Another "Living Fossil," the Platypus! God's Practical Joke, or, Evidence for Evolution? (Also, The Young-Earth Creationist's Long March Idea)

The platypus "almost single-handedly (or, perhaps better, single-web-footedly) overturned the earlier creationist classification of animals that followed a Great-Chain-of-Being model. With its hodgepodge of physical traits and behaviors it offered 'an unexpected bridge between the categories of mammal/quadruped and reptiles and birds.' That bridge helped set evolutionary theory on a new course. See Moyal's, Platypus: The Extraordinary Story of How a Curious Creature Baffled the World. The platypus played an explicit role in Charles Darwin's ideas on isolation, species diversity, and natural selection, and he branded it a prime example of a 'living fossil' that had managed to find an unoccupied ecological niche and live, relatively undisturbed, while fellow creatures marched toward extinction.

The monotremes, the group to which the Platypus belongs, are among the earliest forms of mammals. When the first monotreme, a platypus, was sent back to England scientists did not believe it was real, they thought it was an elaborate hoax. After all how could a mammal have a duck's bill, webbed feet, spurs on its hind legs and lay eggs? These mammals retain many reptilian characteristics in that they lay eggs, have a single genital opening, the cloaca. Even their limbs are attached to their body more like those of a reptile than a mammal. Also the male platypus is the only known venomous mammal, another reptilian trait.

Of the known living monotremes, two species, the platypus and echidna, lives in Australia while another echidna species lives in New Guinea. So they are all found in Australasia. The reason these species have survived is that when they were isolated on the Australian continent with the marsupials they adapted to very specific habitats allowing them to compete successfully with the marsupials. This specific adaptation has made them vulnerable to changes in their habitat and for this reason attention needs to be given to preserving their habitats to prevent extinction.

Until human beings brought modern day mammals to Australia it didn't have any true mammals, it just had marsupials and less than a handful of monotreme species that included the Platypus.

The Difference Between Monotremes, Mammals and Marsupials (Monotremes are the earliest of the three)

Sharing a common ancestry, marsupials and mammals evolved for millions of years in two increasingly different directions having a lot to do with changes in their reproduction systems. Marsupial species lack a womb with a placenta where the young live prior to birth, nor do they have mammary glands, instead the young are born early on and then have to climb into a pouch where they lick sweat off of hairs inside the pouch in which they continue to grow, eventually emerging from the pouch. Both marsupials and mammals feed their young via modified sweat glands. But mammals evolved in the direction of keeping their young in a watery womb with a placenta until birth, and after birth feeding them rich quantities of milk via mammary glands. But even earlier than marsupials and mammals in the fossil record are monotremes (such as the platypus which still laid eggs like a reptile).

Modern mammals (with placentas and mammary glands) spread and diversified all over the world, nudging out marsupials nearly everywhere, except in Australia, because Australia broke off from the Asian continent before modern mammals were able to reach it. Australia was the first landmass to be isolated from the supercontinent Pangaea. So Australia became an entire continent cut off from the evolutionary development of mammals. That's why Australia came to be filled with nothing but marsupials along with the only three known monotreme species (some of the most primitive of mammals, before they evolved placentas) which includes the platypus.

After the separation of Australia from the mainland of Asia marsupials diversified to fill all the niches on the new continent, i.e., marsupial rodents, marsupial dogs, gliding marsupials, bat-like marsupials, digging marsupial moles, marsupial kangaroos (including even tree kangaroos!). Interestingly, marsupials never evolved either a "bat" form, nor a "seal" form, nor a "porpoise/whale" form as mammals did.

Far fewer species of marsupial were able to survive in the mammal-dominated world of the other continents. For instance the marsupial known as the opossum inhabits the United States and another 80 or so species thrive in South America, but some 220 species are found in the Australasian region.

The Young-Earth Creationists' Long March of the Marsupials (and Monotremes)

Creationists at "Answers in Genesis" believe a hoard of marsupials and some monotremes disembarked from Noah's ark in Turkey and then promptly began a long march to Australia, the only continent where such a hoard of marsupial species are found today.

The marsupial population of Australia contains animals found nowhere else on earth--not even in fossil form. Are we to suppose that those marsupials managed to travel from the landing place of Noah’s ark to . . . Australia? What a long perilous post-Flood journey. I guess God guided them. But you don’t hear about that miracle in the Bible. Why not? It’s at least as good as the story about God herding the Israelites through the desert, only these marsupials were herded through a denuded post-Flood earth undergoing cataclysmic aftershocks. This menagerie of wombats and koalas, bandicoots and kangaroos (not to mention the flightless moa and kiwi birds of New Zealand) had to keep ahead of lions-’n-tigers-’n-bears all the way to Indonesia, and then--although the superior placental mammals could not manage it--reach the continent of Australia. As if this were not mind-boggling enough, it turns out that the types of marsupials that made it to Australia just happened to form an ensemble able to fill all the ecological niches available!

Thus, there were marsupial moles, marsupial ant-eaters, marsupial mice, marsupial grazers, marsupial carnivores, marsupial frugivores, etc.--not one of which can be found anywhere else in the world. If this highly diversified marsupial population evolved from one or a few primitive generalized marsupials that reached Australia millions of years before it separated from Indonesia (and before mammals had evolved on the mainland), then this peculiar situation is understandable. But if all these creatures had to journey from Turkey to Australia as an ensemble, it is incredible beyond computation. [Frank Zindler, “The Kiwi Question,” American Atheist, May 1988]

Molecular biology and anatomy both demonstrate that, of living marsupial groups, koalas are most closely related to wombats. And both the living species and fossilized remains of koalas and wombats are found only in Australia. In other words they evolved there from shared marsupial ancestors that had been living on that continent even before the land bridge that connected Australia with Asia had dissolved. And all of those changes, both geological and biological, took more time than young-earth creationists can find mentioned in their Bibles.

Such fragile creatures as the platypus and the blind marsupial mole raced across the land bridge to Australia quicker than the Malaysian tigers and other robust placentals? [Robert A. Moore, The Impossible Voyage of Noah’s Ark]

A "Living Fossil"

Darwin was proven right concerning his suspicion that the platypus was a "living fossil." Fossil evidence of a platypus-like jaw was discovered in Australia that dates back earlier than the fossils of any other known marsupial or modern mammalian fossil. And fossil evidence of a cousin of the platypus has even been found that's dated earlier still, before Australia broke off from Asia.

PLATYPUS GENOME SEQUENCING, AND EVOLUTION see Wikipedia

Creationists Love to Talk About "Living Fossils" Like the Coelacanth, Shark, Horseshoe Crab, etc. So Long As Evolutionists Aren't Allowed A Word in Edgewise.

Creation took six days. Evolution took billions of years. Hence it takes a bit longer to explain the Big History of the cosmos and planet earth than it does to read the creation story in Genesis chapter one. Likewise it takes a bit longer to discuss the evidence for evolution than it does to say, "God Did It." Below is a typical "argument for creationism" that amounts to "Look a Living Fossil!" The "argument" is then followed by a discussion of the evidence for evolution.

SOURCE

Added comment by an ex-creationst:

I've mentioned before that I went to a fundamentalist Baptist high school. My first introduction to the Coelacanth was through a heavily biased (and flawed) biology texbook from Bob Jones University, which (to the best of my memory) described the Coelacanth as a "living fossil" and took that description literally. Evolution couldn't possibly be real, I was told, because here was this Coelacanth, utterly unchanged 65 million years (air quotes implied) after it was supposed to be extinct. If evolution were real, why would it ignore the Coelacanth? [or the shark, the horseshoe crab, etc.?] SOURCE

RESPONSE

"Living Fossils" are the exceptions that prove the evolutionary rule. They stand out because the vast majority of species in the fossil record are NOT alive today. But as we will see such cases fit into a clear geological-evolutionary pattern.

