The problem of polygamy: how to refurbish the Bible’s good reputation?

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Polygamy in the Bible embarrasses today’s Christian apologist. If it’s wrong today, how could it have been moral in Old Testament times? Or is it not wrong today?

The problem with polygamy

A recent article (“Polygamy in the Bible is Not Prescriptive”) from Robby Lashua of Stand to Reason agrees:

The ugly truth is that many of the heroes in the Old Testament were polygamists. Jacob had two wives and Esau had three. King David, the man after God’s own heart, had at least eight wives. Solomon, not to be outdone, had a staggering seven hundred wives.

Right from the beginning, the moral evaluation of various pieces of the argument are made clear. (1) Polygamy is “ugly,” bad, embarrassing. And (2) the Bible makes plain that many Old Testament heroes were polygamists, and that’s awkward. Lashua’s goal is soon clear: we must find a way to acknowledge polygamy in the Bible while salvaging the moral positions of God and the Bible. The reputations of the patriarchs are expendable, and they can be thrown under the bus as necessary.

Our goal is to understand how polygamy is really presented in the Bible. We’ll follow along with Lashua’s argument, taking it as a representative Christian response to polygamy. Along the way, we’ll see how not to make a defense of the Bible.

There’s no more disgrace in “Patriarch X had two wives” than in “Patriarch Y had a hundred sheep.”

Prescriptive, proscriptive, or descriptive?

How is polygamy treated in the Bible? Is it good, bad, or just a trait of society with no more moral value than where the utensils go on a dining table?

Lashua gives a Bible example.

The first mention of polygamy in Scripture says, “Lamech took to himself two wives” (Gen. 4:19). We are then told that Lamech, a descendant of Cain, boasted to his wives about murdering a boy (Gen. 4:23). Lamech was a bad man, and polygamy is something he practiced.

Huh? I agree that murdering someone is morally wrong, but what’s that got to do with polygamy? Where is the cause and effect in “Lamech was a bad man, and polygamy is something he practiced”? Was Lamech bad because he practiced polygamy? The Bible doesn’t say this, and Lashua has done nothing to make this connection.

His article suggests we get our terms straight, and finally there’s something to agree on.

  • A prescriptive norm is something we should do. It might be a law, like paying taxes. Or maybe just shared wisdom, like the importance of brushing your teeth regularly.
  • A proscriptive norm is the opposite—it’s something we shouldn’t do. For example, drinking and driving is proscribed.
  • Finally, a custom can simply be described.

In the Bible, God’s commandments are prescriptive if they’re demands to do something (animal sacrifice, for example). Or commandments can be proscriptive when they prohibit or condemn something (the rules in Leviticus about who not to have sex with, for example). Finally, the Bible is simply descriptive when it documents society’s customs without giving a moral critique—clothing, housing, herding livestock, commerce, and so on … and polygamy.

How does the Bible see polygamy?

Let’s put this new vocabulary to use. Lashua says,

Are these passages about polygamy prescriptive or descriptive? Are they prescribing how we are supposed to live, or are they describing events from the past?

Many passages in Scripture describe events God doesn’t condone. Lot’s daughters getting him drunk and having sex with him comes to mind (Gen. 19:32–36). But many passages of Scripture prescribe how we are to live as followers of God, such as when Jesus prescribes loving God with all of our heart, soul, and mind (Matt. 22:37).

Is polygamy prescriptive? The short answer is no.

Is polygamy in the Bible made mandatory? No. But this is the wrong question. We must ask if the Bible proscribes polygamy—that is, prohibits it. It doesn’t.

In lieu of an actual argument, the article gives more guilt-by-association tales of polygamists with no indication that polygamy causes anything.

Jacob’s firstborn son, Reuben, by his first wife Leah, had sex with Bilhah, Jacob’s concubine (Gen. 35:22). David’s son Amnon raped his half-sister Tamar and was then killed by Tamar’s full brother Absalom (2 Sam. 13). Absalom then tried to usurp the throne from his father David and had sex with David’s concubines (2 Sam. 16:22). Solomon “had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines, and his wives turned his heart away” (1 Kings 11:3). These descriptions are sad reminders that polygamy is sin and has destructive consequences.

