In my “Faith and Reason” seminar this past week, our reading was Genesis 1–11. We did not engage “creation-vs.-evolution” issues in my section this week; rather, we tabled that discussion until later in the semester, when we will be reading excerpts from Darwin’s Origin of Species and selected chapters from Ken Miller’s Finding Darwin’s God. My students (most, but not all, conservative Christians) were, well, pretty freaked out by the notion of the “divine council,” which is explicit in other biblical texts but implicit in Genesis 1, 6, and 10. They also had never really considered the differences between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. I tried to focus the discussion primarily on literary themes, so the students could see that the differences between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are not just matters of superficial detail, but run deep into the conceptual frameworks the different stories instantiate (different controlling metaphors for God, different views about the “godlikeness” of humanity, and so on).

Yesterday, the table of contents for the October 2007 issue of Teaching Theology and Religion (published by Blackwell) landed in my inbox. This issue includes an article by David Bosworth entitled “Teaching Creation: A Modular Approach.” (The abstract is available here; you need a subscription to the journal—your own or a library’s—to read the full article, or you can pay a one-time access fee.) In the short (four pages) note, Bosworth describes how he teaches the Genesis creation stories. It’s an interesting approach, though it requires about three days of class, and I’m not sure how large Bosworth’s courses are. Some of his strategies sound a lot like my own, although I can really only spend one day of my “History and Religion of Israel” class on the creation stories, and I teach Genesis 1–2 alongside Psalms 74; 89 and Proverbs 8, so the students can see just how varied “biblical creation faith” really was.

But Bosworth’s non-literal approach apparently wouldn’t go over too well at Southwestern Community College in Red Oak, Iowa, where Steve Bitterman alleges that he was fired from his part-time appointment teaching Western civilization courses because he taught the Genesis story from a non-literalistic perspective. This story was brought to my attention by Hector Avalos, who was interviewed by the Des Moines Register for the story. Here’s a long excerpt from the story, though I encourage you to read the whole thing for yourself:

A community college instructor in Red Oak claims he was fired after he told his students that the biblical story of Adam and Eve should not be literally interpreted.

Steve Bitterman, 60, said officials at Southwestern Community College sided with a handful of students who threatened legal action over his remarks in a western civilization class Tuesday. He said he was fired Thursday.

“I’m just a little bit shocked myself that a college in good standing would back up students who insist that people who have been through college and have a master’s degree, a couple actually, have to teach that there were such things as talking snakes or lose their job,” Bitterman said.

Sarah Smith, director of the school’s Red Oak campus, declined to comment Friday on Bitterman’s employment status. The school’s president, Barbara Crittenden, said Bitterman taught one course at Southwest. She would not comment, however, on his claim that he was fired over the Bible reference, saying it was a personnel issue.
“I can assure you that college understands our employees’ free speech rights,” she said. “There was no action taken that violated the First Amendment.”

Bitterman, who taught part time at Southwestern and Omaha’s Metropolitan Community College, said he uses the Old Testament in his western civilization course and always teaches it from an academic standpoint.

Bitterman’s Tuesday course was telecast to students in Osceola over the Iowa Communications Network. A few students in the Osceola classroom, he said, thought the lesson was “denigrating their religion.”

“I put the Hebrew religion on the same plane as any other religion. Their god wasn’t given any more credibility than any other god,” Bitterman said. “I told them it was an extremely meaningful story, but you had to see it in a poetic, metaphoric or symbolic sense, that if you took it literally, that you were going to miss a whole lot of meaning there.”

Bitterman said called the story of Adam and Eve a “fairy tale” in a conversation with a student after the class and was told the students had threatened to see an attorney. He declined to identify any of the students in the class.

“I just thought there was such a thing as academic freedom here,” he said. “From my point of view, what they’re doing is essentially teaching their students very well to function in the 8th century.”

