From Play to Purpose | How Culture and Faith Made and Make Us Human

Faith & Science Conversation
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Bear with me, first time poster, long story. I had the amazing privilege of meeting and talking with Francis Collins at the ASA conference where he spoke Saturday evening outlining several of the tools in his upcoming book.

I was raised as an independent Baptist fundamentalist. Several things have morphed my faith system. And, in the past several years I’ve come to conclusions that would label me as an agnostic: there must be a God because Science has too many unanswered questions. But, the traditional stories of the Bible are no different than myths of any other religious system. The earth is not flat, the earth could never have been covered by water and the heart isn’t the center of our belief system.

I asked Dr. Collins how someone like me can discover a new belief system. He recommended the Language of God podcast among other things.

The latest episode, “From Play to Purpose | How Culture and Faith Made and Make Us Human” is good. However, it still has an unusual bias towards a purposeful creator that seems to miss many known facts of science. Let me try and explain.

Stump says in dealing with the point of Morality…

“So like play and imagination, morality is another trait that humans have the capacity for, one that I have proposed that we alone have among the creatures. We are moral creatures, we have moral responsibility for our actions in a way that other creatures do not. And so we might ask, where did that come from? Could it come out of evolution?”

Here’s the bias that seems clear. God directed evolution so that at the point we see Homo sapiens, animals (humans are animals, right), we magically became moral creatures. Let alone thinking through the mechanism of what caused our neurons to become moral, this indicates that no other animal has morality.

What about homo naledi? I met Dr. Lee Berger and listened to his amazing stories of the descending down into the Dinaledi Chamber. Discovering that this species buried their dead, had rituals for death. Did homo naledi have morality? I’d argue, of course.

What about the recent discovery that elephants have names for each other. They have a sophisticated language of vibrations. Do elephants have morality, even could they possibly have a religious system?

There are many more examples and I’m wondering how saying Homo sapiens are the only creatures that have morality aligns with science. If God is the progenitor, couldn’t he have designed evolution at all levels and even a belief in him? Hey, do mitochondria have morality?

I admit, from my “coming out” my bias is to root out all learned biases that were created in a social system of the fundamentalist Christian God.

If those of us who desire a faith and try and understand the awesome power of God, how do we allow all science, even the evidence beyond just Homo sapiens alone having morality. Won’t this identification or our bias help us better discover the truth of God?

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IMO, there are a few things that are required before there is morality: empathy, self, instinct, and reason.

First, you need to understand the concept of self, that you are a person interacting with other people who also view themselves as an individual person.

Second, you have to be able to sense emotional pain in others. This is empathy.

Third, there needs to be an inbuilt concept of good and bad. If each person had a completely different list of good and bad things, then morality wouldn’t work.

Fourth, you need reason to understand how your actions will impact others.

From what I can see, humans are the only living species that meet these requirements (could be wrong though). I think it is really difficult to determine when these requirements were first met in our lineage. I think we can say with strong certainty that Neanderthals and Denisovans were probably a lot like us. H. erectus? Hard to say. H. naledi is thought to have branched off from H. erectus separately from us (if memory serves), so they may have kept some of the abilities found in H. erectus or evolved those abilities independently of our lineage.

Do our ape cousins meet these requirements? I don’t think so, although the stark contrast between bonobo and chimp behavior is really fascinating.

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I know you are just saying some of that for effect, but just to clarify, evolution and EC does not really say that. On one hand , morality depends on capacity, and capacity evolved with intellect and consciousness which then can be exercised in a moral fashion. And moral behavior perhaps itself evolved with advantage given to population groups that acted in a moral fashion. I think that gets real fuzzy, however. In any case, there is really no problem with most EC folk to say that morals evolved.
Also, welcome to the forum. fresh voices are good to have, and rest assured that you are not alone in struggling with these issues as they are not easy.
We look forward to knowing you better.

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Thank you!! Very helpful. The concept of morals evolving and @T_aquaticus set of criteria for self are all very helpful. It seems more of a metrics, with in my mind, sliders for each of these.

Do, for example, mitochondria feel emotion for each other, some studies seem to indicate that yes they do. We know higher order species to have emotions.

And, self, our tests show that several species have a sense of self. Do mitochondria, probably not.

Reason, that’s a hard one. I’ve always heard in my growing up that we, humans, are the only ones that have reason, all other animals have instinct. However, in the past year, I’ve been reading too many books on the research going on about whether we have free will. Some say no, some say maybe and some say absolutely yes. The science is still happening and I think a great place for Biologos to explore. If we have no free well then do we really have reason? Or is it just a complicated set of processes (system of systems) that have evolved to be the largest set of systems to give the illusion of reason (think of what’s happening in ML/AI and AGI). Animals do, elephants for example, and others, appear to have reason.

