won in front of that audience, but Giberson definitely lost. All of the religious people in the room ended up feeling sold out by his slick and skin-deep answers to the sceptic's questions. I'll spare you the discussion, just report his deeply disappointing answer to a question my ex-student A and I asked him after: what's your understanding of sin, we asked, and does evolution have anything to say about it? Oh yes, he replied. Sin is basically selfishness, and evolution explains that. But we're not always selfish - we're altruistic too, as the most recent work in evolutionary psychology has established - which shows that sin can be overcome. Theological liberalism lives! But how is this Christian?!
Monday, November 17, 2008
Fishy
Never thought I'd sympathize with the authors of The Fundamentals, the series of pamphlets that launched modern Biblical literalist fundamentalism in 1915, but a book forum sponsored by the Templeton Foundation I attended this evening brought me close. The book being celebrated was Karl W. Giberson's Saving Darwin: How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution. Giberson's conversation partner was Michael Shermer, editor of The Sceptic and author of the column of the same name in Scientific American. (They've performed together before, so both were somewhat too polished.) I'm not sure Shermer could have 
won in front of that audience, but Giberson definitely lost. All of the religious people in the room ended up feeling sold out by his slick and skin-deep answers to the sceptic's questions. I'll spare you the discussion, just report his deeply disappointing answer to a question my ex-student A and I asked him after: what's your understanding of sin, we asked, and does evolution have anything to say about it? Oh yes, he replied. Sin is basically selfishness, and evolution explains that. But we're not always selfish - we're altruistic too, as the most recent work in evolutionary psychology has established - which shows that sin can be overcome. Theological liberalism lives! But how is this Christian?!
won in front of that audience, but Giberson definitely lost. All of the religious people in the room ended up feeling sold out by his slick and skin-deep answers to the sceptic's questions. I'll spare you the discussion, just report his deeply disappointing answer to a question my ex-student A and I asked him after: what's your understanding of sin, we asked, and does evolution have anything to say about it? Oh yes, he replied. Sin is basically selfishness, and evolution explains that. But we're not always selfish - we're altruistic too, as the most recent work in evolutionary psychology has established - which shows that sin can be overcome. Theological liberalism lives! But how is this Christian?!
