Debunking John Loftus

John Loftus has blog. To judge by his performance thus far, Loftus has nothing original to say. The reader is invited to sample a refrigerator full of stale, half-eaten leftovers.

The only thing that sets him apart from the pack is that Loftus is a one-time Christian apologist turned militant apostate. Hence, he will probably enjoy a wider hearing than the garden-variety unbeliever who hawks the same rotten tomatoes.

As of yet, his approach is completely piecemeal and reactionary. A grab-bag of assorted odds and ends. So it would be a waste of time to follow every meandering twist and turn. It’s too strung out to offer a cohesive target.

But when he happens upon a big-ticket item like the Flood, this may be worth remarking upon.

http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2006/02/flood-story-of-genesis-6-9.html#links

“The first thing to notice in the story is that there is a great deal of repetition…Did Noah make two arks and board them twice?”

Yes, the flood account is redundant. There are several reasons for this:

i) Aural literature is naturally redundant. Being addressed to the ear rather than the eye, the repetition of certain catchphrases is a mnemonic device for the benefit of the listener.

ii) The narrator has a spiral style of exposition in which he begins with a programmatic statement, then changes the subject, then circles back to the topic sentence with an expansive gloss which resumes the original motif, but furnishes additional information.

iii) Just as a flood is bisected into a natural rising and falling motion, the flood account deliberately pegs this action with a palistrophic construction. The rising and falling action of the dramatic arc parallels the natural contours of event it records.

So Loftus’ comments betray an ignorance of both the literary conventions of the genre as well inattention to the specific architecture of the narrative.

“There are also discrepancies in these chapters. In 6:14-22 God is referred to as “Elohim”, and only one pair of each species of animal was put in the ark, whereas in 7:1-5 the word for God is “Yahweh” and Noah is told to put in the ark seven pairs of clean animals and one pair of unclean animals. There are also discrepancies with how long the flood lasted: 40 days (7:17), 150 days (7:24), or one year (compare 7:11 with 8:13)? “

Several things go awry in this analysis:

i) Variations are not the same thing as contradictions.

ii) To some extent, it suffers from the aforementioned failure to appreciate the chiastic coordination of elements within the overarching narrative.

iii) The use of alternative divine names follows a thematic pattern. Hamilton, for one, discusses this in his commentary on Genesis, 1:285-86.

iv) Likewise, the number of animals in 7:2-3 picks up on the earlier statement, but fills it out by distinguishing between clean and unclean animals. There are more of the former than the latter since clean animals serve as sacrificial animals (8:2). Hence, you need more on hand—otherwise there would be nothing left to replenish the earth.

Far from being contradictory, this refinement exhibits the logical consistency and practicality of the account.

iii) Again, because he’s blind to the overall shape of the narrative, Loftus fails to register the proper relation between the time divisions. What we have here is a period of rainfall, followed by a period of cresting waters, followed by a period of receding waters, until we return to the status quo ante of dry land.

For a man who flaunts his seminary credentials, Loftus has an exceptionally ham-handed feel for the text.

And this is irrespective of whether you believe it or not. It’s just a matter of competent literary analysis.

“Biblical scholars now see the way the flood is presented here as reflecting two ancient sources that were combined into one account. This was done by “following a very conservative principle of keeping virtually everything from both sources, even though that produced considerable repetition” and, I might add, discrepancies. Donald Gowan, From Eden to Babel: Genesis 1-11 (Eerdmans, 1988, p. 89).”

There are three debilitating objections to the claim:

i) I’ve already noted the internal symmetry of the flood account. This cannot be achieved by fusing two discrepant sources.

ii) There are intertextual parallels between the flood account and the creation account (Gen 1).

iii) There are also intertextual parallels between the flood account and the construction of the tabernacle (Exod 25).

As with (i), (ii)-(iii) cannot be achieved by fusing divergent sources. It has to be all of a piece from start to finish.

“The closest stories we find to the flood story in the Bible are from Mesopotamia: the Epic of Gilgamesh, and Atrahasis. According to Gordon J. Wenham the Epic of Gilgamesh was written about 1600 B.C. and it “may be based on the flood story told in Atrahasis.”

i) This is, at best, misleading. What Wenham says is that “the relationship between the biblical flood story and the Mesopotamian parallels, it was pointed out above [1:162-63], can be explained whether on the assumption that both go back to a common tradition (the minimalist view) or that the Genesis account is a deliberate rewriting of the Mesopotamian versions of the flood story” (168).

Notice how Loftus quotes one option, but not the other, leaving the reader to believe there’s only one option—which just so happens to be the interpretation most compromising to the historicity of the account.

ii) How does it subtract from the historicity of the account that there might exist an independent historical witness to the same event?

Notice that when there is no corroborative evidence for a Biblical claim, an unbeliever will say the Bible writer made it up; but if there is corroborative evidence, an unbeliever will say the Bible writer borrowed it.

iii) Since the Biblical record tells us that the survivors disembarked in upper Mesopotamia (8:4; cf. 2 Kgs 19:37), it’s hardly surprising that Mesopotamian literature would preserve a folkloric version of that memorable event.

This is not inconsistent, but entirely consistent, with the implications of the Biblical account.

“If this is the case, then the flood story in the Bible is taken and reshaped to fit the purposes of the final editor of Genesis 1-11. And if we consider prior sources to be the more authentic sources (and historical scholars consider this to be the case in every other historical investigation), then the true account of the flood (if there is one, and it reflects something that historically happened) is to be found in Atrahasis along with the Epic of Gilgamesh!”