I think it’s shocking, too. I might have expected such behavior at a private, Christian college where professors are required to affirm “statements of faith” and that sort of thing; even at Pepperdine, I know that my colleagues sometimes choose their words very carefully to avoid certain vocabulary (”myth”) while communicating the same concepts. But for a community college to fire a Western civilization professor for not teaching the “garden of Eden” story as historical fact is just mind-boggling. Besides that, Bitterman is quite right to say “it was an extremely meaningful story, but you had to see it in a poetic, metaphoric or symbolic sense, that if you took it literally, that you were going to miss a whole lot of meaning there”—which loops us right back around to the first paragraph in this post. The Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 stories dramatize some very deep-seated (for the authors and their ancient audiences, anyway) questions about humanity and its place in the cosmos, and they offer diferent answers to these questions. That the editors of the book of Genesis left both stories in testifies to their ambivalence about the issues, and their sense that the two stories, which are incompatible if taken literally, represent two “poles” in a debate over these humanistic questions.

If Bitterman’s firing really was about the way he treated Genesis in his Western civilization course—and as far as I know, there has been no further comment from the school adminstration to the contrary, beyond the vague denial reprinted above—the school’s actions are reprehensible (and probably legally actionable as well, though I’m not really competent to speak on legal matters). One would think that if there were other serious reasons to fire Bitterman, the school wouldn’t have put him on the teaching rotation for the current term. The fact that the course is close-circuited over to another campus certainly suggests that they don’t have much depth in the bullpen. The timing is also suspicious. I’ll be surprised if Southwest comes out with a really convincing defense of Bitterman’s firing, but time will tell.

Okay, this is pretty funny.

In a comment to one of my recent posts, G.M. Grena takes exception to my characterization of young-earth creationism as “exegetically irresponsible.” G.M. is my go-to guy for reproductions of ancient Israelite artifacts, but matters of faith and science are a realm in which G.M. and I generally disagree. It therefore comes as no surprise to me that G.M. would question my judgment on these matters. I started to simply reply in the comment stream on that earlier post, but I decided to “promote” the discussion to the top level of the blog because I think that some of my other readers, who might not take the time to check the comments on a several-days-old post, would be interested in reading my answers to G.M.’s questions. G.M., I trust you will not mind me answering the questions here instead of in the earlier comment thread.

Here is G.M.’s comment, quoted in full, preserving G.M.’s formatting (but footnote 1 is my own addition):

Genesis 2:2–And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made.

Exodus 20:11–For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day…

Christopher Heard–“I have no sympathy whatsoever with young-earth creationism…; I consider it exegetically irresponsible … I am anti-lying…”¹

Prof. Heard, True or False quiz: The writer(s) of these verses in Genesis & Exodus attempted to communicate that God created everything in 7 days, AND wanted it to be commemorated. Or is that an exegetically irresponsible explanation of the text?

Prof. Heard, True or False quiz: A year-long global flood as described in Genesis 7-8 could be “a clue to readers” that the geography described in Genesis 1:10-14 might have been significantly altered thereby. Or is that an exegetically irresponsible explanation?

Let’s start with Genesis 1. That the biblical writers used the language of a seven-day creation is, obviously, unquestionable. That they thought those “days” were of the 24-hour variety is more ambiguous. The familiar argument about the impossibility of measuring 24-hour days before the existence of the sun is not just an invention of modern skeptics. “And God said, ‘Let lights exist in the dome of the sky, and let them [the lights] divide between day and night, and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years” (Genesis 1:14). The author is perfectly aware that it is nonsense to speak of literal evenings, mornings, and days without reference to the sun’s perceived motion across the sky (and now, 2,500 years or more later, we know that it’s really with reference to the earth’s rotation on its axis), and yet that author uses precisely that language for all the days prior to “Day Four.” I cannot conclude otherwise than that the author intentionally wrote a text that he (or she, but a female author is very unlikely, socio-culturally speaking) knew to be literally impossible but theologically meaningful. With that “short answer” as background, then I would be compelled to answer “false” with regard to Genesis 1. That is, I think it’s exegetically demonstrable that the author of Genesis 1 did not intend for that text to be read as describing divine work over seven literal, twenty-four-hour days.

