Evangelical Christians have strange heroes.
There is a passing of leadership right now. In about 10 years it will be a whole new landscape.
Yes, I hoping for a shift to secular humanism and away from the Evangelical Christian white guys who now hold too much power in this country.
So do you new atheist/ anti-theist types.
might want to see his list of publicationson pubmed–latest is 2018 publication. He works with a friend in U of Alberta Edmonton. on evolutionary biology; has PhD in this and theology. You would also enjoy the debate referred to. Dr Krauss referred to him respectfully as “Doctor, Doctor, Doctor”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=lamoureux++denis
J Morphol. 2018 May;279(5):616-625. doi: 10.1002/jmor.20797. Epub 2018 Feb 5.
Tooth germ initiation patterns in a developing dentition: An in vivo study of Xenopus laevis tadpoles.
Lamoureux DO1, LeBlanc ARH1, Caldwell MW1.
J Anat. 2017 Dec;231(6):869-885. doi: 10.1111/joa.12686. Epub 2017 Sep 12.
Mosasaurs and snakes have a periodontal ligament: timing and extent of calcification, not tissue complexity, determines tooth attachment mode in reptiles.
LeBlanc ARH1, Lamoureux DO2, Caldwell MW1.
I can try out my newly minted title…
I think @Patrick includes Christian secular humanists like myself in this, like myself. I come to a similar set of values by a different route, also wanting A Secular-Confessional Society.
Secular is not atheist. Encountering Jesus, I oppose coercive use of power. Following the one who has already been granted all authority, why grasp for human power?
And he did it by becoming a servant.
I like Lamoureaux and agree with him on a lot.
However, he seems so wedded to the idea of God “setting it all up in the beginning,” that in my opinion, he runs into really big problems regarding his view of the image of God as some sort of naturally emergent property. https://randalrauser.com/2013/05/lamoureux-on-the-tentative-apologist/
This view seems to have incredibly disturbing implications for human rights. Are retarded people half imaged then? What about the aged? The fetus? It seems to me that unless God “gave” humanity an extra component at some point (I don’t care when, neanderthals, or maybe the upper paleolithic) to separate us from the animals, then it becomes very difficult to ground a traditional Christian understanding of the inherent worth of every human being.
I think I would have to opt for C.S. Lewis’s view regarding the image of God or human spirit being bestowed by God in some sort of supernatural act at some point in the evolutionary process. This seems to ground human rights far better than Lamoureaux’s view.
I am curious if you guys think I’m right about this. Perhaps a topic for another thread? Do you see another way to ground traditional Christian teaching if we accept Lamoureaux’s view?
First, I am so glad to see someone else who quotes Randal Rauser. I’m a fan of his kind approach. He’s a friend of Lamoureux but doesn’t hesitate to question him, too.
Second, I think I’ve listened to this one before, but I’ll do it again (I can’t at this very moment, but will try this weekend). George Macdonald’s view that God has a relationship with all of creation, including dogs, horses, and lesser animals, perhaps to a lesser extent with those that have less insight into responsibility, has attractive points to me. Thus, there’s a continuum of responsibility and relationship to God. As we grow in awareness of Him, we become both more responsible and more understanding of His characteristics. Thus, I think that Adam’s parents and great-great-grandparents also had relationship capabilities to God as well; but with the multi-thousandth generation before him, perhaps less, based on their God given intelligence, etc.
This is one option that I don’t think that Rauser or Lamoureux would accept; and while Macdonald acknowledged evolution’s possibility, I don’t think he got that deep into extrapolations. I’d be interested in your thoughts.
Thanks.
If there is a question about relationship between God based and those who have learning challenge, that’s a great point and really needs to come out. Autistic people, for example, may have less interaction than intelligence. I think that we could benchmark them though in terms of potential. Someone who is ill, mentally challenged, should be recognized as having all the potential, but not yet there. Once in Heaven, they’ll be healed.
I am not completely comfortable with this as a definition either. So your feedback is appreciated.
How are we to form an ethical system from this continuum? We put our dogs and cats to sleep, yet orthodox Christians have always been against HUMAN euthanasia. Why? On what basis? If we base this on self-consciousness, then the less self-concious someone is, the more disposable he/she is, and this seems wrong.
I think one possible way of constructing ethics without any outside input from God would be to appeal to some sort of Platonic form of the human person, which could be insantiated in the mind of God. And then we could say that the “form” of humanity is a considerably different form than that of a chimp and should therefore be treated differently. But this seems far too abstract to me.
Thanks for your reply. Sorry–I was adding another part on there, and messed it up. I am not familiar Plato, unfortunately (“what do they teach children in these schools?” to appropriate Lewis). I"d be interested in what you think of that addendum.
The “potential” part would only work if there were some human ESSENCE. The severely retarded person has no potential to become anything other than that (as far as I am aware). However, if the person is invested with a spirit or soul or SOMETHING, this would easily separate him/her out as intrinsically valuable. Just seems like the easiest solution.
on another note, you don’t agree with Lamoureaux that there probably was no historical Adam? That’s where I agree with him. Haha
Thank you. I don’t know–I think that the children who have anencephaly or severe mental retardation bear marks of how they should be. Last week, a nice young man who looked initially normal quickly declared himself with a severe learning disorder as he repeated himself with friendly overtures when he cleaned the play place at our local McDonald’s where I watched my 5 year old girl play. (McDonald’s has a program that gives people with disabilities a sense of self worth when they pay them with fries, drink and a sandwich for work). I caught myself wondering how his parents would react to him in Heaven when they saw him healed and interacting intelligently and normally. Mental retardation is often from brain damage in birth, a genetic abnormality, or something else that is not the normal for a human.
