Thursday, September 22, 2011

Threading the needle


KLOMPENMAKER SAID:

Can put away the polemics and role play a bit? I'm not setting a rhetorical trap for an argument - I don't have any hidden agenda to get you to paint yourself into a logical corner. Just humor me a bit.
 
Suppose you were a pastor and I were a member of your congregation, all other things being the same. I am not one of your deacons or elders, I'm just a layperson, a decent enough ordinary member of your church who takes his faith seriously enough to have attended seminary, and who takes truth seriously. I've come to you because you are a friend whom I hold in high regard and someone whose judgment I respect.
 
I tell you that I believe the historic truths of the faith: the reality of human depravity and my own sin, my need of redemption which can be found only in Christ, that God is Creator and sustainer of all things.
 
But, I explain, I am also a student of God's creation, and everywhere I looked I found the evidence for an ancient universe and biological evolution overwhelmingly compelling and finally convincing, leading me to a quandary.
 
To this point my view of inerrancy has been intact, but there are real theological challenges. Genomic evidence seems settled that at no time was there a breeding population of modern human beings of less than 10,000 individuals. I can find no geological evidence for a global flood and myriads of evidence against one. So I've come to you to see what you think I should do with these ideas I find troubling.
 
I'm not out to engage in a campaign or to evangelize my ideas. I simply can't ignore data which seem to challenge the historicity of Genesis 1-11 and the idea of a historical Fall. I still embrace the Doctrines of Grace.
 
So what would be your counsel to me, pastor? I hope you'll answer that way because apart from not being a member of a church pastored by you, everything else describes where I actually have been and am in my walk with Christ.
 
So if I were a friend and not some anonymous Internet commenter, how would you respond in a way designed to comfort my doubts and reinforce my faith? An inner struggle in the life of the mind may not seem as real as struggle with divorce, sexual temptation, illness or hardship, but those who have doubts over intellectual matters are no less in need of wise and compassionate counsel, are they not? Can we not say alongside the father of the afflicted boy in Mark 9:24, "I do believe - help my unbelief!"

i) I’m not sure what you think I’m supposed to say in that scenario. Looks like a set-up where you’ve framed the issues to yield a foregone conclusion. So what’s left to talk about?

If you treat your framework as nonnegotiable, then there’s nothing more to say. If you take for granted your assumptions about the “data” or the “evidence,” then, by definition, something else has to give. That’s a forced option.

ii) What if the pastor doesn’t see the evidence lining up the way you do?

iii) There are, of course, some “Evangelicals” who subscribe to theistic evolution (e.g. Don Page, J. J. Davis, B.B. Warfield, Alister McGrath). However, I don’t see an exegetical pathway from Scripture to Darwin.

iv) I’d ask you if you’d read the best young-earth creationists (e.g. Byl, Wise, Sarfati, Snelling, Marcus Ross).

I’d ask you if you’d read the best old-earth creationists (e.g. Collins, Poythress, Walton, Youngblood).

I’d ask you what critics of evolution you’d read (e.g. Berlinski, Chien, Dembski, Meyer, Richards, Wells, J. C. Sanford).

I’d ask you if you studied temporal metrics. I’d ask you what you studied in philosophy of science. I’d ask you if you’d considered the full implications of creation ex nihilo.

v) Sounds to me like there’s a veiled threat in the way you’ve cast the alternatives; that unless the pastor gives his parishioner an out, the parishioner will turn his back on the Christian faith.

However, Scripture means whatever it means. You can accept or reject it (with the corresponding consequences), but you have to accept it or reject it on its own terms. The reader must be prepared to hear the Bible as the original audience heard it. That’s true of literature in general.

We can’t make it say or not say something just because that would conflict with our precommitments. We’d be fooling ourselves.

19 comments:

  1. Good questions Steve. What, for my understanding, are you referring to when you say 'temporal metrics'?

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  2. The debate between metrical conventionalism and metrical objectivism.

