Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Progressive Christian
The Bible vs. The Facts?

The Bible vs. The Facts?

Last updated on: June 24, 2012 at 3:59 pm by Fred Clark

The Bible vs. The Facts? 2012-06-24T15:59:14-04:00 Fred Clark

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

I am a Christian. I’m also a Baptist and we Baptists aren’t big on creeds. That’s not because we necessarily disagree with the substance of those creeds, just that we don’t agree with the idea that any authority should be permitted to compel or require every individual to assent to any given formulation of their faith. It’s the same Baptist principle of “soul freedom” that led Baptists to fight for the separation of church and state here in America.

But having made that anti-creedal Baptist caveat, the historic creeds of the Christian faith are a useful summary of what most, if not all, of us Christians believe and have believed over the centuries. Here, for example, are the words of the Nicene Creed, something most of us Christians have been reciting since 381 CE:

We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified. He has spoken through the Prophets. We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.

Amen.

I’ve reproduced that here in order to point out one particular characteristic of its many affirmations: None of them is falsifiable.

“We believe,” we say, because this is what we believe, but we cannot prove that it is true. We are stating our faith — “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” That conviction is firm, but it does not claim or require the certainty that only proof can supply. That is what separates faith from the certainty of fact.

What separates faith from folly is this: It cannot be disproved either.

Again I can’t avoid Wendell Berry’s indispensable distinction between religion and superstition. Religion, Berry says, echoing that passage from the book of Hebrews just cited above, is faith in that which cannot be proved. Superstition, he says, is belief in that which can be — and has been — disproved.

The creed quoted above is a religious declaration, but not a superstitious one. It affirms that “we believe” to be true a host of things that neither we nor anyone else can prove to be true. But nowhere does it affirm that “we believe” to be true anything that we or anyone else can prove, or has proved, to be false.

Christianity is a religion, not a superstition. My belief that Jesus Christ was God incarnate and rose again from the dead may be viewed skeptically, and it may be rejected by skeptics due to a lack of supporting evidence. But unlike, say, the belief that the moon landing was a hoax, it cannot be rejected on the basis of evidence to the contrary. Moon-landing denialism, unlike the faith expressed in the Nicene Creed, is a superstition. It can be and has been disproved.

What rankles me about Al Mohler’s creationist shtick is that he wants to equate “biblical orthodoxy” with superstition.

Not satisfied with the brevity of the Nicene Creed, Mohler adds to it a litany of further proclamations that he insists — in distinctly un-Baptist fashion* — must be affirmed as non-negotiable for all real, true Christians. But unlike the religious affirmations of that creed, the additions Mohler demands include tenets that are demonstrably falsifiable.

It’s likely you’ve noticed that I find that infuriating.

Not for any of the reasons Mohler always goes on about. He’s forever accusing Christians who refuse to deny science of chasing after “respectability” or “intellectual vanity.” That’s got nothing to do with it.

It’s infuriating because I’ve seen what it does to people. I’ve seen too many of its victims not to be furious with it.

When Christian teachers like Mohler insist that the non-negotiable tenets of the faith include beliefs that can be and have been proven false, they set their followers up for inexorable crisis and calamity. It turns Christians into ex-Christians with industrial efficiency.

“Test everything,” the apostle Paul wrote. “Hold on to the good.”

But what Mohler is teaching is, essentially, don’t test anything, and hold on to whatever we tell you.

“This stuff is unavoidable,” says Dan Harlow at Calvin College. “Evangelicals have to either face up to it or they have to stick their head in the sand. …”

“If so, that’s simply the price we’ll have to pay,” says Southern Baptist seminary’s Albert Mohler.

The problem with sticking your head in the sand is that you can’t see and you can’t breathe. Eventually you’ll come up for air and open your eyes and you’ll wind up catching a glimpse of whatever it was you were trying not to see.

And when that happens, it causes people to lose their faith. Not because their faith was weak and not because they were vainly chasing intellectual acclaim, but because Al Mohler or someone like him had taught them that belief in Jesus Christ was indivisible from some other belief that could not withstand testing. Taught to regard such things as inseparable, once they encounter the evidence disproving that superstition, they do as they were taught and jettison belief in Christ as well. They were taught that their faith must be bound up with folderol. And when that folderol falls apart — as folderol always will — it takes their faith with it.

