TOUCHSTONE SAID
Out of one side of his mouth:
“To my knowledge, TEs do not appeal to supernatural mechanisms in scientific questions. For instance, I believe God created the universe, but I don't have any scientific evidence at hand that conclusively establishes that.”
“There's no honest way around this but to say that YEC interpretations as *science* are a complete joke.”
Out of the other side of his mouth:
God *does* intervene miraculously at some point, elevating proto-human to human by virtue of the endowment of a soul and th image dei. Before elvating Adam (and Eve) in this way, proto-humans were just animals. Their shared ancestry with other species isn't a problem at all.
Out of one side of his mouth:
“Thinking that the ancient Hebrews understood ‘yom’ to be a claim for a solar day just makes no sense to me. It's post-enlightenment reductionist thinking superimposed on a tribe of ancient Hebrews.”
Out of the other side of his mouth:
“I'm sure YEC subscribers can be found all along the timeline (Josephus was a YEC I think).”
Out of one side of his mouth,
“Well, YEC views are totally discredited, scientifically. As Christians, I think it's patently dishonest to present this any other way than that. YEC believers are welcome to say that they think God created the entire universe recently by in such a way as to an exquisite illusion -- it looks and behaves like it was billions of years old.”
But, out of the other side of his mouth, doesn’t a TE believe that God positioned the stars so that stars appear to be newer than they really are—due to the time-lag in the transmission of light?
So I guess TE believers are welcome to say that they think God created the entire universe ages ago in such a way as to an exquisite illusion -- it looks and behaves like it’s much younger than it actually is.
Steve,
ReplyDeleteYou said:
But, out of the other side of his mouth, doesn’t a TE believe that God positioned the stars so that stars appear to be newer than they really are—due to the time-lag in the transmission of light?
So I guess TE believers are welcome to say that they think God created the entire universe ages ago in such a way as to an exquisite illusion -- it looks and behaves like it’s much younger than it actually is.
I think you are confused here. TEs -- me for sure, and the ones I know -- are fully "starlight-compatible". Things are as old as they appear, astronomically.
I'm not sure where you got this idea, but perhaps it was the TE idea that God endowed man with a soul and the imago dei at some point, creating "man" out of proto-man. That intervention doesn't have anything to do with stars though, at least so far as I'm aware. By the time God intervened for this, His universe was already many billions of years old. Starlight from stars millions of light years from earth reached earth after millions of years in transit.
I hope that clears that up.
-Touchstone
"I think you are confused here. TEs -- me for sure, and the ones I know -- are fully 'starlight-compatible. Things are as old as they appear, astronomically."
ReplyDeleteI think you are confused here. Of course you can harmonize appearance with reality if you throw in a qualifier like "astronomically speaking."
But a YEC could make exactly the same move: "things are as old as they appear--taking creation ex nihilo into account, or taking metrical conventionalism into account."
It wouldn't hurt you to honestly try, for once in your life, to accurately represent the internal resources of the opposing position.
"That intervention doesn't have anything to do with stars though, at least so far as I'm aware."
No one said it did. If you pay attention to the way the alternatives were framed, that was not the matching term.
As usual, you have no capacity to follow the opposing argument, or even keep track of your own contradictory statements.
Steve,
ReplyDeleteIn 1987 a fantastic supernova appeared in the sky. Astronomy's trigonometric measurements determined that the star that went supernova was approximately 167,000 light years away from the earth.
I'm saying that that supernova is as old as it appears, based on the astronomic measurements, and the attendant physics. It looks 167,000 years old because it actually was that old (the event actually happened 170,000 years ago, according to the astronomical assessment).
So, no funny business need for me here. The answer fits right in line with our observation.
Now, from a YEC perspective. Your claim is that you can affirm that "things are as old as they appear". So, in the case of SN1987A, which appears to be an event from 170,000 years ago, how does creation ex nihilo or conventionalism or any other "-ism" help you affirm 170,000 years old for this event?
And if you *can* do that, haven't you disproven YEC ideas?
Saying it's *not* 170,000 years old doesnt' qualify, nor that it's merely an "illusion" dessed up in meta-scientific decoration. You've just said YECs can affirm that "things are as old as they appear".
So how do *you* affirm the 170,000 year history of supernova SN1987A?
I'm interested to here how this might be done.
-Touchstone
[Although this comment belongs in previous post, I'll again post it here instead so that we don't lose track of the thread.]
ReplyDeleteHi Touchstone,
Thanks for your comments. Rather than responding point-by-point to what you've said, however, I'd like to simply post a few remarks. This should help better focus the discussion (at least for me). Otherwise I feel as if we're liable to get buried beneath an avalanche of words and posts such that nothing constructive will come of this. Hope you don't have any objection to this. (Plus I've not as much free time to respond as I'd like. Sorry about that.)
1. You said: Not as far as I can see. God does intervene miraculously at some point, elevating proto-human to human by virtue of the endowment of a soul and th image dei. Before elvating Adam (and Eve) in this way, proto-humans were just animals. Their shared ancestry with other species isn't a problem at all.
