Ed Bozinski

Let’s begin with some gems from Bozinski’s blog:

Geocentrists remain hopeful even in this heliocentric age because as Gerardus Bouw (Ph.D. in astronomy, president of the Association for Biblical Astronomy and the country’s leading proponent of geocentrism) puts it: "I would not be a geocentrist if it were not for the Scriptures.”… "Both the anthropocentric theory of inspiration and the phenomenological-language theory are forms of accommodation where God is said to accommodate his wording to the understanding of the common man.

Which reminds me, Evangelical theologian Ben Witherington wrote this in Bible Review in 2003:

"In the late 1960s, my car broke down in the mountains of North Carolina, and I had to hitchhike. . . . I was picked up by an elderly couple driving an ancient Plymouth. After a little conversation, I discovered they were 'Flat-Eathers [sic.],' by which I mean they did not believe the world was round.

"Honest.

"I pressed them on this and asked, 'Why not?'

"The elderly man's response was, 'It says in the Book of Revelation that the angels will stand on the four corners of the earth. The earth couldn't have four corners if it was round.'"

http://edward-t-babinski.blogspot.com/2010/10/does-bible-teach-geocentrism.html

1. Now, anyone with a functioning brain could see what is wrong with this type of argument. But Bozinski is blind to the fact that this type of argument contradicts his underlying argument.

i) Bozinski has argued that Bible writers teach an obsolescent view of the world. And they teach that antiquated view because they lack the scientific resources to know any better. All they could go by back then were appearances, and on the face of it (so goes the argument) they seemed to be living on a flat, stationary earth.

ii) However, when Bozinski cites modern geocentrists like Bouw, Sungenis, Selbrede, &c., they don’t subscribe to geocentrism because they think their senses select for geocentrism. Rather, they subscribe to geocentrism because they think that is what the Bible teaches.

iii) Moreover, they don’t subscribe to geocentrism because of their scientific ignorance. Rather, they subscribe to geocentricism in spite of well-known scientific arguments for heliocentrism, as well as scientific arguments against geocentrism.

iv) Furthermore, notice how Bouw explicitly opposes geocentrism to a merely “phenomenological” description. Yet, according to Bozinski, the phenomena are exactly what Bible writers and ANE writers were going by. All they had were the bare phenomena, which allegedly single out geocentrism.

Same thing with a flat earth. They supposedly believed in a flat earth because the earth appeared to be flat. That’s what they had to work with.

Yet when Bozinski tries to fortify his underlying argument by citing modern geocentrists (or even flat-earthers), they stake out that position in defiance of mainstream science and mainstream theology alike.

Even the hillbillies he cites via Witherington don’t believe the earth is flat cuz it looks just plain flat. That’s not the reason they gave. Rather, it’s based on how they interpret the Bible.

v) By parity of reasoning, if Bible writers taught geocentrism or the flat-earth, that would be despite, and not because of, the prima facie evidence. So Bozinski has upended his initial argument.

2. Let’s take another example of Bozinski’s fried circuitry. He appeals to writers like Bouw and Walton as if their positions were equivalent or complementary. Ye even if they both think the Bible teaches geocentrism, they have divergent rather than convergent reasons for that common conclusion.

Walton thinks that Christians ought to take the Bible at face value. However, what he has in mind is what would be the face-value meaning of Scripture to the original audience (as he understands it). He’d fault Bouw for reading the Bible through the tinted lens of Bouw’s blinkered fundy tradition, rather than recovering the lens of the original audience.

For Walton, “face value” is culturebound. What’s the face-value reading for one culture isn’t interchangeable with the face-value reading for another. For what we take to be the face-value meaning of Scripture is deceptively value-laden. We often bring unconscious assumptions or filters to the interpretive process.

My immediate point is not to evaluate Walton’s own position, but just to point out that superficial agreement between Walton and Bouw conceals incommensurable hermeneutical strategies. You can’t intelligently cite both Bouw and Walton to prove Biblical geocentrism (or flat-earthianity), for any similarity is strictly adventitious.

But, of course, that would require Bozinski to be a rational rationalist.