BioLogomachy

I. BioLogos

BioLogos is getting some buzz on the Internet. And a fundamental level, BioLogos nothing new. Its basic scientific and theological orientation is just a rehash of the American Scientific Affiliation, which was founded in 1941. Likewise, the recourse to comparative mythology goes back to the 19C. Still there’s a sense in which what is old hat to the last generation is new to the next generation.

A deceptive aspect of BioLogos lies in its very one-sided version of the evidence. For example, there are better treatments of comparative mythology by scholars like John Currid, Kenneth Kitchen, David Tsumura, and John Oswalt.

According to their self-serving promo:

We believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. We also believe that evolution, properly understood, best describes God’s work of creation.

http://biologos.org/about

But one of the problems with this statement is their dubious sincerity in affirming the inspiration of Scripture. For example, this is what one contributor recently said:

The answer is that we are reading the [flood] account over the shoulders of the ancient Israelites to whom it was addressed. They believed it was factual. This was a naïve belief, but they had no reason to question the account’s historicity. We must remember that their understanding of the natural world was that of little children.

http://biologos.org/blog/the-flood-not-global-barely-local-mostly-theological-iii/

But if the narrator of Gen 6-9 intended to relay a true story–which, however, we now know to be false, then in what sense is the Bible the inspired word of God? If Seeley’s assessment is correct, then how would an “inspired” account differ from an uninspired account?

In the same vein, the articles by Peter Enns are ironically self-incriminating. His dismissal from WTS either liberated him to come out and say what he's been covertly harboring all along, or else it had a somewhat radicalizing effect on his theology. An accelerant. Whichever the case, he's unwittingly validating his dismissal by his subsequent statements.

II. Grammatico-Historical Exegesis

Here is how one contributor states the challenge:

The creation accounts of Genesis 1 and 2, when interpreted by the grammatico-historical method cannot be harmonized with creation by the process of evolution.

http://biologos.org/uploads/projects/Waltke_scholarly_essay.pdf

Although that statement targets the creation account, contributors raise the same challenge to the flood account. So let’s evaluate the way in which BioLogos handles the flood:

The language used in Genesis 6-9 does not insist that the flood was global.

First of all, the Hebrew kol erets, meaning whole Earth, can also be translated whole land in reference to local, not global, geography. The Old Testament scholar Gleason L. Archer explains that the Hebrew word erets is often translated as Earth in English translations of the Bible, when in reality it is also the word for land, as in the land of Israel.6 Archer explains that erets is used many times throughout the Old Testament to mean land and country. Furthermore, the term tebel, which translates to the whole expanse of the Earth, or the Earth as a whole, is not used in Genesis 6:17, nor in subsequent verses in Genesis 7 (7:4, 7:10, 7:17, 7:18, 7:19).7 If the intent of this passage was to indicate the entire expanse of the Earth, tebel would have been the more appropriate word choice. Consequently, the Hebrew text is more consistent with a local geography for the flood.

Moreover, in this period of history, people understood the whole Earth as a smaller geographical area. There is no evidence to suggest that people of this time had explored the far reaches of the globe or had any understanding of its scope. For example, the Babylonian Map of the World,8 the oldest known world map, depicts the world as two concentric circles containing sites of Assyria, Babylon, Bit Yakin, Urartu, a few other cities and geographic features all surrounded by ocean. There are also small, simple triangles that shoot out from the ocean labeled as nagu or uncharted regions.9 Contextual evidence also suggests that Greek geographers developed comparable maps during the middle of the first millennium, where Greece was positioned in the middle of a circle surrounded by oceans.10 These maps remind us that people were most familiar with the regions surrounding their homelands. Therefore, to say that something happened in the kol erets –– or referring to "all people" (Genesis 6:13), –– would have been an appropriate way of referring to the entirety of Earth and its population in a manner in which ancient Israelites would have been familiar. Davis A. Young, author of The Biblical Flood: A Case Study of the Church's Response to Extrabiblical Evidence, sums this up when he states:

"Given the frequency with which the Bible uses universal language to describe local events of great significance, such as the famine or the plagues in Egypt, is it unreasonable to suppose that the flood account uses hyperbolic language to describe an event that devastated or disrupted Mesopotamian civilization — that is to say, the whole world of the Semites?" 11

First, a universal flood would have changed the topography of the land. For example, in the event of a worldwide flood, the Hidekkel, or Tigris, and Euphrates rivers of Genesis 2:14 would have disappeared under layers of flood-laid sedimentary rock.12 Instead, the Euphrates is mentioned again in Genesis 15:18, and the Hidekkel is alluded to in Daniel 10:4. This suggests that the rivers’ integrity was maintained.13

http://biologos.org/questions/genesis-flood/

For the sake of argument, let us stipulate that Enns has made a plausible case for the local flood interpretation. (I say “Enns” because he’s credited with assisting in the answer.) With that interpretation in mind, let’s compare this with some of the scientific or logistical objections which he raises to a global flood:

Second, it would require an inordinate amount of water to flood the entire Earth.