Speaking of fish species, the most diverse and abundant species today are not the same as yesterday. The majority of fish species today are osteichthyes or bony fish, an extremely diverse and abundant group consisting of over 29,000 species--in fact they constitute the largest class of vertebrates (i.e., species with backbones) in existence today. But such was not the case in the past. There were times in the past when jawless fish filled the sea, then fish with armour, and then cartilaginous fish, in that order, before bony fish ruled the sea. There are only some cousins of the more ancient species alive today and in far less abundance than their ancestors were in the distant past.

Coelacanths

The most numerous species of fossilized coelacanth show up in the expected place in the evolutionary geological record, and also have anatomical features, that place them in the fish-to-tetrapod evolutionary bush.

The coelacanth is a type of Sarcopterygian (sometimes considered synonymous with Crossopterygian fish), an "actinist Sarcopterygii" to be exact. They used to be far more abundant in the distant past than they are today. Another group of Sarcopterygii was the "rhipidistian Sarcopterygii" which were the shallow-water group, and they are extinct, unless you count all of the land-lubbing tetrapods that evolved from them. (Therefore the Sarcopterygii didn't all remain the same. Far from it.)

As for "actinist Sarcopterygii" or coelacanths, not even all of them have remained the same. Living coelacanths found in Madagascar are neither the same type of coelacanth fossils that have been found in rocks that are 360 million years old, nor are they exactly the same type of coelacanth found in strata about 80 million years old; though the living species does resemble the younger fossil species more closely than it does the oldest known coelacanth fossil species. Hence differences are tracible through time as evolution would expect. The oldest known coelacanth species, the ones that are known from before 80 million years ago, were far more diverse (more than 120 different known fossil species) smaller, lacked certain internal structures found in modern coelacanths and belonged to a different genera and suborder. Modern coelacanths also belong to a different genera than the 80 million year genera. See the book, Coelacanth. W. W. Norton and Company, New York and London, 1991, page 78:

One point has to be emphasized; The living coelacanth is not a living fossil in the very strict sense that members of the species L. chaumnae itself have ever been found as a fossil. In fact, no other species assignable to the Genus Latimeria has been found as a fossil either. Latimeria and the Cretaceous fossil Genus Macropoma are quite closely related, and we could possibly include them in the same family. Beyond that, all fossil coelacanths belong to the order Coelacanthini. [Keith Littleton, New Orleans, LA]

Why No Coelacanth Fossils For 70 Million Years? Don Lindsay explains:

You might well ask: is it really possible for a group of species to live for millions of years and yet leave no fossils? First, note that fossil hunts are done on dry land. That's partly because it's easier, and partly because watery environments are usually undergoing deposition, which covers everything up. On land, rocks are eroding, and fossils get revealed. So, where do dry-land rocks come from? Well, some were formed on land, and some in fresh water, and some in shallow sea water. But very few were formed in deep sea water. Plate tectonics makes it clear why this should be. The deep ocean floor is constantly being destroyed, sucked down into the earth at subduction zones. It is unlikely for a piece of deep ocean floor to wind up as a dry-land rock. Now, imagine a creature that lives only in the open ocean, and is unlikely to venture close to shore. (Perhaps it lives in the depths.) That creature will leave no fossils that we are likely to find. So, the answer is, yes. It is possible to leave no fossils. Does Latimeria live in the depths? Well, close. They've been seen in caves about 200 meters down, and they die from decompression when brought to the surface. Also, if a creature lives in a small geographic area, it is possible that no one ever looked in the right place. The first colony of Latimeria is off one single island (Grand Comoro) in the Indian Ocean. And, the whole population there is only a few hundred fish. The second colony hasn't been located yet, so it can't be large. SOURCE

Living coelacanths, Latimeria chalumnae,and Latimeria menadoensis are possibly the sole remaining representatives of a once widespread family of Sarcopterygian (fleshy-finned) coelacanth fishes (more than 120 species are known from fossils). That dwindled down to only a single known fossilized Coelacanth species by the end of the Cretaceous, 65 million years ago. And likewise, only a single genus is known to still be alive today, and it more closely resembles the genus from 65 million years ago, not the over 120 different species know from 360 million years to 65 million years ago. SOURCE

Sharks

Sharks also once had their "golden age." The evolutionary record of their ancestors shows that the earliest shark-like species started out fairly small, and only grew larger over time, till the "golden age" of sharks, and then their diversity declined. SOURCE Some of the variety of ancient shark species:

While the earliest fossil sharks superficially resembled modern sharks, later species from the 'golden age of sharks' appeared in all manner of curious shapes and sizes. Top, Cladoselache; middle, Helicoprion; bottom, Stethocanthus.

Horseshoe Crabs

Kasaoka City Horseshoe Crab (kabutogani) Museum (hakubutsukan) is the only horseshoe crab museum in the world. The museum opened March 16, 1990 with the purpose of protecting and promoting the breeding of this "living fossil." This museum holds the world's foremost collection of information on the evolution of this creature.

Evolution of the Horseshoe Crab

The ancestors of the modern horseshoe crab evolved from trilobite ancestors in the Early Cambrian period approximately 550 million years ago. It was not until the Carboniferous period (354 to 290 million years ago) that the horseshoe shape developed. True horseshoe crabs do not appear until the Late Jurassic period, with fossils discovered in the Solnhofen limestone of Bavaria. dsc.discovery.com

The trilobite is an arthropod that dates back to the Paleozoic Era, and preceded not only the horseshoe crab and the sea scorpion but all other arthropods, crustacea and insects in the fossil record. (So, not all trilobites stayed the same, they evolved. *smile*) For instance trilobites preceded sea scorpions that preceded both the the scorpion and the spider in the fossil record. So the horseshoe crab's closest living cousins include spiders and scorpions. (So as I said, not all trilobites stayed the same, some trilobites evolved. *smile*)

Horseshoe crab fossils have been found in Europe and North America. The horseshoe crab evolved on the Laurasian Continent during the Paleozoic Era. The horseshoe crab reached Asia parallel to the Thetis Sea (check an ancient geology map), when the Atlantic Ocean was formed near the end the Mesozoic Era.

There are four distinct species of horseshoe crabs living on earth now. One lives on the beaches of the East Coast of the USA. Three others live in Japan and on the southeastern shore of the Asian continent.

Today there are only 3 genera and 5 species of Xiphosura (Horseshoe crabs and their extinct relatives) left alive, but they were much more numerous and diverse during the Palaeozoic era.

Surviving horseshoe crabs

(Limulus) are 'living fossils', barely changed in some 250 million years (since early Triassic time)...The exoskeleton generally consists of three parts, the large, semicircular cephalothorax, or prosoma, the usually smaller, subtriangular and in earlier forms "trilobite"-like opisthosoma, and the long stout tail-spine or telson (which is actually the end part of the opisthosoma)...The compound eyes are small (and absent in some early forms), and there are six pairs of legs (in the living Limulus) but no antennae.

Paleomerus and Lemoneites are very early forms that were either Aglaspids or transitional between the Aglaspida and the Xiphosura.

The late Cambrian (Caerfai epoch) marine family Eolimulidae is generally considered a true Xiphosuran,but again more research needs to be done if more is to be known about the early history of this interesting group.
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Further Creationist Questions

Question #1: In the billions of generations through the millions of years that fruit flies have had to evolve, why have they not become or at least spawned something else?

Reply: About 500 species of fruit flies are found only on the Hawaiian islands, a chain of islands whose oldest rose up from the sea approximately 8 million years ago. Concerning the evolution of new fruit fly genera. . .