Regarding the proto-human endowed with a soul. Neither the Bible nor evolution teaches this. It's probably obvious to most that the theory of evolution would have nothing to say about the existence of a soul. Looking at it in its barest form, evolution is a scientific theory without any pretensions to the spiritual realm. But what might not be as obvious to others is that the Bible itself does not appear to teach this.
Rather this is how the Bible describes the creation of man in Genesis 2:7-8: "then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed."
In other words, according to the above passage, man was formed directly from the dust of the ground. Only then did God breath the breath of life into man. God did not take an already formed proto-human and breath the breath of life into it. God took dust from the ground, created man as man (not man as proto-human, who was somehow transformed from proto-human into man by virtue of the breath of life), and breathed the breath of life into him.
Moreover, God placed this man in a specific place: in a garden in Eden. And later (after the Fall) man spread out from this point. But as I understand it, according to the Out of Africa theory you've cited in a previous comment, wouldn't proto-human have had to have migrated to this specific place from someplace else? So how could God have "placed" man in a specific location, i.e. the garden of Eden? Unless by "place" you mean something more like "guided" or "directed" proto-humans there, only to choose one male and female of the species, and then breathed the breath of life into these? And even if this is true, it would reverse the passage, since in Genesis 2:7-8 man was first formed or created and then placed in a specific location. Not the other way around.
I don't know how this passage could be taken allegorically either. It seems pretty straightforward to me. I think to the atheist evolutionist, for instance, it would be straightforward, too. Although he would dismiss it outright as an ancient myth since his position is that man evolved from an ape-man or proto-human and God had nothing to do with it.
Thus it would seem to me that this idea of a proto-human does not at all jibe with the Biblical narrative. Instead it appears to be an interpolation into the Scriptural text. Something the theistic evolutionist position has perhaps conceived in an attempt to harmonize the theory of evolution with a belief in the God of the Bible. But insofar as I can tell, the harmonization doesn't appear to fit what the verses teach.
To be frank, it seems more intellectually honest to me to side with naturalistic evolution than it does to side with theistic evolution. As Steve has pointed out, theistic evolution seems to be a compromised position. And it seems more evident here than elsewhere.
But perhaps I'm missing something?
2. You said: Those are the questions science takes on. How did that come about? How did we get here? I don't think you could find any anthropologist that would say we have a clear view of how things happened, in terms of what man's resources were and what his environment was like. There's just a lot we don't know. Ask your local anthropology what the predators were for (proto-)man, and you get a probably list of candidate, but even the list of predatory species is very sketchy.
So Steve comes along and says 'this couldn't have happened'. I, and I think your local anthropoligist would say: hold on, ruling out survival would mean we know a lot more than we currently know. What's up with that?
We don't know all the hows and whens. We may never know. But by the same measure we don't know enough to make positive claims like Steve does.
If you're right, then this only proves that at any time any theory could be open to invalidation. Including the theory of evolution. By this line of reasoning, the best position to maintain is not that evolution is true or even more likely to be true than any other theory, per se, but agnosticism about evolution. We just don't know because we don't have all the facts in.
By the same token, this really isn't saying anything, because we'll never have all the facts. There's no way for anyone to have an exhaustive amount of knowledge.
But that's not what evolutionists claim in the first place. I don't see the evolutionist placing such a high bar for the theory of evolution itself. Evolutionists do not claim that the theory of evolution needs to take into account every known and unknown which might crop up. Which explains everything under the sun. Perhaps that'd be nice. But it's not realistic insofar as evolution is concerned. Rather the theory of evolution is an attempt to make sense of what we do know.
So it's not about facts and figures, and piling on more and more information and data, but it's about argument. What makes the best argument out of the available evidence? The theory of evolution is an argument. And it should thus be disproven or proven based on the strength of its argumentation. Which in my reading is what Steve has been doing all along here.
3. You said: Hmmm. I think without considering the witness of science, I'd interpret scripture to say the earth is the center of the universe, and that the sun goes around the earth, just as the church did for many centuries. But that would be ignoring Copernicus' discovery. I've got no problem looking at scripture and trying to see it as the ancients did. But I have a big problem ignoring knowledge readily at hand -- like the movements of tides that confirms heliocentrism.
I'm not at all suggesting we ignore science or other knowledge. But what I mean is that for the Christian the Bible should be primary. That is, we first look at the Bible and attempt to accommodate science (or whatever else) to Scripture. We don't try and take science and impose it into the Scriptural text. But that's precisely what theistic evolution seems to be doing here, at least as far as I can tell.
For example, take point #1 I raised above. Shouldn't we rather work from the Biblical text and then try to understand whether the theory of evolution would fit in with the text? Instead it seems to me the opposite in this case: that the theistic evolution position is trying to squeeze evolution into the text when it doesn't appear to fit.
Or to take another example. I noticed you didn't have the chance to address something else I mentioned in the previous comment. Perhaps you accidentally overlooked it or it didn't seem significant to you. But it does seem significant to me. So I wonder if you might please consider responding to it? I'll quote it again now:
Speaking of which, I'm curious, how would you as a theistic evolutionist respond to the existence of disease and death prior to man if we assume evolution is true?
