I'm only doing this once. I do not want to get distracted from my intention which is to demonstrate, from a layman's point of view, how Helder is doing a disservice to the understanding of science and why many are abandoning the faith because they don't want to be associated with YEC "science" or American -styled fundamentalism (contra Zylstra who is convinced that it's evolution and folks like Dawkins who are making unbelievers of us).
Because it seems this matters a lot to you, I will clarify what I meant by writing that Helder misrepresented established science and evolutionary theory. The context of my conclusion was Helder's condemnation of the Royal Tyrrell Museum's sign, remember? The museum had the audacity to quote Job 12:8, making it appear that both the Bible and nature teach evolution. Helder had every right to say that the museum abused the Scriptures by taking one line from Job while leaving out the completing thought made in that passage. It was a clever misrepresentation and I'm glad the museum took it down.
I simply pointed out that what’s good for the goose is what’s good for the gander. If the museum was wrong for taking a little snippet out of the Bible and making it seem to support evolutionary theory, then Helder is even more wrong – hypocritical, in fact -- to go on and summarize evolutionary theory as time and chance and “random processes”. It’s why I hauled out the memory of Charles Darwin whose main contribution to evolutionary theory wasn’t a theory of time or a theory of randomness but his break-through idea of natural selection. That idea is alive and well-evidenced in the museum and at the heart of the scientific enterprise. By leaving this critical piece out of her initial descriptions of evolution, like the museum did of Job, she not only misrepresents evolution but proves herself hypocritical.
Hope you get it now. Don’t fall on your sword too soon. I have more to say that might interest you in the following installments.
In a Genesis Week video, Ian Juby called into question Pat Robertson's commitment to Christ. At the very least, he gives Robertson an opportunity to fall in line before he proves himself an apostate. Juby used a saying of Jesus in Mark 10:6 to correct Robertson for not believing people lived with the dinosaurs in the Garden of Eden. He's my comment on that text and how it's used by YEC.
“But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ (NIV)
A "test" of orthodoxy among young earth creationists is pointing out how Jesus himself believed human beings existed from the very beginning of earth's history. That is, the Son of God believed the first chapters of Genesis should be taken as for a literal, scientifically feasible account of exactly how the universe began. Confronting old earth notions with Jesus' inerrant literalism would crush further argument, after all. We are told we have only two choices: accepting Jesus' view of a young creation or rejecting Christ as a reliable guide to truth.
Really?
Great care is needed when pressing a sacred text into service as the last word on questions which were not part of the text's original situation. For example, when the apostle Paul instructed husbands to love and wives to submit, did he really intend anything more for gender roles than that all God's children need to submit to one another for Christ's sake and to submit to his peace in all things? Was Saint Peter intending to be dismissive of democracy when he said, "Fear God. Honour the king"? Many Christian monarchists have thought so in the past. Simply put, people sometimes make too much of a text -- ignoring its context, commonsense, and sound theology -- so that it can be conscripted into some agenda.
Let's set aside for a moment the idea of kenosis (Philippians 2:5-8) and how Christ's incarnation limited his knowledge before his eventual ascension. When our Lord pointed to the "beginning of creation", were questions of paleontology and geology at the center of his attention? From the context it appears they were not. He was responding to test questions pertaining to matters of marriage and divorce. He isn't entertaining questions of natural science but reminding his inquisitors of Moses' precise instructions and what the Creator originally intended for married living.
If we insist Jesus answer questions about science and the age of the earth, we might find him actually contradicting the creation account. Literally speaking, male and female are the beginning of God's creation according to our Lord. This makes Adam and Eve creatures of the First Day of God's creative work -- not the Sixth, the Day it was ending.
But that's only if Mark 10:6 actually portrays Jesus as a YEC.
Marie! Thanks for your interest. I've been trying to demonstrate from a layman's point of view that much of young earth "science" is actually destroying the faith of bright, curious minds who are extremely disappointed with YEC tactics and explanations. I've been trying to do this not by attacking John and his positions personally, though I know he is a YEC, but by using Helder's paper "How Christians Respond to Secular Science" as an example of what is not helpful.
Two days ago, after I invited a bright young man to read this discussion, he emailed me: "I read as much as I could before losing interest. How can he throw so much science out the window? .... I've lost the passion for debate on this subject. I feel at ease with my paradigm. I feel it makes sense. I can't say that I felt that way with a Christian paradigm...Science could allow for a god, but Christianity doesn't allow for science. End of story in my opinion."