Rape, adultery, treason, and murder? I’m not sure polygamy is the worst thing here. Anyway, this list of polygamists behaving badly does absolutely nothing to show that polygamy caused anything bad.

I gotta tell ya, bro—you’re doing all the lifting and the Bible isn’t helping. Maybe you should reconsider if it deserves all this effort.

Examples of polygamy

Polygamy was just what some people in Bible stories did. There are plenty of examples, and never do we see any divine condemnation of the institution—condemnation of polygamists, yes, but not of polygamy. The Bible mentions Gideon’s many wives without criticism (Judges 8:30). And that Elkanah had two wives (1 Samuel 1:1–2), as did Ashhur (1 Chron. 4:5). Mered had multiple wives (1 Chron. 4:17), and “Rehoboam … had eighteen wives and sixty concubines” (2 Chron. 11:21). And there are more. None of these examples are stated with complaint. There’s no more disgrace in “Patriarch X had two wives” than in “Patriarch Y had a hundred sheep.”

God has no trouble pointing out and punishing moral errors. When David sleeps with Bathsheba, another man’s wife, God makes his disapproval known, and the son they produced quickly dies. No confusion—God disapproves of adultery.

Show this clear disapproval of polygamy in the Bible.

Concluded in part 2.

Learn from the mistakes of others.
You can’t live long enough
to make them all yourself.
— Eleanor Roosevelt

More traits of a real man, according to the Bible

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In response to a list of biblical rules for a real man, let’s scour the Bible for more rules (part 1). If the original conservative agenda can guide a selection of rules, then anyone can play the game. This is the conclusion of our list of 10 More Biblical Traits of Real Men.

5. Real men can personally perform miracles

Jesus made clear that his miracles were just the beginning.

Whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these (John 14:12).

We see something similar with the Great Commission. It’s pretty clear that Jesus wasn’t giving it to ordinary Christians today but rather the apostles, but for Christians who imagine that Jesus was talking to them, they should expect to get “authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and sickness” (Matthew 10:1) and the authority to decide which sins can be forgiven (John 20:23).

6a. Real men insist that their sassy children be stoned to death

The Bible says that there’s nothing wrong with a good thrashing (“Blows and wounds cleanse away evil, and beatings purge the inmost being,” Proverbs 20:30), but it gets a lot worse than that.

If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town…. Then all the men of his town are to stone him to death. (Deuteronomy 21:18–21).

That’s effective! I can’t imagine the son misbehaves after that.

6b. Real men stone non-virgins, too

And by “virgin,” of course, we’re talking about virgin women. Virginal purity isn’t a thing for men—and how fortunate for you gentlemen out there! The Bible has a kind of honesty-in-advertising guideline for women. Fathers, if you offer your daughter as a virgin and she isn’t as advertised, you’ll have to take her back:

[If] the tokens of virginity be not found for the bride, then they shall bring her to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die (Deuteronomy 22:20–21).

That is, you’ll have to take her back dead. The good news is that the problem of feeding another mouth has been addressed.

7. Real men take sex slaves

Israelite forces were successful in battle against Midian. They killed all the men, destroyed all their towns, and returned with women, children, livestock, and other plunder, but Moses greeted them with anger. He said, in effect, “What part of ‘kill everyone’ did you not understand?!” His resolution of the problem:

[Now] kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man (Numbers 31:17–18).

How about that—biblical conquest comes with sex slaves as a bonus.

8. Real men never sin

We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin; the One who was born of God keeps them safe, and the evil one cannot harm them (1 John 5:18; see also 1 John 3:6, 3:9).

So if you’re still sinning, you must not be saved. Save a place for me in hell.