That is, according to evolutionary theory, uni and multicellular organisms (prokaryotes and eukaryotes) such as bacteria, and others such as virii, were present well before the advent of man. Decomposition took place when organisms died. Presumably bacteria, for example, helped along in the process of animal decomposition after death. It makes sense to say that (early) man would have also decomposed after death. Or at least fallen prey to disease even if he was able to eventually fight it off through a developed immune system. But probably many died from disease.
Thus early to modern man would have evolved in an environment which included things like the existence of processes like decomposition, would have been susceptible and in fact exposed to disease, and would very likely have died. Even from his earliest days, in fact even from his transitional phase between ape-man to early man, man would've been living in these conditions. Illness and disease existed and thus would've been trasmitted to him. His body would begin to gradually die as he approached old age. Death would inevitably claim him. His body would decompose. And so on.
Yet Genesis indicates that man did not suffer the effects of physical death until after the Fall. Man's own body did not decay and eventually die in the Garden of Eden. What's more, he appears to have been living in an environment in which none of these processes which lead to death were in effect. Man's environment seems to have been perfect and free of those things which would cause death. Romans 8:20-22 elaborates: "For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now." This "pains of childbirth" would seem (at least in part) to refer to the Fall in Genesis 3.
At any rate, Romans 8 indicates that creation itself is in "bondage to decay." In other words, according to the Bible decay and death do not seem to be a natural state of affairs. But according to the theory of evolution decay and death would be perfectly natural. In fact, they would even be prerequisites to the entire process of evolution and human evolution. Without decay and death, how could any organism evolve in the first place? Without decay and death, how could animals prey on one another? Without decay and death, how would natural selection and survival function? Etc.
So my question is, how would you make sense of the Biblical narrative in places like Genesis 3 and Romans 8 in light of evolution?
4. Related to the previous point, it seems to me that for theistic evolution to be viable, it would not only have to take into account the validity of the theory of evolution (e.g. perhaps by beginning with addressing some of the problems Steve has raised with you), but it would also have to be able to exegete the Bible in such a way as to be true to the relevant passages of Scripture on their own terms while explaining how the same Scriptural passages would accommodate the theory of evolution.
At this point, again, it seems to me that theistic evolution is a bit dodgy in both the theory of evolution itself as well as plays fast and loose with a proper exegesis of the Bible. It seems to want the best of both worlds without being truly honest with the explicit claims of either.
That's my take of theistic evolution so far, anyway.
Hi Patrick,
ReplyDeleteYou said:
Thanks for your comments. Rather than responding point-by-point to what you've said, however, I'd like to simply post a few remarks. This should help better focus the discussion (at least for me). Otherwise I feel as if we're liable to get buried beneath an avalanche of words and posts such that nothing constructive will come of this. Hope you don't have any objection to this. (Plus I've not as much free time to respond as I'd like. Sorry about that.)
No objections here. There are good, meaty issues afoot here. Let's go after them.
You said:
Regarding the proto-human endowed with a soul. Neither the Bible nor evolution teaches this. It's probably obvious to most that the theory of evolution would have nothing to say about the existence of a soul. Looking at it in its barest form, evolution is a scientific theory without any pretensions to the spiritual realm. But what might not be as obvious to others is that the Bible itself does not appear to teach this.
When Genesis says that God created Adam "from the dust", that's telling us that man's origins are in the earth. It's allegorical in form, but the underlying science would be that man evolved from more primitive forms, as the *method* of God's creation of man. So I assert that absolutely is taught in the Bible.
As for science and the soul, science has no *concept* of 'soul'. As such, it would not expect to know, or notice the presence, absence, or endowment of a soul. Science simply has nothing to say about it -- it's a *physical* discipline, and the soul is metaphysical entity. Mention soul to science, and science says "I have no idea what you're talking about. I only deal with the physical."
I respect and honor God's physical creation, but I'm not limited to my scientific understandings to establish my holistic view of reality. My views are *compatible* with the science available -- they do not war against the physical aspects of God's general revelation -- but they are not constrained to ideas or truths that are "in scope" for science.
So I neither expect or want science to acknowledge, or even consider the idea of a soul, or anything metaphysical.
You said:
In other words, according to the above passage, man was formed directly from the dust of the ground. Only then did God breath the breath of life into man. God did not take an already formed proto-human and breath the breath of life into it. God took dust from the ground, created man as man (not man as proto-human, who was somehow transformed from proto-human into man by virtue of the breath of life), and breathed the breath of life into him.
Patrick, you're treating Genesis like it was a science textbook. Do you suppose Moses understood this to be a *scientific* rendering of creation? I don't and think such a view is wholly anachronistic, a modernist-reductionist view of scripture. It's allegorical language. That makes it no less true -- it's perfectly true and authoritative. But it's not a literal description of a mechanical process.
All of the millions of years of man's development are encapsulated in the these words: "from the dust of the ground".
