Fearful that people might use this as occasion to, you know, disbelieve in the Bible, creative Bible-believers have created the Message-Incident Principle:

That is, instead of confusing or distracting the biblical writers and their readers with modern scientific concepts, God descended to their level and employed the science-of-the-day.

[...]

Therefore, passages in the Bible referring to the physical world feature both a Message of Faith and an incidental ancient science. According to this interpretive principle, biblical inerrancy rests in the Divine Theology, and not in statements referring to nature.

Of course! God didn’t want to confuse people! If everyone believes in a firmament, then God made a firmament. If everyone believes in human parthenogenesis, then that’s how God rolls!

And, being omniscient, god must have foreseen that the science-loving denizens of the 21st century would easily distinguish between the parts of the Bible that count as “Divine Theology” and the parts that count as “Cave-People Folk Science.” It’s just common sense:

In the case of Phil 2, the 3-tier ancient astronomy is “alongside” the “more important” Message of Faith that Jesus is Lord over the entire universe. Amen!

Thanks, god, for not confusing anyone!

1. Observation is not a reliable way of gathering data:

Putting modern scientific ideas into [the Bible] distorts the meaning of the text, which is clearly about God’s faithful and caring relation to the world, not the details of how that world came to be.

See, even though the very first chapter gives a somewhat explicit description of, well, how the world came to be, that’s “clearly” not what the book’s about, and “clearly” you’re supposed to ignore that part. (Many of the other parts are “clearly” 100% true, of course. Which parts? I can’t believe you’d even ask such an impertinent question! Clearly you have no future as a BioLogos Scientist.)

2. Only test some of your hypotheses:

What we learn from science cannot threaten our belief in God as the creator. If God created the universe in a Big Bang 15 billion years ago, guided its development with elegant mathematical laws so that eventually there would be big-brained mammals exploring things such as beauty, morality and truth, then let us celebrate that idea, not reject it.

Can what we learn from science threaten our beliefs in human parthenogenesis, resurrection, non-conservation of bread and fish, and spontaneous heaven-ascension?

The article doesn’t say, but based on my experiences with BioLogos, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that “clearly” it cannot. Praise Jesus science!

WHERE THE HELL WAS HIS GUARDIAN ANGEL?

What’s the point of being Pope if your guardian angel isn’t protecting you from slippery floors? I mean, sure, there’s page boys lining up to sodomize you, and you might get to have a posthumous show trial, and there’s opportunity to fornicate with your father’s concubine, and if you get sick of the job you can always sell it to your godfather.

But you can do pretty much all those things simply by getting elected to Congress. Whereas the guardian angel only comes with the papacy. And the guardian angel totally dropped the ball on this one.

However, true to his heritage, Benedict offers up the Nuremberg Defense on the angel’s behalf:

Unfortunately, my own guardian angel did not prevent my injury, certainly following superior orders.

That’s dangerous territory, of course. I feel an obligation to tell Benedict that if he accuses Yahweh of ordering the broken wrist without proper evidence, he’ll be subject to Court-Martial for professional misconduct. And that’s something that’ll be stapled to every job application he ever fills out.

However, I have an idea. We just need to get Yahweh on the stand. And then it would go a little something like this:

BENEDICT
Yahweh! Did you order the broken wrist?!!

GOD THE HOLY SPIRIT
You don’t have to answer that question!

GOD THE FATHER
I’ll answer the question. You want answers?

BENEDICT
I think I’m entitled to them.

GOD THE FATHER
You want answers?!

BENEDICT
I want the truth!

GOD THE FATHER
You can’t handle the truth! Son, we live in a world that has a firmament, and that firmament has to be guarded by angels with wings. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Benedict? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for your wrist, and you curse the Heavens. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know — that your broken wrist, while tragic, probably saved lives; and my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that firmament — you need me on that firmament.

We use words like “faith,” “obesiance,” “BioLogos.” We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punch line. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it.

I would rather that you just said “thank you” and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a prayer book and stand the post. Either way, I don’t give a DAMN what you think you’re entitled to!

BENEDICT
Did you order the broken wrist?

GOD THE FATHER
I did the job I was –

BENEDICT
— Did you order the broken wrist?!

GOD THE FATHER
You’re me damn right I did!!!

GOD THE HOLY SPIRIT
Guard the prisoner.

GOD THE FATHER
I’m being charged with a crime?