9. Real men abandon reason and evidence

The Bible is supposed to be confusing, didn’t you know? Here’s Jesus praying to God:

I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children (Matthew 11:25).

It’s best to check your brains at the door and just have faith:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding (Proverbs 3:5–6).

10. Real men keep slaves

But, of course, real men conduct slavery in a godly way, and the Bible is a helpful resource. For example, can you keep slaves for life?

Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life (Leviticus 25:44–6).

Slaves need to know their place, but how much punishment is too much?

Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property (Exodus 21:20–21).

We find support in the New Testament as well:

Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh (1 Peter 1:18).

Hallelujah! How thoughtful of God to clarify. 

See also: Yes, Biblical Slavery Was the Same as American Slavery

And, of course, there’s more. A real man doesn’t mix things like wool and linen or two different crops in a field, and he doesn’t yoke together different animals like an ox with a donkey (Deuteronomy 22:9–11). A real man doesn’t put up with mixed-race marriages (Deut. 7:3, 23:3). And so on.

Admittedly, I’m picking verses following a let’s-make-the-Bible-look-foolish agenda, but that’s no less honest than the original article’s conservative Christian agenda. The Bible’s wisdom doesn’t look so timeless when you imagine it applied today.

To any Christians annoyed at my list, I have a suggestion: stop having such a hateful holy book.

So far as I can remember,
there is not one word in the Gospels
in praise of intelligence.
— Bertrand Russell

What is a ‘real man,’ according to the Bible?

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What makes a “real man”? We’ve all seen light-hearted rules like real men don’t cry, real men don’t eat quiche, real men don’t let other men eat quiche, and so on. James Dobson’s Family Talk site has a page that claims to have God’s rules for how to be a true man of God. The author summarizes the goal this way: “My wife and kids need a real man, not some wimpy guy that rides the ever-changing cultural tides of our times.”

Here’s that list, built on the rock of the Bible.

God’s Real Man List

  1. Real men don’t leave their wives. See Ephesians 5:25-32, Mark 10:9, Job 31:1
  2. Real men honor their wives as co-heirs. See 1 Peter 3:7
  3. Real men teach their children God’s ways (both in word and in action). See Deuteronomy 6:6-7, Ephesians 6:4, Psalm 78:5-7
  4. Real men build into the lives of other men. See Proverbs 27:17
  5. Real men don’t use their words to demean others. See Ephesians 4:29
  6. Real men don’t let their anger get away from them. See James 1:19-20
  7. Real men lead best when they love most. See Ephesians 5:1-2; John 13:34-35
  8. Real men are sacrificial for the sake of their Lord, family, and others. See John 15:13
  9. Real men are servants. See Mark 10:45
  10. Real men can show their emotions (this includes crying). See John 11:35, Matthew 21:12, Matthew 9:36

But why this list? Don’t forget that “all Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16). You really can’t go wrong when pulling Iron Age biblical examples into the 21st century, amirite, Dr. Dobson?

So, with that wind of certitude filling our sails, let’s look deeper in the Bible to see what else it says and make a new list, 10 More Traits of Real Men.

1. Real men don’t get married

The list above has at least two rules about men’s relationship with their wives, but Paul had no use for marriage:

Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry (1 Corinthians 7:8–9).

You can rationalize this one away by saying that Paul wrongly thought that the End was coming soon, but what’s left of your faith when you must say that the books of the New Testament are seriously wrong?

2. Real men listen to God over common-sense morality

God made some crazy demands in the Bible. Christians, what would it take for God to convince you to accept a modern equivalent of these demands?

  • Abraham accepted God’s demand that he sacrifice his son Isaac.
  • After discovering the Israelites worshipping the Golden Calf, Moses commanded the Levites to punish fellow Israelites: “Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor,” and 3000 were killed (Exodus 32:26–29).
  • God demanded human sacrifice: “The first offspring of every womb among the Israelites belongs to me, whether human or animal” (Exodus 13:2). 
  • God demanded that Babylon be punished, with the Israelites as executioners: “Every one that is found shall be thrust through; and every one that is joined unto them shall fall by the sword. Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled, and their wives ravished” (Isaiah 13:15–16).
  • God demanded genocide. He said that within the tribes that must be destroyed, “you shall not leave alive anything that breathes” (Deuteronomy 20:16–18) and that, for the Amalekites, Israel should “put to death men and women, children and infants” (1 Samuel 15:2–3). More here, here, and here.

