Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Creation and Evolution

  • Creationism and Christianity

    One frequent response I get when criticizing certain views of creation is that I believe the people who hold those views are wrong, not really Christian, and/or are incredibly stupid. Now there are occasional folks whose intelligence seems questionable, though I prefer to question the intelligence of their arguments, and not their actual IQ. I believe quite intelligent people can hold incorrect views. I’m certain I do. That certainty is fed by the fact that I’ve changed my views on some topics. For example, I was once a young earth creationist myself and I was a precinct worker for Ronald Regan in 1976, you know, the campaign against Gerald Ford, four years before he was actually elected. Now I’m registered independent and lean somewhat more to the left.

    My position on Christianity and creationism is simply that the church’s position should be that God is the creator and allow the “how” to be an open question on which people can disagree. I do not want theistic evolution to be doctrine any more than I want young earth creationism to be doctrine. Individual denominations not only have the right to determine their own position, but certainly will, irrespective of what I think. While I think it is unfortunate when certain conservative denominations close the door on this particular issue, it’s a fact of life.

    At the same time, I do not intend to be quiet on the issue myself. I believe the young earth creationists are massively wrong, and old earth and ID creationists are wrong to lesser extents and I will go on debating those issues and calling things wrong when I think they are. At the same time I will note that they certainly have no slowed down the propaganda for their own point of view.

    In addition, I will note that I object when they call defending their particular view of creation “defending the faith.” This is not because I have a better reason to call my view of the “how” of creation “the faith.” I would be quite wrong to call a defense of theistic evolution “defending the faith.” Thus the Answers in Genesis creation museum is not designed to defend the Christian faith; it is designed to defend one particular view of how and when God created. I regard it as dishonest to portray it otherwise.

  • Young Earth Creationists: What They Say and What They Do

    A couple of days ago I wrote an entry about young earth creationists and presuppositions. Two commenters have now taken me to task over my claim that young earth creationists try to dodge their main presupposition, that Genesis is narrative history conveying accurate science.

    Commenter Jonathan Bartlett said:

    I think you are slightly confused on some of the issues. Scientific creationists DO NOT say that they came to believe in YEC because of the evidence. What they do say is that they believe that YEC can be _supported_ on the evidence alone, and believe that it can be investigated and analyzed scientifically without respect to the Bible. There is a difference between the _inspiration_ for an idea and the _support_ for an idea. Science should, in theory, criticize only the _support_, and not the _inspiration_, and it is on this basis that scientific creationism attempts to make its case . . .

    I am always delighted when someone accuses me of being confused, and I am most frequently accused of confusion by creationists who generally believe that I don’t understand their position, even though I was myself a young earth creationist most of the way through college and only slowly rejected it over a period of years. And just to prevent the normal reply that obviously I was led astray by my secularist professors, I am a graduate of a Seventh-day Adventist college where the dominant view was YEC.

    What’s interesting about the paragraph I quoted from the comment, however, is that it accuses me of confusion while at the same time demonstrating the very thing I describe! My contention is that the young earth creationist position is founded on the presupposition that Genesis 1-11 is narrative history that is accurate in its science. I didn’t specify “inspiration” as opposed to support, because I don’t think that matters all that much. In what sense would it be possible for something to be “investigated and analyzed scientifically without respect to the Bible” and yet impossible for one to “get to” (my unscientific terminology) that same thing through science?

    When a young earth creationist sets out to demonstrate his theory apart from the Bible, he is, in fact, claiming that it is scientific. In the link I provided in one of my own comments, a young earth creationist claims to be prepared to debate the issue without referring to religion. He’s avoiding the presupposition, pretending it’s unnecessary, whether he confesses to getting inspiration from the Bible or not.

    My basic claim here is that such an activity denies one of the presuppositions of young earth creationism, and that this presupposition is essential, and is actually held by the young earth creationists. Young earth creationism will completely fail without that presupposition. It cannot be scientifically supported. It fails tests from archeology through physics, geology, biology, astronomy, and so forth. Its predictions fail. The Bible is not merely an inspiration, it is a fundamental element running through the YEC position, and not merely the Bible, but a specific category of literalistic view of the Bible.