Reading a book on Drosophilia, I discovered the answer to the question of why no new genera of fruit flies have evolved in Hawaii despite the hundreds of species. It is due simply to the classification approach used by Drosophilia workers. The Hawaiian lineage is apparently descended from within the genus Drosophilia, as presently defined. Based on cladistic terminology, one genus should not give rise to another genus. Rather than reclassifying the 2000 or so "Drosophilia" into multiple genera, fruit fly workers use a variety of subgenera and informal terms to group them. In fact, genus names have been proposed for some of the Hawaiian lineages. [Dr. David Campbell, Biology Department, Saint Mary's College of Maryland]

And in answer to the question, "How to test that all Hawaiian fruit flies descended from one common ancestral population that began with a founder event," the answer is to "Select many characters of Hawaiian and non-Hawaiian fruit flies, and use them to develop a phylogeny, using some related fly as an outgroup." SOURCE Such characters include the fact that Hawaiian fruit flies are larger and more brightly colored compared with the rest of the fruit flies on earth, and have even evolved a type of "song" that the mainland fruit flies never evolved. Obviously, some new morphologies and behaviors peculiar to certain species of fruit flies have evolved on the Hawaiian islands.

About 25% of all fruit fly species worldwide are found on those tiny Hawaiian islands. Ecologists believe Hawaii has so many kinds of fruit flies because the islands were isolated for millions of years and the environment varies greatly from beaches to tall mountains and lush green tropical valleys. When the first fruit flies arrived, they were able to evolve quickly because there were few competing species of flies. When people first arrived at the islands centuries ago they also found that there were thousands of unique species of birds, plants, and other life forms. While it is the fruit flies that are the best known, many other insect groups have diversified also. Hawaii boasts a carnivorous caterpillar, the happy face spider and a whole host of other fascinating endemic arthropods, many of which are brilliantly illustrated in the book, Hawaiian Insects and Their Kin by Francis Howarth and William Mull. Lush, and also in the book, Remains of a Rainbow; Rare Plants and Animals of Hawai'i by David Liittschwager and Susan Middleton. Published by National Geographic. See also Hawaiian Natural History, Ecology, and Evolution by Alan Ziegler. Published by University of Hawaii Press which traces the natural history of the Hawaiian Archipelago, such as island formation in a chain due to plate tectonics slowly moving over a lava spewing point in the ocean far below, as well as plant and animal evolution, flightless birds and their fossil sites.

Sadly, people have over time brought many new species with them to the islands, and the competition is driving most of the native species into extinction. Even the unique Hawaiian fruit flies are disappearing, replaced by flies from other parts of the world.
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Question #2: Consider dogs. We have St. Bernards, Chihuahuas, Great Danes, poodles, and hundreds of other breeds of dogs. But not only are those animals all mammals, they are all dogs.

Reply: Then what were the "dog-bears" of the Miocene? Dogs or bears?
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For further reading see this article by ex-creationist/geologist, Glen Morton, Living Fossils: There Are None

Eric Hoffer quotations -- on the similar psychological drives that animate adherents of mass movements be they Christian, Fascist or Communist

Below are some quotations from The True Believer.

Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves. p.22

[i.e., when faith in one's own autonomy is not allowed to develop, such a person may join a mass movement, either religious or political.--E.T.B.]

The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready is he to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.

A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business.

There is no doubt that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless.

One of the most potent attractions of a mass movement is its offering of a substitute for individual hope. This attraction is particularly effective in a society imbued with the idea of progress. p.23

In a modern society people can live without hope only when kept dazed and out of breath by incessant hustling. p.24

The embracing of a substitute will necessarily be passionate and extreme. We can have qualified confidence in ourselves, but the faith we have in our nation, religion, race or holy cause has to be extravagant and uncompromising. A substitute embraced in moderation cannot supplant and efface the self we want to forget. We cannot be sure that we have something worth living for unless we are ready to die for it.

The chief passion of the frustrated is 'to belong.' p.45

An effective mass movement cultivates the idea of sin. It depicts the autonomous self not only as barren and helpless but also as vile. To confess and repent is to slough off one's individual distinctness and separateness, and salvation is found in losing oneself in the holy oneness of the congregation. p.55-56

What ails the frustrated? It is the consciousness of an irremediably blemished self. Their chief desire is to escape that self-and it is this desire which manifests itself in a propensity for united action and self-sacrifice. p.58

Both united action and self-sacrifice require self-diminution. In order to become part of a compact whole, the individual has to forgo much. He has to give up privacy, individual judgment and often individual possessions. To school a person to united action is, therefore, to ready him for acts of self-denial. p.59

All mass movements generate in their adherents a readiness to die and a proclivity for united action; all of them.

The technique for fostering a readiness to fight and to die consists in separating the individual from his flesh-and-blood self -- in not allowing him to be his real self. This can be achieved by the thorough assimilation of the individual into a compact collective body-by endowing him with an imaginary self (make-believe); by implanting in him a deprecating attitude toward the present and riveting his interest on things that are not yet; by interposing a fact-proof screen between him and reality (doctrine); by preventing through the injection of passions, the establishment of a stable equilibrium between the individual and his self (fanaticism). p.59-60

To ripen a person for self-sacrifice he must be stripped of his individual identity and distinctness. The most drastic way to achieve this end is by the complete assimilation of the individual into a collective body. The fully assimilated individual does not see himself and others as human beings. p.60

He has no purpose, worth and destiny apart from his collective body; and as long as that body lives he cannot really die.

To be cast out from the group should be equivalent to being cut off from life. p.61

The readiness for self-sacrifice is contingent on an imperviousness to the realities of life. p.75

All mass movements strive, therefore, to interpose a fact-proof screen between the faithful and the realities of the world. They do this by claiming that the ultimate and absolute truth is already embodied in their doctrine and that there is no truth nor certitude outside it. The facts on which the true believer bases his conclusions must not be derived from his experience or observation but from holy writ.

It is the true believer's ability to 'shut his eyes and stop his ears' to facts that do not deserve to be either seen or heard which is the source of his unequaled fortitude and constancy. He cannot be frightened by danger nor disheartened by obstacle nor baffled by contradictions because he denies their existence. Strength of faith, as Bergson pointed out, manifests itself not in moving mountains but in not seeing mountains to move.

Thus the effectiveness of a doctrine should not be judged by its profundity, sublimity or the validity of the truths it embodies, but by how thoroughly it insulates the individual from his self and the world as it is. What Pascal said of an effective religion is true of any effective doctrine; It must be 'contrary to nature, to common sense and to pleasure.'

The effectiveness of a doctrine does not come from its meaning but from its certitude. No doctrine however profound and sublime will be effective unless it is presented as the embodiment of the one and only truth.

In order to be effective a doctrine must not be understood, but has to be believed in. We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand. A doctrine that is understood is shorn of its strength. p.76

If a doctrine is not unintelligible, it has to be vague; and if neither unintelligible nor vague, it has to be unverifiable. One has to get to heaven or the distant future to determine the truth of an effective doctrine. When some part of the doctrine is relatively simple, there is a tendency among the faithful to complicate and obscure it. Simple words are made pregnant with meaning and made to look like symbols in a secret message. There is thus an illiterate air about the most literate true believer. He seems to use words as if he were ignorant of their true meaning. Hence, too, his taste for quibbling, hair-splitting and scholastic tortuousness.

To be in possession of an absolute truth is to have a net of familiarity spread over the whole of eternity. There are no surprises and no unknowns. All question have already been answered, all decisions made, all eventualities foreseen. The true believer is without wonder and hesitation. 'Who knows Jesus knows the reason of all things.' The true doctrine is a master key to all the world's problems. With it the world can be taken apart and put together. p.77

An active mass movement rejects the present and centers its interest on the future. It is from this attitude that it derives its strength, for it can proceed recklessly with the present-with the health, wealth and lives of its followers. But it must act as if it had already read the book of the future to the last word. Its doctrine is proclaimed as a key to that book.

The urge to escape our real self is also the urge to escape the rational and the obvious. The refusal to see ourselves as we are develops a distaste for facts and cold logic.

