williams, “Gaia, nature worship, and biocentric fallacies,” in Mark Ridley (1997, 398). Incidentally, Dawkins’ use of the “robot” metaphor got a sharp slap from Gould (2002a, 619): “a striking example of the triumph of false consistency over legitimate intuition.” This occurred during an extended critique of the limitations of the “inadaptive meme” of Dawkins-style gene selectionism, Gould (2002a, 613-644). The Darwin quote warrants some scholarly marginalia. Johnson’s footnote read: “Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1981), p. 201: ‘At some future period, not very distant as measured in centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races.” This was a slight variation on the version in the Notes to Defeating Darwinism, used to score points in his critique of Inherit the Wind: “Ironically, The Descent of Man would never be allowed in a public school classroom today—because of its racism and sexism! For example, Darwin calmly predicted, ‘At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races’ (The Descent of Man [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981], p, 201). Imagine Henry Drummond trying to convince a modern jury that freedom of thought requires a community to accept the teaching of racial inferiority or genocide if it comes supported by ‘science,’” Johnson (1997, 121-122). How one obtains two text versions from one original source is an interesting question. Cf. also the more general version in Johnson (1995, 144, 233), where he at least acknowledged that “Darwin was not a bloodthirsty imperialist but a scientist explaining that extinction by natural selection was responsible for the absence of intermediate forms and that the process could be expected to continue.” The Darwin quote has naturally made the rounds of antievolutionist apologetics. Wiker (2001, 12) fielded yet another (unreferenced) version to show that Darwin considered such extinctions as “necessary and beneficial.” Incidentally, the relevant “even than” reference was excised by ellipsis; see note 8, chapter five, for the whole text (and context). Hanegraaff (1998, 25, 166n) invoked the quote to conclude that “Darwinism” inherently promotes racism—as did filmmaker Walt Becker in his 1998 creationist novel Link (page 338 of the Avon paperback edition, if you’re curious). Given the nature of apologetic scholarship, there is every reason to think the Darwin quote was extracted from secondary sources rather than from reading the original text. In Becker’s case, his cliché was drawn from a far broader antievolutionary pallet than Johnson, Wiker or Hanegraaff: the New Age “Mysterious Origins of Man” version of human history discussed last chapter. Creationist “Mark” tossed off a version of the Darwin quote during a spring 2001 “Trash Talk” exchange at Steve Milloy’s Junk Science website (cfis.org/ubb/Forum7/HTML/000082.html). The Darwin quote also pops up in an antievolutionary (but non-creationist) context in a February 2000 installment of Mike Carrier’s Netwurking News (on “Darwin’s Evolution—a Matter of Racism Over Science” at goodschools.com/darwin.pdf).

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Carrier’s Good Schools website takes repeated swipes at Darwin’s alleged racism, at one point even contending that “Darwin was every bit the racist that Hitler was.” Concerning evolutionary theory, Carrier’s argument tracks familiar authority quote ground (from Michael Denton to Colin Patterson). He is most especially taken with the supposed anti-Darwinian sentiments of Stuart Kauffman (both a “real scientist” and “a premier scholar”), tossing off a snippet of Kauffman (1993, 643) almost as often as he does the Darwin extermination quote. Carrier is also no fan of Richard Dawkins, castigating him at one point for expressing unflattering opinions of Richard Milton (!). 417 Even the genetics has moved beyond the sort of simplified correlation Johnson was thinking Dawkins was thinking of. It turns out that genes can not only be “selfish”—they can be Machiavellian too: “assassin” genes can conspire with “safe-conduct” genes to violate the normal Mendellian rules of genetic inheritance, Mark Ridley (2001b, 170-179). Cf. also note 145 (chapter five) on the genetic drawbacks of high mutation rates. 418 The bowerbirds’ often-complicated constructions are the counterparts of the peacock’s tail, a product of sexual selection, Uy (2002). 419 Segerstråle (2000, 352) asked of Wilson’s Consilience argument: “But what happened to wisdom, and meaning and purpose? They somehow got swept up in Wilson’s great synthesis. Meaning, for instance, does not appear as an independently discernable aspect of reality.” Cf. Gould (1999a, 178), whose NOMA envisages uniting “the patches built by our separate magisteria into a beautiful and coherent quilt called wisdom.” 