Science and the Flood

In our mini-series on the flood of Noah's day, we have so far discussed the context of the flood narrative, establishing two important things that are often misunderstood by modern Christians. One is that the account is not a geological treatise--that attempting to use it to explain away scientific evidence that one doesn't like is an illegitimate approach to interpreting the passage. (Instead, the purpose of the passage is theological; it reminds us--by recounting an actual, historical example--that God can and will punish sin and rebellion in the humanity that He created.)

We also established that the geographical scope of the flood narrative should not be assumed to be the entire planet. And once we removed this global preconception, we found (by appealing to other portions of the narrative itself and to other Old Testament passages) that the much better understanding of this text is that a flood covering the Mesopotamian plain was sufficient for accomplishing God's purposes.

In other words, we began with the text itself, and by using the most basic hermeneutic principles, reasoned our way to a localized--yet universal--flood and not one covering the entire planet. In another post, I might share some of the (logically and exegetically) bizarre lengths to which modern defenders of a global flood are forced. But it is probably best at this point to make explicit a fact that was hinted at in the discussion of the history of flood geology--that a global flood a few thousand years ago is completely incompatible with all of modern geological (and paleontological) knowledge.

The difficulty here is in knowing where to start. In The Genesis Flood, which made the case for a global flood that could explain the Earth's geology and fossil record, Whitcomb and Morris were forced to ignore or deny a host of evidence. And yet today, the same arguments are being made despite exponential growth of our knowledge about earth's history. Some creation science organizations continue to believe that the issue in geology is catastrophism versus uniformitarianism. That is, they accuse geologists of dogmatically asserting that only gradual, uniform processes have shaped the earth. But in the intervening years, geologists have come to grips with overwhelming evidence for catastrophic events.

Plate tectonic theory came after Whitcomb and Morris, and though that paradigm shift did not come without angst, today's geologists unanimously acknowledge that the Earth's crust is a series of moving plates, and that it is this movement that is raising the Himalayas, building Hawaii, and causing volcanoes and earthquakes worldwide. Moreover (and more recently), geologists and paleontologists alike have come to recognize the role of meteoritic collisions in shaping the planet and in causing mass extinction events. Central to this paradigm shift was the discovery of the Chicxulub crater (beneath the Yucatan and Carib) that caused the worldwide iridium layer that marks the end of the third and final (Cretaceous) dinosaur era.

No, modern geologists are not uniformitarians. They have come to understand not only those processes that work slowly over millions of years but also some of the many sudden, cataclysmic events that have left their mark on Earth. But they continue to deny the claim (and now with more reason than ever) that a single worldwide flood a few thousand years ago can account for all that we see on Earth.

Whereas the events connected with Noah's flood are quite simple, the geological record is quite complex. The flood involved a steady increase in water levels followed, eventually, by a steady decrease in water levels. This would cause very little in the way of geological change, and simply cannot expain Earth's depositional, structural, chemical, and thermal complexity.

The Green River of Utah shows annual depositional layers that alternate between calcium carbonate (laid down in summers) and organic matter (winters). These can be counted just like tree rings, and attest to 4 million years of such deposition.

At the Prudhoe oil fields in Alaska, ice cores demonstrate that the permafrost has remained frozen for the last 100,000 years. The top 2000 feet of this permafrost column were frozen before, during, and after the Genesis flood, which had no effect on the permafrost. In Antarctica, ice cores span 420,000 years.

Contrary to the claims of global flood proponents, a single, year-long flood cannot account for Earth's wealth of biodeposits. Oil, coal, natural gas, and limestone deposits all take vast ages to form, and require different thermal and pressure scenarios. Moreover, deposits of each are found at vastly different levels (and therefore ages) in the geological record, and with a variety of complex histories.

And the evidences go on and on.

With regard to the flood of Genesis 6-8, the clear conclusions from geology are at least three. First, that flood left no mark behind. That is, the geological record of the Earth is entirely independent of the events associated with the flood of Noah's day. Second, the flood played no role in forming Earth's abundant biodeposits. These deposits, upon which modern technology depends, are the result of billions of years of plant and animal death, of God's creating and recreating life as He prepared this planet for human beings. Third, the flood therefore cannot be invoked as proof for a young-earth interpretation of the Genesis creation account. Although a young-earth view requires a global flood, the geological record provides no support for such a scenario.

Perry's Posts

My blogging apologist buddy Bob Perry is in the middle of a great series on the sanctity of human life. Go here for some must-read, thoughtful blog posts.

Flood Geology

In the last post, I discussed the flood of Noah's day (described in Genesis 6-8) and showed that good, consistent exegesis leads to understanding the flood as covering only the portion of the earth that was occupied by humans, the Mesopotamian plain. This is, of course, in contrast to the understanding of many modern American Christians, who have been taught to see the flood as global. We began by acknowledging that correctly identifying the context of a Scripture passage is of first importance.