I realize that we’re made in God’s image and that our sense of morality should line up with God’s, but forget that. A real man does what God says, regardless of how immoral it seems.

3. Real men know that daughters can be sacrificed

In his younger days, God wasn’t omniscient, so he had to send scouts to Sodom to verify the rumors he’d heard. Lot protected these angels from the angry mob eager to teach these strangers who’s boss by raping them. Lot is portrayed as a godly man, though he doesn’t look very godly after he offered his two virgin daughters to the mob as a rape substitute. 

4. Real men throw the first stone if their friend or relative strays

Suppose a friend suggests that you worship another god. Now imagine that it’s your best friend, or that it’s a family member, maybe a child or your wife. How should you respond?

Forget that freedom of religion is protected by the U.S. Constitution—real men do things differently in the Bible’s little world.

Do not yield to him or listen to him. Show him no pity. Do not spare him or shield him. You must certainly put him to death. Your hand must be the first in putting him to death, and then the hands of all the people. Stone him to death, because he tried to turn you away from the LORD your God (Deuteronomy 13:6–11; see also Deut. 32:41–2, Exodus 22:20).

Concluded next in part 2.

There have been nearly 3000 gods so far
but only yours actually exists.
The others are silly made up nonsense.
But not yours. Yours is real.
— Ricky Gervais

Do science and faith share humility and service?

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A Christian scientist says that science and faith aren’t that far apart—indeed, that important traits of science are found within Christianity.

This is a response to an article by Dr. Deborah Haarsma titled, “I am an astrophysicist. I am also a Christian.” She is the president of BioLogos, a Christian advocacy group founded by Francis Collins that tries to coax Christians to accept science. This is the conclusion of a 3-part series (part 1 here).

Haarsma’s concern is that conservative U.S. Christians are pushing back against science’s conclusions about covid, evolution, climate change, and more. I share that concern, but let’s see how plausible her argument is that Christianity has guided modern science. She says, “The historical teachings of Christianity actually support the methods and values of science.”

The first of these values was curiosity and a comprehensible Nature. Let’s move on to the final two, humility and service.

3: Humility

Haarsma says that science requires experimentation, and scientists’ ideas and expectations often crash into reality. Scientists need humility to follow the evidence and accept where they are wrong.

“This approach also fits with Christianity. God creates in ways that humans cannot predict or fully understand (Job 38), so we must continually check our ideas against what we observe in the natural world.”

The previous value was “Belief that nature is comprehensible.” Apparently, the pendulum has swung back, and nature is not comprehensible now.

Let’s grant that the Bible says Christians must be humble, but Christians need to remember that when Christianity collides with science, they need the humility to remember that it’s science that follows the evidence.

In the Bible chapter she references, God mocks Job’s inadequacies. Job was arrogant to question God, and God tells him to know his place. “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?” God demands. “Tell me, if you understand” (Job 38:4).

That’s just a Bible story. It’s mythology, not history. Christians shouldn’t be humble because they must avoid offending the Big Guy; they should be humble because when Christianity conflicts with science, science wins every time.

Physicist, heal thyself.

4: Service

In this final (supposed) similarity, she points to people in STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) who are motivated to help others. And look at Christianity: there you find people dedicated to service as well.

I’ll agree, but I also notice that you don’t have to be a Christian to be dedicated to others. She notes that Luke in the Bible was a physician, but she doesn’t say that being a Christian makes you likelier to be a physician. As with science, medicine has been created by people, and it took enormous amounts of effort. God didn’t lift a finger, which is surprising from a god who apparently cares about our helping others.