As for Exodus 20:11, it’s clear that the periodization of creation into “seven days,” as we also see it in Genesis 1, was on the writer’s mind. That’s undeniable. Whether that writer was thinking in terms of seven literal, twenty-four-hour days is beyond the reach of exegesis. If the author were working from the text of Genesis 1—and it is by no means clear whether Genesis 1 or Exodus 20 is the older text—then I suspect that this author was smart enough to see that the language was metaphorical but nevertheless meaningful. I wouldn’t quite know how to answer the Exodus 20 question with a simple “true” or “false,” because there’s too much ambiguity about sources involved. However, it is clear that a seven-day creation model is not the model for the Sabbath observance everywhere in the Tanakh; to see this, one need but compare the 10 Commandments in Exodus with those in Deuteronomy. The only really substantial difference between those two forms of the Decalogue is the motive for the Sabbath commandment; Deuteronomy does not invoke creation.

As for the matter of the impossible geography of Genesis 1, again it is impossible to answer with a simple “true” or “false” because the question requires the answerer to read the mind(s) of one or more authors living thousands of years ago, and unlike the question of “days” in Genesis 1, there is a paucity of exegetical clues as to how the author(s) would have answered the question if given a chance. Unlike Genesis 1, where the author explicitly refers to the sun’s role in measuring the passage of day and night, the author(s) of Genesis 6–8 make(s) no comment whatsoever about the flood having any impact on topography. So yes, I would have to say that using the Genesis 6–8 flood story to try to argue for a topography vastly altered from that described in Genesis 2 is “an exegetically irresponsible explanation,” because it does not rest upon demonstrable features of the text, but on the interpreter’s speculations. I am not a geophysicist, but based on my limited understanding I would have to find it terribly unlikely that even the one-year flood that G.M. posits would not be able to so completely change the landscape of the Near East that four major rivers issuing from the same headwater would be transformed into two major rivers that begin separately and converge, plus now-unidentifiable rivers encompassing Arabia (and the Sudan or the Zagros mountains).²

But exegetically responsible handling of these texts cannot be limited to interpreting isolated verses. There isn’t just one creation story; there are at least three, the third being found in scattered poetic references and involving God fighting the primeval chaos monster—a story which I have never yet found to be taken literally among those proud to be literalists. But even if we leave aside that obviously mythical (in the best senses of that word) model of creation, we still have the basic impossibility of taking both Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 literally at the same time without rewriting one or both texts. I’ve blogged on this issue several times and won’t repeat myself here. I will add to these considerations that there is not just one flood story, but two that have been “zipped” together through an editorial process. Compare Genesis 6:13–22 with Genesis 7:1–5; they just don’t match up. Even the length of the flood, which G.M. gives in his question above as “one year,” is not consistent between the two sources. The mere fact that the biblical editor allowed these contradictions to stand without resolving them should caution us against rigid literalistic readings of these texts.

I have far more to say about these matters, but I cannot take the time right now to do so. I have other tasks I must address before sleeping tonight, and I’m already looking at some jet lag tomorrow. I will, therefore, leave it at that—and trust that readers can see with some degree of clarity why I would characterize young-earth creationism as “exegetically irresponsible.”

———
¹In this quotation from my earlier post, G.M. strings together widely separated phrases to imply that I equate young-earth creationism with lying. Well, it wouldn’t be hard to demonstrate that a number of prominent creationists, of both young-earth and old-earth varieties, are masterful at obfuscation and outright misreprsentation of mainstream science. The treatment of Y-mcra (”Y-chromosome ‘Adam’”) and mt-mcra (”mitochondrial ‘Eve’”) in the DVD in question amply testifies to this fact; creationists on the video proudly tout these models as providing mainstream scientific support for a literal biblical-style Adam and Eve, when in fact the models provide nothing of the sort. But if you go back and look at the original post, the term “anti-lying” appears in a context that has to do with blanket denials of (a) contradictions within the Bible, and (b) historical evidence challenging the veracity of biblical narratives—not in connection with young-earth creationism. The statement “I am anti-lying” comes thirteen paragraphs after the other two statements. I don’t appreciate being “quote-mined” in this fasion, and G.M., I think you should have known better and had more respect for context. When you lift phrases out of context and remix them to create something different, you undermine your own credibility to talk about exegetical responsibility.