They ask to be deceived. What Stresemann said of the Germans is true of the frustrated in general: '[They] pray not only for [their] daily bread, but also for [their] daily illusion'. The rule seems to be that those who find no difficulty in deceiving themselves are easily deceived by others. They are easily persuaded and led. p.78

A peculiar side of credulity is that it is often joined with a proneness to imposture. The association of believing and lying is not characteristic solely of children. They inability or unwillingness to see things as they are promotes both gullibility and charlatanism.

Only the individual who has comes to terms with his self have a dispassionate attitude toward the world. p.79

By kindling and fanning violent passions in the hearts of their followers, mass movements prevent the settling of an inner balance. They also employ direct means to effect an enduring estrangement from the self. They depict an autonomous, self-sufficient existence not only as barren and meaningless but also as depraved and evil. Man on his own is a helpless, miserable and sinful creature. His only salvation is in rejecting his self and in finding a new life in the bosom of a holy corporate body-be it a church, a nation or a party. In its turn, this vilification of the self keeps passion at a white heat.

He [the fanatic]embraces a cause not primarily because of its justness and holiness but because of his desperate need for something to hold on to. p.80

Self-righteousness is a loud din raised to drown the voice of guilt within us.

There is a guilty conscience behind every brazen word and act and behind every manifestation of self-righteousness. p.89

A sublime religion inevitably generates a strong feeling of guilt. There is an unavoidable contrast between loftiness of profession and imperfection of practice. And, as one would expect, the feeling of guilt promotes hate and brazenness. Thus it seems that the more sublime the faith the more virulent the hatred it breeds. p.90

Their clamor for a millennium is shot through with a hatred for all that exists, and a craving for the end of the world. p.91-92

Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. p.92

The act of self-denial seems to confer on us the right to be harsh and merciless toward others. The impression somehow prevails that the true believer, particularly the religious individual, is a humble person. The truth is that the surrendering and humbling of the self breed pride and arrogance. The true believer is apt to see himself as one of the chosen, the salt of the earth, a prince disguised in meekness, who is destined to inherit this earth and the kingdom of heaven, too. He who is not of his faith is evil; he who will not listen shall perish.

There is also this: when we renounce the self and become part of a compact whole, we not only renounce personal advantage but are also rid of personal responsibility. There is no telling to what extremes of cruelty and ruthlessness a man will go when he is freed from the fears, hesitations, doubts and the vague stirrings of decency that go with individual judgment. When we lose our individual independence in the corporateness of a mass movement, we find a new freedom-freedom to hate, bully, lie, torture, murder and betray without shame and remorse.

To cite Adolf Hitler, "Any violence which does not spring from a firm, spiritual base, will be wavering and uncertain. It lacks the stability which can only rest in a fanatical outlook." [Adolf Hitler. Mein Kampf (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1943), p 171.]

Thus hatred is not only a means to unification but also its product. Renan says that we have never, since the world began, heard of a merciful nation. Nor, one may add, have we heard of a merciful church or a merciful revolutionary party. p.93

Imitation is an essential unifying agent. The development of a close-knit group is inconceivable without a diffusion of uniformity. The one-mindedness and Gleichschaltung [meaning 'coordination,' 'making the same,' 'bringing into line,' is a Nazi term for the process by which the Nazi regime successively established a system of totalitarian control and tight coordination over all aspects of society. The historian Richard J. Evans translated the term as 'forcible-coordination' in his most recent work on Nazi Germany] prized by every mass movement are achieved as much by imitation as by obedience. Obedience itself consists as much in the imitation of an example as in the following of a precept.

The chief burden of the frustrated is the consciousness of a blemished, ineffectual self, and their chief desire is to slough off the unwanted self and begin a new life. They try to realize this desire either by finding a new identity or by blurring and camouflaging their individual distinctness; and both these ends are reached by imitation. p.94

The less satisfaction we derive from being ourselves, the greater is our desire to be like others.

The desire to belong is partly a desire to lose oneself.

Finally, the lack of self-confidence characteristic of the frustrated also stimulates their imitativeness. The more we mistrust our judgment and luck, the more we are ready to follow the example of others. p.95

Imitation is often a shortcut to a solution. We copy when we lack the inclination, the ability or the time to work out an independent solution. People in a hurry will imitate more readily than people at leisure. Hustling thus tends to produce uniformity. And in the deliberate fusing of individuals into a compact group, incessant action will play a considerable role. p.96

The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the single-handed defiance of the world.

Charlatanism of some degree is indispensable to effective leadership. p.107

The total surrender of a distinct self is a prerequisite for the attainment of both unity and self-sacrifice; and there is probably no more direct way of realizing this surrender than by inculcating and extolling the habit of blind obedience.

All mass movements rank obedience with the highest of virtues and put it on a level with faith: 'union of minds requires not only a perfect accord in the one Faith, but complete submission and obedience of will to the Church and the Roman Pontiff as to God Himself'. [Leo XIII, Sepientiae Christianae. According to Luther, "Disobedience is a greater sin than murder, unchastity, theft and dishonest.." Quoted by Jerome Frank, Fate and Freedom (New York: Simon and Schuster, Inc., 1945), p. 281] Obedience is not only the first law of God, but also the first tenet of a revolutionary party and of fervent nationalism. p.108

Self-contempt, however vague, sharpens our eyes for the imperfections of others. We usually strive to reveal in others the blemishes we hide in ourselves.

Strict orthodoxy is as much the result of mutual suspicion as of ardent faith. p.114

FOR FURTHER ERIC HOFFER GEMS, click here and here and here

Crisis After Crisis Among Evangelicals Concerning Biblical Authority

[Click on the image to view it full size, you won't be disappointed, it's from the volcano in Iceland that erupted.]

Christians are tireless debunkers of each others' interpretations of the Bible (perhaps because many of them still believe the stakes are infinitely high, and they fear one unorthodox interpretation can lead to another down a slippery slope toward damnation). Thanks to the internet, questions of biblical interpretation flow instantly and without ceasing. Everyone from aged scholars to eager young seminarians and born again newbies are commenting on blogs, engaging in online forums and Facebook discussions, commenting on books at amazon.com, tweeting, contributing to carnivals like the Biblical Studies Carnival, and newsgroups like CrossTalk2, or emailing each other. Books and articles on biblical studies have never been easier to seek and obtain (at the very least one can read abstracts and portions of books online and request the item at your local library via document delivery).

Having said that, I don't think I need to enumerate the controversies between Christians (but click here for a sampling). Instead I am sharing information about topics that biblical scholars (not just "Evangelical Christian" biblical scholars) are researching and discussing today per the latest edition of Old Testament Abstracts, a tri-annual publication that sums up the contents of current articles and books. (There is also a sister publication called New Testament Abstracts.)

Today's Topics Add Fuel to Tomorrow's Flames

DANIEL VAINSTUB, "Human Sacrifices in Canaan and Israel," Beer-sheva 19 (2010), 117-204 (in Hebrew).
"The existence of infant sacrifices in biblical times both in the Canaanite culture and in Israel has been a matter of intense controversy in the scholarship of the last eight decades. Paradoxically, the more relevant data emerges, the wider the scholarly discensus grows. Some hold that the practice never existed among the Canaanites or the Israelites, while others aver that it was a deeply rooted practice both in the Canaanite homeland and the Punic cities of the West. Vainstub's comprehensive, interdisciplinary study of the issue includes an up-to-date survey of the divergent opinions concerning it and offers new insights based on an array of evidence, epigraphic, linguistic, artistic, and literary. The study highlights the significant degree of parallelism among the various sources, and comes to the conclusion that infant sacrifices to Baal by parents were indeed a strongly rooted custom in Bronze and Iron Age Canaan. The practices was taken over by the Israelites, and persisted until its abolition by Josiah. Later on, the practice was limited to the Phoenician coastal area until it was completely eradicated by the Persians there during the 5th century. B.C. Such sacrifices continued in the Phoenician colonies in the West for another 400 years."