You said:
Moreover, God placed this man in a specific place: in a garden in Eden. And later (after the Fall) man spread out from this point. But as I understand it, according to the Out of Africa theory you've cited in a previous comment, wouldn't proto-human have had to have migrated to this specific place from someplace else? So how could God have "placed" man in a specific location, i.e. the garden of Eden? Unless by "place" you mean something more like "guided" or "directed" proto-humans there, only to choose one male and female of the species, and then breathed the breath of life into these? And even if this is true, it would reverse the passage, since in Genesis 2:7-8 man was first formed or created and then placed in a specific location. Not the other way around.
Well, formed = evolution, Garden of Eden = wherever Adam was, now that he was "man", and not proto-man. That order accords just fine with your passage. I don't know if God intervened to guide Adam (or his anestors) to a specific geographic location or not. Either way, it's fine with me. Eden was important not because of its longitude/latitude, but because of its moral and spiritual implications, it's *metaphysical* location in the universe.
You said:
I don't know how this passage could be taken allegorically either. It seems pretty straightforward to me. I think to the atheist evolutionist, for instance, it would be straightforward, too. Although he would dismiss it outright as an ancient myth since his position is that man evolved from an ape-man or proto-human and God had nothing to do with it.
I think the working assumption here -- that everything is straightforward -- is how YECs get into the trouble they do. The moral and spiritual truths of Genesis *are* fairly straightforward. Trying to extract scientific phenomena out of Genesis is exceedingly complex, and intractable in principle in many cases.
If you take Genesis seriously, the allegorical interpretation is by far the most faithful one, in my view.
You said:
Thus it would seem to me that this idea of a proto-human does not at all jibe with the Biblical narrative. Instead it appears to be an interpolation into the Scriptural text. Something the theistic evolutionist position has perhaps conceived in an attempt to harmonize the theory of evolution with a belief in the God of the Bible. But insofar as I can tell, the harmonization doesn't appear to fit what the verses teach.
To be frank, it seems more intellectually honest to me to side with naturalistic evolution than it does to side with theistic evolution. As Steve has pointed out, theistic evolution seems to be a compromised position. And it seems more evident here than elsewhere.
But perhaps I'm missing something?
Well, if you are committed to Genesis being straightforward science, I can totally understand seeing theistic evolution as problematic. I don't think that's a serious way to look at God's Word, though. Taken on its own terms -- look at all the textual clues and form to figurative/allegorical modes of expression in Genesis -- it's remarkably clear and powerful in terms of spiritual and moral messages for man, and remarkably silent in terms of scientific phenomenon.
If you are missing something, I'd say it was a measure of imagination in the way God communicates truth to mankind. Jesus used parables -- fiction -- to convey truth to us. Problem? Not at all. Failure to see allegory for what it is seems like quarreling with Jesus for using made up stories to convey moral truths.
And, just to be clear, I don't suppose the creation story is fiction. It's completely true and real. It's just expressed in allegorical forms.
More in a subsequent message.
-Touchstone
Hi Patrick,
ReplyDeleteYou said:
If you're right, then this only proves that at any time any theory could be open to invalidation. Including the theory of evolution. By this line of reasoning, the best position to maintain is not that evolution is true or even more likely to be true than any other theory, per se, but agnosticism about evolution. We just don't know because we don't have all the facts in.
By the same token, this really isn't saying anything, because we'll never have all the facts. There's no way for anyone to have an exhaustive amount of knowledge.
Science is tentative, by definition. It *never* claims an ultimate answer, but simply offers the best performing ones. Some answers are expressed with high confidence, some are expressed with low confidence.
You said:
But that's not what evolutionists claim in the first place. I don't see the evolutionist placing such a high bar for the theory of evolution itself. Evolutionists do not claim that the theory of evolution needs to take into account every known and unknown which might crop up. Which explains everything under the sun. Perhaps that'd be nice. But it's not realistic insofar as evolution is concerned. Rather the theory of evolution is an attempt to make sense of what we do know.
That's right. We'll never have all the facts, on any question, evolution or other wise.
But, evolution, like all science, is not at liberty to pick and choose what science it abides by. It can't propose an alternate set of physics laws, for example, and leave it at that. Evolution must be expressed in the language of the other disciplines -- the Second Law of Thermodynamics applies as much to evolution as much it does to fusion in the sun.
You said:
So it's not about facts and figures, and piling on more and more information and data, but it's about argument. What makes the best argument out of the available evidence? The theory of evolution is an argument. And it should thus be disproven or proven based on the strength of its argumentation. Which in my reading is what Steve has been doing all along here.
Steve has offered a claim that man did not have the wherewithal to survive the last millions of years. It's an unsupportable claim, and everyone paying attention to this point is well aware of that.
Science: This is our best-performing theory of what happened...
Steve Hays: What science supposes could *not* have happened. Man did not have the wherewithal to survive.
So, Steve has the strong, categorical claim here. Science is convinced this what happened, but only until a *better* theory comes along. Scientists are always thrilled to have a theory falsified -- falsification is the engine that drives scientific progress. So if Steve is doing anything but talking through his hat, he's really on to something big.
