Darwin and God: a response to Fabricius (3)

Remark on Thesis #6. Barth is unfair to and dismissive of biology. The biblical creation story is like an organ playing the music of Bach or Buxtehude. But biology in its own way is an organ of the music of the spheres. Dooyeweerd is better than Barth on this point (and not only on this point). If theology is a world unto itself rather than the queen of the sciences – Aquinas is better than Barth on this score - the loss of understanding is across the board, theology and biology included.

Remark on Thesis #7. Does the Bible teach that we will be punished for not believing? That we are "punished" for not believing here and now is clear enough from the narrative and, if that doesn’t grab you, there’s always Whitney Houston’s rendition of “If you believe” in Prince of Egypt. But will we be punished for not believing on Judgment Day?

On a different plane, the teaching that there are consequences for “poorly adjusted behavior,” to use phraseology with a slightly Darwinian flavor, now and on Judgment Day, is far from being a damnable doctrine. How could it be otherwise, if justice is to be upheld?

The existential pathos of Darwin’s predicament is to be respected, but cannot be justified except insofar as it depends on a caricature of biblical teaching on the subject of the last things.

Remark on Thesis #8. Why would an unbelieving biologist be left unconsolable by the death of a loved one? On what biological grounds? Jesus, from the cross, has a right to say, “My God, my God, why hast thou abandoned me?” But an atheist, what right does he have to be miserable in the face of death? Almost all atheists are, except for Stalin perhaps, unreconstructed theists on a day-to-day basis.

Darwin and God series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4

Comments

[Ranger]

"Dooyeweerd is better than Barth on this point (and not only on this point)."

Yep...

"Almost all atheists are, except for Stalin perhaps, unreconstructed theists on an everyday basis."

This is an interesting point, and I've read Rowan Williams and David Bentley Hart make it as well.

[JohnFH]

Ranger,

Tell more. Do you remember where in Williams and Hart?

[Ranger]

I'm stateside right now so I don't have the opportunity to check the specifics, but I'm fairly confident that Hart gets into it in "The Doors of the Sea" when talking about how atheists borrow from a theistic worldview in order to live...he also mentions it in some of his discussion of Ivan Karamazov. I'm also somewhat confident that he alludes to this end in the early parts of "Beauty of the Infinite." In regards to Rowan Williams I think he makes the point in his recent work on who else, but Dostoevsky.