HERVE TREMBLAY, O.P., "Yahve contre Baal?" ScEs 61 (2009)
"Tremblay pulls together conclusions from different fields of research. If Baal is the god of Canaan, Yhwh was not originally from there and was 'imported' from the South. The people of Israel did not come from outside the country but emerged out of inner division within Canaanite society. In a process of ethnic and religious distinction that lasted several centuries, Yhwh was adopted as the national God by the Israelites."

MARTIN LEURENBERGER, "Jhwhs Herkunft aus dem Suden. . ." ZAW 122 (2010)
"The 'Berlin thesis' of Kockert and Pfeiffer has challenged the regnant hypothesis of the southern origin of Yhwh. Leurenberger's article defends the southern origin hypothesis via a more comprehensive evaluation of the relevant archaeological data and biblical texts. The results of his investigation of these two bodies of data correlate with each other, and thereby substantiate the emergence of the solitary weather-god Yhwh in the Late Bronze Age Araba."

DOUGLAS S. EARL's writings figured prominently in v.34 (2011) Old Testament Abstracts.
Earl's book, The Joshua Delusion was summarized in which Earl claims [the book of] Joshua is a symbolic rather than historical narrative. Three of his articles were also summarized:

DOUGLAS S. EARL, "'Minimalism' and Old Testament Theological Hermeneutics," JTI 4 (2010)
"In recent OT scholarship there is a growing tendency to understand the portrayal of Israel in the OT as bearing little relation to the ancient Israel of history--the so-called minimalist stance. In particular, the existence of a united monarchy under David is now widely questioned and often actually denied. Readers of the OT with theological concerns often appears to either reject or disengage from these trends and their implications for the study of the OT. But might theological interpreters not rather fruitfully engage with minimalist readings of the OT? Taking John Van Seter's 2009 The Biblical Saga of King David as a test case of a radically revisionist reading of the life of David, EARL explores the implications of a reading of this sort for a hermeneutical and theological perspective."

DOUGLAS S. EARL, "The Christian Significance of Deuteronomy 7," JTI 3 (2009)
"Earl says that Deuteronomy, chapter 7 is perhaps the primary articulation of the herem concept in the OT, this commanding the utter annihilation of the local inhabitants of the promised land that Israel is about to enter, and is, as such, a deeply problematic text. . . Earl raises the question of the contemporary Christian significance of Deut. 7, exploring the hermeneutical issues the passage generates for a Christian reading of the OT."

DOUGLAS S. EARL, "Toward a Christian Hermeneutic of Old Testament Narrative: Why Genesis 34 Fails to Find Christian Significance," CBQ 73 (2011)
"Interpreters have come to conflicting positive and negative assessments of the actions of the brothers Simeon and Levi verses the actions of their father Jacob in the story of the rape of Dinah, Genesis 34. . . Earl discusses different scholarly readings of the text, only to find Sternberg on track in his reading . . . that spotlights the underlying ideaology that both structures and is reinforced by the text, viz., the importance of endogamy [=the practice of marrying or requiring to marry within one’s own ethnic, religious, or social group] in Israel. One is either an Israelite (like Dinah) or one is not (like Shechem), and there is no chance of mediation or transformation (in this narrative even via circumcision) between the two categories. Thus, the narrative evokes the disastrous consequences of exogamy and mingling. For Christianity, which is based on shared faith, not genealogy, mediation and transformation are essential to the construction of identity. Hence, Genesis 34 is problematical for Christianity, both theologically and ethically, at its structural and narrative levels."

GRZEGORZ SZAMOCKI, "Polityczne i spolecezno-religijne . . . "
"Szamocki notes the difficulty of aligning the particulars of the Book of Joshua with the historical truth concerning the proto-Israelites. Historical-critical research regarding selected texts of the book allows one to conclude that these rec'd their basic shape in the postexilic period. In particular, the analogies between the history of the proto-Israelites as described in the book and the experiences of the Israelites involved in the restoration of social and religious life in the province of Yehud suggest that the texts in question have a parenetical and catechetical character: i.e., they are intended to teach the postexilic community about its new chance for reordering its life now that it is back in the land via a resolute commitment to the Torah and faith in God's guidance of them."

VOLKER WAGNER, "Profanitat und Sakralisierung. . ." VT 60 (2010).
"Wagner argues that male circumcision was not widely practiced in Israel and did not possess any religious or specific cultic significance until after the Exile. A theologization and sacralization of the practice are only attested in very late texts of the OT, i.e., Gen 34:15-17; Lev 12:3; Josh 5:2-7; 9:24-25. Against this background, W. associates the practice of circumcision to the end of the monarchy and the need for greater cultic distinctiveness during the Exile in Babylon (whose population did not circumcise). This development led to a broad dissemination of the practice of circumcision in Judaism."

LUKASZ NIESIOROWSKI-SPANO, "Origin Myths and Holy Places in the Old Testament: A Study of Aetiological Narratives [aetiology = "the story or stories told about how a place received its name](International Seminar, 2011)
"NIESIOROWSKI-SPANO's monograph examines the aetiologies of a series of extra-Jerusalem cultic sites as related in the Books of Genesis, Joshua, and Judges, viz., Beersheba, Bethel, Dan, Hebron (and Mamre), Ophrah, Shechem and Gilgal, plus the Transjordanian locales Galeed, Mahanaim and Penuel. Basing on the evidence of the relevant biblical texts, archaeological discoveries, and such extra-biblical documents as Jubilees, Josephus, and Pseudo-Philo, N.-S. endeavors to trace the tradition-history of the aetiologies in question and their final literary fixation, as well as the nature of the cult (and the deity worshiped) at the given site. On this basis he concludes that the materials studied by him, while they do--in some cases at least--draw on older materials, received their final redaction in the Hasmonean period (160-110 B.C.), the territorial realities and aspirations of which they reflect. The fact that the Jerusalem priests responsible for these materials included such accounts accrediting the sacral character of an array of extra-Jerusalem sites would indicate, according to N.-S., that Jerusalem was not, in fact, regarded by them as the sole legitimate place of worship--Jerusalem attained that status in Judaism only after the catastrophe of 70 A.D."

Next time . . . some excerpts from New Testament Abstracts!

Has Michael R. Licona considered the raising of many saints story in Matthew in light of questions of Markan priority? (hat tip: Michael Patton, J. P. Holding)

Has Michael R. Licona considered the raising of many saints story in Matthew in light of questions of Markan priority? (hat tip: Michael Patton, J. P. Holding)

Which Gospel was written first, Mark or Matthew? Markan priority is currently more widely accepted and has grown in acceptance even among members of the Evangelical Theological Society--see Three Views on the Origins of the Synoptic Gospels.

The story of the raising of many saints (and other stories in Matthew compared with Mark) appear to make more sense if Markan priority is true rather than Matthean priority.

Mark and Matthew's stories about Jesus' execution right up to the message delivered at the empty tomb are nearly identical. They both depict the same actions and messages of Jesus on the cross, and they both share the same message delivered at the empty tomb. None of the other Gospels share as much as Mark and Matthew do in the above sections and elsewhere. But for all that they share, Matthew's tale contains some spectacular bits that Mark lacks. Neither are those spectacular bits found in any other Gospel--they include the earthquake at Jesus' death and the raising of many saints who enter the holy city and show themselves to many, guards at Jesus' tomb, an earthquake at Jesus' tomb, an angel that descends from heaven and sits on top of the rock outside the tomb, and Jewish bribery of the guards. Mark contains none of that, no first earthquake that opens many tombs, no resurrected saints, no guards at Jesus' tomb, no second earthquake, no angel descending from heaven and sitting on top of the rock outside the tomb, no Jewish bribery of the guards. (Mark simply says Jesus' tomb was empty and a young man was found inside it.) Neither do the other Gospels mention those spectacular bits in Matthew that Mark lacks. In fact all the Gospels lack mention of a single earthquake, let alone two of them. On the other hand, as I already stated, Jesus' last words and actions, and the message delivered at the empty tomb ("He has gone before you to Galilee, there you will see him") are nearly identical in both Mark and Matthew. So it appears Matthew added a lot to a prior Markan story, many of the added bits being of a spectacular nature and corroborated neither by Mark nor by other Gospel writers.

