Christianity, Evolution, Atheists, Social Divisions, and Not Going Nuts

 

This blog is about Christianity and Evolution, but it's also about COVID and loneliness, and the West's current tectonic fracture between extremists on all sides.

 

In October, 2020, I reviewed James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose's "Cynical Theories," a book about left-wing extremism. I gave the book a mostly positive review. Readers have made "Cynical Theories" Amazon's number one bestseller in its category. James Lindsay is a frequent guest on YouTube channels addressing left-wing extremism; see here.

 

Helen Pluckrose is editor of Areo, an online magazine dedicated to Atheism, reason, and human rights.

 

I faulted "Cynical Theories" for its Christophobia. As I wrote,

 

"Cynical Theories" would have been a better book without its Christophobia. Helen Pluckrose self-identifies as a New Atheist. James Lindsay is author of "Everybody Is Wrong about God." People who believe in God "have certain psychological and social needs that they do not know how to meet," his book contends. Lindsay and Pluckrose's colleague, Peter Boghossian, is another "New Atheist." Boghossian is author of "A Manual for Creating Atheists."

 

Lindsay and Pluckrose denigrate Christianity, slur Judaism – "The Bible is filled with tribalism" – and barely mention the Greeks. Lindsay and Pluckrose's lost Eden is their, highly doctored, take on the Enlightenment. This glorious age, they recount, gave us something called "liberalism," and liberalism is the panacea. Evidently, liberalism popped, through parthenogenesis, fully formed out of Zeus's head, as did the ancient Greek goddess Athena. News flash: babies are not born that way. They don't pop out of males' heads. Similarly, historical eras don't pop fully formed out of the mind of Baruch Spinoza.

 

I wished that I could convey to Lindsay and Pluckrose: Millions of Christians and Jews want to be your allies in the battle for Western Civilization and against hateful extremism. I even emailed the authors, but received no reply.

 

I asked Areo, Pluckrose's magazine, if they'd review my book. I hoped that by reading the book, they would see that Christians and Jews are allies in the battle against extremism.  

 

What I hoped for did not happen. Their book reviewer did not see the book as an invitation to ally-ship between Atheists and People of Faith for the good of Western Civilization. Their book reviewer wrote that "God through Binoculars," should really be called. "God through Blinkers," that is, blinders, the devices put on horses so that they can't see and be panicked by what they see. I can't see, of course, because I believe in God. That belief renders me blind. And I'm analogous to a horse, a dumb animal. (Apologies to any horse fans reading this.)

 

The reviewer sent me an email inviting me to an exchange with him via a medium called "Letter." The entire exchange can be seen at this link. In the reviewer's penultimate letter to me, he referred to Christians, indiscriminately, as murderers, rapists, and torturers, and said that Christians are blind liars who ignore the evil in the Bible and get their morality from Atheists.

 

I would never speak to him that way about Atheists. I don't think that way about Atheists. I'm not a deluded bigot. I don't generally invite people to dialogue and then trash their minds, their ethics, and their core beliefs. And accuse them of wholesale torture lasting for centuries. But then I was a Girl Scout so maybe I'm just too darn polite.

 

After I read the Atheist reviewer's penultimate comment to me, I went for a walk to Garret Mountain and I cried.

 

I'm really lonely. Like, if I were not as strong as I am, I would have gone nuts by now. I lost my adjunct job because of low enrollment. I haven't taught since last May – almost a year. I live alone. I have been obedient to all COVID restrictions, which means I haven’t talked to another human being in a really long time.

 

And, even when I do have other human beings to talk to, it's rare for me to find anyone who wants to talk about what I want to talk about. I remember a former internet friend, Charlie Fabrizio Ryan. Charlie and I would go on *for days* talking about one movie. Scenes, lighting, the significance of hair styles, ambivalent lines of dialogue. Charlie died almost twenty years ago and, though I never met him in person, I miss him with all my heart. And, of course, my sister Antoinette. Books, science, politics – she could talk and talk and talk. I miss that.

 

I used to be able to have conversations before and after class with my students. I miss that, too.

 

So, yeah, I cried because I am lonely and here was another human connection that ended up as a herpes sore.

 

I cried because I wondered what I did wrong.

 

I cried because what happened between me and the Atheist book reviewer is a microcosm of what's going on in the macrocosm. We are all so divided now. I don't need to tell you that. Everyone is handing everyone else litmus tests. Are you a Trump supporter? If so, I don't want to know you, or, if not, I don't want to know you. And the left hands out its litmus tests, too. Do you not support abortion on demand or the banning of Dr Seuss or men in women's bathrooms? BE GONE SCUM.

 

The Atheist wanted, in our Letter exchange, to talk about evolution. In his review of "God through Binoculars," the reviewer implied that I am too stupid, or, again, blinded by Christian faith, to understand evolution, or that I had not read enough, or that I had not read the right authors, or that I was dismissing evolution, and that I needed him and Richard Dawkins to education me.

 

In fact I explicitly state that I do believe in evolution. Why couldn't he see that? I think it's because his prejudices against people of faith are so strong that he can't see. Blinders, ya know?