But the obvious problem with this objection is that Enns just told us that our narrator didn’t have the same sense of scale. He wasn’t using a gnomonic map projection or the Mercator projection.

So there’s a basic equivocation in the terms of this objection. When Enns says it would require an inordinate amount of water to flood the entire earth, does this have reference to the known world of the narrator, or the world known to Enns?

Put another way, what does the contrast between local and global interpretations refer to? Is it local from the viewpoint of the narrator, or local from the viewpoint of a modern scholar like Enns?

Remember, the stated challenge is whether the flood account is harmonious with modern science given grammatico-historical exegesis of the flood account. And Enns just told us that grammatico-historical exegesis of Gen 6-9 yields a local interpretation. But if that’s the case, then why would a local flood require an inordinate amount of water?

Another supposition is that all animals and humans are derived from the survivors on Noah’s Ark. There are several problems with this idea. First of all, there is no way that the 2 million known species of animals could have fit onto the ark — not to mention the estimated 10 to 100 million species yet to be discovered. The dimensions of the Ark were 300 cubits by 50 cubits by 30 cubits (Genesis 6:15). At 18 inches per cubit, the Ark would have been 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet tall. This was indeed a large ship by the standards of the time, but not nearly large enough to carry such a vast and varied cargo. Getting all of the animals to fit on the ark, along with the necessary food would not have been feasible. Some have argued that not all species were included, but only representatives of each type. Not only would this still represent an improbably great number of creatures, it would also require that the evolution of related species be drastically accelerated after the flood, in order to account for current diversity of species.

How is “2 million known species” pertinent to the grammatico-historical exegesis of Gen 6-9? Known to whom? To the narrator? Or to Enns?

Isn’t grammatico-historical exegesis supposed to assume the viewpoint of the narrator rather than the viewpoint of a modern reader?

“Species” is a modern taxonomic category. Gen 6-9 does not employ that category. Rather, it speaks of natural “kinds.”

And since, moreover, Enns doesn’t believe the narrator was even cognizant of “2 million species,” isn’t this a grossly anachronistic objection? The problem is that Enns is conflating his own perspective with the perspective of the narrator.

Finally, the migration of animals across mountains and oceans is quite difficult to explain.

But according to Enns, Australian kangaroos (to take one example) don’t fall within the purview of Gen 6-9. The narrator didn’t operate with a modern concept of biogeography. So given the narrative parameters of Gen 6-9, as Enns defines them, why wouldn’t that account be feasible on its own terms?

If his exegetical objections to a global flood are valid, then they cancel out his scientific/logistical objections.

Moving along to Paul Seely:

Data from various scientific disciplines provides a clear indication that Noah’s Flood did not cover the globe of the earth. Before considering that data, however, we must first determine a rough earliest probable date for the Flood. If the Flood is an actual historical event, it must touch down in the empirical data of history somewhere. We can make a rough approximation of its date from the two genealogies in Genesis 5 and 11. At one end is Adam, whose culture is Neolithic and therefore can be dated no earlier than around 9,000 or 10,000 B.C. At the other end is Abraham who can be dated to approximately 2000 B.C. In both genealogies the Flood occurs in the middle of these two ends, and therefore roughly at 5500 or 6000 B.C. An even clearer indication of the Flood’s date is implied by the statement that shortly after the Flood, Noah planted a vineyard. This implies the growing of domesticated grapes, which do not show up in the archaeological record until c. 4000 B.C.1 The biblical Flood is therefore probably not earlier than 4000 or maybe 5000 B.C.2

http://biologos.org/blog/the-flood-not-global-barely-local-mostly-theological-iii/

But, once again, a fundamental problem with this objection is the way in which Seely is transgressing the viewpoint of the narrative. For Seeley’s relative chronology isn’t drawn from information available to the narrator. The narrator wasn’t using the Gregorian calendar. Or Zulu time.

It’s not as if the narrator is placing Adam in the Neolithic period. Rather, that is Seely’s extratextual contribution. Seeley is superimposing a chronological framework on the text which is not derivable from the text itself.

The second line of evidence is from the Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 ice core.

How are Greenland ice-core samples germane to the grammatico-historical exegesis of Gen 6-9? According to Seely, the narrator didn’t even know that Greenland existed. So Seely is interpolating a frame of reference which falls outside the scope of Gen 6-9.

And this is even assuming that ice-core samples are datable going back thousands of years.