420 Pinker (1997, 558-561) suggests that consciousness, the self, free will, meaning, knowledge and morality may be inherently intractable concepts because our minds didn’t evolve to handle them. It is also possible that such philosophical problems arise inevitably whenever conscious beings operate in an autonomous context, as proposed by Kauffman (2000, 116-118). 421 One may point out that the “fact” of Smith actually having had golden plates would not necessarily resolve whether the story contained in them was true. After all, a passing alien with a wry sense of humor might have been playing a prank. Here a differing or new data set could resolve such uncertainties. Had the Mormon plates remained available for independent translation and study, for example … of if the End Times Rapture were actually to take place, and Jesus return to set up his Millennial kingdom. Thus there is an inevitable linearity and contingency to a culture’s course through idea space. 422 Damasio (1994, 177-179) commented on the “adaptive somatic markers” that act like alarm signals regarding proposed actions, and how these relate to the proper coordination of emotion and reason in both individuals and society. Emotion without reason can lead to mob violence, while reason without emotion can produce the sociopath (re note 228, chapter five). Cf. also Linda Mealey’s 1995 take on “The Sociobiology of socipathy: An integrated evolutionary model” (bbsonline.org/documents/a/00/00/05/20/bbs00000520-00/bbs.mealey.html). Perhaps the most dangerous societies are those that find ways to straddle both polarities at once. The hyperrationalist (and rationalizing) revolutionary extremism of the French in the 1790s and the Soviet Union in the 1930s comes to mind. Such systems also offer endless job opportunities for genuine sociopaths, as the Nazis sadly illustrated. Or put one in charge of the “whole shebang,” such as that amiable monster Pol Pot presiding over the killing fields of Cambodia. 423 Edward Wilson (1998, 264). For comparison, Paul Davies (1983, 3) contended that “No religion that bases its beliefs on demonstrably incorrect assumptions can expect to survive very long.” He offered no substantiation for this claim, which would seem adequately refuted by the persistence of the Ussher-sized creationist cosmology of D. James Kennedy and Jerry Falwell. 424 This line of reasoning may be compared with Dennett (1995, 467-481) on the impossibility of deriving “ought” from “is” no matter how many steps are involved. Dennett was primarily concerned with trying to find an evolutionary reason for humans to acquire ethical behavior, not to examine if morality could exist whether or not any conscious beings were there to appreciate it. “It must be true that there is an evolutionary explanation of how our memes and genes interacted to create the policies of human cooperation that we enjoy in civilization—we haven’t figured out all the details yet, but it must be true unless there are skyhooks in the offing—but this would not show that the result was for the benefit of the genes (as principle beneficiary),” Dennett (1995, 470).

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Running along the “Darwinian fundamentalist” track, Dennett (1995, 477) opted for the incremental: “Not in one fell swoop, so far as anybody can see, but there are devious gradual routes by which we might have bootstrapped ourselves into genuine morality by a series of smallish changes.” Logically, though, a transcendent morality need not be a “skyhook”—any more than the Pythagorean Theorem is. Nor need its realization be gradualistic, any more than Euclid’s “Eureka!” Such is the difference when traversing Idea Space as opposed to a purely genetic landscape. 425 Again Edward Wilson (1998, 251) opted for practical: “Ought is not the translation of human nature but of the public will, which can be made increasingly wise and stable through the understanding of the needs and pitfalls of human nature.” 426 Gould (1999a, 4). See also note 203 above. 427 Johnson (2000, 160-162) took issue with Freeman Dyson for considering theology a cultural subject, not a universal in the way science is. It is relevant that Dyson’s approach to religion is outside the Wedge because of a refusal to accord theology the status Johnson gives it—while the pseudoscientific claptrap of D. James Kennedy is welcomed with open arms. Dyson describes his gentle ecological social justice view of religion in an essay on “Progress in Religion” (EDGE 68, May 16, 2000) at Brockman’s Edge website. Plantinga’s views are represented in the essays listed in note 372 above. 428 Blackmore (1999, 203). Cf. note 412 above on Paul Davies re science and God. 429 Evolutionist Hrdy (2001, 62) worried that, “If human compassion develops under particular rearing conditions, and if an increasing proportion of the species survives to breeding age without developing compassion, it won’t make any difference how useful this trait was among our ancestors. It will become like sight in cave-dwelling fish.” Hrdy and Phillip Johnson might benefit someday by comparing notes. 