This is what I am afraid of.
I would also point to the experiences of brilliant, science-minded Christians like Todd Wood and Glen Morton who get repeatedly slammed for being, well, good scientists. (i.e. http://www.icr.org/article/3132/ ). John began this thread by saying that it's Dawkins and evolution who are destroying faith. I disagree. Christians have had to deal with Bible-defying scientific claims and eloquent atheism for a many centuries. It's American fundamentalism, with its false scientific shibboleths, that is driving many people away from the camp of faith in Christ.
I have two installments left in my critique of Helder's paper. The last will include some "so what" conclusions.
I'm surprised that you didn't really deal with any of these vaguenesses . It would have been so easy for you. Now you want to get to the real tough stuff. I feel flattered. BTW I encourage you to rethink your definition of ad hominem. You are making it seem that it's unethical to call someone on deliberate misrepresentations of subjects we are presently discussing. If you want some examples of real ad hominem attacks, I know exactly where I can find them.
"...he was refering to the Genesis event, right? In the beginning. Yes, the entire week of creation was part of that beginning, the beginning of how the earth operates and is maintained."
No. Jesus wasn't referring to an event. They were not discussing events. Jesus was referring to the Torah, specifically the Book of Beginnings and the Book of Deuteronomy. Jesus was referring to Moses, as mentioned in the context, as opposed to various Jewish schools of thought about divorce. By referring to "the beginning of creation" Jesus is lifting the question of divorce to matters of Torah and the beginnings of marriage. Torah trumps Mishna.
"You could argue that the beginning was before the week of creation, but then you are misappropriating the meaning of the word in order to argue with Jesus, right?"
No. I am not trying to misappropriate the word nor am I trying to argue with Jesus. I'm arguing with YEC's use of Jesus. When you make a saying of Jesus a matter of science and the age of the earth (as if these are the point of what he is saying), it's youself and YEC who misappropriate his words. I pushed the science/literalism angle to absurdity to make this point. If Jesus is literally talking about the scientific timing of male and female creation, then the logical conclusion is that male and female were created at the "beginning of creation". Again, if the literal sense of the creation story is the real issue, then the story itself has a literal sequence -- beginning with the first day and ending on the sixth. I don't mind Jesus correcting the order a little. What's a few days? Jesus is the living Torah, afterall, and the living Torah trumps Moses. But do remember this is a reductio ad absurdum designed to keep you honest about Jesus and his supposed literalism.
"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Then we get a description of how that happened. We get the beginning of everything, of separation of earth and water, of light, of stars, plants, animals, fish, and humans. All of that week was a beginning, according to scripture."
None of this is what the rabbis were discussing. In fact you have hijacked their discussion. Perhaps you wish Jesus would have expounded a little more on the days of creation in the gospels but he didn't. Doesn't this give you any pause?
"You say that Jesus knowledge was limited, including about the process of creation. But this contradicts what John 1 says about Jesus being there in the beginning, with God. That Jesus himself was the Word by which the creation happened. Now yes, Jesus did indicate sometimes that somethings related to judgement and his own return were known to the Father only. But this doesn't mean that therefore He had to forget what He was involved in before."
Actually I set that idea aside for the moment. Instead I encourage you to learn the meaning of kenosis, the well-attested notion in Scripture that the Son of God voluntarily stripped himself of his omniscience and omnipotence in order to become the suffering servant of redemption. It might open up a whole new world of understanding about his incarnation for you. To sully this with our present debate would be a shame.
I really don't want to argue every text raised in this discussion, though it is tempting. I'm just concerned that our Lord is made out to be the posterboy for today's Young Earth Creationism. I also don't object to Juby's right to disagree. I object to his hermeneutics as well as his "science".
If you have been following along, I've been critiquing Dr. Margaret Helder’s “How Christians Respond to Secular Science” (March, 2012). Last time, I pointed out how young earth creationists often misunderstand what scientific theories are. Neither UFO experts, Reiki practitioners, quantum incarnationists, white supremacists, nor present day geocentrists, for instance, have genuine scientific theories to support their claims. They do have their own models. Some of them are quite detailed and self-confessedly “scientific”.