It fundamentally agrees with the tree ring record of American bristlecone pine going back to 6400 B.C. and with the tree ring record of European oak going back to 8480 B.C.6

Once again, American bristlecone pine trees exceed the narrative outlook of Gen 6-9. For Seely doesn’t think the narrator even knew about North America.

And this is even assuming that dendrochronology is all that reliable.

Contributors like Seely and Enns have backed themselves into a dilemma. They claim to be using the grammatico-historical method. And that is bound up with a theory of meaning in which meaning is tied to original intent. Yet Seely has also told us:

The answer is that we are reading the account over the shoulders of the ancient Israelites to whom it was addressed. They believed it was factual. This was a naïve belief, but they had no reason to question the account’s historicity. We must remember that their understanding of the natural world was that of little children.

But in that event, Gen 1-9 can only mean what the narrator intended it to mean. And he can only intend it to mean what it would mean to him, given his historical horizon.

So, if that is how contributors to BioLogos frame the issue, then how could Gen 1-9 ever contradict modern science? On that assumption, wouldn’t these represent incommensurable paradigms? As such, the orientation of BioLogos lacks internal coherence.

III. Evolution

BioLogos takes macroevolution for granted. But while we’re on the subject of storytelling, let’s take an evolutionary example:

A new study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides yet more evidence that birds did not descend from ground-dwelling theropod dinosaurs, experts say, and continues to challenge decades of accepted theories about the evolution of flight.

The weight of the evidence is now suggesting that not only did birds not descend from dinosaurs, Ruben said, but that some species now believed to be dinosaurs may have descended from birds.

"We're finally breaking out of the conventional wisdom of the last 20 years, which insisted that birds evolved from dinosaurs and that the debate is all over and done with," Ruben said. "This issue isn't resolved at all. There are just too many inconsistencies with the idea that birds had dinosaur ancestors, and this newest study adds to that."

"Raptors look quite a bit like dinosaurs but they have much more in common with birds than they do with other theropod dinosaurs such as Tyrannosaurus," Ruben said. "We think the evidence is finally showing that these animals which are usually considered dinosaurs were actually descended from birds, not the other way around."

"This model was not consistent with successful flight from the ground up, and that makes it pretty difficult to make a case for a ground-dwelling theropod dinosaur to have developed wings and flown away," Ruben said. "On the other hand, it would have been quite possible for birds to have evolved and then, at some point, have various species lose their flight capabilities and become ground-dwelling, flightless animals -- the raptors. This may be hugely upsetting to a lot of people, but it makes perfect sense."

OSU research on avian biology and physiology has been raising questions on this issue since the 1990s, often in isolation. More scientists and other studies are now challenging the same premise, Ruben said. The old theories were popular, had public appeal and "many people saw what they wanted to see" instead of carefully interpreting the data, he said.

"Pesky new fossils...sharply at odds with conventional wisdom never seem to cease popping up," Ruben wrote in his PNAS commentary. "Given the vagaries of the fossil record, current notions of near resolution of many of the most basic questions about long-extinct forms should probably be regarded with caution."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100209183335.htm

This sort of thing is deeply problematic on several grounds. A reversal like this is already problematic on its own grounds.

But the problem runs deeper. You can’t have macroevolution without evolutionary sequences. Not only is that a necessary implication of evolutionary theory, but a primary evidence for macroevolution. New species evolve out of old species as they adapt to environmental pressures. If, however, evolutionary biology can do an about-face on the evolutionary sequence of birds and dinosaurs, then what does that tell you about the state of the theory?

What’s even worse is that when a Darwinian posits an evolutionary sequence, he also gives us a little narrative to explain the evolutionary pathway connecting the predecessor to the successor. So we’re treated to Dawkinsian narratives about how birds evolved from dinosaurs–complete with stepwise progressions plausibly charting the way in which the respiratory, musculoskeletal, and cardiovascular systems made the intricate structural, mutual adjustments.

If, however, evolutionary biology reverses itself and tell us that, on second thought, things actually went the other way round, then we’ll be treated to Dawkinsian narratives about how dinosaurs evolved from birds– complete with stepwise progressions plausibly charting the way in which the respiratory, musculoskeletal, and cardiovascular systems made the intricate structural, mutual adjustments.

It's a classic case of a debater who can argue both sides of any position. Just tell him what to defend, and he'll defend it with a nice little story.

IV. Sensory Perception

The basic contention of BioLogos is that we know better than the author of Genesis. As a result, our modern, enlightened standpoint ought to prevail. But what’s ironic about this position is their rather puerile grasp of the issues.

Suppose I go along with their guiding assumptions. Suppose I take modernity as my standard of reference. Where does that leave me?

One of the quandaries of being a timebound creature is that I can’t step outside of time to know what time is like apart from my timebound perception of time.