One also can't help but notice that following Matthew's story of the earthquake that cracks open tombs followed by the raising of many saints, Matthew says:

When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified, and exclaimed, Surely he was the Son of God! (NIV)

But Mark says:

And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, heard his cry and saw how he died, he said, Surely this man was the Son of God! (NIV)

So Matthew depicts the centurion along with those with him all "seeing" the "earthquake and all that had happened," and "they were terrified." But Mark depicts only the centurion standing "there in front of Jesus," reacting to "his cry" and seeing "how he died."

So it looks like Matthew inserted a lot of spectacular bits into his version of the Markan story, even altering what the centurion was looking at when he exclaimed Jesus to be "the Son of God." Indeed, Matthew seems to have the centurion "and those with him" exclaiming in unison, "Surely he was the Son of God."

Such additions and edits in Matthew point toward Mark being a more likely primary source.

For further evidence of the priority of Mark one could compare the type and number of miracle tales found in both Mark and Matthew. See this fascinating discussion by a biblioblogger.

Christopher Hitchens -- quotations to remember him by, including his view of C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity

Hitchen's book tour for God is Not Great took a few miraculous turns, including receiving a P.R. boost from Jerry Falwell's demise, and ended with a chance encounter with the Archbishop of Canterbury, and discovering to everyone's surprise, support for Hitchen's attack on religion:

It's been weeks on the road, and after a grueling swing through Canada I am finally home. I tell the wife and daughter that's it: no more god talk for a bit—let's get lunch at the fashionable Café Milano, in Georgetown (Washington, D.C.). Signor Franco leads us to a nice table outside and I sit down—right next to the Archbishop of Canterbury. O.K., then, this must have been meant to happen. I lean over. "My Lord Archbishop? It's Christopher Hitchens." "Good gracious," he responds, gesturing at his guest—"we were just discussing your book." The archbishop's church is about to undergo a schism. More than 10 conservative congregations in Virginia have seceded, along with some African bishops, to protest the ordination of a gay bishop in New England. I ask him how it's going. "Well"—he lowers his voice—"I'm rather trying to keep my head down."

Well, why, in that case, I want to reply, did you seek a job that supposedly involves moral leadership? But I let it go. What do I care what some Bronze Age text says about homosexuality? And there's something hopelessly innocent about the archbishop: he looks much more like a sheep than a shepherd. What can one say in any case about a religion that describes its adherents as a flock?

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, my book is selling particularly well in the Bible Belt, on a "know thine enemy" basis. And I get encouraging letters from atheists in foxholes in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as from people who feel that they are at last emerging from some kind of closet. One day a decent candidate for high office will say that he is not a person of faith, and the sky will not fall.

Everywhere I speak, I find that the faithful go to church for a mixture of reasons, from social to charitable to ethnic, and take their beliefs à la carte or cafeteria-style, choosing the bits they like and discarding the rest. The Christianity Today Web site, which has hosted me in an online debate with its champion Douglas Wilson for the past two months, writes to say that Mr. Wilson wants to send me a wheel of Washington State cheese, as a token of appreciation. A nice surprise. Blessed are the cheese-makers.

God Bless Me It's a Bestseller!
__________________

Hitchens argues that Genesis is the mundane work of ignorant humans:

Man is given "dominion" over all beasts, fowl and fish. But no dinosaurs or plesiosaurs or pterodactyls are specified, because the authors did not know of their existence, let alone of their supposedly special and immediate creation. Nor are any marsupials mentioned, because Australia—the next candidate after Mesoamerica for a new "Eden"—was not on any known map. Most important, in Genesis man is not awarded dominion over germs and bacteria because the existence of these necessary yet dangerous fellow creatures was not known or understood. And if it had been known or understood, it would at once have become apparent that these forms of life had "dominion" over us, and would continue to enjoy it uncontested until the priests had been elbowed aside and medical research at last given an opportunity.

God is Not Great
___________________

Religion of every kind involves the promise that the misery and futility of existence can be overcome or even transfigured. One might suppose that the possession of such a magnificent formula, combined with the tremendous assurance of a benevolent God, would make a person happy. But such appears not to be the case: unease and insecurity and rage seem to keep up with blissful certainty, and even to outpace it.

Christopher Hitchens--The Atlantic, April 2003
____________________

Hitchens on Mere Christianity

...On C. S. Lewis's classic nonfiction best seller, Mere Christianity; taken a look at it lately? Try this:

First, there is what is called the materialist view. People who take that view think that matter aned space just happen to exist, and always have existed, nobody knows why; and that the matter, behaving in certain fixed ways, has just happened, by a sort of fluke, to produce creatures like ourselves who are able to think. By one chance in a thousand something hit our sun and made it produce the planets; and by another thousandth chance the chemicals necessary for life, and the right temperature, occurred on one of these planets, and so some of the matter on this carth came alive; and then, by a very long series of chances, the living creatures developed into things like us.

On this evidence - which sounds like a semiliterate peasant stammering to repeat what he'd heard of a very faint radio broadcast on Darwin or Albert Einsten - one would have to conclude that the process did not end up by producing creatures who were able to think, or at any rate, not always. What if, in reply, one were to be so vulgar as to offer a parody of Christian belief that was comparably low and uninstructed? It might read like this:

Christianity is a fighting religion. It thinks God made the world--that space and time, heat and cold, and all the colours and tastes, and all the animals and vegetables, are things that God 'made up out of His head' as a man makes up a story. But it also thinks that a great many things have gone wrong with the world that God made and that God insists, and insists very loudly, on putting them right again.

I would apologize for this pathetic caricature of faith-based life, if I had in fact written it. But it is Lewis' own best shot, and there is plenty more where that came from. He could knock out this stuff without even bothering to switch on what there was of his brain.

...Lewis' laughable and sinister book is a great joy and comfort to all those who have noticed the paper-thin morality and the correspondingly fanatical assertions of the religious. It should be a project of all skeptics and humanists and heretics to get it into the hands of as many readers as possible, most especially the young and impressionable. We, and not the "faithful" should be reprinting it and reaping the royalties.

____________________

Hitchens on the Closing Years of Thomas Paine (the man who helped inspired the American Revolution with his book, Commonsense, and who inspired colonial soldiers with the line, "These are the times that try men's souls," and also a deist and author of a book that questioned the truth of the Bible, The Age of Reason that became a bigger bestseller, percentage-wise, than Hitchen's own book, God is Not Great)

Paine's closing years, pitiful as they were, contained one triumph. He might have become a scarecrow-like figure. He might have been forced to subsist on the charity of friends. He might have been denied the right to vote by a bullying official, when presenting himself at the polling station, on the grounds that the author of Common Sense was not a true American. But as the buzzards began to circle, he rallied one more time. It was widely believed by the devout of those days that unbelievers would scream for a priest when their own death-beds loomed. Why this was thought to be valuable propaganda it is impossible to say. Surely the sobbing of a human creature in extremis is testimony not worth having, as well as testimony extracted by the most contemptible means? Boswell had been to visit David Hume under these conditions, because he had been reluctant to believe that the stoicism of the old philosopher would hold up, and as a result we have one excellent account of the refusal of the intelligence to yield to such moral blackmail. Our other account comes from those who attended Paine. Dying in ulcerated agony, he was imposed upon by two Presbyterian ministers who pushed past his housekeeper and urged him to avoid damnation by accepting Jesus Christ. "Let me have none of your Popish stuff," Paine responded. "Get away with you, good morning, good morning." The same demand was made of him as his eyes were closing. "Do you wish to believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God?" He answered quite distinctly: "I have no wish to believe on that subject." Thus he expired with his reason, and his rights, both still staunchly defended until the very last.