There’s something about Lewis’ and Macdonald’s yearning for the real source of our shadowlands that tugs at the heart, isn’t there?
I am not certain, nor dogmatic, about the continuum–but I would have a hard time imagining being an Adam with a parent who would never see God, but was in all other ways like me.
Thanks for the discussion. I have to head for bed, but I look forward to more wisdom. God bless.
Thanks for your thoughts. I got a chance to listen to the interview. It was good to refresh. Lamoureux says that the point of the image of God coming to us is a mystery. It reminds me of Lewis’ musing about what we would look like in Aslan’s Country–he sort of implied that for Tirian, his father would look young again, but would be an adult. But who is to say that that is the ideal image of God? So, would a fetus who miscarried appear as a child, or as an adult to his/her mother/father in Heaven?
It seems to me (conjecture only) that as we get our definition from God first and second from others He blesses us to meet, He would decide that, but maybe translate that to our understanding as what we were capable of learning–but that is pretty hard for me to conjecture, as I don’t really know what Heaven would be like (I was using it as a way to guess what an ideal would be).
I jumped over something–I don’t think there was a historical Adam, either. I think that the problem of a punctuated spot of choosing Adam would be a problem as theoretically, he and everyone around him would look just alike, and I personally have difficulty thinking of God choosing Adam over his parents to go to Heaven, etc. I think a continuum of interaction with God makes more sense to me, but I’m willing to say I could be way off. We were discussing this here too: https://discourse.biologos.org/t/how-do-you-reconcile-evolution-with-genesis/39283
Anthony Guthry had trouble with that too…
Thanks for your thoughts.
I guess what got me thinking about this was Nancy Pearcey’s new book and WLC’s interaction with one of her interviews on it. https://www.reasonablefaith.org/media/reasonable-faith-podcast
On your continuum theory, what would the ethical reason be for letting an old woman who can no longer think clearly, speak, see or hear continue living if she’s sucking up too much money from her family? If they can’t afford to pay for her to stay alive, why not kill her? One answer would be because at some point in evolution, God caused to descend upon creatures a spirit that was lacking in the other aninals. That woman has this spirit and should therefore be treated differently than an advanced chimp although her cognitive functioning may be BELOW that of a very smart chimp.
How would this scenario work on the continuum view?
And as far as Lamoureux’s natural abortion comments, (I’m Eastern Orthodox), there is a divide in EO over whether life begins at conception or at fertilization. I would probably go with the conception side. As far as I am aware, no one would say it begins any time AFTER conception. Everyone seems to agree that it would begin AT conception if not sooner. So that’s how I’d answer that question. At conception, a fetus obtains negative rights- a right NOT to be killed, or aggressed against, stolen from, etc…
Most of the natural abortions he is talking about occur before conception I believe (I could be wrong).
Great conversation. Let me know what you think!
@swamidass, @jongarvey, anyone else…thoughts? We have 2 “no Adam” people here disagreeing over this. What about you guys?
I’m not sure how replacing Adam with a continuum helps this particular problem. We take Abraham and he can, in your shorthand, be “chosen by God to go to heaven.”
We take his common ancestor with the chimpanzee and say, perhaps, that it doesn’t “go to heaven” or know God.
Then we take a being halfway in between, along some continuum of knowing God, a bit. Does he half “go to heaven,” or what? The fact that process is slow doesn’t solve dichotomies.
And then , by contrast, we have Peter who is on his way to heaven, and Judas, who looks very much like him and lives next door, who is not. It seems that discontinuity in close proximity is not unknown in God’s dealings. It’s no injustice to a creature whose nature lacks a particular spiritual dimension to be treated accordingly by the Lord.
You have medical confusion here, Mark - maybe you mean “fertilization and implantation” which are the two points most cited… or at least, sincethe 1960s when abortion became legal. Before that, embryologists took the simple view that life began at fertilization, ie conception (for example, my embryology textbook at Medical School was quite explicit on the matter). Since then, the “continuum” view has expanded to variable degrees to make life begin at viability, and other points are possible if you classify “human” by cognitive or physiological standards. Granny then becomes a problem at the other end of life, as you rightly say.
Spontaneous abortions are, in my view as a medic, a red herring. Most (numerically) happen before implantaion and are undiagnosed. Most first trimester miscarriages after implantation are probably related to fetal disorders which are “screened” because unviable. The few later micarriages are more often due to maternal factors.
But in any case, if we assume for now that they happen because “something goes wrong in nature”, what possible bearing does that have on deliberate human actions? In most societies before now, a majority of children died in infancy, but I don’t recall any Christians arguing that that made infanticide a moral dilemma. That was because life and death were justly in God’s hands as Creator, but not in our hands as creatures.
The model for considering such things in a “spiritual” setting is surely the resurrection of the body, which is our hope in Christ. So far, we have one instance in Jesus, who dies in the prime of life and, apparently rose in an equivalent state. God has, I’m sure, an appropriate plan that doesn’t depend on spending eternity with false teeth and dementia, or alternatively in an incubator.
You are right, that’s what I meant. I was mostly going by this podcast, but it’s been a while since I listened to it. http://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/features/orthodoxy_and_bioethics_abortion_euthanasia_and_stem_cell_research
He and Fr John Breck disagree over whether life begins at fertilization (Breck), or implantation (Fr Harakas). Breck- http://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/aftoday/christianity_and_bioethics
So other than the historical Adam part, I take it you have no problem with my tentative view (which is essentially Lewis’s)?