430 In one sense the search for an arrow to evolution puts Wright (2000) at the opposite pole from Stephen Jay Gould along a polarity of opinion that has been staked out over generations. As covered by Barlow (1994, 3-58), the progressive aspect of evolution has been favored by such theorists as Julian Huxley, Francisco Ayala and E. O. Wilson—and just as strenuously critiqued by the paleontologically inclined George Gaylord Simpson, David Raup and Gould. What all these scientists have shared, though, is a persistent curiosity about the rules governing the Big Picture (cf. also note 106, chapter four), and there is some justification for a “common ground” optimism. Living things do appear to have properties (like compartmentalization and redundancy) whose enhancement can lead to an increase in a lineage’s “evolvability,” Kirschner & Gerhart (1998) with commentary by West-Eberhard (1998). Yet the great question still remains: if there is a ratchet of “progress” to life, how much of it is contingent on a cycle of mass extinction? Whatever evolvability the synapsid/mammal crowd had up their sleeve during the Mesozoic, it appears to have been suppressed so long as the dinosaur ecosystem remained intact. What then of dinosaur evolvability? Had only the proposed Chicxulub asteroid been off target, were they capable of the sort of change speculated by Dixon (1988b)? Answering those questions requires a correct comprehension of the history and nature of life (including recognition of the macroevolutionary processes leading to the appearance of mammals and dinosaurs). Compared to the level of analysis occurring in the evolutionary sector on even this one point (note 6 of the Introduction) the truncated scale of antievolutionist thinking shows all too clearly the thin veneer of Theistic Realism. This runs from Phillip Johnson’s extinction befuddlement (note 211, chapter four) to Gerald Schroeder on human inevitability (note 73, chapter five). 431 In his earlier book, Wright (1994, 377-378) offered this cheery tautology: “Given the way natural selection works, there were only two possibilities at the dawn of evolution: (a) that eventually there would be a species with conscience and sympathy and even love, all grounded ultimately in genetic self-interest; (b) that no species possessing these things would ever exist. Well, a happened. We do have a foundation of decency to build on.” Wright (1994, 378) followed that with: “Indeed, if you ponder the utter ruthlessness of evolutionary logic long enough, you may start to find our morality, such as it is, nearly miraculous.” By the way Wright’s The Moral Animal

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was a work Gould (1997b) characterized as an “egregiously simplistic argument.” Cf. note 407 above. 432 Wright (2000, 7). See note 233, chapter five, on Bergson. 433 Conway Morris (1998a, 205). One may recall from chapter five the cultural pall of British pessimism (re note 58) and the evidence for human gang violence running back 20,000 years (note 200). D’Souza (2000, 164-183) offers an interesting account of the yearning for Golden Ages and Eden spanning the political spectrum, as the scientifically minded see-saw between extremes of optimism and despair. Though just as critical of Golden Age mythologizing, Thornton (1999, 8285) also chided the Enlightenment and Humanist traditions for taking the existence of “evil” far too lightly for his pessimistic tastes. Burke & Ornstein (1995) tread a middle path: suggesting that our present technological reach has threatened to outstrip our mental grasp, operating by necessity from an evolutionary heritage attuned to a quite different set of circumstances. 434 This notion of irreversibility is one of the reasons why the abortion controversy is so intractable. Seen as an instance of “ensoulment” at conception by many religions, all abortions would be a class of human murder. Regarded as a natural developmental process, the human mind could not be present at the start—arriving only after contingent neurological systems have engaged. Cf. notes 37 (chapter one) and 287 (chapter five) on the related political issues of Garrett Hardin and the animal rights movement. 435 Plait (2002, 141): “Science fiction author Larry Niven once commented that the reason the dinosaurs became extinct is that they didn’t have a space program. We do, and if we have enough ambition and enough reach, we can turn these potential weapons of extinction into a literal gold mine for humanity.” This is because even a modest “asteroid 500 meters across would be worth about $4 trillion in cobalt, nickel, iron, and platinum.”

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