When religion is reduced to superstition, a crisis of faith becomes inevitable. You can read the stories of those crises in the testimonies of the wounded souls profiled in Stefan Ulstein’s Growing Up Fundamentalist. You can measure the effect of this reduction to superstition at any of the alumni reunions held each year at Bob Jones University. (“Has anyone heard from Jim?” “Oh, poor guy, he accidentally picked up a copy of Smithsonian magazine at the dentist’s office and his faith shattered into a million pieces. He won’t be back this year.”) Richard Dawkins hasn’t produced a fraction of the ex-believers that Bob Jones churns out every year.

By declaring falsifiable beliefs to be central tenets of Christianity, Mohler warps our faith into a superstition. That renders it something that can be, and will be, disproved, dismissed and abandoned.

And superstition ought to be dismissed and abandoned — because it’s not true.

It’s strange even to have to say this, but apparently it needs to be said: Believing things that aren’t true is not good.

And it’s not good for a host of reasons — ethical, theological, practical, effectual — that have nothing to do with a desire for respectability or intellectual vanity. If those are really the only reasons Mohler can imagine for wanting not to believe in something that isn’t true then I’m not sure how to begin convincing him otherwise.

I suppose I could understand Mohler better if he seemed to recognize the high stakes of this game he’s playing. If he showed a bit more urgency in acknowledging that The Bible vs. The Facts is not a tenable position to try to sustain.

I’ve known many fundamentalists who believe, as Mohler believes, that the facts as established by sound science are incompatible with what they believe the Bible teaches. Like Mohler, they choose to side with the Bible, but they cling, white-knuckled, to the hope that some day scientists will find another set of facts — some new, revolutionary discovery that will show they had been mistaken and that the Bible, as these fundamentalists understood it, hadn’t really been disproved after all. Theirs is a desperate hope, but for them it’s a necessary one — it’s the only way they can see out of the bind they have created for themselves by elevating their own dubious interpretations of the Bible to equal status with God on high.

I’ve also known many more fundamentalists who shared Mohler’s The Bible vs. The Facts framework and who therefore have declared war on science in just the same way that the moon-landing denialists have declared war on NASA. They latch onto the arcane fantasies of Ken Ham and the Discovery Institute, ferociously promoting the latest iterations of credulous urban legends supposedly “debunking” the grand hoax of science. They speak in sinister tones of a shadowy scientific “conspiracy.” The media is in on it too, they say. And the libraries. And the Internets.

Neither of those responses is a healthy one, but at least those responses recognize what is at stake for them due to their belief — mistaken and self-inflicted — that The Bible and The Facts are incompatible.

Mohler apparently shares that belief, yet he doesn’t share the urgency of either of those responses. He seems almost complacent about his assertion that his doctrines cannot be reconciled with the proven facts of science. I can understand the deniers choice to live in denial. And I can understand and almost even admire the fretful, desperate hope of those longing for a scientific revolution that might reinstate the validity of their beliefs. But Mohler’s response — or, rather, lack of a response — just baffles me.

If incontrovertible science disproves what he declares to be doctrine, then he says he will side with the doctrine. And that is that.

But how do you …? I mean, how can you …? But if …?

Just baffled.

“But … but … but when the facts disprove what you believe, that means you’re wrong,” I splutter.

Very well, then, Mohler says. “That’s simply the price we’ll have to pay.” And if people like you want to be real, true Christians, he says, then you ought to be wrong too.

So I surrender. I’m not giving up the argument, mind you, but if wrong and right and true and false are all going to be used interchangeably, then I’m mystified as to how to continue it.

– – – – – – – – – – – –

* I had some fun a few years ago with a post on this — “Can we please stop calling them ‘Baptists’ now?” — in which I noted that:

The “statement of faith” has replaced the creeds in most evangelical churches, and these statements are enforced with a dogmatism rivaling that of Athanasius. … The Southern Baptist Seminary’s … “Abstract of Principles” is 1,230 words long — more than 10 times as long as the Apostle’s Creed.”

But that AofP, at least, does not explicitly require a belief in a “historical” Adam and Eve, or explicitly call for a rejection of genomic science.

Previous Post

August 11, 2011

Al Mohler on Adam and Eve vs. The Facts

Next Post

August 11, 2011 Left Behind Index IV: Posts 151-200

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category class warfare evangelicals Iraq Left Behind Mammon music Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Which book includes "A time to weep and a time to laugh"?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Genesis Malachi Ecclesiastes Judges