“Jesus called his followers to feed the hungry and care for the sick, and there are dozens of stories of Jesus personally healing illness and injury. Fundamentally, Christians serve because we are called to imitate Jesus Christ, who made the ultimate sacrifice in giving his life for others.”

Jesus could’ve eliminated cancer but didn’t. Or malaria, or smallpox, or covid. I’m not impressed with Jesus’s service.

As to his sacrifice, first it’s just a story, and second it’s not that impressive when Jesus was immortal and could pop back to life after a couple of days.

Addressing the skeptics

“You may have heard Christians arguing for a young Earth, or seen the trend of tying anti-vaccine rhetoric directly with Christian worship. Such examples grieve me deeply because they don’t reflect the Bible I know and the God I love, or even the majority of Christians.”

The Bible teaches a young earth. When those Christians argue for a young earth, they have Bible verses to back it up. You have the luxury of knowing the answers (praise be to science), so you can reject this Bronze Age young earth myth. Or a flat earth, or a global flood, or stars so small that they can fall to earth. Job 38, which she referenced above, has God ticking off his control of nature, with doors for the sea, storage for light and darkness, and dawn and lightning that answer to him.

See also: The Bible’s Confused Relationship with Science

You’re walking a tightrope, coddling Christians on one hand by celebrating their faith, while pointing out their failings on the other. But you give them too much. Some of Christianity’s positives (hope, comfort) come with unhelpful baggage (gullibility, lack of critical thinking). When a Christian lowers the mental drawbridge to accept miracle claims and mythology, conspiracy thinking and politicians’ agendas can slip in as well.

“Faith and science are both needed to address the challenging questions facing our culture today.”

No, religion has no role to play in uncovering new truths about nature. If you’re saying that religion is an opiate that provides hope and comfort, as Marx argued, I can accept that, but that’s very different than religion as a way to understand the world.

And remember Marx’s point. Yes, religion can comfort, but that risks our dependence on it and ignores what should be our real goal: improving society to make that comfort unnecessary. The salve of religion should be temporary. Don’t focus on sedatives—fix the problem.

Conclusion

You imagine science and Christianity as parallel somehow, two valid paths to truth. But they are not parallel. Science has an outstanding track record, and religion is just superstition and myth.

If you must find a role for religion, a better framework would be Stephen Jay Gould’s non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA). He argued that religion and science both have a lot to say, but they needn’t conflict because they don’t overlap. Evidence in the real world is the domain (magisterium) of science, and comfort, compassion, ethics, community, and the like are the domain of religion.

Religion was not a bad guess when people didn’t know where the sun went at night. Today, it’s no more than a social custom—which can be a good thing, if we see it accurately. When science and religion clash today, it’s irresponsible to give religion a vote on the consensus view. Religion must know its place. Science has earned a seat at the table, but religion has not.

To Dr. Haarsma, I say: physicist, heal thyself. You’re right when you say that Christians are often on the wrong side of science, giving themselves permission to deny climate change, evolution, vaccines, and indeed any science they don’t like. Bravo for pushing back against that. Conservative Christianity has been enslaved by conservative politics. As a scientist and a Christian, you stand a much better chance than me of coaxing conservative Christians into the cold, clear light of reality.

But you say, “Faith and science are both needed to address the challenging questions facing our culture today.” In what world does this make sense?! To the extent that “faith” is permission to ignore the evidence, it’s a problem. When you coddle faith this way, you become part of that problem.

When we remove all the unevidenced beliefs
[from supernatural thinking]
we are left with naturalism.
And when we remove all the unevidenced beliefs
from naturalism,
we are left with naturalism.
— commenter Greg G. 

Do science and faith share curiosity and a comprehensible Nature?

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A Christian scientist says that science and faith aren’t that far apart—indeed, that important traits of science are found within Christianity.