I’m gonna tear your eyes right outta your head and piss in your dead skull. You fucked with the wrong deity.

All you did was weaken a religion today, Benedict. That’s all you did. You put people in danger. Sweet dreams, son.

BENEDICT
Don’t call me son.
(beat)
Jesus is your son. I’m a pope, and the head of the Vatican City. And you’re under arrest, you son of a bitch.

FADE OUT

Based on the square quotes (and also the “supposed”) you’d probably guess that they don’t believe there’s a conflict, and you’d be right:

The common ground, instead, must be science in its broadest sense–a shared body of facts we can all agree about, however we may differ about the spiritual. Yet this common ground itself is at risk if we let science and faith be in conflict.

I see what they’re saying. We all agree on the age of the earth; the best explanation for the appearance of design in nature; whether there was a sudden, world-wide flood at some point in the past; the meaning of a frozen waterfall; and the existence of thetans. And so we shouldn’t let our “spiritual” differences get in the way of this common ground.

Because if there’s one principle that’s important to the practice of science, it’s majoritarianism:

After all, the vast majority of Americas want nothing to do with this conflict. They want compromise, and compatibility.

If that’s what they want, then who am I to argue? Tell me, Mooney and Kirshenbaum, how can I help?

Next time you see the news media cover “science versus religion” as if it’s a battle, write or call in and say why that’s simplistic.

I can do that:

Dear New York Times,

Joel Grus
Seattle, WA

Typically the NYT doesn’t print my letters, but I have a good feeling about this one.

You see, there’s a new book, Unscientific America, arguing that scientific illiteracy threatens our future.

I have no doubt this is true. Just last weekend I wore my Maxwell’s Equations T-shirt out to a nightclub, and not a single woman remarked on how clever it was. And to be frank, I’ve had similar experiences with my “Carbon Based And proud of it!” shirt, with my periodic table tie, and with my “Negative air pressure differentials SUCK!” shirt.

(And you don’t even want to know about my “Geologists Make The Bed Rock” misadventure.)

Like everyone else, I have lots of good ideas about how to solve this problem:

• bring back “El Mundo de Beakman”
• new CBS drama “Dr. Quinn, Postdoctoral Researcher”
• marijuana-growing contests
• daily ballistic pendulum demonstrations in elementary school classrooms
• Tacoma Narrows Bridge video put into constant rotation on MTV and MTV2
• routine in-school showings of pro-biology movies like Underworld: Evolution and Dragonball Evolution
• new national anthem: “She Blinded Me With Science”

“Those are great ideas,” you’re thinking, “and I’d love to fund them. But where’s the debate?”

Well, I haven’t read the book per se, but I’m told that the debate lies in chapters 8 and 9: “Why Wicked Scientists Shouldn’t Tell Credulous Believers That Their Religion Is False” and “Why Wicked Bloggers Shouldn’t Tell Credulous Believers That Their Religion Is False.”

Apparently (and, again, I’m piecing this together from what I read on a couple of blogs and in TV Guide), by telling people that science and religion are incompatible, we’re scaring them away from science (but not from religion).

Instead we should be reassuring them that science and religion are perfectly compatible, just as long as they abandon a few ancillary tenets like “our holy scriptures mean what that say” and “god doesn’t have to obey the laws of physics” and “it’s possible to get pregnant without sperm, and also it’s possible (using 1st-century technology) to come back to life after being dead for three days.”

Actually, I’m pretty sure that we’re also not supposed to point out the necessity of throwing out the religious claims. Better still to trot out Francis Collins and the BioLogos crew.

After all, he worked on the Human Genome Project, so anything he says about science is automatically trustworthy. And if science and religion are compatible enough for him, then who are we to argue?

DATE: July 9, 2009

APPLICANT: Joel Grus
CONTACT: your.religion.is.false -at- gmail.com

NAME OF FEDERAL AGENCY: National Institutes of Health

DESCRIPTIVE TITLE OF PROJECT:

“Don’t Go Chasing Waterfalls”: Religious Implications of Hydrological Phenomena

ESTIMATED PROJECT FUNDING: $30 million

ARE HUMAN SUBJECTS INVOLVED? yes
ARE VERTEBRATE ANIMALS USED? yes
DOES THIS PROJECT HAVE A POTENTIAL IMPACT ON THE ENVIRONMENT? yes
DOES THIS PROJECT HAVE SPIRITUAL IMPLICATIONS? oh god yes

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR: Joel Grus

POSITION/TITLE: Author, Your Religion Is False

DOES THE PROPOSED PROJECT INVOLVE HUMAN EMBRYONIC STEM CELLS?