    There are two reasons YECs want to avoid this fact. First, there is the first amendment in the United States. They would like their dogma taught in the public schools. Since their dogma is religious (though I believe theologically unsound), they have failed to get the courts to accept it. But when they go to court and claim that their position is scientific when it is, in fact, attached at practically all points to the Biblical text of Genesis 1-11 read as narrative history, they pretend, and I repeat pretend not to employ the (very bad) presupposition that is fundamental to their entire system.

    The second is that science has gained a high level of public respect. It has earned it. So to be respectable, the YECs have to place themselves on a level with science. They accomplish this in two ways. 1) They claim that their own view is the really scientific one, and 2) They degrade the scientific claims of their opponents by claiming they are merely the result of scientist’s presuppositions or their faith in _____ (fill in claim of moment here).

    Young earth creationists really shouldn’t talk about presuppositions. It doesn’t work well for them.

    Another commenter, macht, also is severely bothered by my “get to” phrase. Before I quote what he said, let me say that I think it is nonsense to claim that one can be inspired by the Bible to create a scientific model, then to claim that one can fully analyze and test that model scientifically without reference to the Bible, yet one can’t “get to” the model through science.

    If one can fully analyze and test a model, one can assemble that model based on hypothesis and testing. Science works that way.

    Here’s the quote:

    Morris and Parker think that evolution and creation are two different worldviews that ultimately cannot be confirmed or falsified by science. But they also say that these two worldviews each have a “scientific model” which can be confirmed or falsified. As far as I can recall, they don’t claim that we can “come to” either one without presuppositions. What they say is that each scientific model attempts to explain empirical data within their own frameworks and that when we evaluate each, the creation science model is confirmed and the evolution science model. . . .

    This is an example of the pervasive prevarication of young earth creationism. Evolutionists have faith; they have faith. Evolutionists have a worldview; they have a worldview. Evolutionists have presuppositions; they have presuppositions. It’s all just one happy presupposition party in which your guess is as good as mine, so who are all those nasty scientists, and a few Biblical studies types like me, to criticize? (It’s another topic, but it’s interesting to note that we have this sort of post-modern “we all have our reality” view, except that we’re supposed to come out believing YEC is TRUTH.)

    So what are the presuppositions of young earth creationism? There is a God. He inspired a book. That book must be taken literally, and its first 11 chapters are a historical narrative of prehistory. Even though the writers, however divinely inspired, had no scientific skill at all, one must take their words as science. Maybe I missed some, but that’s the gist.

    What are the presuppositions of biological evolution? Hmm. Let’s see. You learn about nature by observing nature. I should add, of course, that the scientific method has been repeatedly shown to work as the specific means of studying nature, as is testified by this computer on which I’m writing and all the various accomplishments of technology that lie between this computer and the one on which you will read this post. It may be a worldview, but it works!

    The worldviews are not equal. One works and the other doesn’t. The theory of evolution is validated, and young earth creationism is not.

  • Young Earth Creationism and Presuppositions

    Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars I found this article on WorldNetDaily. Ed suggested that it didn’t require fisking, but from the Christian point of view there are a couple of things I’d like to comment on.

    Lofton says,

    I love Ken Ham – president of the Answers In Genesis ministry – because he’s a Christian with a brain and he has the guts to defend the faith. I also love him because he drives the God-haters nuts – or I should say he drives them even nuttier.

    Where to start? There are so many silly things about that paragraph. First, there’s the notion that Christians with brains are rare, and thus one had to search and search until finally Ken Ham was located. Oh joy! Oh Rapture! A Christian with a brain! Well actually there are plenty of Christians with brains, and there are plenty of Christians who are willing to defend the faith, and none of them are Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis. I’m not so much commenting on Ken Ham’s IQ as I’m suggesting that he is not defending “the faith” but rather an eccentric view of Biblical interpretation that is producing misguided science. Unless “the faith” is to be equated with massive rejection of evidence over a wide variety of fields, then Ken Ham is not defending the faith. Young Earth Creationism doesn’t merely collide with geology and evolutionary biology. It collides even with archeology. There is written history that dates to before the flood date according to young earth creationists.

