I think this makes a very important point. Are we willing to consider all the evidence, even whether we might be wrong about the Bible? How can atheists or anybody from another Faith tradition take our questions seriously, unless we are willing to consider every question, even the Bible’s inerrancy? How can we trust our own self-questioning? Ultimately, we realize that our faith may be built on sand. if we are not intellectually honest, and willing to question everything, finding one of our foundational presuppositions to be wrong may cause the whole house of cards to come tumbling down.
Beyond this comes our deepest perception of God. If we perceive him as unable to tolerate even honest questioning, this Foster’s excessive fear, rejection of others questions, and our own, and presuppositionalism. But many portions in the Bible show that God knows our frame, he remembers that we are dust. He regards us a father. My own parents showed such a gracious attitude, so Christlike, that it really helped me with Honest questioning. I’m becoming convinced that patience with ourselves and others inspires confidence, and improves questioning and fruitful inquiry into both science and theology.
Some of them are Catholics. My advisor at the Graduate school was not even a Christian.He demonstrated greater integrity in his life and work. I as a christian was ashamed at times about my own behaviour. Morality is not a copyrighted of the Christians. There are Nonchristain saints and Christian sinners. Wall street and the major financial institutions are run by those whose education was grounded on moral relativism. There is no difference between right and wrong: good and evil. Evolution embraces Amoralism.It is not immoral. It is amoral. .
None of this changes the idea that the mission statements of BioLogos dont really function if you dont accept that there is Evolution-WITHOUT-God… as distinct from Evolution-WITH-God!
That is the way it seems from the outside. For someone not already in the tent of course it would matter very much how you interpret the bible. Even if inerrant, the bible’s being useful would still depend on insight provided by correct hermeneutics. To unlock what truth any book may hold you must decide many things about the structure of the writing and the author’s intent, and you could be wrong in the choices you make. Faith based on naive literalism just seems foolhardy in the extreme.
In some ways, faith (as some traditions praise it) is a vicious cycle of trying to strengthen certainty and fill in our void spaces of anxiety.
We can get so entrenched in inerrancy that we forget why we believe it exists. Dawkins gives a valid criticism that the Byzantine arguments lend to “fairyology”–a complicated web of reasoning that doesn’t have any basis in reality, and makes no sense to those outside (for example, arguing about the God/man nature, inherited sin, etc can lead to this accidental fallacy).
Mormons and some others believe that we can assess what is true by how we feel when we read it–but Muslims and evangelicals can fall into that trap just as easily.
This (the title question of the thread) is like asking where biochemistry comes into computer science. It doesn’t. Evolutionary theism addresses questions entirely disjoint from that of morality. But part of the problem is that evolutionary theism is not a singular picture or theology. All it really consist of is a belief that evolution and creation are not mutually exclusive beliefs. The details, especially with regards to the story of Adam and Eve will vary a great deal. Some see this story as entirely metaphorical, while other like myself see it as based on historical events but with a great deal of symbolism being used. Still others imagine that the story is about some kind of special creation of man, perhaps even while there are homo sapiens species on the planet.
Of course those with an authoritarian based morality and using the moral argument for the existence of God will perhaps have a harder time with this. I certainly reject both of these, just as I reject the literal treatment of the Genesis story which has morality coming from a magical fruit.
So… anyway… I guess the implied question is… where did morality come from? Did it evolve or was it given to us by God? In my view the answer is both. Some of it is learned and we see plenty of evidence for this is animal behavior. Other parts of this I believe has been communicated to us from God, starting with Adam and Eve, but continuing through the whole Biblical story, but also in other cultures and texts like the writings of Confucius, and all the way to modern times with the condemnation of slavery and the affirmation of equal rights for all people regardless of race or sex. And I see all of that being both inspired by God and learned from experience.
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