This is a response to an article by Dr. Deborah Haarsma titled, “I am an astrophysicist. I am also a Christian.” Formerly a professor at a Christian college, Haarsma has for ten years been the president of BioLogos, a Christian advocacy group founded by Francis Collins that tries to coax Christians to accept science. Part 1 summarized the problem the article is trying to address, that conservative U.S. Christians are wrongly pushing back against science’s conclusions about covid, evolution, climate change, and more.

Haarsma has promised to show both skeptics and science-hesitant Christians that Christianity has guided modern science with four values common to science and Christianity.

Here’s the first shared value, curiosity.

1: Curiosity

“People of all beliefs can be curious, and Christians are no exception.”

And you think Christianity encourages people to be more curious? Do Christians demand answers to puzzling things within Christianity, from Bible contradictions to God’s violent Old Testament outbursts to church scandals? Instead, I see Christians burdened by doubts and not eager to rock the boat by asking more questions. Many conservative congregations have a small selection of one-size-fits-all answers to these questions that presuppose God. These might be “God is smarter than us and can be trusted to have a good answer to that question even if we don’t” or even just “God did it.”

“Scripture encourages and models curiosity about the natural world, in stories such as Adam naming the animals and Solomon cataloging plants.”

Adam assigned the animals their names, and God filled Solomon with wisdom about the natural world, but neither showed curiosity. If you want ancient role models, you won’t find them in the Bible. Look instead to scientists like Aristotle or Archimedes. Aristotle wrote about many subjects including logic, biology, and physics, and Archimedes discovered the properties of many mathematical figures and pioneered the application of mathematics to natural phenomena. That’s curiosity.

Yes, Christians can be curious, and they can be scientists, but Christianity does not have some unique fuel to drive the engine of curiosity.

Where’s the real problem?

“God commissioned humanity to tend and care for the Earth.”

If you see Christians as nature’s stewards, you haven’t been paying attention. Are Christians today leading the charge for environmental protection, pollution control, and reversal of climate change? Look at government and you find that those politicians who are the most overt about their Christianity are the least likely to push for laws to benefit nature.

You’re making up Christianity to suit your argument. I’ll admit that I like your version better than what I see in the news, but Christianity is flexible. You point to a generous, loving Christianity, but other Christians have cobbled together their own. These versions support homophobia, home schooling, and the husband as the head of the household. In part 1, you wanted to imagine atheists as part of the problem, but you’ll make more progress if you first admit the actual problem, conservative politics. A large segment of U.S. Christianity has been zombified and listens to little more than conspiracy theories and Donald Trump.

2: Belief that nature is comprehensible

No, we didn’t need the Bronze Age storm god Yahweh to inform us that nature is comprehensible. Ask a paleolithic hunter-gatherer about the seasons, when the rains come, edible and medicinal plants, hunting techniques, how best to make clothing from available materials, and a hundred other survival topics. Yes, nature is comprehensible without any need of Christianity.

See also: An Understandable Universe May Point to God, but How Understandable Is the Universe?

But wait—is Nature comprehensible? How many billions of person-years has it taken to develop the science we benefit from today? God didn’t program us with this knowledge, create libraries for us to consult, or in any way get off the couch to make life easier for us with science.

Dr. Haarsma pointed to “Nature’s regularity.” She compared Christianity favorably against those religions with a pantheon of gods, “[the whims of whom] determined the weather, planetary motion, illness, and other phenomena. One could only guess what the gods might do next.”

As if the Christian god were predictable. Even today, his apologists must explain away the natural disasters, disease, and more that happen on his watch, with his approval. Yahweh was as capricious as Zeus, and Zeus didn’t demand human sacrifice and genocide.

And why do we need God to make nature comprehensible or regular? Show me that the natural world doesn’t look like a god-less world. There’s much more evidence that evolution tuned us to understand our natural world than that God tweaked the natural world to best suit us.

The “nature is comprehensible” test

Let me assign homework to anyone who thinks God made the world to be comprehensible. Think of the periodic table of elements. Its very name, “periodic,” points to some of nature’s regularity. Atoms are simple—protons and neutrons in the nucleus and electrons outside.