Thomas Paine's Rights of Man: A Biography

The Beliefs of Two Christians Compared: C. S. Lewis and Josh McDowell

C. S. Lewis needs no introduction.

Josh McDowell is the author of Evidence That Demands a Verdict and other Evangelical Christian works of apologetics.

Of all the "converted skeptics" whom McDowell mentioned in the first ed. of Evidence That Demands a Verdict none has had as wide and enduring an influence as C. S. Lewis. His "Christian novels" and works of "Christian apologetics" are sold in both mainstream and Christian bookstores, and make McDowell’s books and efforts pale in comparison. Many, including McDowell, have utilized Lewis’ fame to their own advantage by citing him as a Christian authority in their own works.

However, Lewis never systematically examined each Biblical book and discussed what he believed about it and why. When he spoke on theological matters, he always qualified himself as an amateur: "I have no claim to speak as an expert in any of the studies involved, and merely put forward the reflections which have arisen in my own mind and have seemed to me (perhaps wrongly) to be helpful. They are all submitted to the correction of wiser heads."[1]

Some interesting facts about C. S. Lewis that McDowell might not like his readers to know, include the following:

1) Lewis admitted the Bible "may no doubt contain errors," and, he doubted, denied, or avoided discussing, many biblical miracles (though he stood by most if not all of the miracles of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels).[2]

2) Lewis denied the "inspiration" of Biblical authors whenever they attributed to "God" blatantly immoral actions and commands (such as linking "God" to the "treacheries of Joshua" or to "striking dead" a married Christian couple for withholding some of their money from the church in Acts). Lewis wrote, "The ultimate question is whether the doctrine of the goodness of God or that of the inerrancy of Scripture is to prevail when they conflict. I think the doctrine of the goodness of God is the more certain of the two."[3] "The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him [i.e., God]. The conclusion I dread is not ‘So there’s no God after all,’ but, ‘So, this is what God is really like. Deceive yourself no longer.’"[4]

3) Lewis acknowledged that Jesus made an error when Jesus predicted that the Son of Man would come in final judgment within a "generation" of Jesus’ day, or, "before those standing [around Jesus after his transfiguration] had all died."[5]

4) Lewis focused on Jesus’ death as "exemplary," the perfect example of "dying to self" that we all should follow. He did not focus on it as a necessary price to pay to appease God’s wrath toward all mankind.[6]

5) Lewis had no theological difficulty accepting that Genesis may have been "derived from earlier Semitic stories which were Pagan and mythical,"[7] and he found more truth in the story of the "Garden of Eden" when he regarded it as a myth than when he regarded it as history.[8]

6) Lewis accepted the theory of the biological evolution of the human form from earlier animal species.[9]

7) Lewis speculated that at least some animals might be granted eternal life with human beings in heaven.[10]

8) Lewis believed in the miraculously "real" presence of Christ in the communion wafer.[11]

9) Lewis held a tolerant attitude toward things like beer, tobacco and the cinema, and disagreed with those who found such things "bad in themselves."[12]

10) Lewis believed in purgatory, prayers for the dead, and prayers to saints.[13]

11) Lewis believed that even the most peculiar religions contained "at least some hint of the truth." "There are people in other religions who...belong to Christ without knowing it." "We do not know that only those who know Him can be saved through Him." In fact, in Lewis’ fairy tale, The Last Battle, prince Emeth "hated" the name of "Aslan [the Christ-figure]," and worshiped the false god, "Tash," but prince Emeth was loved and accepted by Aslan after Emeth died.[14] Lewis even had a character in his novel, The Great Divorce, say, "St. Paul talked as if all men would be saved."[15] Moreover, Lewis’ central inspiration in the field of Christian apologetics was G. K. Chesterton. And the man whom Lewis called "my spiritual mentor" was George MacDonald. Both men agreed on the theological possibility (if not inevitability) of all mankind being saved.[16]

C. S. Lewis, McDowell, and Tolerance

In contrast to Lewis’ views, above note what Josh McDowell preached at a Youth for Christ rally in 1994. McDowell got up in front of thousands of young people and denounced tolerance itself: "Tolerance is the worst roar of all, including tolerance for homosexuals, feminists, and religions that don’t follow Christ." (If only C. S. Lewis were alive to tell McDowell, "I dare say, there are people in every religion who are ‘following Christ’ more closely than you at this moment, Mr. McDowell.") McDowell reiterated in a magazine article published in 1997 that we are teaching our kids to focus on tolerance too much. He called it a "drastic change," "one of the greatest shifts in history," adding, "I am convinced we have only a short time to counter this new doctrine of tolerance before it will be too late - for us and our children."[17] McDowell even had a novel published in 1997 titled, Vote of Intolerance, in which the hero "takes a hard stand against crime, drugs, homosexuality, abortion, euthanasia" (and presumably against all beliefs and convictions other than his own).

McDowell’s statements remind me of similar ones reported by a friend who attended a famed retreat/camp for young Christians called "Scroon Lake" in New York State. The retreat was tied in with Jerry Falwell’s ministries and Campus Crusade for Christ (who sponsor Josh McDowell Ministries), and other Christian organizations. According to my friend, "On the first day, a speaker pushed Oliver North’s book and sang the glories of the Gulf War. Most of the weekend was in the hands of some anti-evolutionists from the Institute for Creation Research in California; one of them, a leading member in the organization with which Josh McDowell is closely associated, said how terrible a sin it was that Charles Darwin was buried in Westminster Abbey. He added that we could all take comfort in the fact that we could, anytime we pleased, go there and trample and spit on his grave. Another speaker went on about the evils of secular education, the evils of tolerance for homosexuals, etc. All of this provoked constant cheers and ‘Amen’s’ from the youthful audience. I felt like I was at a Hitler Youth Rally! The weekend ended with someone quoting Jerry Falwell himself: ‘If you’re not a born again Christian, you’re a failure as a human being.’ If only this sort of ‘Christianity’ were an aberration. Unfortunately, it’s not."[18]

Speaking of the difficulty that many fundamentalists and hard-line evangelicals have in tolerating the notion of tolerance, about ten years ago in Greenville, South Carolina (where I live), the County Council (backed by "strong Christian principles") passed an "Anti-gay resolution." The council did not advocate running gays out of town, but they felt they had to let homosexuals know that they were to blame for destroying America. In response to the Council’s "Anti-gay resolution," homosexuals organized a gay pride march to take place in Greenville. Some stores on Greenville’s main street hung signs in their windows supporting the march. But on the day of the march those shop owners discovered that someone had jammed toothpicks into their door locks so that they could not open. And two weeks after the gay pride march a local minister organized a "pro-family rally" and told people to boycott all restaurants in downtown Greenville because "waiters with AIDS" were transmitting the disease by "spitting on people’s food." A few weeks later a man who said he was "sent by God to kill homosexuals" spewed obscenities and threats at students in a high school career center in Greenville county (it took numerous police officers to subdue him).[19] Then the Southern Baptists (the majority religion in the South, including Greenville county), voted to boycott Disney because they treat their gay employees as if they were human beings (i.e., Disney pays benefits to the gay companions of their employees).