But I think he's simply talking through his hat. He's got the whole "critique of science" smokescreen to fallback on, so it's a plausible way to proceed for him. But there's no getting around the fact that evolution is not a categorical claim, and Steve's falsification of evolution is.
You said:
I'm not at all suggesting we ignore science or other knowledge. But what I mean is that for the Christian the Bible should be primary. That is, we first look at the Bible and attempt to accommodate science (or whatever else) to Scripture. We don't try and take science and impose it into the Scriptural text. But that's precisely what theistic evolution seems to be doing here, at least as far as I can tell.
For example, take point #1 I raised above. Shouldn't we rather work from the Biblical text and then try to understand whether the theory of evolution would fit in with the text? Instead it seems to me the opposite in this case: that the theistic evolution position is trying to squeeze evolution into the text when it doesn't appear to fit.
We have two revelations, but absolutely true: a) The Bible, God's special revelation to man, and b) God's creation, His general creation to man. Neither of these conflict, ever. Truth is truth. Suggesting that the Bible is "more true" than God's creation is a distortion of the meaning of "true".
Both the Bible and God's creation are experienced through interpretation by man. In some cases, where an apparent conflict arises, man's interpretation of God' creation is incorrect. In other cases, man's interpretation of scripture is incorrect. Sometimes, *both* are correct.
Many Christians were convinced in 1630 that the sun *must* orbit around the earth. Their interpretation of scripture was incorrect, and was corrected by scientific discovery and knowledge.
Now. Here's the important question I hope you will answer. Were the geocentric Christians *wrong* to subordinate the authority of the Bible to science when they realized that the earth really did go around the sun?
My answer is no, of course not. Man was just mistaken about what scripture actually said. God's Word was not diminished a bit in truth or authority at any point -- it never can be.
Thanks, continuing in a bit.
-Touchstone
Patrick,
ReplyDeleteYou said:
Yet Genesis indicates that man did not suffer the effects of physical death until after the Fall. Man's own body did not decay and eventually die in the Garden of Eden. What's more, he appears to have been living in an environment in which none of these processes which lead to death were in effect. Man's environment seems to have been perfect and free of those things which would cause death. Romans 8:20-22 elaborates: "For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now." This "pains of childbirth" would seem (at least in part) to refer to the Fall in Genesis 3.
Patrick, I'm just taking the last paragraph here of this section of yours which I understand to be related to the same question. In Genesis, there is a "Tree of Life". The name it's given should suggest to you the answer I will give. Man could partake of the "Tree of Life" in Eden, and it is this that provided ongoing vitality -- immortality so long as the Tree of Life was available to him. When Adam sinned, God sent him out of the Garden of Eden and *away* from the Tree of Life - the life sustaining resource for him. As a consequence of Adam's sin, this life-preserving resoure was withdrawn, and Adam was forced to go without, and to die a physical death one day, as is appointed to each of us who came after.
This means that Adam did not have an "immortal biology", but rather had a relationship with God in Eden that availed a resource that provided eternal life.
You said:
At any rate, Romans 8 indicates that creation itself is in "bondage to decay." In other words, according to the Bible decay and death do not seem to be a natural state of affairs. But according to the theory of evolution decay and death would be perfectly natural. In fact, they would even be prerequisites to the entire process of evolution and human evolution. Without decay and death, how could any organism evolve in the first place? Without decay and death, how could animals prey on one another? Without decay and death, how would natural selection and survival function? Etc.
So my question is, how would you make sense of the Biblical narrative in places like Genesis 3 and Romans 8 in light of evolution?
Exactly, you've made a great argument here that says that Romans 8 should not be understood to mean that creation existed -- ever -- without the physical laws that God ordained, laws that necessitate decay, decomposition, and death. Creation *is* in bondage to decay, that's how God designed the universe. Without God, and his intervention and sustenance, living things die, physically.
You said:
4. Related to the previous point, it seems to me that for theistic evolution to be viable, it would not only have to take into account the validity of the theory of evolution (e.g. perhaps by beginning with addressing some of the problems Steve has raised with you), but it would also have to be able to exegete the Bible in such a way as to be true to the relevant passages of Scripture on their own terms while explaining how the same Scriptural passages would accommodate the theory of evolution.
At this point, again, it seems to me that theistic evolution is a bit dodgy in both the theory of evolution itself as well as plays fast and loose with a proper exegesis of the Bible. It seems to want the best of both worlds without being truly honest with the explicit claims of either.
Evolution has nothing to say about the soul -- that just isn't a problem, and not sure why you think it might be. If you can show me where evolutionary theory either denies of affirms the idea or presence of a soul, then we can talk about it. I claim that evolutionary theory is wholly agnostic with respect to metaphysics. And as for Biblical interpretation, as a former YEC, I've studied long and hard the YEC exegesis, and subscribed to it for a time. The TE model is a much more serious treatment of scripture, to my mind, and precisely because it *does* accept scripture on its own terms, and doesn't cast it as something it's not -- a science textbook in Genesis, for example. As for the explicit claims YECs make, having been there, and done that, I understand those claims to claims for the authority of one's *interpretation*, conflated with the authority of the Bible itself. Claims that Genesis makes explicit claims about the method of creation (6 solar days, for example) are simply wide misinterpretations of the text.