Hence, we have philosophical debates over the true nature of time. Debates between the A-theory and the B-theory–as well as debates over variations of each. We also have debates between temporal metrical objectivism and temporal metrical conventionalism.

Likewise, we have reported phenomena like retrocognition (e.g. timeslips), which raise questions about the linearity of time.

And this goes to a deeper issue. For our spatiotemporal perceptions have a projective or constructive aspect as well as a receptive aspect. The mind or brain makes an active, creative contribution to our perception of the physical world. A stock example is the illusion of perceptual constancy. Objects appear to be stable despite wide variations in lighting, orientation, and motion. Our brain is compensating for limitations in the actual input. Let’s consider two related examples:

An assumption implicit in the argument from experience is that there is a direct correspondence between the perception of change and the objective passage of time, or its consequences. Change and motion are out there, and we just register them. But as perceivers are we really so passive? Is there not an element of the mind’s construction in what we experience? According to a very influential theory of motion perception, proposed by Herman von Helmholtz, what we see when we see motion is in part due to the mind’s telling us what we see.

The systems responsible are known as the image/retina system and the eye/head system. For as we take in a static environment by sweeping our eyes over it, as we often do, our retinal images are constantly shifting. But the world outside does not appear to move…the brain registers the changing image, but attributes the shift simply to the fact that the eyes are moving, so we do not register motion. This involves some interpretation on the part of the brain.

This datum of experience, that we perceive motion, is, then, no merely passive reception of an objective phenomenon, but one that arises, in part, from the active interpretation of the mind. It is, at least in some cases, a projection.

I am looking at the clock on the mantelpiece, and note that both hands are pointing to twelve. Here, surely, is a straightforward case of veridical perception. There is the clock, and I am looking at it in near-ideal conditions. Without question, I see the clock, and the position of the hands, and at least a case can be made that I do so in an apparently unmediated way. The direct theory of perception is, if applicable to any case, applicable to this one.

But now the clock strikes noon, and I perceive a host of other things: not merely a series of sounds, but one chime as following on from another, the interval between chimes, and that interval as remaining the same in each pair of chimes. All these are instances of time perception, in that the content of the perceptions seems irreducible temporal. But perceiving time in this way, and perceiving the clock, seem very different kinds of experience.

R. Le Poidevin, The Images of Time: An Essay on Temporal Representation (Oxford 2007), 93,97.

Patients with scotomas or blind-spots in their visual field [REF 1- 5] resulting from damage to the visual pathways often report that the pattern from the rest of the visual field ‘fills in’ to occupy the scotoma. Here we describe a novel technique for generating an artificial perceptual scotoma which enabled us to study the spatial and temporal characteristics of this filling-in process. A homogeneous grey square subtending 1.5° was displayed against a background of twinkling two-dimensional noise of equal mean luminance (Fig. 1). On steady eccentric fixation for 10s the square vanished and was filled in by the twinkling noise from the surround. Using this display we found that ‘filling in’ is an active visual process that probably involves creating an actual neural representation of the surround rather than merely ignoring the absence of information from the scotoma; filling in can occur separately for colour and texture, suggesting separate mechanisms; the filling-in process does not completely suppress information from the scotoma, even after an image has faded completely from consciousness – it can nevertheless contribute to motion perception; and the process can be strongly influenced by illusory contours. 

Does this filling-in process involve creating an actual neural representation of the ‘twinkle’ in the brain areas to which the grey square projects, or does it merely involve ignoring the absence of information? (After all, one is unaware of the huge gaping hole behind one’s head, but one would not want to conclude, for example, that the wallpaper had been filled in behind the head.) One hint comes from the fact that the filling-in process often appeared gradual; after the square’s borders faded, the twinkle filled in from outside to inside slowly, taking 2 or 3’s. This suggests an active process.

http://www.richardgregory.org/papers/percep_filling/perceptual-filling-scotomas.pdf

This sort of thing poses a major obstacle to facile appeals to, let us say, aborigines living in Australia 40,000 years ago, to disprove a global flood.

For if there’s a break between the world we sense and the world we perceive, then it’s hard to measure the extent of the discontinuity. We can’t use sensory perception to measure the discontinuity inasmuch as that is the very point at which the break occurs. Put another way, if our mind or brain makes a positive contribution to our perception of time and space, then how can we determine where the projection ends and the reality begins?

This is less of a problem from a Christian standpoint. For if God designed the brain to make the various adjustments necessary to smooth out the shifting orientation of a mutable observe in a mutable world, then we can abode confidence in the fact that our perception of time and space isn’t seriously and systematically distorted.

If, however, you take the view of BioLogos, according to which our perception of time and space functions as a corrective to the prescientific and unscientific outlook of the Bible writers, then they cut the ground out from under their own assurance. That's their conundrum.