But in that discussion, we focused on only one part of context--the geographical scope. There is a more fundamental issue regarding the context of the flood, and it, too, plays into the modern Christian misunderstanding. The main context of the flood account--as all Christians ought to agree if they stop to think about it--is God's judgment on sinful humanity. Where global flood proponents err is in seeking to make the flood account a geological treatise. I know it sounds kinda silly when I write it out like that, but I'm serious. The reason many modern Christians defend a global (rather than localized, universal) flood is their belief that such a flood can somehow explain away a whole lot of geological and paleontological evidence that doesn't fit well either in their interpretion of Genesis or their view of God.

From a historical perspective, this view--flood geology--only goes back a short while. By the early 1800's, geological understanding of sedimentary stratification and the uncovering of fossils of extinct creatures led to the general recognition that the Earth was much older than Lightfoot and Ussher's interpretation of Scripture would make it. Nonetheless, this did not prove a problem for geologists and paleontologists who were Christians. But when Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) offered a naturalistic explanation for the diversity of life, many Christians came to see science as fundamentally opposed to Scripture.

The first publication attempting to defend the view that a global flood accounted for the fossil record and Earth's geology was Outlines of Modern Christianity and Modern Science (1902) by George McCready Price. Price, who had less than a full year of science training, was a disciple of Ellen G. White, the prophetess of Seventh-Day Adventism. She claimed to have been shown by God in a vision that all creation occurred in a normal Earth week and that the flood covered the entire planet and was responsible for all that modern geologists and paleontologists study.

This unusual view did not, however, become a significant part of the conservative Christian understanding until it was refurbished in The Genesis Flood, authored by hydrology engineer Henry Morris and theologian John Whitcomb in 1961. Despite the fact that Whitcomb could find not one geologist (Christian or otherwise) to help him defend this view, the book had--for the Christian layman--enough of the appearance of a scientific tome to lend to young-earth creationism and flood geology the scientific credibility that those views so desperately needed.

By that time, there were overwhelming scientific problems for the global flood view, as well as logical (common sense) objections. Moreover, though the strength of Whitcomb and Morris' view was that it resulted from a straightforward reading of (the English translation of) Scripture, the arguments they were forced to offer in defense of their theory involved anything but a straightforward reading of the Bible.

Today, modern defenders of the global flood view use the same stale arguments (or worse) even though geology has grown exponentially in the ensuing 50 years. Claiming that the Bible clearly teaches this view, "creation science" organizations are more numerous and stronger than ever, despite their view having absolutely no credibility within the scientific community, and despite the flawed exegetical process upon which it is based. For science-minded folks in our day, consideration of the claims of Christ upon their life is prevented by the incorrect view--so successfully promoted by these well-meaning but misguided groups--that the Bible teaches that the Earth is thousands of years old and that the fossil record and geological formations were laid down in a global flood. I can only echo the words of creationist Dudley Joseph Whitney, upon reading Whitcomb's views and by way of declining Whitcomb's request for collaboration...

Why, why, why should the saints be so prone to take positions which discredit the Bible?

Why See the Flood as Global?

If you've grown up in a good, Bible-teaching church in America, chances are excellent that you have been taught to believe that the Bible describes a global flood in Genesis 6-8. Illustrations of Noah's ark carrying kangaroos and penguins are etched in your memory, and you have never seen any reason to question the understanding given to you by your loving and well-meaning Sunday school teachers.

But did you know that this understanding is a very modern one, confined really to the globally-minded cultures of the 20th and 21st centuries? The original readers of this account (the people to whom it was first communicated) would certainly not have applied it to the entire planet, nor did people throughout the ensuing millennia. Indeed, the view that the flood of Noah's day covered the whole planet, and that it can be used to explain the fossil record and Earth's geology only arose in the late 19th century and only became popular among Christians beginning in the 1960's.

Of course, imposing our modern way of thinking upon Scripture written thousands of years ago is one of the big no-nos of hermeneutics (of rightly interpreting the Bible). For example, when moderns accuse one or more of the gospel writers of misquoting Jesus (because, say, Matthew and Luke do not agree word-for-word when recording the same teaching incident), it is wrongly imposing our standards for quoting someone (which involves word-for-word accuracy) upon a culture with a different standard (for Jews of Jesus' day what mattered was that one accurately record someone's thought or intent). In the same way, imposing our 21st-century, global perspective on the flood account of Genesis ensures that our conclusions will be wrong.

In coming posts, I want to reexamine the flood account theologically, logically, and scientifically, and will seek to show that a global understanding fares poorly with each of these assessment methods. But for today, let's examine together the words themselves to see whether they require believing that the flood encompassed the whole planet.

Superficially--and in English--the flood account seems to encompass everything. We read, for example, that God said "I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life under heaven" (Gen. 6:17). We find that "the waters prevailed so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered" (7:19), and that "all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all mankind" (7:21).