² For those who don’t know, Genesis 2—the Bible’s “Garden of Eden” creation story—describes a river welling up in Eden and then dividing into the headwaters of four rivers, the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Pishon (”the one that surrounds the whole land of Havilah”), and the Gihon (”the one that surrounds the whole land of Cush”). The Tigris and Euphrates are well-known, but they don’t branch off from a common river; instead, they converge as they approach the Persian Gulf. (As a side note, the mention of the Tigris and Euphrates often leads to the erroneous claim that the Bible places the Garden of Eden in Iraq, but Eden is supposed to be at the origin of the rivers, not at their confluence. If anywhere, one would need to look in the mountains of Turkey.) The Pishon is unknown outside of the verse in Genesis 2; Havilah is a part of Arabia. Everywhere else in the Bible, the name “Gihon” attaches to a spring of water outside of Jerusalem; here in Genesis 2, the Pishon is a river that surrounds Cush, which is usually understood in the Bible to be a region basically similar to today’s Sudan. Some interpreters argue that this “Cush” is instead the land of the Kassites, highlanders from the Zagros mountains, but in either event one is hard pressed to find a large river that emanates from a common headwater with the Tigris and Euphrates and “surrounds” (not “winds through,” as the NIV mistranslates הַסֹּבֵב) either Sudan or the Zagros mountains. Ancient educated readers would have seen this description for the geographical impossibility that it was, and I think they would have seen this as a tip-off, a wink from the author, a clue not to try to take the story as historico-geographical reality but in some other fashion.

The furor surrounding Olivet Nazarene University’s treatment of biology professor Richard Colling, which I previously mentioned (see also the Newsweek article that garnered attention, as well as posts by PZ [here, here, and here], Henry [here and here], and another Chris—and be sure to check the comments on all these posts for Rick’s own input), has stirred up some memories of an evolution flap during my undergraduate days, a flap that was, I now think in retrospect, mishandled in a different way than ONU administrators have mishandled Rick’s teaching duties.

These memories take me back to my freshman year at Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas—and before I go any farther, I want to make it clear that I still have great love and respect for my alma mater. In fact, I’m writing this blog post from an airport, while I wait to board a plane that will take me to ACU’s 96th annual Bible Lectureship program where I will be teaching a two-day course on the book of Amos. I digress—but I do so as a kind of disclaimer; I have no wish to attack my beloved ACU, but I do think that poor choices were made in 1985–86. Yet I should also say that I did not really think so at the time. In 1985, fresh out of dear old Abilene High, I could best be described as an unreflective old-earth creationist. I had taken AP Biology at Abilene High; in that course, we learned enough about genetics that I recieved the nickname “XY” since I was the only male in the class, but as far as I can remember I didn’t learn squat about evolution. To this day, the only thing I can remember about evolution from high school is the phrase “ontology recapitulates phologeny” and the fact that this statement is incorrect—but I learned that from my chemistry and physics teacher, not in biology class. To my everlasting shame, I managed to leverage that AP course into college credit and avoided taking any college-level biology classes; as a matter of fact, I somehow received a Bachelor of Arts degree without taking any lab science (I had one course in the “history and philosophy of science”; it was a wonderful course taught by physicist Paul Morris, but nevertheless, I didn’t learn a lot of actual nitty-gritty science in that course, and what I did learn there was mostly mathematics and physics). Looking back, I’m embarrassed to admit that I was an old-earth (day-age) creationist well into my twenties. I finally capitulated to the fact of evolution only under the constant tutelage of my dear friend Richard Beck and the writings of the late Stephen Jay Gould.

