Recovering Evangelicals

Dr Joel Duff helps us critique Young Earth Creationist and Intelligent Design ideas about predation strategies in particular, and science in general This week, we talked to Dr. Joel Duff about the focus of our previous episodes on venomous snakes and the Green Jewel Wasp.  Joel not only has decades of experience at a state university doing hands-on research and teaching in biology and genetics, he also hosts a blog site and YouTube channel focusing on how Young Earth Creationists either resist science or distort it.  It was one of their articles which prompted him to write a blog post — and us to release the previous two podcast episodes — on examples of “defense and attack structures.” We compared Joel’s observations about Young Earth Creationists with our own about Intelligent Design proponents, and found that: their explanations of evolutionary changes are poorly thought out, raise many more problems than they solve, and often invoke magical thinking; some of their arguments really end up making the version of God they’re trying to protect look malicious, vindictive, and capricious; their spokespeople invariably have no expertise in the areas about which they’re talking/writing, and a large number of them have little or no training in science at all; many arguments keep coming up again and again, even though those arguments have been soundly refuted by world-leading experts in the respective areas; their leaders, writers, and “scientists” do not engage directly with the scientific community, nor respond to feedback from that community. Joel also gave us some perspectives on personnel-shuffling and leadership changes going on at Answers-in-Genesis, their up-coming fund-raising and building projects, and how it seems their mission and strategy are moving away from confronting scientific challenges to Christian faith, and toward creating theme parks and home entertainment programming. As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic … Find out more about Dr. Joel Duff at his faculty website or his blog site, or his YouTube channel. If you enjoyed this episode, you may also enjoy several of our previous episodes collected thematically under “Young Earth Creationism.” Episode image by Andrew …… thanks Andrew! To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted... Subscribe Join our private discussion group at Facebook and our YouTube channel. YouTube Facebook Instagram Twitter Amazon Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

The Emerald Jewel Wasp brings new meaning to the phrases “eating out” and “having someone over for dinner”. The Emerald Jewel Wasp is an amazing example of “Extreme Evolution.”  They propagate their own species by stinging their prey — cockroaches — three times in a very carefully orchestrated dance.   The first sting is directed at the mid-section of the cockroach to briefly stun and paralyze it for only a minute or two, while the wasp re-positions itself for the second sting.  The latter is directed at a soft spot underneath the “chin” of the cockroach, and with surgical precision aimed at a very specific brain region which controls the cockroach’s “escape reflex.”  This essentially lobotomizes the cockroach, making it completely compliant to the wasps commands while leaving other parts of the brain intact to activate the “walking reflexes”.  In this state, the wasp can lead the non-resistant zombified cockroach, like a dog on a leash, into an underground burrow, where it lays an egg in the “armpit” of one of the legs and then covers up the entrance of the burrow to trap the cockroach inside and keep other predators out. In the meantime, the egg hatches and a jewel wasp larva crawls out and begins to eat its way through the entrapped cockroach.  But that baby dines in a very careful, strategic, pre-programmed way, eating certain internal organs and not others, in order to keep that lethargic cockroach alive for many days.  Eventually, though, enough of the cockroach is eaten that it finally dies.  A couple weeks later, a brand new Jewel Wasp chews its way out of the dead husk of that poor victim and flies away, to repeat the cycle. The precision and orchestration of this reproduction strategy is simultaneously fascinating and horrifying. As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic … You can find more information about our guest  — Dr. Ryan Arvidson — at his faculty page at the university. Episode image by Andrew …… Thanks Andrew! If you enjoyed this episode, you may also enjoy several of our previous episodes collected thematically under “Human Evolution.” To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted... Subscribe Join our private discussion group at Facebook and our YouTube channel. YouTube Facebook Instagram Twitter Amazon Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