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  3. I have not read most of those things you suggested. You know what the believing and unbelieving scientists say about the evidence and the Bible, and you seem to have come to some resolution in your heart about the issue. Since you are much more well read and much smarter than I am, I was hoping you would share your conclusions about the contradictions between secular science and the Bible, and how you got there. BTW, I am not in danger of chunking the Faith.

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  4. "I’m not sure what you think I’m supposed to say in that scenario. Looks like a set-up where you’ve framed the issues to yield a foregone conclusion. So what’s left to talk about?"

    When the question's rigged in advance like this, it seems like the questioner wants to hear something like this:

    "Yes, you may certainly hold onto and claim theistic evolution and inerrancy. You are a faithful follower of Christ and need never be ashamed of being a proponent of theistic evolution which is entirely compatible with historic Biblical faith."

    The Reformed theistic evolutionist walks away pleased with this answer.

    The Reformed pastor walks away pleased that he has been pastoral in his counsel to his friend, and has avoided the nasty stench of polemics because he has wisely chosen to be pastoral.

    A win-win for all concerned.

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  5. A win-win for all concerned.

    Except for the truth, of course.

    In Him,
    CD

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  6. Firstly, thank you, Steve, posting my comment on its own. While your rules of engagement state there is no word limit, it looks like the blog engine has a limit of 4096 characters, so I would like to respond to each of the numbered points in your response separately. To save space I will refer to the numbers you helpfully provided.

    i) There's no preconditions about what you should say - you can challenge my assumptions please do so and we can discuss things on their merits. If you want to suggest I've crossed a doctrinal limit in the direction of heresy, then that's okay too. My post wasn't a set-up to paint you into a rhetorical corner, but a sincere set of questions.

    I also think that it is a real pastoral issue for evangelicals - read the Pew Global Survey of Evangelical Protestant Leaders taken at last year's Lausanne conference in Cape town and published this June: http://pewforum.org/Christian/Evangelical-Protestant-Churches/Global-Survey-of-Evangelical-Protestant-Leaders.aspx

    In it you will see that slightly more evangelical leaders (47%) do not believe in evolution than those who think that biological evolution is one means God could have used in forming the world and life (41%). So I think it's likely that pastors and other church leaders will face questions like this from sincere church members.

    Again I didn't post my questions as a set-up. I think it is unquestionable that is a real pastoral issue which will be raised by Christian church members who are scientifically literate, or from educated inquirers who find the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ compelling and winsome, but for whom rejecting the majority report of secular science as a requirement for church membership would be a steep obstacle to further steps toward the church. And of course there are also, right now, legions of students who have been home-schooled or have attended private Christian schools who experience a crisis of faith when much of what they were taught about evolution is challenged by the science courses they take when they get to university.

    This is your blog, not mine, and I don't want to abuse the privilege you extend by inviting readers to comment by hijacking your space to advance a polemic against your convictions. I'm not really interested in engaging in a campaign of that sort here or anywhere else. The Biologos forum at http://biologos.org is at least engaging the issue in an irenic fashion, and its leaders have invited input and participation from thinkers who may disagree with their stated position that biological evolution is compatible with the Christian faith by engaging in dialogue, not rhetorical warfare.

    Since you have found my comment interesting enough to publish them as a blog post, I am thankful for the opportunity to respond, and I hope my breaking up the responses for space is not too inconvenient. Also it takes time to write carefully, so I may not be able to respond to everything right away.

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  7. I posted a reponse to point i) on 9/24 and received an automated email notification from the blog platform that my comment was successfully posted. It does not appear in the comments under "Threading the Needle" for reasons unkown to me.

    In my prior comment I stated pastoral concerns which motivate my interest in seeing how you as a pastor would deal with a congregant who had come to the convictions that secular science is correct with regard to the issues of the age of the universe, the development of the earth, and biological evolution as a process by which life was formed under God's providence.

    Again, I'm not out to play gotcha, but since I wrote that first response I read a bit of your Masters thesis, "Apostasy in Pastoral Theology", in which you state the following:

    "By becoming more conversant with what motivates some individuals to suffer a crisis of faith, we can take precautionary or preemptive measures to prepare the flock, so that fewer sheep will be blindsided. In cases where an individual suffers a crisis of faith or lapse of faith, we can use this paradigmatic material to help diagnose his situation. Not everyone who loses his faith is an apostate. Some cases are treatable. Some cases
    involve backsliders whom the Lord will restore in due time. And the church can facilitate their reconciliation." (Hays, Apostasy in Pastoral Theology p. 2).