Thanks Patrick. Interesting exchange -- you present your case well.
-Touchstone
Hi Touchstone,
ReplyDeleteThanks again for your comments. Here's the next round:
1. You said: When Genesis says that God created Adam "from the dust", that's telling us that man's origins are in the earth. It's allegorical in form, but the underlying science would be that man evolved from more primitive forms, as the method of God's creation of man. So I assert that absolutely is taught in the Bible. ... Patrick, you're treating Genesis like it was a science textbook. Do you suppose Moses understood this to be a scientific rendering of creation? I don't and think such a view is wholly anachronistic, a modernist-reductionist view of scripture. It's allegorical language. That makes it no less true -- it's perfectly true and authoritative. But it's not a literal description of a mechanical process. All of the millions of years of man's development are encapsulated in the these words: "from the dust of the ground". ... If you take Genesis seriously, the allegorical interpretation is by far the most faithful one, in my view.
a. But why should one treat the first few chapters Genesis as allegorical rather than historical? On what grounds do you take the first few chapters of Genesis as allegorical?
b. Also, if you do take the first few chapters of Genesis allegorically, then why not the rest of Genesis? Or the stories of Moses in Exodus? And the flight from Egypt, the Israelites' wanderings in the wilderness, and their entry into the Promised Land? And so on. Where do you draw the line?
c. I don't know whether you would already believe this or not, but why couldn't we likewise allegorize Adam and Eve, for example, suggesting that they represented whole groups of male and female proto-humans rather than single individuals? Or perhaps the Garden of Eden is not a literal place, but representative of an idyllic setting such as a subtropical region of Africa (or wherever else)? Or the tree of life not as a literal tree of life but as a metaphor for, say, all plants with fruits which are able to nourish human beings? Or what of the commandment to observe the Sabbath after six days of work? Is it likewise figurative? Perhaps it really means something like we are to work six decades in life and in the seventh decade we can finally retire and rest (which would be rather convenient for a 21st century businessman)? Or what of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the patriarchs? Perhaps the twelve tribes were not literal tribes but types which represent twelve Briggs-Meyers like personalities or something like that?
In short, if Genesis is merely allegorical, then how do we decide what the allegories mean? In a sense, they could mean anything, couldn't they? Thus they would fit in with not only evolution, but virtually any other theory of human origin. An allegorical interpretation of Genesis could potentially be so wide open that it would accommodate any idea -- at times including or excluding the theory of evolution.
d. Furthermore, if you do accept the previous, then it would seem to invalidate a point you later make since it appears you take the tree of life quite literally here: Patrick, I'm just taking the last paragraph here of this section of yours which I understand to be related to the same question. In Genesis, there is a "Tree of Life". The name it's given should suggest to you the answer I will give. Man could partake of the "Tree of Life" in Eden, and it is this that provided ongoing vitality -- immortality so long as the Tree of Life was available to him. When Adam sinned, God sent him out of the Garden of Eden and away from the Tree of Life - the life sustaining resource for him. As a consequence of Adam's sin, this life-preserving resoure was withdrawn, and Adam was forced to go without, and to die a physical death one day, as is appointed to each of us who came after.
Why take the tree of life literally when you take other passages in the same proximity allegorically?
e. Speaking for myself, Dr. Kurt Wise argues quite persuasively in his book Faith, Form, and Time for understanding Genesis as historical narrative:
"But should the Genesis account be taken at face value? Is it intended to convey history? What qualifies the Book of Genesis as historical narrative literature?
Genesis lacks many characteristics of non-historical Hebrew literature. Characteristics common in Hebrew allegory, such as storytellers, interpreters, interpretations, and a non-physical-world focus are absent from the Genesis text. Most of the terms of the text (like birds, plants, stars) do not seem to be symbolic. The characteristics of Hebrew poetry with its parallelism of juxtaposed couplets and metrical balance are also absent from most of the text.
Genesis does have many of the characteristics common in Hebrew historical narrative. It contains genealogical lists, for example, as well as narrative with interspersed poetic lines, an emphasis on definitions, frequent use of the direct object sign and relative pronoun, a list of sequential events separated by the special Hebrew phrase called a waw consecutive (waw is pronounced vahv and is usually translated "and" as in "And God said..." or "And the earth was..."), plus an abundance of geographic, cultural, and other verifiable details. Included are a number of other features that in Western literature may indicate non-historical, even poetic narrative (such as numerology, figures of speech, textual symmetry, and phenomenological language) but that are commonly found in Hebrew historical narrative.
The historical texts in Genesis contrast with non-historical narrative. For the most part, seamless connections join the various Genesis accounts, including those widely accepted as historical. But the short, non-historical passages within the Genesis account -- for example, Adam's response at seeing Eve (Gen. 2:23) and the song of Lamech (Gen. 4:23-24) -- as well as poetic renditions of Genesis passages found in other places in Scripture (such as in Ps. 104) contrast sharply with the historical flavor of the Genesis text, including the creation account.
