One more for the road

JD WALTERS SAID:

“But to look to Genesis for evidence of the emergence of biological and geological processes is anachronistic. Ancient people simply didn't have that knowledge.”

i) If you deny the inspiration of Scripture.

ii) Moreover, the question is not whether Genesis operates at the same level of technicality as modern cosmology/geology/biology, but whether it makes factual claims that intersect with scientific claims.

“Even when YECers deny evolution they still have modern biology in mind when they speculate whether Adam had a navel, or whether Eve had more ribs than Adam.”

Are you suggesting that midwives knew nothing about the umbilical cord? Likewise, did ancient people never observe the number of ribs on a skeleton?

“There is no indication that what God created would come fully formed with a previous biological or geological history that never happened. We're reading too much into these narratives if we speculate like that.”

It’s hardly speculation. Ancient Israelites knew about farming. They knew how long it normally takes from sowing to reaping. It took longer than one day. Same thing regarding the lifecycle of animals.

You can try to deny that the creation week is literal. But you can’t deny that ancient Israelites knew how long many of those processes ordinarily take.

“You seem to be arguing exclusively from an a priori philosophical concept of creation ex nihilo when you infer that it wouldn't allow us to say at what point in the 'cycle' creation came into being. There is no such speculation in the Bible.”

i) I think creation ex nihilo is a Biblical concept.

ii) Moreover, I don’t have to answer you on exegetical grounds, since your objection wasn’t predicted on exegesis. Rather, it was predicated on modern science. A philosophical concept is perfectly legit when dealing with that type of challenge.

“Even ex nihilo creations that might have been involved in the nature miracles, like the multiplication of loaves and fishes, do not give warrant for assuming that that's what happened in the original creation. The miracles take place against the backdrop of an already existing creation, and obviously God wasn't going to wait billions of years to bring the fish Jesus needed into being for the hungry crowds. This was a special case, which does have some affinity with God's original creation to be sure, as they are both of the same author, but the two scenarios are not completely analogous.”

But, of course, the creation week is “special” too. That doesn’t happen every week.

“No, my point was that, as I said above, we should not read any kind of modern biology into these narratives. When God says, let the waters swarm with living creatures, we have knowledge of what 'swarm' entailed. We can't read into it that fish popped into existence (whether instantaneously or gradually) with a previous developmental history that never happened. It's a word picture.”

Of course, the traditional interpretation antedates modern biology. So there’s nothing anachronistic about the traditional reading.

“All the propositional knowledge we get from Genesis about creation is that God created and ordered the universe to make it a place that reflected his glory (see the 'cosmic temple' exegesis of Walton, Beale, Alexander and others). Any other inferences about what the biology of the first created things was like, etc. is unwarranted.”

Genesis is discussing prototypical natural kinds. How did they originate?

“Like I said, your philosophical speculation about the point at which creation ex nihilo instantiated a cycle is just that, speculation. There is biblical warrant for it. And in the absence for such warrant, I think it's best to infer that real history goes back as far as we have physical evidence for it, which is 13.4 billion years.”

Of course, that’s a non sequitur, since there’s no biblical warrant for the modern figure either.

“…and inferences about the emergence of fully formed organisms are unwarranted.”

Something that normally takes months or years to develop is attributed to the span of a day. And it didn’t come from preexisting organisms of the same kind. So, yes, “mature creation.”

“God did create the preexisting material, but as formless and chaotic. It was not 'mature', and its description is precisely meant to convey that it wouldn't have had any prior development. Development starts with God's process of differentiation and sequencing.”

Maybe you’re simply confused about the meaning of “mature.” Have you never noticed that YEC writers think the creation of all things involved a temporal process (albeit in six days)?

“No, we would still be reliant upon appearances, because the biblical record itself might be part of the cycle prior to when God actually created.”

On the face of it, you’re committing a level-confusion. But perhaps you’d like to explicate what you think you mean by that.

“In the absence of such a reason, when theistic evolutionists look at the Earth's developmental record they will properly assume that it was part of real history.”

Strictly speaking, they don’t see the external world. What they see is a mental image. Coded information.

“They see no reason to think that God started the cycle in medias res (and the biblical creation account is not a reason for them to do so either, because as I said above it doesn't give us that kind of information). But if the YEC account is true, and the biblical God would do something like that (start the cycle in medias res), then we would have reason to worry about exactly when in the cycle God started.”

i) For some reason you’re hung up on the “in medias res” phrase. I used that in reference to Omphalism, not YEC. And I used Omphalism as a limiting case. It takes the idea to a logically possible extreme.

ii) It’s no more worrisome than other hypothetical conundra, like the Cartesian demon, brain-in-vat, or Last Thursdayism.

iii) And the same time, the Biblical process of creation does have some story-like features: God creates by “speaking” the world into existence: like a bard.