I pointed out that Helder, with the support of Dr. Kurt Wise, doesn’t seem to understand what makes a theory (or model) persuasive in its ability to explain reality. As it stands, Helder believes the “strength” of the young earth model is how its main idea remains intact, perhaps even stronger, despite various weak or discredited arguments based on various kinds of evidence. Yet by standards of science and logic, this is precisely what makes such a model more impotent and less persuasive.
The bulk of Helder’s paper is taken up with controversies concerning the Cambrian Explosion. It is very telling that despite urging creationists to concentrate on building a positive case with the data, she devotes no less than 6 pages of her paper to arguments between non-YEC scientists who are delving into Cambrian mysteries. None of them, from J. William Schopf (http://www.research.ucla.edu/chal/99/highlights/article05.htm) to S. Conway Morris (http://www.pnas.org/content/97/9/4426.full.pdf) would ever posit a world-wide flood occurring 6,000 years ago as a helpful, plausible scientific explanation for the Cambrian data.
In other words, Helder uses disagreements between scientists who totally disagree with YEC as proof that YEC must be correct. This is called parasitic science. It is not science at all. Mysteries and disagreements are what advance a scientific understanding of the world. It’s frightening to think that if YEC controlled the scientific establishment, this drive to explain the great mysteries of nature would shrink to nothing but endeavours such as naming new forms of fungi.
“And so concerning the sudden appearance of animals in Cambrian rock, we see that the expectations of the creation model are met. We also see that secular scientists have not been able to find an explanation which can accommodate these data into their evolution model. The latter model does not predict abrupt appearance. They need some kind of phenomenon to initiate such an event…. The implications of the Cambrian explosion are obvious to Christians. The sudden appearance was the result of supernatural intervention…a universal flood burying large and diverse animal communities along with human populations (emphasis mine).” P. 10
This kind of YEC dismissal of all other scientific work is what drives folks bonkers. Helder tells us YEC scientific expectations have been met: God did it. Therefore all the field work, all the expense, all thinking and debating, all the gathering of evidence and sheer intellectual energy expended in trying to understand the Cambrian Explosion turns out to be “a sheer waste of time” (p. 6 par. 3) as Helder would put it. It’s a fundamentalist’s form of Occam’s Razor that says, “It’s in the Bible, dumbo”. Perhaps this explains why she hasn’t bothered updating Cambrian studies beyond her 1995 citations. So much good scientific work has gone on since that time, despite YEC’s smugness.
But even a scientifically untrained Christian can ask questions. If the Flood did it, why aren’t people, land animals, trees, boney fishes -- in fact, almost all forms of animal life as see today – missing from the entire Cambrian layer? Another way of putting it is this: Why, without sounding more convoluted than any secular scientist, would God send a flood that buries animals successively more and more unlike present animals in sucessively deeper and deeper layers of sentiment? Why is the fossil evidence of life before the Flood so simple and “squishy”? Why is the dating of rocks containing the first Cambrian fossils close to 600,000,000 years old? Why do you believe 50,000,000 years of Cambrian Explosion can be described as “sudden” and “rapid”, when your geological explanation of life spans 6,000-10,000 years? How do young creationists explain other “explosions” of life in the fossil record – like mammals and flower plants?. Why isn’t an old earth creation science a much better explanation of the fossil record?
I once believed that the meatiest part of Helder’s paper would be the hardest and lengthiest part to criticise. In fact, it was easy because the people who agree with me did all the hard work.
NEXT: Conclusion: Why YEC is both bad for science and bad for faith.
Perhaps mincing a few percentage points doesn't add anything to the debate about the DNA in chimps and humans. It detracts us from the awesome fact that we are so closely related secular scientists have to rely on "junk DNA" to explain why we are different.
Did Genesisweek take into account that humans have less chromosomes (23 rather than 24) than chimps? This alone might help with the math.
And you think Humphreys, the man who came up with the idea that earth is 6,000 years old while most of the universe is 15 billions years old, is someone who can be trusted with the facts? Whatever, John. It will all help make my conclusion more obvious.
Personally speaking, I think it's presumptuous and perhaps even blasphemous to think we can know exactly how God does things, as was pointed out to Job in Job 38:4. I believe even in the next life we will not "know" exactly how God does things because it presumes we will have God-like minds. The Scriptures weren't inspired to answer every "how" question. They were written to give humanity reliable answers to the most important who, why, and how questions that roost our hearts.
I belong to a theological tradition that says only by the inner operation of the Holy Spirit that we can truly know God and trust him and his promises in Christ. Using the Bible as a "modern" science text book or as a technology manual or as a fine arts catalogue simply abuses God's purposes for his written Word. It makes us arrogant and it gets us into trouble when we have borne false witness to God -- which has happened far too often in history.