The evolution of venomous snakes was an incredibly complex journey that took hundreds of millions of years. Here’s the short version of this interview (~45 minutes) … with much of the really technical scientific bits removed …. And here’s the full-length version (over an hour) of our conversation with our guest expert. Buckle up your seat belts for this one, folks … Dr. Bryan Fry, a world-renowned herpetologist unpacks for us the evolutionary journey that snakes have been on for the past couple hundred million years.  We first compared what scientists can learn from the fossil record versus the genetic record.  Then we talked about how, when and why their predecessors lost their legs, and added a couple dozen vertebrae with ribs.  Spoiler alert: this involved DNA regulatory coding sequences called “sonic hedgehog” genes.  The next major step in their evolutionary journey was the transformation of one or more of their salivary glands into a devious laboratory for the weaponization of otherwise normal proteins into a potent and lethal venom.  This venom doesn’t have to simply kill the prey: even just briefly stunning or paralyzing the prey is enough “to immobilize it long enough to swallow the prey whole and let it suffocate in the stomach.” After that came the transformation of certain canine teeth into long, inwardly-curved, retractable and hollow fangs, to act like a syringe needle for that venom.  Finally, we learned about a very recent evolutionary adaptation for snakes: a new behavioral response to the appearance of primates and humans on the evolutionary scene just a few million years ago, because those hominids had a nasty tendency of grabbing a stick and beating the snakes whenever the two species came into contact.  The snakes learned how to squirt their venom at those attackers, and then they revised  the venom to contain new components that induced intense pain (rather than paralyzing or killing the prey), which they then learned how to aim directly at the eyes of their attackers to ward them off! Such an excellent case study in a variety of aspects of evolutionary theory: anatomical, biochemical and behavioral changes that result in exaptation … gene duplication … amplification … consolidation … and speciation. We highly recommend checking out Bryan’s books and videos. Find out more about Dr. Bryan Fry at his personal website or his faculty page at the university. As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic … If you enjoyed this episode, you may also enjoy several of our previous episodes collected thematically under “Human Evolution.” To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted... Subscribe Join our private discussion group at Facebook and our YouTube channel. YouTube Facebook Instagram Twitter Amazon Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

They preview deep dives into how snakes evolved hollow venom-delivering fangs and how the Emerald Jewel Wasp zombifies cockroaches for its young. They challenge Young Earth Creationist and Intelligent Design views on predation. They outline upcoming science-heavy interviews with experts and explain why gruesome adaptations raise theological and ethical questions.

Dr. Paula Fredriksen, historian of ancient Christianity and Judaism, explains why early Christianity was many competing movements. Multiple short sentences: she explores roots in Second Temple Judaism, the impact of Hellenization, and the different roles of Jesus and Paul. She traces fierce theological battles over God, resurrection, sexuality, and how political power shaped which version survived.

Dr. James F. McGrath, a New Testament scholar and author, reflects on moving from traditional Evangelical beliefs to a more authentic, expansive faith. He talks about why deconstruction matters, adopting curiosity to avoid traumatic faith shifts, the role of mysticism and experience, and how to build a positive, evidence-informed spiritual life.

Why a mechanistic explanation for religious belief/unbelief in humans can actually complement a thoroughly Christian faith. Over the last two weeks, Dr. Will Gervais unpacked his research looking at how humans — as a species, as groups of nations, and even as individuals — build a religious belief system.  He identified a variety of contributing factors which could be “dialed in” to greater or lesser extents, much like an electronic box with a series of dials and switches that could be “tuned” to produce different qualities (not contents!) of religious belief or loss of religious belief.  One set of dials and switches pertained to contributing factors which originate from our genes: our brains, neural pathways, signal processing and reflexes.  And the other pertained to factors which originate from our cultures: who we learn from, and how. Luke had already mentioned last week how he found this new perspective on belief/unbelief to be so useful in his own spiritual journey. And in this episode he explains more fully why: this model is so explanatory, and even predictive!  He compared this “electronic box” for producing religious belief with a similar “electronic box” which humans developed for predicting the weather.  He also compared this very mechanistic explanation for how humans have this built-in mechanism that spontaneously develops and produces a religious belief with a very mechanistic explanation for a newly created universe having a built-in mechanism (physical laws and constants) which spontaneously develops and produces life and biological species, including one species which eventually looked up to the stars for Something Bigger.  And he wanted to emphasize how this does NOT need to eliminate God nor a greater reality (you can call this a spiritual dimension). It just gives a different perspective on how to understand this journey we’re all on. We highly recommend this book. As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic … If you enjoyed this episode, you may also enjoy several of our previous episodes collected thematically under “Human Evolution.” Find out more about Dr. Will Gervais and this book at his website. Image by Andrew: thanks Andrew! To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted... Subscribe Join our private discussion group at Facebook and our YouTube channel. YouTube Facebook Instagram Twitter Amazon Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