Scripture itself refers to Genesis as historical. The remainder of Scripture (Exod. 20:11; Neh. 9:6; ACts 17:22-29) and Jesus Himself (Matt. 19:4-6) speak of Genesis -- including the creation account -- as if it were to be taken as history. Likewise, most of the Jews and Christians through time have understood the Genesis account to be historical. Since the Genesis account is historical narrative and reliable, its clear claim of a six-day creation should be taken seriously."
f. By the way, I've never suggested we should read the Bible as a science textbook. Rather we should allow the Bible to speak to us as it spoke to the original author(s) and his audience.
g. Now assuming we do take the Bible as historical narrative, again, I'd wonder how the theistic evolutionist would take Gen. 2:7, "then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature"? Since this would mean that man was formed directly from the dust of the ground and given the breath of life, not that there was an already formed proto-human into which God breathed the breath of life.
2. You said: Well, if you are committed to Genesis being straightforward science, I can totally understand seeing theistic evolution as problematic. I don't think that's a serious way to look at God's Word, though. Taken on its own terms -- look at all the textual clues and form to figurative/allegorical modes of expression in Genesis -- it's remarkably clear and powerful in terms of spiritual and moral messages for man, and remarkably silent in terms of scientific phenomenon.
If you are missing something, I'd say it was a measure of imagination in the way God communicates truth to mankind. Jesus used parables -- fiction -- to convey truth to us. Problem? Not at all. Failure to see allegory for what it is seems like quarreling with Jesus for using made up stories to convey moral truths.
And, just to be clear, I don't suppose the creation story is fiction. It's completely true and real. It's just expressed in allegorical forms.
a. It's true Jesus told parables in the Gospels. But we know He was speaking in parables because either He or His disciples would explicitly say so. Here's a quick sample:
* "And he told them many things in parables, saying..." (Matt. 13:3).
* "Hear then the parable of the sower..." (Matt. 13:18).
* "He put another parable before them, saying, 'The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field...'" (Matt. 13:31).
Even in the OT, a parable is almost always explicitly introduced: "The word of the Lord came to me: 'Son of man, propound a riddle, and speak a parable to the house of Israel...'" (Ezek. 17:1).
My point is simply that it seems the Biblical text will call attention to a parable when a parable is being told.
But no where in Genesis do we see this. There's nothing along the lines of, "Hear then the parable of the creation of the heavens and the earth" or "When God created man, it was like such and such..." Rather Genesis seems to be making statements or assertions. "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." And "the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life."
b. What's more, sometimes Jesus would tell a parable and no one would understand what He meant -- not even His disciples. Then He would have to step aside and explain it to them. Thus some parables are not at all clear to its listeners. Assuming Genesis is a parable for the moment, how do you know you have the right interpretation? How do you know the Genesis parable comes across to you crystal clear and isn't obscured by layers upon layers of allegory, symbols, and metaphors?
3. You said: Science: This is our best-performing theory of what happened...
Steve Hays: What science supposes could not have happened. Man did not have the wherewithal to survive.
So, Steve has the strong, categorical claim here. Science is convinced this what happened, but only until a better theory comes along. Scientists are always thrilled to have a theory falsified -- falsification is the engine that drives scientific progress. So if Steve is doing anything but talking through his hat, he's really on to something big.
But I think he's simply talking through his hat. He's got the whole "critique of science" smokescreen to fallback on, so it's a plausible way to proceed for him. But there's no getting around the fact that evolution is not a categorical claim, and Steve's falsification of evolution is.
a. Actually, isn't this how science works or at least should work? Science argues such and such: e.g. humans evolved from an ape-man or proto-human. Then the statement is subjected to questions and criticism: e.g. Steve asks, if human evolution is true, then how did man have the wherewithal to survive in the millions of year long transitional period between ape-man and modern man when he lost his arboreal lifestyle, had not yet developed the brainpower to make let alone use weapons, faced natural predators which could easily prey on a defenseless ape-man, etc.?
b. As far as I can tell, there's nothing inherently wrong with making a strong, even categorial claim against a theory or proposition. That way, we can test its validity or legitimacy. In fact, shouldn't questions, claims, and so forth be encouraged for science to truly be science? The way our secular society paints the perfect scientist, it would seem that skepticism and doubt are virtues to be cultivated.
4. You said: Now. Here's the important question I hope you will answer. Were the geocentric Christians wrong to subordinate the authority of the Bible to science when they realized that the earth really did go around the sun? My answer is no, of course not. Man was just mistaken about what scripture actually said. God's Word was not diminished a bit in truth or authority at any point -- it never can be.
I'd agree with you here.
However, I would say that a heliocentric solar system does not seem to conflict with a proper interpretation of the Bible whereas as far as I can tell the theory of evolution does seem to conflict with a proper interpretation of the Bible. One area of conflict centers on what I've pointed out above: an allegorical interpretation of the Bible.
