V J Torley, in a piece on Uncommon Descent, cites ex-Biologos TE Karl Giberson writing a blurb for atheist John Loftus’ new book, in which Giberson does a mea culpa for the weakness of his “free creation” defence of Christianity in relation to evolution.
As you’ll see there, I have commented with a link to a piece of my own on Loftus and Giberson from two years ago. But in truth, that piece was only a rehash of arguments I had been making here, on BioLogos and elsewhere for two years already.
Regular readers will be aware that I (and those like our own Eddie and non-Humpers like “Crude”) have never had our arguments even seriously engaged on BioLogos, let alone refuted. And they will also know that there is even now a fog of uncertainty there in which creation’s autonomy and God’s sovereignty are both tentatively lauded without any attempt to resolve them, like somebody waving a Union Jack in one hand and a Nazi swastika in the other.
It may be quite significant for the understanding of our argument that Giberson has, at this stage, made a choice to endorse a published critique of Christianity from a second-rate atheist apologist, and to recant (partially?) of the science-faith synthesis he has been promoting, and which BioLogos continues to promote.
I would remind you that, over the last four years here and on BioLogos, I and others have not simply been knocking the “free creation” view and its associated ideas without suggesting a positive alternative. Indeed, the whole point of this website has been to show that an intellectually rigorous position on the natural world (in the scientific sense) and orthodox Christian faith can be held coherently and faithfully to Christ and to his authoritative revelation in the Bible.
So the question arises why someone like Giberson should retreat from his position in the direction of endorsing an atheistic critique of Christianity, rather than adopting something like our own position? Similarly, why has BioLogos never engaged with either our criticisms or our solutions? I don’t necessarily expect to be asked to write for BioLogos again, though our writers have been amongst the most frequent commenters there, but the only responses we’ve had from BioLogos staff commenting here have been substance-lite complaints about our critical attitude.
I can only conclude that Christian orthodoxy is the problem – people don’t want to believe in the Sovereign and surpring God of “Classical Christianity”, the God whose own “frowning Providence hides a smiling face.” They would rather, it seems, live with incoherence (now at last admitted by Giberson – an Open Theist) than with the theology of God which has served the Faith since Old Testament times and which, as we continue to show, is quite compatible with any legitimate science.
To hijack Alvin Plantinga’s book title, we need to understand “where the conflict really lies”, or the phenomenon of leading TEs writing self-abasing blurbs for atheist books will be completely mystifying to us. The conflict is theological, not scientific.