    I am in agreement with what you wrote here, and I am inclined to think that if the issue of scientific evidence for evolution comprises a possible catalyst for crises of faith (not to mention an evangelistic obstacle for some as I stated in my prior response) it would be an area of interest for you personally given your choice of thesis subject.

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  8. To continue responding to your points

    ii) What if the pastor doesn’t see the evidence lining up the way you do?

    I don't really expect most pastors will see the evidence lining up as I do but I have a good reason why I think that happens. In my first semester and a half or so of seminary, I lacked the terminology to really interact with the material we were studying because I still had yet to master theological prolegomena. Many who have graduate training in seminary have experienced the challenge of trying to make subtle theological distinctions clear to an interlocutor who lacks the terminology to express points with clarity, precision and coherence. Every discipline has its own prolegomena and technical language, including the disciplines of science. I don't have a graduate education in science but I have studied several disciplines sufficiently to at least be conversant with their terminology to the degree that I can interact with the material with specificity and a fair degree of precision and concision. If a pastor is conversant in the prolegomena of physics, astronomy, chemistry, biology, and genomics, is familiar with at least with popularizations of scholarly research in those fields and can interact in a cogent fashion with the specifics of evidence, it is possible to have a meaningful dialogue. If however the pastor is conversant only with popular creationist literature no meaningful dialogue is really possible. There are pastors who are scientifically trained.

    iii) There are, of course, some “Evangelicals” who subscribe to theistic evolution (e.g. Don Page, J. J. Davis, B.B. Warfield, Alister McGrath). However, I don’t see an exegetical pathway from Scripture to Darwin.

    Yes - and many more besides: J. Gresham Machen, Bruce Waltke, John Stott, C.S. Lewis, and many more. Why the quote marks around "Evangelicals?"

    Neither do I an exegetical pathway from Scripture to Darwin, but by the same token I don't see an exegetical pathway from Scripture to Galileo or Copernicus either. Many of the leaders of the Magisterial Reformation wrote passionate and eloquent polemics against heliocentrism and gave exegetical defenses of geocentrism. In America, the Missouri Synod Lutheran church published literature supporting geocentrism until the 1920s, but today only a miniscule group of fringe eccentrics embrace a Tychonic schema of astronomy on exegetical grounds. I'll aver that you probably agree with most of us that we inhabit the surface of a fairly spherical planet which spins, and orbits a medium-sized yellow star, one of about a hundred billion in a galaxy roughly 100k light-years across, in a creation where we can observe hundreds of billions of other galaxies from millions to billions of light-years distant from us. We don't believe that earth is the center of the universe or the galaxy or even the solar system - and it wasn't an exegetical path that led us to that conviction: it was a scientific and societal path.

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  9. Steve: iv) I’d ask you if you’d read the best young-earth creationists (e.g. Byl, Wise, Sarfati, Snelling, Marcus Ross).

    KM: Yes. Of those you have named, Kurt Wise is by far the best scientist. I will add another name to the list - Wise's former colleage at Bryan College, Todd C. Wood, who is the most honest and scientifically rigorous Young Earth Creationist I know of. Here are links to a couple of his articles:
    The truth about evolution
    http://toddcwood.blogspot.com/2009/09/truth-about-evolution.html
    Evolution still not in crisis
    http://toddcwood.blogspot.com/2010/06/evolution-still-not-in-crisis.html
    The Chimpanzee Genome and the Problem of Biological Similarity (Occasional paper in the Journal of the Creation Biology Society) http://www.creationbiology.org/content.aspx?page_id=22&club_id=201240&module_id=36954

    I also know and have great personal respect and affection for Douglas Kelly, whose _Creation and Change_ is a defense of six-day creation, although the science portions of the book are sadly so bad that I blush for Dr. Kelly when I read them.