The Dual-Inheritance Model explains so much about the emergence of religion in Homo sapiens millions of years ago, as well as the persistence (growth?) of atheism in a world dominated by religious humans. This week, we bring you the second half of our conversation with Dr. Will Gervais.  We return to the kitchen table where he pulled out a wide variety of ingredients (neurobiological and cultural psychological mechanisms and definitions) one-by-one, and now watch him mix them up together to create a mechanistic soufflé that he calls the Dual-Inheritance Model for religious belief in Homo sapiens.  And he shows how this model answers two intertangled evolutionary questions: how Homo sapiens alone became a religious species millions of years ago, and how atheism can still persist today in a world that is completely dominated by religious humans. The concepts and mechanisms that we learned about from neurobiologists — theory of mind; mind/body dualism; agency and hypersensitive agency detectors; teleology, promiscuous teleology, and intuitive creationism — are still important, but not by themselves enough to explain the emergence of religion.  It’s when you add to those the mechanisms and concepts we learned about from cultural psychologists — content- versus context-biased learning; conformist and prestige-biased learning; and, especially, credibility-enhancing displays — that you get something that’s not only exceptionally explanatory, but possibly even predictive! We learned a lot by making comparisons between beliefs in a variety of well-known characters: Mickey Mouse, the Tooth Fairy, Zeus, Yahweh/YHWH, and Santa Claus. Each one of these has us cranking the dials on Dr. Gervais’s Dual-Inheritance Model in various directions in order to explain the differences between them. And then Dr. Gervais showed how this dual-inheritance model explained why: European and Scandinavian countries, who once were the hotbeds of Christian theology for centuries, are now so secular; Canada is making its way along the same path, while the U.S. is moving in the opposite direction, toward a hyper-religious society; the Shakers and the Latter Day Saints had almost identical starting points, but one quickly flourished while the other went extinct; my parent’s generation was hyper-Fundamendalist/Evangelical, my own generation embraced Liberal Christianity, and my children’s generation are “spiritual-but-not-religious.” We also talked about four very different types of atheists, and how most atheists are not products of reasoning (rationalizing and educating one’s way out of religion and/or into atheism, as the New Atheists would want us to think), but rather products of failing to see enough credibility-enhancing displays (I’m really simplifying here ….. you need to listen to Will explain this). So this machine is exceptionally explanatory …. but is it predictive?  Marx, Durkheim, Freud, Jefferson, Voltaire, the New Atheists and many other widely-recognized and highly-acclaimed thinkers have long been predicting the imminent demise of religion.  But this dual-inheritance model predicts that — moving forward into a world full of wealth disparity, racial unrest, political chaos, climate collapse, and imminent pandemics — religion will not only persist, but may even grow! We highly recommend this book. As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic … Find out more about Dr. Will Gervais and this book at his website. If you enjoyed this episode, you may also enjoy several of our previous episodes collected thematically under “Human Evolution.” To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted... Subscribe Join our private discussion group at Facebook and our YouTube channel. YouTube Facebook Instagram Twitter Amazon Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