“And since you're trying to absolve the YEC God of deception for creating at least some appearances of things that never happened, you can't protest that it would deceptive for part of the biblical framework of real history to also be apparent.”

i) You’re equivocating. As I’ve said before, I use the lingo of “deception” because that’s how the objection is phrased.

ii) Genesis says the creation week is real. Exodus says the exodus history is real. And so on.

You’re the one who’s interpolating the notion of “unreal” history into the YEC interpretation. If you’re going to frame the issue in those terms, I may use the same term when I cite counterexamples, but that doesn’t mean I agree with your rhetoric.

And the rest of what you say is just repetitious.

“And the Wheeler-Everett many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is just that, an interpretation, and to my mind a not very convincing one. QM is a formal apparatus that is consistent with several metaphysical pictures.”

Of course, that’s one of the problems with modern science.

“But I think we've established the consistency…”

Established in your own mind.

“The speed of light is calculated from Maxwell's theory using two other constants, the vacuum permittivity and vacuum permeability. Amazingly, these last two have nothing to do with rates or time, and their value is measured using electrical capacitors.”

Of course, a physical constant is, itself, a temporal category (constant through time), so all you’ve done is to conceal the circularity of your procedure. How do you measure constancy without comparing it to another process? Unless you simply posit a physical constant.

“…because biblical life durations are given in years who size was determined by rotations of the moon, which makes it directly comparable to the scientific one.”

Which doesn’t invoke physical constants a la modern physics.

“Fine. Then the biblically derived age of the Earth is not in conflict with the scientific one, but neither does it trump the scientific one.”

I’m not vying for absolute chronology. Relative chronology will suffice. What events in what sequence. My objection to your position is with the whole evolutionary narrative.

“And I found it very intriguing that you link to a book by Robin Le Poivedin to argue for temporal metrical conventionalism. He is, of course, the author of ‘Arguing for Atheism’ and would probably argue that his view of time and the laws of nature are inconsistent with the biblical doctrine of creation. Secular philosophers can be a two-edged sword.”

Now you’re degenerating into silliness. You think I have to agree with everything a writer says to agree with anything a writer says?

“I saw lots of people, including my parents, get very badly hurt by promiscuous claims to miracles and revelation. God revealed to middle-aged men that underage girls should have sex with them 'out of love'. He also revealed that it was his will for my younger brother to be tied to a chair with tape over his mouth for hours at a time for 'correctional' purposes, my parents not being allowed to see him at all (he was SEVEN YEARS OLD). He also revealed that the cult leader's teenage daughter, who refused to have sex with her father and other men in the 'royal' household, was possessed and should be subject to a brutal exorcism involving beatings and abuse. And you have the nerve to casually dismiss my resulting caution in the face of supernatural claims as 'overcompensating'. In some of your reviews of universalists you attribute their (mistaken, in your view) sentimentalism to them having grown up within the safe haven of the Church, and taking its coziness and warmth for granted. Well I don't know what your background has been, but something insulating has definitely made you callous to the experience of others. If 'playing it safe' means I don't fall prey to those kinds of abusive, demonic claims (which I bought hook, line and sinker, because hey who was I to go against the Endtime prophet?), then I consider a few false negatives a worthy trade-off.”

Yes, I do have the “nerve.” You’re not simply sharing with us your personal coping mechanism. Rather, you’re like a recovering alcoholic turned crusading prohibitionist. If you can’t drink, then nobody else should either!

That hardly gives you the right to filter every other Christian through the grid of you unrepresentative experience. I daresay that only a fraction of Christians come from a cultic background, and their experience shouldn't be allowed to warp Christian theology in the opposite direction.

“Instead of insinuating that I might be a closet atheist, maybe you should be praising God that I emerged with my confidence in the essentials of the faith still intact. Unless your zeal for meticulously correct doctrine outweighs your desire that none of God's sheep be lost. It is only by the grace of God that I am still a Christian. Many, many people who left the same cult became hard-core atheists, or because they were raised in isolation from the world and never learned a real vocation were forced into prostitution and stripping to make ends meet, and many just committed suicide.”

Some of that is promising. However, other elements are not. You’re on a destination unknown. For all I know you might be flirting with universalism or postmortem salvation.

And your overriding need to domesticate miracles, to subsume miracles under some natural covering law, is disturbingly reminiscent of Howard Van Till’s ill-fated strategy.