Perhaps this gets to the point of the debate here. Creation science, especially YEC science, seems to boast that it knows exactly how God created the earth. Most important, it runs roughshod over the monumental intellectual and cultural challenges that the Spirit of God surmounted to communicate his saving truths to ancient peoples barely out of the stone age. And God is still "lisping" to us and stooping to make himself known to us, as Calvin said.
That's why I kind of like the idea of a truly "secular" science. Good science, no matter what faith conviction, must follow where the evidence leads when it comes to understanding the universe we inhabit. We need to be humble about our limited capacities and about how our faith commitments will influence our quest to understand. Yet we must follow the evidence and keep testing to see if our conclusions are sturdy and repeatable and open to peer review, even if at first it doesn't seem to fit with what we used to think about nature.
As a Christian, I know I can do this fearessly. My Father may be inscrutible in somethings, but He's no trickster.
I learned more about Humphreys -- the "expert" whom you think has pointed out the "facts". Eek! Humphreys is a great example of how his fundamentalism abuses science and turns people off. Might have to use him as a closing example for my last installment.
"So is this true? Are they (Morton and Wood) getting slammed for being good scientists? Really? No. It may be they get slammed for changing sides, or for disagreeing with various creationists, or for neglecting certain chemical or physical facts. But not for being good scientists... this is a slur and an adhominem (sic) attack."
It's not a slur or an ad hominem attack. Both Glen Morton and Todd Wood have publically shared their stories of insults, intimidation, accusations of being in league with the devil, etc, by young earth creationists. In other words, both Wood and Morton have experienced slurs and ad hominem attacks because YECs attacked them personally rather than respecting them for being good scientists who take the evidence seriously. I'm just relaying their stories. I think I gave you links to this info before -- perhaps you've forgotten.
Here's a sample ...
"It appeared that the more I questions I raised, the more they questioned my theological purity. When telling one friend of my difficulties with young-earth creationism and geology, he told me that I had obviously been brain-washed by my geology professors. When I told him that I had never taken a geology course, he then said I must be saying this in order to hold my job. Never would he consider that I might really believe the data. Since then this type of treatment has become expected from young-earthers. I have been called nearly everything under the sun but they don't deal with the data I present to them. Here is a list of what young-earthers have called me in response to my data: 'an apostate,'(Humphreys) 'a heretic'(Jim Bell although he later apologised like the gentleman he is) 'a compromiser'(Henry Morris) "absurd", "naive", "compromising", "abysmally ignorant", "sloppy", "reckless disregard", "extremely inaccurate", "misleading", "tomfoolery" and "intentionally deceitful"(John Woodmorappe) 'like your father, Satan' (Carl R. Froede--I am proud to have this one because Jesus was once said to have been of satan also.) 'your loyality and commitment to Jesus Christ is shaky or just not truly genuine' (John Baumgardner 12-24-99 [Merry Christmas]) "[I] have secretly entertained suspicions of a Trojan horse roaming behind the lines..." Royal Truman 12-28-99
Interesting debate. And very telling. It seems that a hypothesis related to "global witness" is easily dissolved into worries about protecting the "flock", seperating out wolves in sheeps clothing, and mincing words about very obvious points of fact, such as the geological column. I don't think these are helpful ways of turning the tide that John Zylstra is lamenting.
I enjoyed Jeff's reminder that the two books of revelation both reveal God and not just any old (sorry) fact. This is something that every Christian scientist/apologist/philosoper would need to keep in mind. It might help us find a productive way out of the Bible/science debate without us reeking of paranoia and grasping at straws.
Posted in: Disciplining a Retired Pastor
Nice!
Posted in: Creation vs Evolution: Impact on Witness and Faith
I'm only doing this once. I do not want to get distracted from my intention which is to demonstrate, from a layman's point of view, how Helder is doing a disservice to the understanding of science and why many are abandoning the faith because they don't want to be associated with YEC "science" or American -styled fundamentalism (contra Zylstra who is convinced that it's evolution and folks like Dawkins who are making unbelievers of us).