    Steve: I’d ask you if you’d read the best old-earth creationists (e.g. Collins, Poythress, Walton, Youngblood).
    KM: I won't go into detail, but yes. Don't forget Kline, Sproul (pre-2008).

    Steve: I’d ask you what critics of evolution you’d read (e.g. Berlinski, Chien, Dembski, Meyer, Richards, Wells, J. C. Sanford).
    KM: I have books by Stephen Meyer, Bill Dembski, Michael Behe and Philip Johnson on my shelves, and know of Jonathan Wells as a frequent visitor of the Discovery Institute's website. I have not read much from Sanford.

    Steve: I’d ask you if you studied temporal metrics. I’d ask you what you studied in philosophy of science. I’d ask you if you’d considered the full implications of creation ex nihilo.

    KM: I have no idea what the term "temporal metrics" is supposed to mean, but have am familiar with Hume, Kant, Wittgenstein, Thomas Kuhn, and some others, but I'm not a philosopher. From Christian sources I've got Gordon Clark's works as well as Alvin Plantinga, Van Til's works and those of John Frame, who tangentially addresses some of the issues.

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    1. You say that about Wise and Wood just because a lot of what they do is attack YECs and appease evolutionists, not because their scientific work is anything special.

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  10. Steve: v) Sounds to me like there’s a veiled threat in the way you’ve cast the alternatives; that unless the pastor gives his parishioner an out, the parishioner will turn his back on the Christian faith.

    KM: I'm surprised you would write this, especially in view of your own stated reasons for writing your Masters thesis.

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  11. Steve:
    However, Scripture means whatever it means. You can accept or reject it (with the corresponding consequences), but you have to accept it or reject it on its own terms. The reader must be prepared to hear the Bible as the original audience heard it. That’s true of literature in general.

    KM: I am prepared to try to discern the message of Scripture in the light of how its original audience understood it, but I'm not sure that this connotes any necessity to adopt every point of their worldview.

    And that's one of the points I am seeking clarification on. If part of the biblical text makes it clear that the original writer and original audience shared an understanding about the nature of the world that is contradicted by modern knowledge, how do we deal with that?

    We don't believe in a firmament (raquia), waters above, waters below, pillars of the earth, or the underworld, all of which appear to be literally true to the original writers and hearers of Scripture. Most of us, even strict inerrantists, hear this language as poetic imagery or allusions to spiritual reality, don't we?

    I don't think disagreeing with some parts of the ancient world view undermines the authority of Scripture. Scientific concordism is a modernistic way of thinking imposed on Scripture by late nineteenth century Adventist George McCready Price, regurgitated half a century later by Henry Morris and then lapped up by the modern Creationist movement and much of popular evangelicalism.

    Steve: We can’t make it say or not say something just because that would conflict with our precommitments. We’d be fooling ourselves.

    KM: I agree with you here. But Scripture itself says that the creation is a source of knowledge (Psalm 19, Romans 1). The book of creation has told us much about itself in exquisite detail, although there is much yet to be learned.

    When there appears to be contradiction between the book of creation and Scripture, the problem is in me: I am misunderstanding one, the other, or both.

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  12. Concluding comment:
    I've tried to respond to your questions without hijacking your blog to make a full-on argument for my own position. I posted a series of questions, and you were kind enough to answer honestly - thanks for that.
    I'll end by simply suggesting that this is an issue church leaders should be well informed on, and being well informed will require a bit more homework than many are willing to do.
    I think J's comment is directed at me, and I'll say that I was an atheist until my late 20s, when a burning bush sort of experience was the first step to my conversion. As a young Christian I tried to dutifully take what I thought to be the Christian position on science, namely anti-evolution, young earth creationism, and put down the science books I used to read for several years. When I began following up on the footnotes and checking out the claims of anti-evolutionists, I became appalled by the paucity of anti-evolution polemics, by sloppy scholarship, obsolete data, and tall tales passed on without verification (Joshua's Long Day, Modern Day Jonah) and outright fraud (diploma mill degrees, etc.)
    I looked for better scholarship and lingered for a time with the ID camp (I was very impressed by Bill Dembski) and adopted a position which allowed for "micro-evolution" but not "macro-evolution" and certainly not speciation.
    As the findings of the human genome trickled into popular literature I recognized a need to learn the terminology of genetics, and without going into detail I became convinced that genomic data left no doubt about common descent. This combined with over 20 years as an amateur astronomer (the speed of light and observation of events at vast cosmic distances) and keeping up with contemporary cosmology (microwave background radiation anisotropy, the Type 1A supernova cosmology projects, both of which reinforce the inflationary model for what happened immediately after the Creation event) were also important, as are simple facts like the sun being a population II star.
    As a strong believer in Reformed theology I affirm that God not only created but sustains everything consciously moment by moment - if God ceased thinking about you or me, even for an instant, we would cease to exist. This is how I see the "omni" attributes of God working out, so I am convinced that all things that take place do so under God's providential superintendence.
    Evolution does pose theological and hermeneutic challenges that at present I do not know answers to. For the moment the certitude that my fundamentalist brethren claim eludes me, but I have faith that Christ is sufficient for me to live in the tension of not knowing how to reconcile some things.
    Thanks for asking, but now I need to sign off lest I impose on the gracious hospitality of the bloggers.

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  13. Klompenmaker said:

    "As the findings of the human genome trickled into popular literature I recognized a need to learn the terminology of genetics, and without going into detail I became convinced that genomic data left no doubt about common descent."

    Thank you for your comment, Klompenmaker.

    If you wouldn't mind saying, I'd be interested in knowing which particular arguments about the "genomic data" convinced you about common descent?

    I ask in part because I don't find universal common descent convincing and I think I'm fairly familiar with the "genomic data" as well as other relevant evidence. Well, maybe not compared to someone who works directly in evolutionary biology, for example, but at least in comparison to most others, I think.

    I'm also a Reformed Christian. The doctrines of grace and the whole shebang. Heck, I think I'm even a supralapsarian (probably)!

    I should add I'm not looking for a debate. In fact I doubt I'd have much time to respond at the moment. Rather I'm genuinely interested in what convinced you personally.

    At the same time, I would like to do a post about all this someday though. So it might help me to know what has convinced others if I ever do post on it (e.g. perhaps it'll better hone my own thinking on the matter, perhaps I can attempt to field the objection(s) if I think it can be fielded).

    Thanks again.

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  14. One of the popular books I read on the journey was _Relics of Eden_ by Daniel Fairbanks. It includes a good introduction to genomics for laypersons like myself.
    I think the real catalyst was learning about the GULO pseudogene, a gene which if working would code codes for the enzyme which enables most animals to synthesize ascorbic acid, but in us and all dry-nosed primates it's broken, so that ascorbic acid is a necessary vitamin we have to get through our diets.
    The same gene is broken in guinea pigs, but in a different place. In us and apes, the break is on exactly the same base pairs in the sequence.
    Another catalyst was learning about human chromosome 2. All other hominidae have 24 pairs of chromosomes except humans. In us, chromosome 2 is either the fusion two chromosomes that exist in other hominids or is designed to look exactly as if it were a fusion of two chromosomes, right down to having an additional vestigial centromere and sequences that can be mapped to telomeres in the chromosomes which fused to form chromosome 2 (specifically, the locus cloned in cosmids c8.1 and c29B).
    The two cited examples by themselves were convincing to me, but they would not have been before I learned enough about genetics to understand what I was reading.
    Even after that there was much more. Just as certain scribal features enable us to trace the lineage of an ancient NT manuscript to a particular family, human DNA is replete with introns, segments of DNA which were inserted into our genome from retroviruses. They have no functions, but there are hundreds of examples of the same intron in the same sequence in the same place in our genome and that of the great apes.
    These are just a few examples of many, many evidences for common descent which taken together I found incontrovertible, overwhelmingly so.
    For me it was very much like my discovery of the majesty of God's sovereignty in the Doctrines of Grace - I had started out with a desire to defeat Calvinism, which I was certain was wrong about everything. Instead I was conquered by the power and beauty of the doctrines of grace. Coming into the Reformed Tradition was like a homecoming to a home I'd never known, but once here I knew this was where I belonged. I didn't know the Reformed doctrines which were my history and background (Dutch ancestry) because my pop-evangelicalism had not bothered to look. God became greater and more majestic and glorious than ever before.

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  15. Thanks for your response, Klompenmaker. That's pretty interesting.

    I'm familiar with the points about Vitamin C (ascorbic acid), chromosome 2 fusion, and endogenous retroviruses. I'm also quite familiar with the structure and function of DNA, etc. (Heck, I've even conducted experiments involving stuff like PCR!) I understand enough about genetics to understand what I'm reading.

    But unfortunately I don't find these points convincing.

    Perhaps one of these days I'll find the time to explain my reasoning. Right now I'm in med school so my schedule is pretty crazy. If I do post on it, I'll try to remember to make a comment here and alert people.

    Thanks again though for offering your perspective. It's helpful to me. And I appreciate it.

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  16. KLOMPENMAKER SAID:

    “…but for whom rejecting the majority report of secular science as a requirement for church membership would be a steep obstacle to further steps toward the church.”

    As Michael Crichton pointed out in his Caltech address, consensus is irrelevant to scientific knowledge.

    “The Biologos forum at http://biologos.org is at least engaging the issue in an irenic fashion, and its leaders have invited input and participation from thinkers who may disagree with their stated position that biological evolution is compatible with the Christian faith by engaging in dialogue, not rhetorical warfare.”

    i) Oh come now! BioLogos is divisive and confrontational.

    ii) In addition, invoking BioLogos is a double-edged sword. For writes like Denis Lamoureux interpret Gen 1-3 as literally as any creationist. He just refuses to believe what Scripture asserts to be the case.

    “I don't really expect most pastors will see the evidence lining up as I do but I have a good reason why I think that happens. In my first semester and a half or so of seminary, I lacked the terminology to really interact with the material we were studying because I still had yet to master theological prolegomena. Many who have graduate training in seminary have experienced the challenge of trying to make subtle theological distinctions clear to an interlocutor who lacks the terminology to express points with clarity, precision and coherence. Every discipline has its own prolegomena and technical language, including the disciplines of science. I don't have a graduate education in science but I have studied several disciplines sufficiently to at least be conversant with their terminology to the degree that I can interact with the material with specificity and a fair degree of precision and concision. If a pastor is conversant in the prolegomena of physics, astronomy, chemistry, biology, and genomics, is familiar with at least with popularizations of scholarly research in those fields and can interact in a cogent fashion with the specifics of evidence, it is possible to have a meaningful dialogue. If however the pastor is conversant only with popular creationist literature no meaningful dialogue is really possible. There are pastors who are scientifically trained.”

    In the age of specialization, I don’t think it’s fair for parishioners to depend on the pastor to adjudicate debates involving astronomy, chemistry, biology, genomics, &c.

    Any layman who’s sufficiently well-read or has the intellectual aptitude to talk about these issues with some proficiency really doesn’t need the help of his pastor. He can do his own reading.

    “Neither do I an exegetical pathway from Scripture to Darwin, but by the same token I don't see an exegetical pathway from Scripture to Galileo or Copernicus either. Many of the leaders of the Magisterial Reformation wrote passionate and eloquent polemics against heliocentrism and gave exegetical defenses of geocentrism. In America, the Missouri Synod Lutheran church published literature supporting geocentrism until the 1920s, but today only a miniscule group of fringe eccentrics embrace a Tychonic schema of astronomy on exegetical grounds. I'll aver that you probably agree with most of us that we inhabit the surface of a fairly spherical planet which spins, and orbits a medium-sized yellow star, one of about a hundred billion in a galaxy roughly 100k light-years across, in a creation where we can observe hundreds of billions of other galaxies from millions to billions of light-years distant from us. We don't believe that earth is the center of the universe or the galaxy or even the solar system - and it wasn't an exegetical path that led us to that conviction: it was a scientific and societal path.”

    That’s one of those Yogi Berra moments. Been there, done that. For instance, I discussed that in response to Ed Babinski in my review of TCD, as well as some follow-up interaction with Babinski.

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  17. Cont. “I have no idea what the term "temporal metrics" is supposed to mean, but have am familiar with Hume, Kant, Wittgenstein, Thomas Kuhn, and some others, but I'm not a philosopher. From Christian sources I've got Gordon Clark's works as well as Alvin Plantinga, Van Til's works and those of John Frame, who tangentially addresses some of the issues.”

    As luck would have it, William Lane Craig just did a thumbnail sketch of metrical conventionalism:

    “Yes, we measure time through changes in physical things which we take as our standard. Notice the ultimate arbitrariness of such a procedure, however: for unless we assume that time itself has an intrinsic measure, we have no grounds for taking some changes to proceed “at steady rates.” We can judge that an atomic clock has a certain constant number of beats per second only if time has an intrinsic metric that allows one to compare non-overlapping intervals of time with respect to their length, so as to differentiate one-second intervals. That doesn’t mean that time is actually composed of seconds; rather what is meant is that if we take an interval which we call a second, then any other non-overlapping interval will be either longer than, shorter than, or equal to our second. In that case, it is a meaningful question to ask whether an atomic clock has a constant number of beats per second and so is a good measure of time.”

    “By contrast, if time has no intrinsic metric, as metric conventionalists hold, then there just is no fact of the matter whether any non-overlapping temporal interval is either longer than, shorter than, or equal to our second. In that case, there is no answer to the question of whether our atomic clock really has a steady rate of change and so is a good measure of time. It is just a human convention that certain processes proceed at steady rates.”

    http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/PageServer?pagename=q_and_a

    For a more detailed exposition, cf. R. LePoidevin, Travels in Four Dimensions (Oxford 2003), chaps. 1-2; B. van Fraassen, Scientific Representation (Oxford 2008), 130-32.

    BTW, I don’t think you registered my point about creation ex nihilo. If that’s how God made the world, then he could instantiate the world at any point in an ongoing process. So you can’t simply run the clock backwards to the point of origin.

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  18. Cont. “I am prepared to try to discern the message of Scripture in the light of how its original audience understood it, but I'm not sure that this connotes any necessity to adopt every point of their worldview.”

    The audience is fallible. However, we must take audiencial understanding into account, for authors write to be understood by their target audience.

    “And that's one of the points I am seeking clarification on. If part of the biblical text makes it clear that the original writer and original audience shared an understanding about the nature of the world that is contradicted by modern knowledge, how do we deal with that?”

    If we accept the inspiration of Scripture, we go with Scripture.

    “We don't believe in a firmament (raquia), waters above, waters below, pillars of the earth, or the underworld, all of which appear to be literally true to the original writers and hearers of Scripture. Most of us, even strict inerrantists, hear this language as poetic imagery or allusions to spiritual reality, don't we?”

    That’s another Yogi Berra moment. Once again, I’ve been over all that ground with Babinski. Repeatedly.

    “I don't think disagreeing with some parts of the ancient world view undermines the authority of Scripture. Scientific concordism is a modernistic way of thinking imposed on Scripture by late nineteenth century Adventist George McCready Price, regurgitated half a century later by Henry Morris and then lapped up by the modern Creationist movement and much of popular evangelicalism.”

    Actually, I think that’s one of those pomo fallacies about modernity. Breezy generalizations about how this all got started with the evil Enlightenment.

    “I agree with you here. But Scripture itself says that the creation is a source of knowledge (Psalm 19, Romans 1).”

    A source of knowledge, not so much about nature itself, but the Creator thereof.

    “The book of creation has told us much about itself in exquisite detail, although there is much yet to be learned.”

    Yes, the old Baconian trope about the “book” of nature. The problem with that metaphor is that nature isn’t very bookish. Nature is nonpropositional.

    “When there appears to be contradiction between the book of creation and Scripture, the problem is in me: I am misunderstanding one, the other, or both.”

    As far as that goes, I think we can have a far better knowledge of what the Bible means than we have for some fast-moving, highly specialized, sub-sub-sub discipline of modern biology.

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