And lastly, the concept of good and bad. To me this is an outcome of reason. For example, if reason is the illusion of a set of complex systems demonstrated in us, then morality is based on those systems. What’s really been messed up in the past decade has been this concept of good and bad. What’s “moral” has clearly polarized humans in the same way we see in various animal tribes. However, when we look at bonobo tribes, we call it instinct. When we look at us, we call it morality.

Can’t wait to see more research and understanding in this space. Excited to learn together.

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first thing this reminds me of is that redneck fundamentalists are a bad example of individuals preaching the gospel…i think you are a byproduct of that craziness in that you have realised that the fundamentalists are just blind naysayers to everything other than the KJV bible!

that is just my personal opinion btw after having watched hundreds of hours of youtube videos of extreme fundamentalist pastor Stephen Anderson from Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe Arizona. He is a keen preacher of the word of God but honestly, the man is making the beginnings of a delusional Christian cult there.

Secondly, I do not think the naturalism argument is an adequite solution to your problem. You correctly recognise that the plain reading of scripture simply doesnt align with the naturalists claims and indeed whats worse, secular naturalists scoff at Theistic Evolutionists in any case (Biologos is still TEist btw…making up a different name doesnt change the underlying belief system).

So you are faced with the dilemma:

  1. Fundamentalists are naive idiots blinded to reality by faith essentially
  2. Secular scientists scoff at Theistic Evolutionism
  3. YEC also scoff at both 1 and 2 above and yet themselves are engaged in a 3 way naitivity war here.
  4. What about other religions (such as Islam or Buddhism), perhaps they are the solution? Well, they teach works that are so restrictive and the spiritual mumbo jumbo of eastern religions??? (ah the western world bias)

Im not one qualified to provide advice, however, my wife complains im good at offering unsolicited advice anyway (so ill stay true to my calling)

  1. You must choose your accepted answer the epistomological questions of why we are here, where we came from, and what the future holds.

I mean the absolute basics for the above…first, how did all of this we see around us happen? Must there be a divine being who made it all happen?

If you accept that even science cannot explain the origins of energy and matter without a God, then the next part of your journey is easy.

So lets say your choice is that there must be a God:

  1. How do you know what God is? Isnt it the bible?

  2. Given God is knowable by revelation in His word…

  3. Does it really matter if you have the knowledge of Albert Einstein…will that provide the solution to the last part of the questions of Epistomology? (what does the future hold?). Of course not! So

  4. You must decide whether or not salvation is univseral to all humanity irrespective of whether or not they accept Christs call “sell all you have and come follow me”. The bible clearly tells us that only those who choose to follow Christ daily will be saved…the rest will perish. Therefore

  5. If you make the choice for God, The Gospel, for salvation, science really is irrelevant to your journey. You will not find God by performing scientific experiments any more than Elijah sensed God in the earthquake, violent wind storm etc whilst he was in the cave after running from Jezebel.

Elijah sensed God in the still small voice.

Francis Collins thinks that the way to bring people to Christ is by performing “science experiments” (a figure of speech btw). The trouble there is, Christ demonstrated his power by performing miracles and thats highly problematic for Francis Collins ideas because how does one test a miracle in a laboratory?

A personal examle of a dilemma for me is the following:

We cant test whether or not Ellen White really did hold a bible elevated for a humanly impossible period of time whilst in vision. The strange event is scoffed at as being an SDA lie (despite there being written eyewitness testimony of the event as being true)

Is the story of Ellen G. White holding up a big Bible fact or fiction?

Early in 1845, while in vision at her parents’ home in Portland, Maine, 17-year-old Ellen Harmon (later White) picked up their large family Bible and held it on her outstretched left arm for 20 to 30 minutes. The story was documented by J. N. Loughborough who interviewed those who witnessed the vision, including Ellen’s father, mother, and sister. The Bible (on display at the Ellen G. White Estate) weighs 18½ pounds (8 kilos) and was printed by Joseph Teal in 1822. W. C. White, Ellen White’s son, also reported hearing of the incident from his parents. There are other reports of Ellen White holding large Bibles while in vision, including an eye-witness account printed in Spiritual Gifts, vol. 2, pp. 77-79.Ellen G. White® Estate: The "Big Bible"

Did Ellen White really do this as recorded? I havent a clue. Scientifically i know its impossible, but eyewitness testimony of multiple individuals who were there says it really happened!

So there is a collision here between science and eyewitness testimony/recorded history.