More recently, a "Christian" on the South Carolina state board of education proposed that the Ten Commandments be displayed in public schools throughout the state. When it was pointed out to him that people of other religions might be offended if their holy sayings were not also displayed, he replied, "Screw the Buddhists and kill the Moslems" (He apparently forgot the commandment "Thou shalt not kill.") Which brings to mind an incident from a few years ago when a man on a Delta airliner in the skies above Greenville, South Carolina, told a flight attendant that he would "have to kill everyone who was not a born-again Christian." Luckily, the man was unable to force the cockpit door open and attack the pilots or damage the controls.[20])
Returning to McDowell’s magazine article on "Tolerance and Truth," in it he listed "homosexuality, pornography, and abortion" as the evils taking refuge behind the "new doctrine of tolerance." But compare McDowell’s list of evils with Jesus’. Jesus did not crow on about the dangers of "homosexuality." Though it certainly existed in his day, the Gospels never have Jesus addressing the subject even once. And he did not rail against "pornography," though there were sexually explicit statues, pottery, and imagery throughout the Roman Empire. What Jesus railed against was each person’s lack of control of their own wandering eyes, not against the objects they might spy. Neither did he cry out against "abortion" though the Greeks and Romans not only employed abortifacients, but also practiced infanticide on unwanted children. Jesus had different priorities and told people that instead of worrying about those who can kill the body, each person should "fear Him who can cast both body and soul into hell." He urged each person to look into their own hearts, and not to judge the secret motives and desires of others. Nor would "compulsory public prayers" have made much sense to Jesus, who taught, "When you pray, do not do it loudly in the streets [or over satellite TV?] like the hypocrites, but go into your closet to pray in secret." Jesus was obviously not obsessed with the same issues as McDowell (or today’s Religious Right). Instead, Jesus preached things like, "Woe to the rich,[21] they already have their reward;" and, "Woe to the Pharisees" (self-righteous religious leaders who only see goodness in their own narrow causes and evil everywhere else). So if McDowell wishes to warn people of a "new doctrine of tolerance," he should begin by warning Christians of their "new doctrine of tolerance" toward the wealthy and self-righteous, against which Jesus preached most loudly.

I would say that McDowell has disguised (even from himself) the motive behind his "dangers of tolerance" speeches. He is not "afraid" of a "new doctrine of tolerance." He just wants intolerance reinstated to its age-old status of a moral and religious obligation. (Just like the Pharisees did.)

McDowell also apparently suffers from selective amnesia regarding the "dangers of intolerance." C. S. Lewis was far more aware of such dangers and of the bloody history of Christians who persecuted pagans, Jews, Moslems, fellow Christians, and more. Lewis wrote in a letter to a friend, "Even more disturbing as you say, is the ghastly record of Christian persecution. It had begun in Our Lord’s time - ‘Ye know not what spirit ye are of’ (John of all people!)[22] I think we must fully face the fact that when Christianity does not make a man very much better, it makes him very much worse...Conversion may make of one who was, if no better, no worse than an animal, something like a devil."[23]

McDowell should consider whether he might be on the way down that slippery slope toward "devil-dom" that Lewis warned about, or whether he might be greasing up that slope for some of his Christian listeners to slide down. He might also benefit by reading Dr. F. Forrester Church’s book, The Seven Deadly Virtues.

NOTES


[1] Michael J. Christensen, C. S. Lewis on Scripture: His Thoughts on the Nature of Biblical Inspiration, The Role of Revelation and the Question of Inerrancy (Waco, Texas: Word Books, 1979), p. 22.

[2] A. J. Mattill, Jr., "Some Reflections on C. S. Lewis’ `Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism,’" The Journal of Faith and Thought, Spring, 1985, pp. 22-33. See also, Christensen, pp. 18-19, & Appendix A. And, W. H. Lewis, ed., The Letters of C. S. Lewis, (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1966), pp. 286-287. And, John Beversluis, C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1985).

[3] C. S. Lewis letter dated July 3, 1963 to John Beversluis. Quoted in full in Beversluis, pp. 156f.

[4] C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed (New York: Seabury Press, 1963), pp. 9-10.

[5] C. S. Lewis, "The World’s Last Night," The World’s Last Night And Other Essays (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, n.d.), pp. 98-99. See also, A. J. Mattill, Jr., "Some Reflections on C. S. Lewis’ `Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism,’" The Journal of Faith and Thought, Spring, 1985, pp. 22-33.

[6] Christensen, pp. 33-34.

[7] C. S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms (London: Collins, Fontana Books, 1958), p. 93.

[8] Christensen, pp. 34-35.

[9] Ibid., pp. 31-32.

[10] Ibid., pp. 32-33.

[11] Ibid., p. 30.

[12] Ibid., p. 25.

[13] Ibid., pp. 29-30. See also W. H. Lewis, p. 300.

[14] Christensen, pp. 25-30.

[15] When Lewis wrote, "St. Paul talked as if all men would be saved," he was undoubtedly referring to verses such as, "All Israel will be saved...[for] they [the Jews] are beloved [by God] for the sake of the fathers: for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable...For God has shut up all in disobedience that He might show mercy to all." [Romans 11:26,28,29,32] "O’ the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past tracing out...For of him, and through him, and unto him, are all things." [Romans 11:33,36] "For just as all people die because of their union with Adam, in the same way all will be raised to life because of their union with Christ." [1 Corinthians 15:22] "God was pleased...through him [Jesus] to reconcile to himself all things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross." [Colossians 1:19-20] What, in terms of Pauline texts elsewhere, i.e., "We fight not against flesh and blood but against spiritual wickedness in heavenly places," could "things in heaven" needing to be "reconciled," refer to, except the rebellious angels including Satan, "prince of the power of the air!" Universalistic sentiments in the Bible can also be found in Lamentations 3:22,31-33 and Psalm 103:8-10,14 which agree that "the Lord will not reject forever," "Nor will He keep his anger forever." 1 Peter 3:19-20 even depicts Jesus "preaching" to "the spirits in prison who were disobedient [in Noah’s day]."

For a thorough discussion of the universalistic side of the Bible, I heartily endorse a slim paperback, titled, Salvation and Damnation by William S. Dalton (Butler, Wis.: Clergy Book Service, 1977). Also see Jan Bonda, The One Purpose of God: An Answer to the Doctrine of Eternal Punishment, in which he scrutinizes church traditions and Scripture - especially Paul’s letter to the Romans - and concludes that neither Paul nor the prophets to whom he appeals show any trace of supporting the doctrine of eternal damnation. On the contrary, they tell us that God wants to save all people, and that He will not rest until that goal has been achieved. I am sure that C. S. Lewis would have been pleased to suggest books like those to Josh McDowell if Lewis had lived long enough to meet Josh.

[16] Babinski, pp. 213 & 218.

[17] Josh McDowell, "Tolerance and Truth," Moody, Vol. 97, no. 4, March/April 1997, pp. 34 & 36.

[18] Bruce Wildish, e-mail message sent to Edward Babinski, dated Wednesday, August 24, 1994.

[19] "School Intruder Arrested," Greenville News (Friday, May 23, 1997, p. 1D).

[20] "Man Tries To Storm Cockpit of Airliner," Greenville News (p. 1A, date of paper was cropped off my copy of the article, but definitely between 1986 and 1994).

[21] Speaking of Jesus’ frequent denunciations of the rich that McDowell and other hard-line evangelicals frequently ignore, Jesus would probably be more appalled by the gargantuan swindles perpetrated both in this country and abroad as reported in the Wall Street Journal, rather than by local street criminals (as shown on the television show, Cops) the latter of whom he would have far more compassion for. For those who disagree, I suggest reading the eye opening article in The Nation, April 7, 1997, "A Year in Corporate Crime."

[22] In the "Gospel of John," Jesus’ enemies are depicted more than sixty times as simply, "The Jews." Jesus’ concern for Israel as seen in the Gospel of Matthew (10:5-6 & 15:24) is absent from the Jesus who appears in the Gospel of John (5:45-47 & 8:31-47). The Gospel John, having been written after Matthew, Mark and Luke, probably reflects the growing breakdown of relations between the early Christian church and the Jewish synagog.

[23] C. S. Lewis in a letter to Bede Griffiths, dated Dec. 20, 1961, not long before Lewis’ death, The Letters of C. S. Lewis, ed., W. H. Lewis, (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1966), p. 301.

POSTSCRIPT

Josh McDowell spoke out on July 15th, 2011, during the Unshakable Truth, Relevant Faith event at the Billy Graham Training Center. There he identified what he claims as being the greatest threat to Christians...the internet. Why? Because it gives those who are skeptical "almost equal access to your kids as your youth pastor and you have... whether you like it or not." The internet "has leveled the playing field [giving equal access to skeptics]."