Because it seems this matters a lot to you, I will clarify what I meant by writing that Helder misrepresented established science and evolutionary theory. The context of my conclusion was Helder's condemnation of the Royal Tyrrell Museum's sign, remember? The museum had the audacity to quote Job 12:8, making it appear that both the Bible and nature teach evolution. Helder had every right to say that the museum abused the Scriptures by taking one line from Job while leaving out the completing thought made in that passage. It was a clever misrepresentation and I'm glad the museum took it down.
I simply pointed out that what’s good for the goose is what’s good for the gander. If the museum was wrong for taking a little snippet out of the Bible and making it seem to support evolutionary theory, then Helder is even more wrong – hypocritical, in fact -- to go on and summarize evolutionary theory as time and chance and “random processes”. It’s why I hauled out the memory of Charles Darwin whose main contribution to evolutionary theory wasn’t a theory of time or a theory of randomness but his break-through idea of natural selection. That idea is alive and well-evidenced in the museum and at the heart of the scientific enterprise. By leaving this critical piece out of her initial descriptions of evolution, like the museum did of Job, she not only misrepresents evolution but proves herself hypocritical.
Hope you get it now. Don’t fall on your sword too soon. I have more to say that might interest you in the following installments.
Apology accepted.
Posted in: Creation vs Evolution: Impact on Witness and Faith
In a Genesis Week video, Ian Juby called into question Pat Robertson's commitment to Christ. At the very least, he gives Robertson an opportunity to fall in line before he proves himself an apostate. Juby used a saying of Jesus in Mark 10:6 to correct Robertson for not believing people lived with the dinosaurs in the Garden of Eden. He's my comment on that text and how it's used by YEC.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URP2WJ6st-E&list=UU23yiJV4Bkagj5dkH-UyHFA&index=1
“But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ (NIV)
A "test" of orthodoxy among young earth creationists is pointing out how Jesus himself believed human beings existed from the very beginning of earth's history. That is, the Son of God believed the first chapters of Genesis should be taken as for a literal, scientifically feasible account of exactly how the universe began. Confronting old earth notions with Jesus' inerrant literalism would crush further argument, after all. We are told we have only two choices: accepting Jesus' view of a young creation or rejecting Christ as a reliable guide to truth.
Really?
Great care is needed when pressing a sacred text into service as the last word on questions which were not part of the text's original situation. For example, when the apostle Paul instructed husbands to love and wives to submit, did he really intend anything more for gender roles than that all God's children need to submit to one another for Christ's sake and to submit to his peace in all things? Was Saint Peter intending to be dismissive of democracy when he said, "Fear God. Honour the king"? Many Christian monarchists have thought so in the past. Simply put, people sometimes make too much of a text -- ignoring its context, commonsense, and sound theology -- so that it can be conscripted into some agenda.
Let's set aside for a moment the idea of kenosis (Philippians 2:5-8) and how Christ's incarnation limited his knowledge before his eventual ascension. When our Lord pointed to the "beginning of creation", were questions of paleontology and geology at the center of his attention? From the context it appears they were not. He was responding to test questions pertaining to matters of marriage and divorce. He isn't entertaining questions of natural science but reminding his inquisitors of Moses' precise instructions and what the Creator originally intended for married living.
If we insist Jesus answer questions about science and the age of the earth, we might find him actually contradicting the creation account. Literally speaking, male and female are the beginning of God's creation according to our Lord. This makes Adam and Eve creatures of the First Day of God's creative work -- not the Sixth, the Day it was ending.
But that's only if Mark 10:6 actually portrays Jesus as a YEC.
Posted in: Creation vs Evolution: Impact on Witness and Faith
Marie! Thanks for your interest. I've been trying to demonstrate from a layman's point of view that much of young earth "science" is actually destroying the faith of bright, curious minds who are extremely disappointed with YEC tactics and explanations. I've been trying to do this not by attacking John and his positions personally, though I know he is a YEC, but by using Helder's paper "How Christians Respond to Secular Science" as an example of what is not helpful.
Two days ago, after I invited a bright young man to read this discussion, he emailed me: "I read as much as I could before losing interest. How can he throw so much science out the window? .... I've lost the passion for debate on this subject. I feel at ease with my paradigm. I feel it makes sense. I can't say that I felt that way with a Christian paradigm...Science could allow for a god, but Christianity doesn't allow for science. End of story in my opinion."
This is what I am afraid of.
