It is very difficult to take religious people seriously; and I say that as a religious person. Fundamentalists, for example, tell me they are serious. Can you believe that? After reading their books and listening to their music? Surely evidence of seriousness could be detected in their art and literature. Can you take their claims as truthful?

I can't.

Now we hear from an evangelical who "hasn't completely resolved in his own thinking" the existence of a historical Adam. A guy by the name of Tremper Longman III is posing as a professor of literature and Old Testament and, much like another academic charlatan I know here in Dallas, is suggesting that he knows better than the Apostles and Fathers.

I think he's a twerp. He looks like a twerp for sure, he talks like a twerp with no lunch money, and just between us, he honestly reflects badly on masculinity everywhere. He regularly casts his argument in the most dishonest way and he invites us to indulge his skepticism. Well, I don't; and I think he's a twerp, as I say.

If you listen to this clown—and I use the word clown in a way that might be seen to reflect unfavorably on a lot of very good people who wear big shoes and a squirting boutonniere; and I do regret that—he posits his ideas by beginning with "a lot of people stumble with the creation account" or "a lot of people believe that Genesis 1 and 2 sort of insists..." or "many people have a picture of..."

I think if Tremper Longman III has any friends, they should schedule an intervention.

"A lot of people" believe a lot of unbelievable things. A lot of people believe believable things. The number of believers does not reflect at all on the truth (or the plausibility) of the belief. What a lot of people believe is not the basis for any argument worth considering.

A lot of people have seen Elvis Presley at their 7-11; a lot of people think that they can better sell their house if they bury a statue of St. Joseph in the back yard; a lot of people believe they will get rich by playing the lottery, a lot of people believe everything came from something over a long period of time and that that something came from nothing a short while before that; a lot of people believe space aliens abduct humans.... I personally believe that if aliens abducted Tremper Longman III, they would conclude from their extensive medical inquiries that he ought to be listed at the top of the column marked "TWERP".

Those of us who think Adam was a real man came to that conclusion by reading and by thinking. Some of us who believe Adam was a historical man can give twelve (or more) reasons for thinking Scripture justifies that belief. Tremper Longman III tells us we come to our conclusions by being programmed.

This is what passes for scholarship these days. These marginal intellects cannot distinguish an argument from an academic fad, and they cannot even detect a simple argumentum ad hominem when they use one.

A lot of people reading this post no doubt took offense at my calling Tremper Longman III a twerp. That's just not the proper way to dialog, is it? How can you fairly consider another man's ideas if you start by calling him a twerp and by suggesting he lacks masculine traits to a conspicuous degree?

Well, my answer is simple enough for Tremper Longman III to understand: I can consider the ideas of twerps just as fairly as he can consider the ideas of programmed believers. If Tremper Longman III wants to be thought an academic he should start talking like one.

I mention all this for a reason. I don't much care what uses Tremper Longman III puts his understanding of ancient near eastern literary forms to. There is something nefarious going on here, so it is worth our consideration. I'm not dismissing those who take Tremper Longman III to task for his shabby thinking.

But what interests me right now is this religious environment, the culture of our religion. As I was reminded again in Sunday School class yesterday: when we behave like Tremper Longman III or when we blame Finney for our deplorable worship, or when we misrepresent the motivations others have for adopting a certain form of worship, we are not thinking. We are not being academic or scholarly or erudite or learned or even intelligent. We are putting lipstick on a pig.

Ours really is a culture of disbelief. We love to think we are drawing rational conclusions when in fact we are just attaching facile rationalizations to our prejudices. We are not committed to truth, we are devoted to pretense.