    Christians should make no mistake. Ken Ham isn’t just after secularists. He’s opposed to Christians who disagree with him about when and how God created.

    Thus Christians with brains such as Hugh Ross are excluded by Ken Ham’s viewpoint. Now I’m not arguing that Ken Ham doesn’t have the right to disagree with Hugh Ross, or with theistic evolutionists. He absolutely does. But people who look at or read about that museum in Kentucky should not imagine that it is dedicated to the general proposition that God created, or that it is a general defense of Christianity against some supposed secularist forces. It’s not. It is designed to advocate a young earth position, a position that is truly not tenable.

    But Lofton continues saying that Ken Ham drives God-haters nuts. I’ve got to tell you that in general the response I get from non-Christians with whom I discuss any young earth creationists is one of extreme humor. I suggest that a response is necessarily precisely because the public discussion of the museum is so deceptive. Many Christians who actually have no problem with evolution may believe this museum is simply about generally seeing God as the creator, of seeing God’s handiwork in nature. It’s a good idea for them to hear that it isn’t.

    I cannot speak for “God-haters,” as I’m not certain that I’ve met any. I certainly have met quite a number of people who would strongly oppose practically everything taught in the museum. I haven’t been there, but from what I’ve seen, I would be one of them.

    What’s going on in the quoted paragraph, however, is not an attempt to accurately portray the situation, but rather to rally Christians against these imagined God-haters. There is nothing like invoking the word “atheist” to get the faithful ready to rally around. But the faithful need to consider two things. First, as Christians we’re not called to act as mobs trying to persecute those who don’t like us. The way Christians speak about atheists is, well, just not Christ-like. Second, when you’re trying to choose a rallying point to defend the faith, it’s a good idea to choose a solid one, something that is part of the essentials of the faith, and is likely to stand the test of time. Young earth creationism doesn’t meet that test.

    But the great fun starts when Ham is quoted saying, “. . . all scientists have presuppositions that they start with to determine how they interpret evidence.” In support of this he notes that scientists search for answers in nature. I’m shocked! Scandalized even! Well, not so much. It seems just natural that scientists setting out to study nature would, well, study nature.

    The word “presupposition” is a buzzword these days, and it gets abused more than it gets properly used. On the one hand, “you’re just basing everything you say on your suppositions” or “that’s all you can possibly see in your worldview” (nearly synonymous phrases) are used to end the discussion. Supposed simply being informed that I have presuppositions is supposed to end the discussion. On the other hand, the idea of presuppositions is dismissed entirely.

    In fact, we all do have presuppositions. But we can actually identify them, and then we discuss whether they are appropriate or not. For example, if one is studying nature, one should, most likely seek one’s answers right there–in nature.

    But young earth creationists are the master of the great presupposition, and many of them are the master of the denied presupposition. They presuppose that Genesis 1-11 (amongst other texts) contain narrative history and scientific statements. They assume that they should be interpreted primarily in a literal fashion. When some of them claim that they get to young earth creationism on purely scientific grounds, they are merely denying this presupposition. It is impossible to come to young earth creationism on purely scientific grounds. Anyone who claims that is simply denying their most fundamental presupposition.

    If one eliminates this one presupposition, the entire young earth structure collapses. There’s simply no reason for it. It’s designed to explain things that just are not so.

    Thus I find it particularly ironic (as in break the irony meter) to have a young earth creationist talk about presuppositions. We could also word this in worldviews. They would generally suppose that their worldview is simply the view that God is creator and sovereign. But that is not precisely the worldview. They must add all of those presuppositions about Genesis to their worldview. God is not just sovereign and creator. He is not just a God who reveals himself, or even a God who reveals himself to prophetic writers who produce sacred texts. He is specifically a God who reveals scientific data or historical narratives. There is no need to presuppose all of that. One can test each of those things.

    Absent those unjustified presuppositions, the worldview of young earth creationists lacks any justification whatsoever.

  • Update on CU Boulder Threats

    There is more information available now on The Panda’s Thumb.

  • How NOT to Express Your Views

    I suppose it was inevitable, with all of the hype about the terrible evils supposedly caused by a belief in evolution, but it looks like some crackpots decided to express their views with threats.