It does now!

RESEARCH PLAN

SPECIFIC AIMS:

To investigate the effect on god-belief of human exposure to various hydrological phenomena.

BACKGROUND AND SIGNIFICANCE:

Over the past decade, Canadian/American indie rock supergroup The New Atheists have been steadily producing books arguing that the god of the Christian bible (among other gods) doesn’t really exist. Although the biological sciences seem to provide unambiguous support for this view, it is possible that god willing some of the other sciences may countervail.

PRELIMINARY STUDIES:

In 1977, Francis Collins (who is the new director of your agency, but please don’t let that sway your opinion) was hiking in the Cascades, when he came across a waterfall frozen into three streams. As this reminded him of the Trinity, he fell on his knees in the dewy grass and devoted himself to Jesus Christ. So far this experiment has never been replicated.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS:

We will collect a large assortment of scientists and randomly assign them to visit hydrological features, including aquifers, beaches, catadupae, drainage basins, endorheic basins, flood plains, infiltration basins, losing streams, percolation trenches, riparian zones, streams, and waterfalls. (I, for instance, will be randomly assigned to the “beach” treatment.)

Each scientist will be measured both before and after his trip using the Dawkins Scale of Religiosity, after which we will use some type of computer (which we will purchase with the grant money) to make graphs and play Minesweeper draw conclusions.

Based on the results of this first experiment, we will repeat on a larger scale, expanding the subject pool to include non-scientists, monkeys, kangaroos, and human embryonic stem cells.

If all goes well, I think we can get our work published in one of the InterVarsity Press science journals. We’d also present at some of the Campus Crusade science conferences, of course. And we’d be happy to facilitate inclusion of our results in the science curriculum in Texas.

OTHER FUNDING:

We’ve also applied to the BioLogos Foundation for funding. If you could put in a good word for us with Director Collins, that would be just swell!

But you’re not alone in your struggle. The BioLogos foundation is there with you every step of the way (and when you see one set of footprints, that’s where they were carrying you).

Today, for instance, they’re offering “Three Ways to View the Fossil Record [that aren't incompatible with your religious faith, even though (if you want to get technical) the fossil record isn't compatible with your religious faith].”

1. God created each species “individually from nothing” as time proceeded. (Note: not actually compatible with fossil record.)
2. God created species in “bursts” over time. (Note: not actually compatible with fossil record.)
3. Evolutionary biology is the proper explanation for the history and diversity of species, but god has been continually doing the work behind the scenes. So, for instance, he’s always choosing which genetic material crosses over during meiosis, and he helps ducks decide which other ducks to rape, and he helps misdirect mooses he doesn’t want reproducing into having sex with horses instead.

Although the third theory is (vacuously) compatible with the fossil record, it presumes a level of perversity on the part of god that’s really more compatible with the jealous, kinky Old Testament god, not the effeminate, hippie New Testament god.

Accordingly, New-Testament-believing Christians might be better served by a fourth way of viewing the fossil record:

4. Your religion is false.

This explanation does have the drawback of not being exactly “compatible” with the Christian faith. But this is almost surely outweighed by its virtue of being the correct explanation.

Make sure to come back next time, when we discuss “Five (Incorrect) Ways To Explain The Existence of Suffering”!

Sure, his bio is a bit iffy in parts:

Collins coined the term “BioLogos” to describe the conclusions he had reached about how life (Bios) came about through God’s speaking it into being (Logos); in that sense DNA can be considered metaphorically as God’s language.

Nonetheless, I have high hopes for this appointment, as it likely means that the current (boring) NIH website will get spruced up with thought-provoking, BioLogos-y questions. For example:

• What is the proper relation between medicine and religion?
• At what point in the evolutionary process did humans attain the “Image of God”?
• If God created the NIH, what created God?
• How does the illness and disease in the world align with the idea of a loving God?
• Is there room in healthcare to believe in miracles?
• What factors should be considered in determining how to approach a passage of scripture?

And really, who better to lead the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and health-related research than a guy who started an entire foundation devoted to twisting science in ways that justify his belief in the supernatural.

This is great for us, however, as we get to read his “yes, we were lying about the tooth fairy, and also we were lying about the easter bunny, and also we were lying about santa claus, but Jesus is totally different and here’s why!” essay.