I believe in God because there is a significant amount of eyewitness testimony to the bible narrative (early church writings about eyewitnesses to the lives of the apostles, links between apostles and Christ, the Old Testament archeology that proves the existence of numerous individuals such as Hezekiah, Nebuchadnezzar etc…even well known atheist Bart Erhman supports the “historicity of Jesus”. He is adament the man really existed. To me this means that there is no issue with the historicity of the bible. All i have to do is take a leap of faith about the “Is Jesus God” part. Given i dont see any other well supported options for salvation there,

Its for the above reasons I choose to have faith despite science telling me miracles are myth.

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Welcome to the forum. These are great questions.

You might be interested in the following podcast series (there are six parts):

I am comfortable believing by faith that we humans are made in the image of God, and yet exploring the science behind animal cognition, and being challenged that there are many fuzzy areas of human uniqueness in the animal kingdom.

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Thank you! These look great!!

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This is where I get caught. Why? Why do we need to know why we are here, where we come from and what the future holds. Why can’t we just enjoy each moment, minute by minute. Celebrate that we are alive and when we die, we die (I have watched my wife die right in front of me, so I’ve seen this first hand). I think faiths try to answer these questions and I continue to find them fun to explore, fun to apply scientific thought to, and fun to read fiction (think sci-fi and other genres, I include books of faith here too, but know that’s very controversial).

I know that for each author in each tribe over the 4,000 years, we have a record of what they believed God was with their epistemology which we know in 100% of the cases didn’t understand any of the scientific facts that we know to be true today.

So, can I know God through the Bible? I can only know each authors version of what they believed their God was. I can then choose to borrow pieces of their thinking and design my own faith (which in some cases may match other humans today).

To me, the most comforting thing is that every author and tribe in the Bible did face fear, emotion, love, etc., evolution hasn’t seemed to change these core emotions in animals. And, if I look up to the hills where comest my help (knowing that the author believed that’s where God was) I can find comfort in my image of what I believe God is. That’s emotionally helpful.

Same answer as #1, only the God created by each of the authors can I know from reading their writings.

No, but goes back to “who cares”, why do I need to know what the future holds. Evolutionarily we’ve built a system that more and more won’t accept the joy of the here and now. Why do we need faith systems that without scientific proof tries to answer these questions for us. Why can’t the answer be, we just don’t know?

This goes to ones understanding of salvation. For example, Paul was hated (Gal 2, Acts 15) by the living apostles and their disciples because Paul taught salvation by atonement. Paul is the tribe/author that most Christians follow even today. His version of God was merged with Greek thought. This is a different God/faith than most of the rest of the authors. Whoever wrote Matthew, Mark and Luke taught that God forgave just by deciding to forgive. There was also the same thinking with these early authors that there was an almighty father and he had a physical son (think Genesis or the book of Enoch when heavenly beings came down to earth). They taught that the teacher Jesus was preparing the way for this father’s son to come down to earth and take care of the crazy Romans that occupied their land. There was no need for someone to atone, a lamb wasn’t needed. You just forgive and choose to forgive. They also didn’t teach any concept of salvation. Whoever wrote John, much later than the first three, was making a transition to a much more gnostic view point of a mystery religion. And then Paul stepped in and mitigated the gnostic followers of Jesus with a Greek form of Jesus.

Why? Can’t I continue to daily love the present, continue to learn everything about science, continue to ask these hard questions and hope for more truth. For example, when it comes to freewill, we know that scientifically there’s more and more evidence that our bodies make the decisions for us. We don’t really have free will.

The example of Elijah doesn’t make sense to me. Elijah believed all of these events were a belief system in various Gods of the Canaanites (Elijah was a Canaanite) and what he’s saying here in allegory (no way this story really happened), that Jehovah (or El, keep in mind there were two competing Canaanite tribes with different “boss” Gods) that his “boss” God (see Job 1 for an example of the thinking of the Council of God for a good example of the mindset of Elijah), wasn’t the one that controlled earthquakes, wasn’t the one that created wind, etc., but his God was gentle and kind. Something that a person in that time of unscientific understanding would find great comfort in. If you couldn’t explain why earthquakes happened or predict them, if you couldn’t understand why violent dust storms came but you believe your God was gentle and quiet, wouldn’t you want to pray and believe in that God over the others.

See my point? Even a deep understanding, need I say scientific, of the thinking of the authors of the Bible and putting ourselves in their context helps us understand much better their thinking and we can choose also to believe in a gentle God (I like the thought of a gentle God).

Totally agree on this one. But this is a true as saying I believe in a real man named Abraham, I real Moses, a real David, a real Paul and a real Jesus. All this does for me is say yep, these were all humans, much earlier in our evolutionary journey that wrote about what they believed their version of a higher power was. They all have very different versions.

Sorry for the long diatribe, it’s been helpful, very helpful, to have a place where I can learn and get this all out.

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