Here’s your assignment: give a simple equation or algorithm that, when given the atomic number of an element, will report the melting and boiling point of that element. These values are known for the naturally occurring elements, of course, but they’re measured, not computed.

How hard can this be when God made nature comprehensible and regular?

When you’ve finished that one, try this. Elements have isotopes, which differ in the number of neutrons in the nucleus. For each atomic number—say, 6 for carbon—predict all possible isotopes and give a good approximation of their half-lives.

For carbon, there are three naturally occurring isotopes, carbon-12, carbon-13, and carbon-14. The first two are stable, and carbon-14 is well-known as a radioactive clock (with a half-life of 5,730 years) that can tell how old some carbon-bearing materials are.

There are twelve more isotopes of carbon that are manmade. And so on, for all the elements.

The answers have been determined experimentally, and a chart of all known isotopes is here. That chart gives the correct answers. Now recreate it algorithmically.

You wanted to imagine atheists as part of the problem, but you’ll make more progress if you first admit the actual problem, conservative politics.

Yes, the part of nature that’s comprehensible is comprehensible, but what about the rest? How big is the rest, the part that will always be beyond us? Do we understand ninety percent of all science? Or is it closer to 0.01 percent?

We just don’t know. Our knowledge of nature is very hard won, with no indication that God made the job easier.

“Scientists of all faiths and no faith hold this modern scientific view, but they hold it for a variety of reasons. For a Christian, the regularity and understandability of nature is due to the intelligent faithfulness of a sovereign God.”

Of what value has Christianity been to scientists? Were humans stymied when trying to do science before Christianity came along? Aristotle and Archimedes did fine without it, and Christianity has no track record for giving us new knowledge about the natural world.

Concluded in part 3.

It would disturb me if there was a wedding
between the religious fundamentalists
and the political right.
The hard right has no interest in religion
except to manipulate it.
— Billy Graham

Scientist argues that both science and faith play a role

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“I am an astrophysicist. I am also a Christian.”

This is the title of a 2022 article by Deborah Haarsma, formerly a professor at a Christian university and now the president of BioLogos, a Christian advocacy group that says about itself, “BioLogos explores God’s Word and God’s World to inspire authentic faith for today.”

That’s not an encouraging start for the skeptics out there, but note that BioLogos was founded by Francis Collins, a firm Christian who led both the Human Genome Project and the National Institutes for Health and has been a vocal and valuable proponent of evolution within Christianity. For example, he has said, “If there was any lingering doubt about the evidence from the fossil record, the study of DNA provides the strongest possible proof of our relatedness to all other living things.”

BioLogos has a doctrinal statement, but their mission is to find common ground between science and Christianity, and they have decent responses to typical Christian anti-science arguments.

Dark clouds on the horizon

While not exactly fighting the good fight, Dr. Haarsma seems to at least be fighting a decent fight, which is worth investigating and celebrating. She gives four values that she claims are common to science and Christianity, which we’ll get to shortly.

We begin to see a problem when Haarsma describes BioLogos as “an organization that shows how faith and science can work hand-in-hand” and declares that “science and faith fit together.”

How do we categorize this—naïve? wrong? dangerous? Where science and faith disagree, we must follow science. Science follows the evidence, and it has an incredible track record of results. The only way science and faith can coexist is if they don’t overlap.

Science can only work by assuming that God never interacts with reality.

Christians’ selective rejection of science

Haarsma understands the problem Christians have made for themselves and summarizes it nicely.

Aren’t White evangelical Christians the group with the lowest vaccination rates? The people most opposed to climate change? The ones who built a whole museum opposed to evolutionary biology? Sadly, this is all true. Even worse, anti-science views on COVID and climate are more than a difference of opinion; opposition is leading directly to increased illness, suffering, death, and harm to the planet.

She blames “cultural forces” and “social media” for this split in society but doesn’t mention politics.