Currently I have no concrete statistics to back up my claim, but I'd wager that those nations most influenced by Protestantism, and in our case specifically a return to a more correct intepretation of the Bible, were less likely to hold to a geocentric solar system and more likely to embrace valid scientific discoveries including a heliocentric solar system than those nations still under the sway of Roman Catholicism. Catholicism, as I'm sure you're aware, has a tremendously rich tradition of allegorical, even fanciful Biblical interpretations underneath its robes. Whereas I've heard argued that Protestantism helped spur on scientific progress.
5. You said: Patrick, I'm just taking the last paragraph here of this section of yours which I understand to be related to the same question. In Genesis, there is a "Tree of Life". The name it's given should suggest to you the answer I will give. Man could partake of the "Tree of Life" in Eden, and it is this that provided ongoing vitality -- immortality so long as the Tree of Life was available to him. When Adam sinned, God sent him out of the Garden of Eden and away from the Tree of Life - the life sustaining resource for him. As a consequence of Adam's sin, this life-preserving resoure was withdrawn, and Adam was forced to go without, and to die a physical death one day, as is appointed to each of us who came after.
How would this fit in with your allegorical interpretation of the first few chapters of Genesis? Here you take the tree literally, but elsewhere you take things like "dust from the ground," the Garden of Eden, and possibly even Adam and Eve symbolically. Why the shift from allegory to literalism or from literalism to allegory? As far as I can tell, the common denominator seems to be that it suits theistic evolution to interpret certain verses literally and historically and other verses allegorically. Again, my contention stands that theistic evolution plays fast and loose with Scripture in order to support its own agenda. It doesn't allow the Scriptural text to speak on its own terms and for itself.
6. You said: Exactly, you've made a great argument here that says that Romans 8 should not be understood to mean that creation existed -- ever -- without the physical laws that God ordained, laws that necessitate decay, decomposition, and death. Creation is in bondage to decay, that's how God designed the universe. Without God, and his intervention and sustenance, living things die, physically.
I'm not speaking of the present situation of creation, which is obvious to any person, since disease, decay, death, etc. are evident enough to us, but I'm speaking about the past. Were these things always present?
So my point is that the creation's "bondage to decay" in Romans 8 presupposes a time in which there was no decay. In which creation did not decay. Otherwise there'd be no "bondage to decay" in the first place. It would simply be the natural order, the way things have always been.
Moreover, this seems to be a problem for the theistic evolutionist. That is, if there was a point in time in which creation was not under "bondage to decay," and if creation today is under "bondage to decay," then how does the theistic evolutionist square away the theory of evolution with this verse in the Bible? If the theory of evolution is true, then the universe must always have been in a state of decay and death, disease must always have been present, species must adapt and evolve in response to some threat to their survival, etc. Otherwise what's the engine for evolution if there was a time in which there was no decay, disease, death, decomposition, etc. as Rom. 8:21 notes?
Bottom line: as a Christian theistic evolutionist, how do you explain the presence of decay, disease, death, decomposition, etc. prior to man coming on the scene, since according to Genesis man did not experience the effects of physical death until after the Fall?
7. You said: "At this point, again, it seems to me that theistic evolution is a bit dodgy in both the theory of evolution itself as well as plays fast and loose with a proper exegesis of the Bible. It seems to want the best of both worlds without being truly honest with the explicit claims of either."
Evolution has nothing to say about the soul -- that just isn't a problem, and not sure why you think it might be. If you can show me where evolutionary theory either denies of affirms the idea or presence of a soul, then we can talk about it. I claim that evolutionary theory is wholly agnostic with respect to metaphysics. And as for Biblical interpretation, as a former YEC, I've studied long and hard the YEC exegesis, and subscribed to it for a time. The TE model is a much more serious treatment of scripture, to my mind, and precisely because it does accept scripture on its own terms, and doesn't cast it as something it's not -- a science textbook in Genesis, for example. As for the explicit claims YECs make, having been there, and done that, I understand those claims to claims for the authority of one's interpretation, conflated with the authority of the Bible itself. Claims that Genesis makes explicit claims about the method of creation (6 solar days, for example) are simply wide misinterpretations of the text.
a. I've never said I thought there's a problem with the soul. Certainly I don't say so above.
b. I'm instead mainly talking about whether the Christian should subject the claims of science to the Bible or whether we should subject the Bible to the claims of science. Ultimately, I think this is the issue: is the Bible or the claims of science the final arbiter of truth? Both are vehicles for truth. I'm not arguing against that at all.
But it seems to me that a YEC position is being more honestly consistent with what the Bible teaches than the theistic evolution position. Yet the YEC does not ignore science and knowledge by any means, but does seek to incorporate science into a Biblical worldview. The theistic evolutionist seems to instead start with the premise that science is the final arbiter of truth and we have to see how the Bible fits with science. It should instead be that the Bible is the final arbiter of truth and we have to see how science fits with the Bible. (Especially when push comes to shove.) At least so far that's how it appears to me.
I think I'm beginning to sound like a broken record, so I'll stop now.
Thanks again for the discussion.