I would also point to the experiences of brilliant, science-minded Christians like Todd Wood and Glen Morton who get repeatedly slammed for being, well, good scientists. (i.e. http://www.icr.org/article/3132/ ). John began this thread by saying that it's Dawkins and evolution who are destroying faith. I disagree. Christians have had to deal with Bible-defying scientific claims and eloquent atheism for a many centuries. It's American fundamentalism, with its false scientific shibboleths, that is driving many people away from the camp of faith in Christ.
I have two installments left in my critique of Helder's paper. The last will include some "so what" conclusions.
"
Posted in: Creation vs Evolution: Impact on Witness and Faith
I'm surprised that you didn't really deal with any of these vaguenesses . It would have been so easy for you. Now you want to get to the real tough stuff. I feel flattered. BTW I encourage you to rethink your definition of ad hominem. You are making it seem that it's unethical to call someone on deliberate misrepresentations of subjects we are presently discussing. If you want some examples of real ad hominem attacks, I know exactly where I can find them.
"...he was refering to the Genesis event, right? In the beginning. Yes, the entire week of creation was part of that beginning, the beginning of how the earth operates and is maintained."
No. Jesus wasn't referring to an event. They were not discussing events. Jesus was referring to the Torah, specifically the Book of Beginnings and the Book of Deuteronomy. Jesus was referring to Moses, as mentioned in the context, as opposed to various Jewish schools of thought about divorce. By referring to "the beginning of creation" Jesus is lifting the question of divorce to matters of Torah and the beginnings of marriage. Torah trumps Mishna.
"You could argue that the beginning was before the week of creation, but then you are misappropriating the meaning of the word in order to argue with Jesus, right?"
No. I am not trying to misappropriate the word nor am I trying to argue with Jesus. I'm arguing with YEC's use of Jesus. When you make a saying of Jesus a matter of science and the age of the earth (as if these are the point of what he is saying), it's youself and YEC who misappropriate his words. I pushed the science/literalism angle to absurdity to make this point. If Jesus is literally talking about the scientific timing of male and female creation, then the logical conclusion is that male and female were created at the "beginning of creation". Again, if the literal sense of the creation story is the real issue, then the story itself has a literal sequence -- beginning with the first day and ending on the sixth. I don't mind Jesus correcting the order a little. What's a few days? Jesus is the living Torah, afterall, and the living Torah trumps Moses. But do remember this is a reductio ad absurdum designed to keep you honest about Jesus and his supposed literalism.
"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Then we get a description of how that happened. We get the beginning of everything, of separation of earth and water, of light, of stars, plants, animals, fish, and humans. All of that week was a beginning, according to scripture."
None of this is what the rabbis were discussing. In fact you have hijacked their discussion. Perhaps you wish Jesus would have expounded a little more on the days of creation in the gospels but he didn't. Doesn't this give you any pause?
"You say that Jesus knowledge was limited, including about the process of creation. But this contradicts what John 1 says about Jesus being there in the beginning, with God. That Jesus himself was the Word by which the creation happened. Now yes, Jesus did indicate sometimes that somethings related to judgement and his own return were known to the Father only. But this doesn't mean that therefore He had to forget what He was involved in before."
Actually I set that idea aside for the moment. Instead I encourage you to learn the meaning of kenosis, the well-attested notion in Scripture that the Son of God voluntarily stripped himself of his omniscience and omnipotence in order to become the suffering servant of redemption. It might open up a whole new world of understanding about his incarnation for you. To sully this with our present debate would be a shame.
I really don't want to argue every text raised in this discussion, though it is tempting. I'm just concerned that our Lord is made out to be the posterboy for today's Young Earth Creationism. I also don't object to Juby's right to disagree. I object to his hermeneutics as well as his "science".
Posted in: Creation vs Evolution: Impact on Witness and Faith
If you have been following along, I've been critiquing Dr. Margaret Helder’s “How Christians Respond to Secular Science” (March, 2012). Last time, I pointed out how young earth creationists often misunderstand what scientific theories are. Neither UFO experts, Reiki practitioners, quantum incarnationists, white supremacists, nor present day geocentrists, for instance, have genuine scientific theories to support their claims. They do have their own models. Some of them are quite detailed and self-confessedly “scientific”.
I pointed out that Helder, with the support of Dr. Kurt Wise, doesn’t seem to understand what makes a theory (or model) persuasive in its ability to explain reality. As it stands, Helder believes the “strength” of the young earth model is how its main idea remains intact, perhaps even stronger, despite various weak or discredited arguments based on various kinds of evidence. Yet by standards of science and logic, this is precisely what makes such a model more impotent and less persuasive.