It took billions of years and billions of life forms, but religion eventually emerged in one species, and filled the globe; and yet disbelief persists? Today’s guest — Dr. Will Gervais (Brunel University, London UK) — has recently published an exceptional book: Disbelief: origins of atheism in a religious species.  In it, he addresses two interconnected evolutionary puzzles. First, how a tendency toward religious belief became such a deeply-seated characteristic of our species, emerging suddenly in just one species in a world that had produced billions of other biological species who showed no tendency toward religious belief, and that trait then quickly spread to envelop the entire planet.  And second, now that religiosity has become endemic in Homo sapiens, why/how non-belief in gods persists (and possibly becomes more prevalent?) in our pervasively religious world? Scott and I were both floored by how much food for thought there was in this book, and how much light it shed on Christian belief and atheism!  There was so much to talk about, our conversation with Will went on for two hours, and so we’ve created two episodes from this one interview! In this week’s episode, we look at the first half of this book.  First, Will addresses a number of popular perspectives on the origin of religious belief that have dominated the discussion for two centuries: from Marx’s “opiate of the masses,” to Darwinism seeing religion as an evolutionary adaptation, to the New Atheist’s seeing it as an evolutionary accident. We even talk about Daniel Kahneman’s “system 1” (for religion) and “system 2” (for atheism). Ultimately, though, Will shows how these have proven to be very inadequate. Next, we look at a diversity of concepts and partial explanations that come from two diverse fields of science: one mountain of evidence generated by neurobiologists looking at the cognitive science of religion, and a second mountain of data generated by psychologists looking at how human culture contributes to the emergence of religious belief.  The neurobiologists point to mechanisms that arise from our biology (brain structures; neural pathways and reflexes; signal processing) that produce cognitive abilities/tendencies such as: theory of mind and mind/body dualism; agency, counterintuitive agency and hypersensitive agency detection; teleology, promiscuous teleology, and intuitive creationism. The psychologists, on the other hand, point to mechanisms that arise from human culture (styles of learning; practices that reinforce) such as: content biases versus context biases conformist learning and prestige-biased learning credibility-enhancing displays, and others. Each of these can explain certain elements of religious belief and non-belief, but are not in themselves fully adequate. But in putting together what we Homo sapiens inherit through our genes (the neurobiology) with what we inherit through our culture, we have a very powerful dual inheritance model which is so explanatory and predictive of religious belief and non-belief.  That dual inheritance model is the subject of our discussion next week!  Stay tuned! As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic … Find out more about Dr. Will Gervais and this book at his website. If you enjoyed this episode, you may also enjoy several of our previous episodes collected thematically under “Human Evolution.” To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted... Subscribe Join our private discussion group at Facebook and our YouTube channel. YouTube Facebook Instagram Twitter Amazon Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

… on science, religious belief, and the meaning of life. Our guest — Dr. Philip Clayton — is an exceptionally credentialed and highly acclaimed philosopher, speaker and author standing at the interface between science and religion.  In this book, he teamed up with a non-theist — Claudia Pearce — to write a book which addresses that interface in brutally honest vulnerability. Both authors have weaved their way through a broad spectrum of Christian belief.  Philip grew up in an atheist home, but embraced Fundamentalist Evangelical Christianity as a teenager (to spite his parents); but with time and life’s experiences, he has now settled comfortably into Open and Relational Theology. Claudia had been a very Conservative Evangelical Christian, but also, over time, shifted comfortably into a non-theistic, agnostic humanism. In the first half of the book, they scrutinize three major fields of science — cosmology/astrophysics, biology/evolution, and cognitive neuroscience — and find that they can agree on so much: not just the details of the scientific discoveries, and the interpretations and models which arise from those, but also common existential values, as well as the perception that religions are generally founded on beliefs and worldviews which are not a good fit for the early 20th century. The very small area of non-overlap between their worldviews pertained to the implications of these findings. For example, we discussed at length whether the discovery of fine tuning of the universe pointed to either a Tuner or to chance, and the discovery of exquisite design in biology pointed to either a Designer or chance. In the second half of the book, Philip and Claudia compare notes on a number of religious concepts: the nature of God (omnipotent/omniscience/omnipresence), Scripture, miracles, and the afterlife.  We unpacked the first and third of those four. In the last chapter of the book, this theist and non-theistic humanist talk about their two different perspectives on one sacred story … and find that they’re really not that far apart at all! It’s a lesson we can all learn from! We highly recommend this book! As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic … Find more information about Dr. Philip Clayton and this book at his web-site. If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like Episode #90, where we talked with Dr. Thomas Jay Oord about Open and Process Theology. To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted... Subscribe Join our private discussion group at Facebook and our YouTube channel. YouTube Facebook Instagram Twitter Amazon Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive