Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Is Genesis a "scientific" account?


One tiresome cliche that's endlessly repeated in Christian debates over creationism is the claim that Genesis 1-2 is not a "scientific" account. Or the Bible is not a "science textbook." 

At one level, the claim is trivially true. Gen 1-2 isn't written in scientific jargon. How could it be? If it was written in 20C scientific jargon, the description would be out of date by the 21C. 

More to the point, this objection fails to distinguish between a scientific account and a factual account. For instance, I remember the Concorde disaster in 2000. That was televised. You could see the plane becoming engulfed in flames even before it became airborne. 

Now, there happened to be footage, but even if there hadn't been any cameras rolling, there were eyewitnesses. Eyewitness accounts of the plane before and after takeoff wouldn't be "scientific." They would simply be descriptions of what the observers saw. 

Yet their "unscientific" testimony would be useful in developing a scientific theory of what caused the accident. If investigators interviewed witnesses, they could interpret the "unscientific" testimony in scientific terms. To the extent that observers accurately remembered and reported what they saw, that's a factual account of the accident. And because it's a factual account, it can be translated into a scientific account, or at least contribute to a scientific explanation of the accident. 

Even though Gen 1-2 isn't a scientific account, as long as Gen 1-2 is a factual account, it impinges on scientific theories of origins. it can rule out some erroneous scientific theories of origins. 

5 comments:

  1. If scientific explanations are developed out of factual explanations, then factual explanations are prior to and explanatorally superior to scientific explanations. But, there are no factual descriptions of events, at least if they are going to be useful and interesting to mankind, that are not interpreted. In other words, they are subjective. Being subjective, scientific and factual events are dependent upon one's philosophical and theological presuppositions whether one is aware of them or not. The question is, what philosophical and theological presuppositions did the writer of Genesis have? What sort of view is he trying to convey? Is it primarily a theological text, a witness of sequential events, a factual description, or a scientific explanation? There are more options to consider, but just saying that Genesis is factual doesn't relieve us of answering these questions.

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    1. The first part of your comment is overstated. If, say, we don't know what we are looking at, we can still furnish a bare description of what we see. The appearance of the object.

      Now, recognition may involve interpretation. If I see a flying object at a distance which I perceive to be an airplane, I may be filling in key details based on experience. That's an interpreted sensation.

      But it's also possible for me to see an object which I don't recognize. All I can do is to describe what it looks like.

      In addition, when babies recognize their mother's face or the sound of her voice, does that require philosophical presuppositions?

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    2. This is Dan O'Brian. My name might say Anonymous or something but it is me. I can't get this comment system to work for me.

      I think my comment about presuppositions can only apply to those are able, through proper use of language, to provide an independent account of things and events. Babies grow in language through borrowed words from their parents and develop, as they age, a set of presuppositions. By the time they have developed enough to give independent descriptions and explanations, they have presuppositions whether they realize it or not. Of course, most children adopt the presuppositions of their parents, but as any parent knows, some kids will rebel against their instructions and develop ideas of their own.

      When we describe something but we don't know what we are looking at, we describe what we see in terms of what we have seen. All the while, the hearer knows that what is being said is not what is being described. The elephant's tail may be like a snake in some way but it is not the snake. We describe what we don't know in terms of what we know. Even objects you don't recognize, when explained to another person, are interpreted and still dependent upon one's presuppositions.

      Back to the topic, obviously the author of Genesis did not witness the events he described. So, what sort of account is Genesis? It is safe to assume his account was an interpretive account since all accounts of events and things are interpreted. At the very least, we can say that it was described in human terms. But, there are many aspects to humanity: science, philosophy, and theology being only some. It is appropriate to ask, then, what presuppositions in the area of science, philosophy, theology, and others did the writer bring to his writing table?

      You say it was a factual description of origins. How are the facts interpreted for us? Is it appropriate to cash the description out in scientific terms?

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    3. Dan O'Brian:

      

"Back to the topic, obviously the author of Genesis did not witness the events he described."

      Not directly. But just as God can reveal the future, he can reveal the past. In visionary revelation, the seer is an eyewitness to what he perceives.

      That may or may not have been the narrator's source of information for Gen 1-3. I'm simply pointing out a consideration we must take into account.

      "It is appropriate to ask, then, what presuppositions in the area of science, philosophy, theology, and others did the writer bring to his writing table?"

      Since, by definition, presuppositions are normally unstated, that's not a starting-point but end-point. We can only infer a writer's presuppositions from what he says.

      I'm less interested in what the narrator brought to the table than what he put on the table.

      

"You say it was a factual description of origins. How are the facts interpreted for us?"

      By how they are narrated in Gen 1-2.

      "Is it appropriate to cash the description out in scientific terms?"

      When the word makes referential statements about the world, that often impinges on science. In this case you have general descriptions concerning the origin and telos of natural kinds.

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  2. The Egyptian hieroglyphics we find in places like tombs and temples are not scientific textbooks, but that doesn't stop scientists from drawing scientific conclusions from them.

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