In any event, 1985–86 proved to be a tumultuous year at ACU. I’m was never quite sure of the exact sequence of events, but somehow a correspondence began between an ACU student and persons associated with Apologetics Press, a young-earth creationist organization specifically targeting the Churches of Christ; Abilene Christian University is operated by members of the Churches of Christ and this church is its primary constituency. In the interests of full disclosure, let me also state (especially for relatively new readers) that I am a lifelong member of Churches of Christ, and Pepperdine University, where I now teach, is also affiliated with this particular church. The student in question—in the twenty-two years since the incident I have forgotten his name—functioned as a sort of “spy” for Apologetics Press, feeding them course materials and lecture notes from the general biology classes taught by Archie Manis and Kenneth Williams. With evidence in hand that these professors were educating their students about evolution, Apologetics Press launched a public-relations assault on ACU. Here’s Apologetics Press’s own account of the matter, ten years after the fact:

For example, in 1985–86, both then-current students and recent graduates of the biology department at Abilene Christian University brought to the attention of the administration the fact that two professors, Archie Manis and Kenneth Williams, had taught, and were teaching, evolution as fact. Dr. Manis even had gone so far as to hand out photocopies of the text of Genesis 1 from his personal Bible, upon which he had handwritten his comment that the text was a “myth.” The scenario in 1985–1986 was almost an exact duplicate of the one at the College of the Bible in 1917. The President of the University, William A. Teague, offered strenuous and patent denials of the charges, even though eyewitness testimony was available, along with written proof, to document the students’ charges. The University’s Board of Trustees performed a perfunctory “internal investigation,” and spurned requests from alumni and interested Christians for a more thorough, independent investigation to be carried out by respected Christians not specifically associated with the University. After its investigation, the Board issued what came to be known as the “gray report” (so-called because it was produced on gray paper), denying that either of the professors involved had taught evolution or labeled Genesis 1 a myth. A 200-page book, Is Genesis Myth?, was written to expose the whole sordid affair, because University officials were unwilling either to acknowledge, or correct, the problem (see Thompson, 1986). Eventually, under duress, the University placed restrictions on the professors’ teachings, even going so far as to require them to pass out cards on the first day of each semester’s classes, in which supposedly it was made clear that although the topic of evolution would be examined, it was not something the professors actually believed. This action—certainly too little too late—occurred only after extensive public pressure from parents and alumni and the loss of financial support to the school. In January 1988, Dr. Manis announced that, as a result of “the evolution controversy” (as he designated it in an interview published in the university’s student newspaper), he was resigning to accept a position teaching high school biology in another Texas city (see Fitzpatrick, 1988, p. 1).

Although the paragraph above clearly reflects the creationist agenda (remember the source), the descriptive parts of the paragraph match my recollections. The university’s big “defense” of the professors against outside attacks was to argue that the professors pretty much had to teach evolution if their students were to have any hope of getting into medical school or graduate school—or to be well-armed enough to refute evolution—but that didn’t mean that the professors or their students had to believe it. At the tender age of eighteen, I thought that was a reasonable stance—but I was a moron. What the university should have done is to say that the professors taught evolution as fact because evolution is a fact (natural selection being an irrefutably well-supported theory explaining a key mechanism by which evolution proceeds). At that time, I would have been shocked and scandalized had the school taken that stance, but it would have been the right stance to take—and it would be the right stance for Olivet Nazarene to take now with respect to Rick Collings. But in both cases, the universities apparently bowed to pressure from constituency groups spoiling for a fight and wielding some degree of control over donors and public opinion.

Several bloggers and Pepperdine colleagues have drawn my attention to Sharon Begley’s online column, “Can God Love Darwin, Too?,” “preprinted” from next week’s Newsweek. It seems that the school administration has banned one its faculty members, biologist Richard Colling, from teaching an introductory biology class (which he’s taught since 1991) and has banned other faculty members from assigning Colling’s book Random Designer (Browning Press, 2004)—because Colling is a theistic evolutionist (emphasis on evolutionist). I feel for Colling and find the administration’s actions reprehensible. At the same time, I am glad that, at present at least, my Pepperdine colleagues need not fear similar treatment.

Higgaion readers who are interested in matters related to conversations/intersections (or lack of same) between Christian faith and modern science should find the young (less than two months old) blog Quintessence of Dust interesting. QoD blogger Stephen Matheson describes himself as:

Associate Professor of Biology, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan | Reformed Christian | developmental cell biologist | evolutionist | NCSE Steve | baseball fan | Bardolator

Who knew that all that stuff could go together? But it just goes to show you that Shakespeare buffs can appreciate sports after all.

Need a “Creationist in Science” degree? Get yours now on eBay. PZ has the scoop.