    From the Denver Post:

    The first threat was e-mailed to the labs – part of CU’s ecology and evolutionary biology department housed in the Ramaley Biology building – on Friday. Wiesley said Monday that morning staff members found envelopes with the threatening documents slipped under the lab doors.

    I hope these just come from a prankster without serious intent. We’ve seen too many times recently how someone who is truly demented can nonetheless get hold of weapons and cause considerable damage.

    HT: The Panda’s Thumb. Further details will be posted there, though I will link to them from here as I notice them.

  • Boundaries of Science and a Shocking Lack of Curiosity

    I know, long title, but I’m having fun.

    One of the things I have noticed about intelligent design (ID) is its shocking lack of curiosity about the designer. One can guess that they’re either afraid of what they will find (God) or what they won’t find (God). Take your pick. ID proponents regularly claim that they have no need to identify the designer; they have only to identify his work. Yet the scientific approach, upon detecting design, would be to promptly look for the designer. (I have previously discussed this natural desire here.)

    Yet for some reason ID proponents try to avoid this issue whenever they are not admitting to Christian groups that the designer, wink wink, is very clearly God. There are two reasons for this. First is the political reason. If ID were billed as a means of scientifically detecting God, it would need to meet much higher standards in the courts. That would be inconvenient especially since actions, speaking much louder than words, indicate that a major goal of ID is to get God into the High School science classroom. Second, however, is the religious issue which is a catch-22. If you detect God scientifically, he’s not really God. We Christians tend to oppose the idea that God is located in images, and we are also not so happy with him turning up in laboratories, nicely pinned between two slides.

    When I place a boundary between science and theology I am not merely trying to protect science from theological incursions, I’m trying to protect theology. And there comes the big problem. The ID proponents clearly know there’s a boundary. It’s recognized by both sides, but that boundary is inconvenient. They want to cross a legal boundary (church / state) by means of ignoring a logical boundary (science studying the natural world / theology and the supernatural). Like good magicians, they try to distract us from their foray across the natural/supernatural boundary by manifesting a shocking lack of curiosity. “Never mind me peaking around this corner,” says the wizard, “I have no interest in what is on the other side at all!”

    This issue came up in a Panda’s Thumb post by Pim van Meurs yesterday. He says:

    ID faces a real problem: Either it insists that it cannot determine much of anything about the Designer which makes the ID inference inherently unreliable and thus useless (Dembski) or it attempts to become scientifically relevant but then it can at best conclude ‘we don’t know’.

    Just so! Commenters jumped on this issue and down the line we had an exchange between Larry Gilman with Pim van Meurs’ response. To avoid the long quotes let me note that Gilman is concerned with crossing that boundary from the side of science, and van Meurs is pointing out that the problem initiates with ID. (One should continue reading the exchange which talks a great deal of what Dawkins is actually saying, and what everyone ought to do. My point is a simpler than that.)

    If God is an entity of the natural world, then Dawkins is right and science should be able, at least in theory, to locate him. I think there are some horrible holes in Dawkins’ logic, and I do believe he goes beyond science in a number of cases. But if there is a designer, whose designs beyond the “design” of the universe as a whole can be detected, then that designer is detectable, but not God. Both Dawkins and the ID crowd seem to me to have an appointment to fight it out on the far side of the natural/supernatural boundary, which Dawkins says isn’t there, and the ID proponents say they don’t care about.

    It is only fair, of course, to point out that Dawkins doesn’t think folks like me have dodged his bullet either, but based on the boundary I’ve mentioned, I don’t hold that God is a bad hypothesis; I hold that it is ridiculous to regard God as a hypothesis at all. For those who want to read more than that, a small number, I suspect, my response to The God Delusion starts here and goes on for several posts. At brevity, I’m a complete failure.

  • More on the Cheri Yecke Story

    Wesley Elsberry has posted some additional information on this story on The Panda’s Thumb, and on his blog in which he states he believes the story is confirmed.