 

What else do I say about evolution in "God through Binoculars"? Maybe what I said would be more clear if I didn't talk about evolution at all.

 

In his 1960 book "Synchronicity," Carl Jung wrote,

 

A young woman I was treating had, at a critical moment, a dream in which she was given a golden scarab. While she was telling me this dream I sat with my back to the closed window.

 

Suddenly I heard a noise behind me, like a gentle tapping. I turned round and saw a flying insect knocking against the window pane from outside. I opened the window and caught the creature in the air as it flew in. It was the nearest analogy to a golden scarab that one finds in our latitudes, a scarabaeid beetle, the common rose-chafer (Cetonia aurata), which contrary to its usual habits had evidently felt an urge to get into a dark room at this particular moment.

 

It was an extraordinarily difficult case to treat, and up to the time of the dream little or no progress had been made. I should explain that the main reason for this was my patient’s animus, which was steeped in Cartesian philosophy and clung so rigidly to its own idea of reality that the efforts of three doctors–I was the third–had not been able to weaken it.

 

EVIDENTLY SOMETHING QUITE IRRATIONAL WAS NEEDED which was beyond my powers to produce. THE DREAM ALONE WAS ENOUGH to disturb ever so slightly the rationalistic attitude of my patient. But when the “scarab” came flying in through the window in actual fact, her natural being could burst through the armor of her animus possession and the process of transformation could at last begin to move

 

A woman was stuck in a tight-ass, materialistic, rigid worldview. Jung, her therapist, recognized that she required "something quite irrational" – a minor miracle – to break out of that worldview. And a scarab came knocking at the window, even as she described to Jung being given a scarab in a dream. This was a turning point in her therapy.

 

Do I know how the scarab flew in the window? I'm not engineer, but I'm sure an engineer could explain the aerodynamics of scarab beetle flight. Do I think there was anything supernatural about Jung, his chair, her therapy? No.

 

This: how did all that come together to change this woman's life? "It's just coincidence," the Atheist would say. I am less satisfied with that answer. I've experienced synchronicity myself, and I describe incidents in "God through Binoculars." None of those incidents imply that I don't believe in the basic physics and science of real life. But they do boggle my mind. Meeting the man I call The Theologian on the road, what he said to me – it boggles my mind.

 

I wrote to someone smarter than either me or the Atheist book reviewer. Dr. Francis Collins lead the Human Genome Project that decoded the human genome.

 

Dear Francis,

 

Recently an Atheist reviewed "God through Binoculars."

 

The review shocked me. He says that I make a "God of the gaps" argument re: evolution. Again, that's totally not true.

 

What I do say in the book is this: I was taught evolution in Catholic school. I believe in evolution.

 

I spend all my free time in nature. I read about the plants and animals I see.

 

Though I respect and believe in evolution, I cannot believe, and nothing would convince me of, the idea that life as we know it occurred by chance.

 

I remember reading your book "The Language of God." I read a library copy so I no longer have a copy.

 

If I remember correctly, and I may not be, you mention that we have junk DNA that corresponds to similar useless DNA in chimps. This seems a pretty strong proof for our descending from common ancestors.

 

I have no problem with that.

 

What I say in "God through Binoculars" is that I can't believe that this all occurred merely by chance.

 

By "this all" I'm not just talking about the noun, living things, I'm talking about the verb, the process, "evolution."

 

I feel similarly about purely physical phenomena. Water, for example, amazes me. Its properties, its abilities, how it meshes with our needs.

 

It's not that I don't understand how water works. To some extent, for a non scientist, I do. I still regard water and its properties as miraculous.

 

My last email to you was about virus replication. I'm totally blown away by viruses. How and why do they do what they do? I don't mean that in the  sense of the "spike protein seeks a receptive spot ... hijacks the cell's reproductive mechanism ... "

 

I mean that in the sense of "What is going on here? Why is the virus doing this? Why are our bodies responding as they do? Who wrote this rulebook? What is the endgame?"

 

It's all well and good to say, "It's just a mindless process," but that doesn't really provide any answers, does it? That seems like more of a cop out.

 

Even the dark side of life astounds me, and leaves me with more questions than answers. To me, "evolution" is merely a flashlight in a vast landscape, and it doesn't provide enough light.

 

My question for you is, am I "allowed" to think this and not be, as the Areo critic makes me out to be, a simple-minded, obscurantist, religious idiot? You can say "yes" if the answer is really yes.

 

Francis, someone I really don't know but who is kind enough to respond to my very occasional emails, wrote back. Here's a line from his reply. "I can heartily agree with you that all the science that the world ever allows us to discern will not take the awe away from creation, or the marvel at its beauty."

 

So there, Atheist book reviewer. Someone smarter than you or I on the topic of evolution shares my sense of wonder.

 

I'll close with the following anecdote.

 

Some scientists met with God. They excitedly and proudly informed God that they had finally created life from scratch. God was no longer needed. Science had finally upstaged and outdated God.

 

God listened carefully to their PowerPoint presentation. It had begun with this phrase, "Just like you, God, we began with some dust."

 

God politely interrupted. "Uh, uh, uh," God gently chided. "You're cheating. Now go and get your own dust."