A couple of years ago, I welcomed a camera crew into my office for some interviews about Old Testament stories. The crew went away and I never heard from them again, until I e-mailed the production company last week to find out what ever became of the footage. A representative of that company promptly e-mailed me back and kindly sent out a screener of the DVD that is scheduled to release in October.

I am not happy with the end result.

When I agreed to do the interview, I did not know that the thankfully direct-to-video program would feature “re-enactments” of biblical scenes (and horrible re-enactments at that; only Moses has a proper beard). I did not know that the film would use completely irrelevant footage to distract viewers during longish voiceovers by host Roger Moore (yes, that Roger Moore). And I certainly did not realize that the production would end up trying to promote views that I do not personally endorse. I did suppose that a diversity of opinions might be represented, and represented as such. Silly me.

Here are some of my specific complaints about the program. Yes, I know that you haven’t seen it yet. My hope is that maybe you won’t. But perhaps if I embarrass myself pre-emptively by means of this post, at least my learned colleagues will cut me some slack. Also, as far as I know, I’m not bound by any non-disclosure agreement, so please consider this an “advance review” of the film. (Click on “continue reading” for the whole, long post.)

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No, we weren’t really as close to the puma as this picture makes it appear, but Rene got this and some other great animal pictures at Temaikén today. Beautiful weather, if a bit on the chilly side, a beautiful zoo with very gentle habitats for the animals, and sparse crowds. The #60 Semi-Rapido to Escobar was a “trip” (so to speak), though—so far, we’ve avoided the colectivos and just used the Subte or walked anywhere we wanted to go in the city.

There was an interesting little movie “in the round” which took an overtly theistic perspective—though it wasn’t terribly overt about the process. The film opened with a quotation from Genesis 1 and a picture of God creating Adam from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light: the biggest explosion of all time.” The film then described (very briefly, of course; it’s only a 20-minute film) the cooling of the earth, and then it skipped ahead to the diversity of animal life and a short little bit of conservation evangelism. The conservation evangelism, however, was attached to a most curious text from the Bible, Genesis 9:1-3, with a significant ellipsis and a bit of rewriting. Here’s the film’s version, as best I can remember it:

God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. … [E]very animal of the earth, and … every bird of the air, … everything that creeps on the ground, and on all the fish of the sea; … I give [to] you … (Gen 9:1–3 NRSV, modified to fit the film’s script)

Now compare the full text:

God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. The fear and dread of you shall rest on every animal of the earth, and on every bird of the air, on everything that creeps on the ground, and on all the fish of the sea; into your hand they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and just as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. (Genesis 9:1–3 NRSV)

The film tried to turn Genesis 9:1–3 into a conservation manifesto worthy of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), whereas the original is more amenable to People Eating Tasty Animals (PETA).

The film’s conservationist agenda was apparent, and perfectly appropriate, but the undergirding scientific and religious outlooks were not quite clear. The film affirmed the Big Bang and cast it as God’s fundamental creative act, an approach with which many of my colleagues in Pepperdine’s Natural Sciences division would be completely comfortable, as am I. The film also clearly accepted geological evidence for an old earth and for the processes that formed the physical earth as we now know it. But other parts of the film seemed to lean toward old-earth creationism or perhaps intelligent design. At least twice, the film referred to the existence of life on earth as a “miracle”—clearly not a scientific claim, whatever else you might think of it. In the conservation pitch, the film seemed to refer to Noah’s flood as an historical event (though not as a basis from which to work in geology, thankfully). And I had a hard time suppressing guffaws when the film referred to animals “choosing” their habitats, as if an anglerfish living in sunny Utah one day said, “You know, this butte is hot in the summer and cold in the winter. I think I’d prefer a climate that’s more consistent. Yes, I’m going to put my cactus on the market and move to the sunless depths at the bottom of the ocean.”

Still, all in all, it was a fun film (most of it was visuals of animals in the wild) and a very peaceful and enjoyable day strolling through Temaikén.

Yes, you heard right. In videos at Answers in Genesis’s new creationist museum theme park in Kentucky, Adam is played by (former?) pornographer/porn star Eric Linden. “Strange bedfellows” indeed.