Recovering Evangelicals

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

Do we burn them all, or can we redact the problematic parts? Or do we take the path that involves his confession, repentance and restoration? Last week, we explored our own responses, as well as those of nine anonymous listeners/friends, to the sex scandals involving Christian authors and theologians.  This began as a direct response to the recent revelation of Philip Yancey’s extramarital affair, but we also talked about parallel stories in the lives of Karl Barth, Ravi Zacharias, Bruxy Cavey and King David.  The main question motivating our discussion was: what do we now do with the intellectual contributions they gave us?  Do we burn them all? Can we sift through them and redact the problematic ones/parts? To get more informed opinion on this, we brought in Dr. Sarah Shin (who wrote a scholarly article in a reputable journal specifically on this very question) as well as Dr. Karen Swallow Prior (a highly sought out thinker and speaker in the Evangelical community who has also written complementary pieces on this problem).  We first introduced our audience to Dr. Shin’s paper, which focused specifically on Karl Barth and John Howard Yoder, both of whom had tremendous influence on the development of Christian theology in the early 20th century, despite having scandalously breached traditional Christian sexual ethics.  This paper became a platform on which to discuss our response to the sexual indiscretions of other Christian leaders like Philip Yancey, Ravi Zacharias, or King David, as well as the Christian community’s response to parallel problems such as racial abuse.  Her paper highlighted several points: the need to develop approaches to dealing with the writings/teachings of the problematic author (a “type 1” problem) as well as approaches that target the Christian practices and institutions which helped create and/or propagate the bad theology (a “type 2” problem); the need to discern between the “value” versus the “influence” of these authors/teachings; balancing the value of keeping their works versus propagating the suffering that the author and/or their work caused; the similarities between the historical white-washing and revisionism in response to the sex scandals (burning their books) and the response to slavery and racial injustice (tearing down their statues) We dug deeper into the “type 2” problem/approach by exploring a variety of systemic issues that may be at play here: our tendency to put Christian authors/leaders on pedestals, giving them celebrity status and idolizing them; our binary approach to either discarding or  hanging on to their teachings, without putting in the time and energy of deliberating and deconstructing them; our need to have certainty and simplicity regarding complex matters, and absolute strength/purity in our leaders; our tendency to avoid uncomfortable truths and live in ignorance (“if we can’t remember together, then we can’t reform ourselves”); the Christian community’s tendency to teach and equip its adherents to compartmentalize incongruities, rationalize away paradoxes, suppress cognitive dissonance, and hide uncomfortable truths and private indiscretions. We also talked briefly about the paths to restitution and restoration, and made comparisons between King David, Karl Barth, Ravi Zacharias, and Philip Yancey with respect to how they may or may not have acknowledged the breach, apologized, offered restitution, and/or been restored. As always, tell us what you think! You can find more about our guests at Dr. Sarah Shin’s Instagram page and Dr. Karen Swallow Prior’s web-page. If you enjoyed this episode, you might also be interested in our mini-series asking: Why is Christianity so hung up about sex? 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

They kick off season seven and debate keeping the show name while musing about cultural decline. A major scandal in evangelicalism is unpacked, focusing on a bestselling author’s confession and how past interviews take on new meaning. They compare similar high-profile betrayals, wrestle with calls to cancel and burn books, and preview a deeper follow-up next week.

Peter Enns, a renowned biblical scholar and professor, dives into the fascinating evolution of the Hebrew Bible. He argues that the Old Testament wasn't divine dictation but a product of centuries of writing, editing, and re-writing by various authors and teams. Enns discusses the impact of historical events like the Babylonian exile on Israelite identity and how cultural influences shaped theological concepts. He emphasizes the importance of flexible interpretations of scripture and the benefits of Jewish interpretive traditions for modern readers.

A new understanding of the ancient story of Israel’s exodus out of Egypt leads to a whole new understanding of the Passover … and of the crucifixion! In this episode, Scott and Luke look back on the two recent re-releases — both challenging the traditional “Sunday school version” of the Exodus story — to address a few loose ends: why did we choose those two episodes in particular to re-release? why is the account of the Exodus from Egypt only available in ancient Hebrew literature …. why wouldn’t the countries around Egypt have said anything about this empire-shattering event? if scholars have learned so much about what didn’t happen, and what actually happened, in the Exodus from Egypt, why does that updated version never find its way to the people in the pews and the kids in Sunday School? the many genetic studies which have been done which only find evidence of a continuous gradual mixing of Israelite genes with the surrounding Canaanite genes, rather than a sudden and dramatic replacement of the latter by the former what does a thinking Christian now do with this new understanding of a core element in our theology? in particular, if the Passover comes directly out of the Exodus story, but the latter may have never happened in the way it’s described in the Bible, and if the Passover has nothing to do with atonement for sins, why does Christianity interweave the crucifixion of Jesus so tightly into the Passover story? As always, tell us what you think … If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like: Episode #80, with Dr. Aren Maeir, another world-leading Jewish archaeologist, about the origin of the nation of Israel and her new religion; Episode #57, with Dr. Peter Enns, about who wrote the Hebrew Bible; Episode #98, with Dr. Eric Seibert, about a perfect example of humans putting words into God’s mouth (like telling them to kill their enemies); Episode #19, in which we focus on the various ideas about atonement theory. We also highly recommend you read Dr. Richard Friedman’s book Who Wrote the Bible? 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