The bulk of Helder’s paper is taken up with controversies concerning the Cambrian Explosion. It is very telling that despite urging creationists to concentrate on building a positive case with the data, she devotes no less than 6 pages of her paper to arguments between non-YEC scientists who are delving into Cambrian mysteries. None of them, from J. William Schopf (http://www.research.ucla.edu/chal/99/highlights/article05.htm) to S. Conway Morris (http://www.pnas.org/content/97/9/4426.full.pdf) would ever posit a world-wide flood occurring 6,000 years ago as a helpful, plausible scientific explanation for the Cambrian data.
In other words, Helder uses disagreements between scientists who totally disagree with YEC as proof that YEC must be correct. This is called parasitic science. It is not science at all. Mysteries and disagreements are what advance a scientific understanding of the world. It’s frightening to think that if YEC controlled the scientific establishment, this drive to explain the great mysteries of nature would shrink to nothing but endeavours such as naming new forms of fungi.
“And so concerning the sudden appearance of animals in Cambrian rock, we see that the expectations of the creation model are met. We also see that secular scientists have not been able to find an explanation which can accommodate these data into their evolution model. The latter model does not predict abrupt appearance. They need some kind of phenomenon to initiate such an event…. The implications of the Cambrian explosion are obvious to Christians. The sudden appearance was the result of supernatural intervention…a universal flood burying large and diverse animal communities along with human populations (emphasis mine).” P. 10
This kind of YEC dismissal of all other scientific work is what drives folks bonkers. Helder tells us YEC scientific expectations have been met: God did it. Therefore all the field work, all the expense, all thinking and debating, all the gathering of evidence and sheer intellectual energy expended in trying to understand the Cambrian Explosion turns out to be “a sheer waste of time” (p. 6 par. 3) as Helder would put it. It’s a fundamentalist’s form of Occam’s Razor that says, “It’s in the Bible, dumbo”. Perhaps this explains why she hasn’t bothered updating Cambrian studies beyond her 1995 citations. So much good scientific work has gone on since that time, despite YEC’s smugness.
But even a scientifically untrained Christian can ask questions. If the Flood did it, why aren’t people, land animals, trees, boney fishes -- in fact, almost all forms of animal life as see today – missing from the entire Cambrian layer? Another way of putting it is this: Why, without sounding more convoluted than any secular scientist, would God send a flood that buries animals successively more and more unlike present animals in sucessively deeper and deeper layers of sentiment? Why is the fossil evidence of life before the Flood so simple and “squishy”? Why is the dating of rocks containing the first Cambrian fossils close to 600,000,000 years old? Why do you believe 50,000,000 years of Cambrian Explosion can be described as “sudden” and “rapid”, when your geological explanation of life spans 6,000-10,000 years? How do young creationists explain other “explosions” of life in the fossil record – like mammals and flower plants?. Why isn’t an old earth creation science a much better explanation of the fossil record?
I once believed that the meatiest part of Helder’s paper would be the hardest and lengthiest part to criticise. In fact, it was easy because the people who agree with me did all the hard work.
NEXT: Conclusion: Why YEC is both bad for science and bad for faith.
Posted in: Creation vs Evolution: Impact on Witness and Faith
In keeping with the thought of His incarnation:
a joyful, safe, worshipful Christmas to you.
my deepest condolences to Americans presently grieving the tragedy at Sandy Hook.
Posted in: Creation vs Evolution: Impact on Witness and Faith
Perhaps mincing a few percentage points doesn't add anything to the debate about the DNA in chimps and humans. It detracts us from the awesome fact that we are so closely related secular scientists have to rely on "junk DNA" to explain why we are different.
See http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111025122615.htm
Did Genesisweek take into account that humans have less chromosomes (23 rather than 24) than chimps? This alone might help with the math.
And you think Humphreys, the man who came up with the idea that earth is 6,000 years old while most of the universe is 15 billions years old, is someone who can be trusted with the facts? Whatever, John. It will all help make my conclusion more obvious.
Posted in: Creation vs Evolution: Impact on Witness and Faith
Personally speaking, I think it's presumptuous and perhaps even blasphemous to think we can know exactly how God does things, as was pointed out to Job in Job 38:4. I believe even in the next life we will not "know" exactly how God does things because it presumes we will have God-like minds. The Scriptures weren't inspired to answer every "how" question. They were written to give humanity reliable answers to the most important who, why, and how questions that roost our hearts.
