Non-Antagonistic Dualisms

Abstract

This chapter begins with biblical stories of fathers’ willingness to sacrifice their sons and daughters for the greater good and seeks to find how and if we can set aside the abhorrence these acts engender in the hopes of reconciling faith and science. When three angels visited Abraham and Sarah at the sacred trees of Mamre, Abraham was one hundred years old and Sarah herself was old enough that she “had stopped having her monthly periods” (Genesis 18: 11). When the god of the Old Testament promises Abraham a son, through whom “[h]is descendants will become a great and mighty nation, and through him I will bless all nations”, Abraham’s wife Sarah doesn’t believe the deity, for which her husband scolds her (Genesis 18: 18 & 15).