Two more lumbering problems:

i) Loftus piggybacks on the faulty assumption which I’ve just discredited.

ii) The accuracy of Bible history doesn’t necessarily depend on how close the time of writing is to the time of the event.

If Moses is the author, and Moses is a prophet of God, then Moses is in a position to know things by direct revelation or divine inspiration.

Of course, Loftus would deny those assumptions, but since he’s concentrating on the inner logic, or lack thereof (in his opinion), of the flood account, he needs to judge the account on its own terms, consistent with its narrative assumptions regarding the narrator himself as well as the power of God.

“We now know why floods take place, and it isn’t because of our sins, but because of atmospheric, and oceanic conditions.”

More sloppy reasoning:

i) The Bible doesn’t attribute every natural disaster to divine judgment.

ii) Divine judgment can make use of natural mechanisms.

“Gowan sums up the available evidence with these words: “Not only have all archeological excavations failed to uncover any such evidence (for a universal flood), the record of the earth’s history discovered by geology virtually rules out the possibility that anything of that sort has ever happened.” (p. 89).”

This is an assertion in lieu of an argument. What kind of evidence would we expect of a global flood? Is the assumption that we should expect global evidence of a global flood?

If so, that strikes me as facile, but specious. Patterns of erosion would vary according to climate and terrain. So much of the evidence would have washed away ages ago.

Or so it seems to me. Does Loftus have any argument to the contrary?

“a) It would have required eight times more water than we now have.”

Where does he come up with this figure? Is this an inference from the text?

According to the creation account, the earth was originally submerged, and dry land appeared as a result, apparently, of orogenic activity (Gen 1:9).

In principle, it would take no more water to flood the earth than already existed. All God would need to do is to readjust the sea-level, returning the earth to the status quo ante.

That, of course, demands a miracle, but it’s consistent with narrative clues and assumptions.

“b) The mixing of salt water and fresh water along with the pressure of the waters would have been devastating to marine life. Fresh-water fish would die in salt water and salt-water fish would die in fresh water. The pressure of the water six miles high (to cover the Himalayas) would crush to death the vast bulk of marine life that lives within the first fifty fathoms in the water.”

Once again, is this an inference from the text? Observe how Loftus is smuggling extra-narrative assumptions into the narrative to generate internal tensions. He is tacitly presuming that postdiluvial conditions are continuous with prediluvial conditions.

But the biblical text makes no such assumptions about the relative salinity of the prediluvial oceans, or the saline tolerance of freshwater fish, and vice versa.

Likewise, it makes no assumptions about the topography of the prediluvial earth in relation to the postdiluvial earth.

I’d add that, for purposes of killing all the land animals, the floodwaters would only need to reach the tree-line. And to inundate all the habitable land, they would only need overflow the mountain passes, not the mountain peaks.

“c) Getting rid of such a vast amount of water would be impossible—think of it! d) “The astronomical disturbances caused by the increase of the mass of the earth would have been significant.”

This piggybacks on the pseudoproblem of (a).

“e) There are improbabilities with regard to the animals involved. How did Noah get them all into the ark? Bringing them from all four corners of the globe would take considerable time. How did they get along in the ark? Some are carnivorous and would be prone to eating the other animals, while others would have vegetarian diets. Where did the food come from to feed all of these animals from around the world? How could a few people care for them all in the ark? Some animals need a moist climate, and others a dry one; some need it very cold, while others need it warm.”

Once again, he’s importing extra-narrative assumptions into the narrative. The text doesn’t make any assumptions about prediluvial land-barriers. It makes no assumptions about the range of biodiversity or biogeographical distribution in the prediluvial world. It makes no assumptions about the degree of dietary specialization or climatic adaptation before the flood.

Indeed, some of his assumptions don’t even apply to modern species. The fact that many species have a standard diet doesn’t mean that most of them can't eat anything else in a pinch. The fact that many species occupy a certain ecological zone doesn’t mean they can’t survive in a warmer or colder climate.

Also, Noah didn't bring them to the drop-site. God sent them there (6:20; 7:8-9).

How do ranchers and farmers and zoo-keepers feed so many animals with so few helpers? They get creative. They invent mass-feeding devices.

And it’s not just modern people who do this. Ancient peoples were quite capable of low-tech innovations. Just read Varro’s De re rustica:

http://www.intratext.com/X/LAT0056.htm

“After the flood how did these animals all migrate back to their original lands, like the kangaroo, from Australia?”

Since the Bible doesn’t say, any answer would be conjectural. But notice the unspoken assumption. Why suppose the animals had to get there on their own steam. Men introduce exotic species into native habitat on a regular basis.

The descendants of Noah knew, from firsthand experience, about the art of shipbuilding, and where sailors go, animals go—as livestock, vermin, and game. Transporting live animals by ship is attested elsewhere in Scripture (e.g., 1 Kg 10:22). Ancient circumnavigation has been documented by Charles Hapgood in Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings (Adventures Unlimited Press 1996) as well as Hugh Moran & David Kelley in The Alphabet and the Ancient Calendar Signs (Daily Press 1969).

“There was no universal flood to dicount the geological evidence that leads scientists to believe the earth is billions of years old.”

Two more pseudoproblems:

i) How is the age of the earth relevant to the flood account?

ii) Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that it were germane, if the earth were created ex nihilo in the span of six days, would science be able to detect its true age?

What kind of evidence would count for or against creation ex nihilo? Creation ex nihilo is sui generis. It leaves no trace evidence, for the effect involves no intervening process, be it fast or slow.