I belong to a theological tradition that says only by the inner operation of the Holy Spirit that we can truly know God and trust him and his promises in Christ. Using the Bible as a "modern" science text book or as a technology manual or as a fine arts catalogue simply abuses God's purposes for his written Word. It makes us arrogant and it gets us into trouble when we have borne false witness to God -- which has happened far too often in history.
Perhaps this gets to the point of the debate here. Creation science, especially YEC science, seems to boast that it knows exactly how God created the earth. Most important, it runs roughshod over the monumental intellectual and cultural challenges that the Spirit of God surmounted to communicate his saving truths to ancient peoples barely out of the stone age. And God is still "lisping" to us and stooping to make himself known to us, as Calvin said.
That's why I kind of like the idea of a truly "secular" science. Good science, no matter what faith conviction, must follow where the evidence leads when it comes to understanding the universe we inhabit. We need to be humble about our limited capacities and about how our faith commitments will influence our quest to understand. Yet we must follow the evidence and keep testing to see if our conclusions are sturdy and repeatable and open to peer review, even if at first it doesn't seem to fit with what we used to think about nature.
As a Christian, I know I can do this fearessly. My Father may be inscrutible in somethings, but He's no trickster.
Posted in: Creation vs Evolution: Impact on Witness and Faith
I learned more about Humphreys -- the "expert" whom you think has pointed out the "facts". Eek! Humphreys is a great example of how his fundamentalism abuses science and turns people off. Might have to use him as a closing example for my last installment.
http://www.cese.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/creation_physicist_humphreys.pdf
Just a little correction...
"So is this true? Are they (Morton and Wood) getting slammed for being good scientists? Really? No. It may be they get slammed for changing sides, or for disagreeing with various creationists, or for neglecting certain chemical or physical facts. But not for being good scientists... this is a slur and an adhominem (sic) attack."
It's not a slur or an ad hominem attack. Both Glen Morton and Todd Wood have publically shared their stories of insults, intimidation, accusations of being in league with the devil, etc, by young earth creationists. In other words, both Wood and Morton have experienced slurs and ad hominem attacks because YECs attacked them personally rather than respecting them for being good scientists who take the evidence seriously. I'm just relaying their stories. I think I gave you links to this info before -- perhaps you've forgotten.
Here's a sample ...
"It appeared that the more I questions I raised, the more they questioned my theological purity. When telling one friend of my difficulties with young-earth creationism and geology, he told me that I had obviously been brain-washed by my geology professors. When I told him that I had never taken a geology course, he then said I must be saying this in order to hold my job. Never would he consider that I might really believe the data. Since then this type of treatment has become expected from young-earthers. I have been called nearly everything under the sun but they don't deal with the data I present to them. Here is a list of what young-earthers have called me in response to my data: 'an apostate,'(Humphreys) 'a heretic'(Jim Bell although he later apologised like the gentleman he is) 'a compromiser'(Henry Morris) "absurd", "naive", "compromising", "abysmally ignorant", "sloppy", "reckless disregard", "extremely inaccurate", "misleading", "tomfoolery" and "intentionally deceitful"(John Woodmorappe) 'like your father, Satan' (Carl R. Froede--I am proud to have this one because Jesus was once said to have been of satan also.) 'your loyality and commitment to Jesus Christ is shaky or just not truly genuine' (John Baumgardner 12-24-99 [Merry Christmas]) "[I] have secretly entertained suspicions of a Trojan horse roaming behind the lines..." Royal Truman 12-28-99
http://home.entouch.net/dmd/gstory.htm
Posted in: Creation vs Evolution: Impact on Witness and Faith
Interesting debate. And very telling. It seems that a hypothesis related to "global witness" is easily dissolved into worries about protecting the "flock", seperating out wolves in sheeps clothing, and mincing words about very obvious points of fact, such as the geological column. I don't think these are helpful ways of turning the tide that John Zylstra is lamenting.
I enjoyed Jeff's reminder that the two books of revelation both reveal God and not just any old (sorry) fact. This is something that every Christian scientist/apologist/philosoper would need to keep in mind. It might help us find a productive way out of the Bible/science debate without us reeking of paranoia and grasping at straws.
Here is an example of why we are losing the "war": http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/cuozzo_cg.html
Posted in: Creation vs Evolution: Impact on Witness and Faith
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