He makes the following points:

1. Some of the data underlying evolutionary biology is “historical” in nature. Some of the arguments for Christianity are also “historical” in nature. This makes belief in Christianity just as data-driven as belief in evolutionary biology!

2. “There are some theologians who I consider just as brilliant as some scientists!”

3. Not only has Jesus never been “falsified,” there are plenty of good reasons to think he exists. For instance, check out the New Testament book Romans, which (unlike The Da Vinci Code) is too packed with “sincere emotion and veneration” to be fiction.

4. If you don’t read every pro-Jesus book with “the open mindset that is supposed to be the trademark of any scientist,” you’ve committed an “unforgiveable sin.”

Now, unlike his granddaughter, I am not a 6-year-old girl, and so it’s hard to say which of his arguments she will find compelling. I’m guessing she’ll reject the first, as even little girls understand that — while studying history helps us understand evolutionary biology — there is also genetic, anatomical, geographical, biochemical, epidemiological, and current biological evidence. I’m also guessing that she’ll reject the second, as little girls tend to put more weight on the opinions of J.K. Rowling and Stephanie Meyer than the opinions of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth. Along similar lines, the Baby-sitters Club books are packed with “sincere emotion and veneration” yet are clearly fiction, making me suspect she’ll reject his third argument. And although his granddaughter sounds pretty smart, a number of the books he propounds still seem above her reading level, making it tough to condemn her for not reading them.

However, although he didn’t mention it in his article, he’s also got a fifth argument in his pocket:

5. If you don’t believe in Jesus, then after you die you’re going to get thrown into a Lake of Fire and tortured forever. It’s worse than anything you can imagine. Remember how bad you felt that day at school when all the other girls were making fun of you? Remember how much it hurt when you fell on the playground and broke your arm? Remember when you had the flu and you kept throwing up everything we fed you and we had to take you to the hospital where they stuck a tube in your arm so you wouldn’t get dehydrated? Remember how sad you were when your dog Pepper died? This is so much worse than all those combined, and if you don’t believe in Jesus you’ll feel it all day, every day, forever and ever.

And I’m pretty sure that this one is the kind of argument that resonates with six-year-olds.

After his best-selling The Language of God came out three years ago, Collins began receiving thousands of e-mails — primarily from other Evangelicals — asking questions about how to reconcile scriptural teachings with scientific evidence. “Many of these Christians have been taught that evolution is wrong,” Collins explains. “They go to college and get exposed to data, and then they’re thrust into personal crises of great intensity. If the church was wrong about the origins of life, was it wrong about everything?

You’d like to think a “scientist” would conclude, “yeah, probably.” I mean, if I were to show up at a scientific conference and present my several-hundred-page “Grand Theory of Everything,” and if the first few chapters were filled with obvious falsehoods, you’d hope that the other scientists would laugh me off the stage, tell me to take a long walk off a short pier, or tar and feather me. And you’d certainly hope that they wouldn’t run off to their little science lairs and try to come up with harebrained justifications as to why the rest of my theory was probably still true.

Which is why, although I have great respect for the Human Genome Project (a scientific achievement on par with the Alan Parsons Project), I find myself wondering just how rigorous it was. And looking at Collins’s BioLogos website isn’t doing much to reassure me.

Here, for instance, is how he sums up his answer to “Question 11: Is there room in BioLogos to believe in miracles?”

This response provides a simple answer to the question of miracles, namely that BioLogos does not in any way remove the logical possibility of miracles. However, for the universe to behave in an apparently ordered fashion, such events must be rare. BioLogos is thus compatible with many faiths that have miraculous events at the center of their doctrine. Finally, although a scientific explanation does in fact take away a phenomenon’s miraculous status, it does not establish that God was not involved in the process.

In other words,

• The fact that the laws of science are regular and predictable seems to leave no room for miracles; however, there could still be miracles as long as they didn’t happen very often.
• Also, even though any given “miracle” may have a perfectly natural scientific explanation, god may have been involved somehow.

I am not sure what the word is for “let’s add an element to our theory that makes it more complicated and doesn’t actually explain anything, but that makes our theory more palatable to the superstitious,” but I’m pretty sure it’s not “science.”

Still, I’ll keep checking the BioLogos site, because I want to see what their answer is to “Question 39: This whole website is just a gigantic prank, isn’t it?”