    . . . As far as I am concerned, the Princeton Union-Eagle is vindicated in this matter; at the time that they reported, Cheri Pierson Yecke was indeed saying that teaching “intelligent design” was a decision that local school districts could undertake. Both the quote from the Princeton Union-Eagle and the subsequent criticism I made of Yecke’s position on the issue are upheld by this source.

    Wesley is quite right to point out that Yecke has only to hold a press conference and state her change of view if she no longer supports teaching intelligent design in high school classrooms. If she does still believe it should be taught, that is information the public has a right to know.

    Since this whole issue resulted from Yecke’s use of ReputationDefender to look for negative material, I would like to call attention to this article on MSNBC, which reports on the other side of such activity. There can be a problem with negative information overwhelming the positive. It’s also quite possible for positive information to overwhelm necessary and important negative information. Search providers such as Google are right to battle spammy methods that try to get positive information into the highest search slots.

    There is an apparent bias in the MSNBC story toward “cleaning up” negative information. But there is no guarantee that the negative information someone wants to clean up is actually inaccurate. Accurate negative information, especially for those involved in the public sector, is important. The search engines cannot guarantee accuracy; they can only aim for relevance.

    In an age when information can be readily disseminated by just about anyone, and accessed just as easily, each reader needs to beware of lies.

  • Scientists Thinking about Intelligent Design

    In an extraordinarily inane post over on Uncommon Descent, titled The best evolutionary biologists think about intelligent design, S. Cordova tells us that, well, as the title says, the best evolutionary biologists are thinking about intelligent design. This strikes me as rather like the child who provokes his parents into punishing him just because he wants attention. He is getting attention after all.

    Here’s why it looks like that to me.

    1. He references “Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne, Ken Miller, Sean Carroll, and Michael Ruse.” Why? Well, as he continues, they have all reviewed Michael Behe’s new book. Their reviews? They systematically demolished it. You will find links to Jerry Coyne’s review, Behe’s ineffectual response, and Coyne’s response along with some dot connecting info here. Yep! Evolutionary scientists are thinking about intelligent design and they think it’s not science.
    2. He references an article in Medical Systems Biology, in which he places ellipses right after the line “intelligent design is making headway in the laboratory…” Guess what the next sentence is in the article. “In this case, though, the designer turned out to be just some clever scientist.” Wow! It’s hard to even consider this deception, it’s so weak.
    3. The last one? Well, they have found a copy of Darwin’s Black Box on the shelf of John Maynard-Smith. Hmmm! You’ll find that I have a considerable library of young earth creationist literature. Does that mean I think it’s serious? No. It simply means I believe that many people are led astray by it.

    Rather an odd way to “defend” ID, isn’t it?

  • Absolute Theology; Flexible Science

    One of the interesting things I note about creationists of various stripes is that they display a tremendous flexibility in interpreting physical data, they generally take hold of one approach to Biblical interpretation and nothing can move them. One of the clearest explicit statements of this position comes in the first three chapters of Kurt Wise’s book Faith, Form, and Time, and especially the second chapter “The Biblical Standard.” The entire section is titled “God’s Word on the Matter.” Wise is to be congratulated for stating his foundation honestly.

    One of the critical issues for Wise is the meaning of “kind,” to which he dedicates a chapter (“After Their Kind”). This is an area where old earth creationists and young earth creationists share a common problem. I’m not planning to delve into the whole area of baraminology, which I think will ultimately be fruitless, but simply to use it as a starting example of theological inflexibility combined with a view of the data that is so flexible it could almost be described as “formless and void.” I blogged about this some time ago, and simply noted that if one took “after their kind” phenomenologically, something that many very conservative Biblical interpreters will advocate for certain obviously non-scientific Biblical statements, one has no problem.

    “After their kind” simply states what we observe to be the truth on a day to day basis. Interpreting this phrase to mean that there is somewhere a barrier that genetic variation cannot cross is a variety of theological inflexibility. Inflexibly holding to a particular view of “after their kind” creationists are then forced to be hopelessly flexible with the physical data in order to create boundaries that do not appear to exist.

    I was reminded again about this when reading the Summary of Reasons To Believe’s Testable Creation Model and a response to it, and even a negative response from the young earth side. It’s especially interesting to see the young earth and old earth people tear one anther apart over Biblical interpretation. Old earth creationists are more flexible in their Biblical interpretation and more willing to hear scientific evidence, but they are still demonstrate the quality I’m discussing.