This is surprising—even shocking. Is politics more of a third rail than religion? Can you disagree with a literal view of the Bible, but you can’t criticize Christians for mindlessly swallowing conservative Republican politics and QAnon?

What caused this split if not politics? Her thinking is hard to believe:

This conflict didn’t come out of nowhere. Debates over creation vs. evolution date back decades, driven by Christian commitment to the authority of the Bible. The writings of militant atheists didn’t help. When Richard Dawkins and others claim that science rules out God and religion, Christians have good reason to be skeptical of what scientists say.

What a shame! And we were getting along so well.

I don’t remember any popular arguments from atheists claiming that science proves no God. The closest Dawkins has come, in my memory, is to say, “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist” (The Blind Watchmaker, 1991), which is no attack on Christianity at all.

And the conclusion she draws is flawed. Atheists claim that science proves no God, so therefore “Christians have good reason to be skeptical of what scientists say”? Christians would be justifiably skeptical of scientists if they made bad arguments, but she’s talking about atheists attacking Christianity, which says nothing about what scientists say about science. Even if scientists were the ones making an argument and they were attacking Christianity, Christians would logically respond with either agreement or a rebuttal. None of this gives grounds for Christians to be skeptical about scientists’ arguments about covid, climate change, or evolution.

The same is true for atheist attacks on Christianity—Christians can be upset at how effective they are, but this is no reflection on the accuracy of science.

Science has Christian roots?

(Going forward, I’ll give Dr. Haarsma’s statements in italics.)

“The historical teachings of Christianity actually support the methods and values of science.”

If we’re generous, it’s not hard to imagine that the Bible and Christian tradition holds examples for us to follow that would make a good foundation for science. Knowing what you want ahead of time, you can pick out just the good bits.

But that’s hardly the predominant message of the Bible, and the reverse is also true. Geneticist Richard Lewontin illustrated what science would look like if God were active in our world. At any moment, God might override the natural laws for his own good purposes. But science can’t operate in an environment where every measurement is due to some (unknown) fraction from nature and the remainder from God. Science can only work by assuming that God never interacts with reality.

Another trait that Haarsma sees in Christians is, “a willingness to correct one’s ideas in the face of data.”

Wow—Haarsma needs to get out of her ivory tower. Following the evidence and correcting one’s conclusions is conservative Christians’ worst thing. Whatever the opposite of a superpower is, it’s that.

This is a tangent, but one problem she probably should have mentioned is the backfire effect, when people dig in their heels when shown a correction such that correcting their errors makes them double down on their original, false belief. With great care, we can avoid the backfire effect (see here and here).

“If there was any lingering doubt about the evidence from the fossil record, the study of DNA provides the strongest possible proof of our relatedness to all other living things.”

Francis Collins

Christianity produced many scientists

“In the earliest years of the Scientific Revolution, leaders like Galileo and Robert Boyle wrote extensively about their faith. They showed how the Bible and Christian virtues fit with their work as scientists.”

I guess we should’ve expected it—the “great scientists like Galileo and Newton were Christian!” argument. In Europe in their day, Christianity was the only game in town. Of course they were Christian centuries ago.

Modern science has steadily undercut any claim Christianity had to be a reliable worldview. The Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Chinese, Indians, and more had their time in the spotlight, and they did just fine without Christianity. The Islamic Golden Age—five centuries of remarkable scientific progress in the Muslim world, during which time Europe was stumbling through the medieval period—is no proof of the rightness of Islam, and similarly, European science populated by Christians is no proof of the rightness of Christianity.

“Christians were leaders in bringing the benefits of science to the poor and marginalized as they founded schools and hospitals.”

Which sounds impressive until you look more closely.

See also: Yeah, but Christianity Built Universities!

See also: Yeah, but Christianity Built Hospitals!  

Next, we’ll get into “Four values common to science and Christianity.” They certainly apply to science, but let’s see how well supported they are within Christianity.

Continue with part 2.

No theologians were consulted
in the search for the Higgs Boson.
— commenter ORAXX