    It is not just the literary genre of Genesis that is taken as obvious, though that is the starting point. A certain set of Christian doctrines is also beyond discussion, and the assumption is made that if Genesis is not taken as narrative history, those doctrines will also fail.

    Let me just take an example from the Answers in Genesis document 10 Dangers of Theistic Evolution. (I have taken the document form ChristianAnswers.net, but its origin is on AiG.) It would be fun to take this document apart point by point, simply because it so blatantly misrepresents evolution in general and theistic evolution in particular. Today, however, I want to note only one point, from their point #6:

    Theistic evolution does not acknowledge Adam as the first man, nor that he was created directly from “the dust of the ground” by God (Genesis 2:17). Most theistic evolutionists regard the creation account as being merely a mythical tale, albeit with some spiritual significance. However, the sinner Adam and the Savior Jesus are linked together in the Bible – Romans 5:16-18. Thus any view which mythologizes Adam undermines the biblical basis of Jesus’ work of redemption.

    Even in theistic evolution, there will be a “first man” somewhere, and there is no difficulty whatsoever with calling that first man “Adam.” Of course “created directly from ‘the dust of the ground’” is precisely where the disagreement is, but while they include that special item in their objection, they don’t explain how “directly” as opposed to “indirectly” harms the doctrines of the incarnation and redemption, which is what they are trying to defend. I have no numbers on how many theistic evolutionists regard Genesis as a “mythical tale,” but as someone who is a bit cautious with literary terms, I certainly don’t call Genesis 1 “myth” even though it has some elements of myth. Rather, it is theology, and specifically liturgy. As such, it not only has some “spiritual significance,” it is designed to present spiritual truths and to pass them on from generation to generation through worship.

    Creationists seem to think that if humanity took a considerable period of time to appear on the scene, then it is impossible for there to be a fall. But the fall, as described in Genesis, can very easily be understood as a fall from grace in a primitive state. Without the efforts of artists to make it look sort of like a modern nudist camp (with only two people and with trees and hair positioned strategically), all that Genesis implies is a primitive state in which the first humans managed the garden. There is an element here of the rural vs the urban that suggests that the story comes out of the period of early urbanization. One notes that after making himself into the ultimate bad guy, Cain heads off and builds a city (Genesis 4:17). None of this requires that the fall of humanity not be a historical event, though personally I think that this passage should be read with even more flexibility.

    Note that in the same document even progressive creationism (see their point #1) is regarded as dangerous. Thus the extremely strong evidence of an old earth must be disregarded totally in order to maintain a set of beliefs, including a literal garden of Eden, a historical moment of the fall, a “direct” creation of the man, and so forth. All of this is required in order to maintain the belief that Genesis 1 is narrative history.

    And yet with a little bit of flexibility, one could maintain the garden of Eden, as there must be a first human being, and there is nothing to require that God didn’t communicate with that human and direct him to some location. There is also nothing to say that God did that, outside of the Bible read as narrative history, but that’s beside the point. One could then have a historical rebellion by that first couple, followed by, of course, the story of redemption. Evolution does not interfere with the picture at all, unless of course one is incredibly rigid in reading literary materials.

    Essentially if the creationists would exhibit any of the flexibility they show in reinterpreting scientific information when they turn to their Bibles, they would find it easy to construct a doctrinal picture that would be in accord with orthodox Christianity. Unfortunately, for them, facts produced by researchers in the field and the lab are to be treated with less respect than their literal, detailed, interpretations of Biblical texts.

    It’s not the Bible that’s the problem here so much as people who refuse to let the Bible speak in its own way in its own time. In ancient times it spoke to a pre-scientific culture. It could speak today in a scientific culture, but for it to do so, one must be ready to restate its principles in the context of new knowledge and new discoveries. Otherwise it simply becomes a barrier to knowledge.

  • Dinosaurs and the Bible: A Creationists Fantasy

    . . . has moved here. It’s worth a look just for the header picture. The subtitle is “Dinosaurs and the Bible DON’T MIX!!!”