Surely, say proponents of a global understanding of the flood, such all-encompassing language must mean that the context is the entire planet. But this shallow (albeit widespread) interpretation does not really do justice to the text itself or to a serious attempt at good hermeneutics. And the first clue that this is the case comes immediately following the flood, and in the same account. In Genesis 8:13 and 14, we read that after the flood "the waters were dried from off the earth," "the face of the ground was dry," and "the earth had dried out." If we take "the earth" that was flooded as referring to the entire planet, then we must also take these latter verses as indicating that the entire planet was subsequently dry.

So the context and scope of the flood is the real issue here. And indeed, accurately determining the context is arguably the first and most important step to rightly interpreting any Scripture passage. I expect to show--by examining other Old Testament passages that use similar language--that the context of Genesis 6-8 is more local than the entire planet, referring only to the rather limited portion of the earth that was inhabited by humans (the large Mesopotamian plain).

But first, a word about translation issues. Hebrew is a very small language, and nouns (especially) are required to serve much broader purposes than do the nouns of English. The Hebrew phrase kol erets, translated "whole earth" or "entire earth," is used 205 times in the Old Testament. The vast majority of these usages (some of which we will examine more closely) refer to a local region, and not the whole planet. In the same way, kol shamayim ("entire heavens") most often serves as reference to a limited region. The Hebrew phrase translated "high mountains" actually can refer to any elevated landscape. Conversely, the various Hebrew words translated "every creeping thing" and "all flesh" are much more specific than the English translations, referring to particular groups of terrestrial mammals and birds. These translational problems have certainly contributed to the modern misunderstanding of the flood account.

But in order to demonstrate the the "whole earth" of Genesis 6-8 does not require a global context, let's look at this same phrase in other Old Testament contexts. In I Kings 10:24, we are told that

The whole world sought audience with Solomon to hear the wisdom that God had put in his heart.

No one (ancient or modern) interprets this verse as saying that representatives from South America came to see Solomon. Instead, we rightly understand the context as the nations surrounding Solomon's Israel. Perhaps more relevant--since a part of the same book of the Bible as the flood account--is Genesis 41:56. It talks about the time when Joseph was second-in-command in Egypt, and people from surrounding lands were coming to buy food that he had stored up:

The famine was over all the face of the earth.

Again, no one understands this passage as teaching that there was a famine that extended all the way to New Zealand, Alaska, and South America. We naturally--and rightly--recognize the context of this famine passage as the Middle East, not the entire planet. And yet the phrase at issue, kol erets, is exactly the same one that in the flood account causes many to leap to the conclusion that the whole planet is in view. Now this next one comes only three chapters after the conclusion of the flood account. In the account about the tower of Babel, the text reads

the whole world [kol erets] had one language and one common speech.

In this case, we have no doubt that the context is a limited region; the point of the story is that humanity still occupied a very small geographic area, and God didn't like this.

As with God's judgment at Babel, His judgment in the flood was aimed at human disobedience, and in both cases part of that disobedience was man's failure to multiply and "fill the earth." The Creator gave this command to Adam and Eve (Gen. 1:28), then again to Noah (Gen. 9:7), and then again at Babel; in the latter case He also acted to ensure that people finally dispersed from the Mesopotamian plain.

In short, there is no scriptural, historical, or scientific evidence for humanity's spreading out from the Middle East until a time better understood as after the flood judgment described in Genesis 6-8. The belief that the context of that account is global is a modern and inacurrate one, and one which provides (to modern skeptics of Christianity) an artificial barrier to seriously considering the claims of the Bible, including its central claim of salvation in Christ.

Five Sacred Crossings

It's a small book, and a real easy read. I'd have read it in one sitting, except that I started it at a restaurant, and had miles to go before I slept. Funny, I had owned a copy for months, ever since the author, Craig Hazen, was one of the featured speakers at last November's Apologetics Conference here in Central Oregon.

I don't know why it took me so long to get around to reading it. I knew Dr. Hazen from my graduate studies at BIOLA; the program I was in, an M.A. in Christian Apologetics, was his brain child and he is still the Director. I knew him to be a gifted apologist, an expert in world religions, and a high-powered philosopher. If anything, I suppose I was worried I might be disappointed because this was his first venture into fiction.

I had nothing to worry about. Five Sacred Crossings delivers the goods, thoughtfully addressing some of the most important issues of our times (or any time) in a gripping narrative. I highly recommend it, and hope all my readers will procure a copy and find a couple of hours in which to enjoy this fascinating and relevant book.

14 Views

Tonight, in the Science and the Bible class I'm teaching this semester at Kilns College, I'll be sharing 14 different ways of understanding Genesis 1. I'll be assessing them exegetically (Do they do justice to the original Hebrew and to other relevant Scripture passages?), scientifically (Do they accord with well-understood evidence from nature?), theologically (Are they free of theologically-problematic implications?), and logically (Are the arguments offered in support of them sound?).

It should be fun and interesting.

First Owl Nest

I found my first owl nest of the year today. As expected, it was a Great-horned Owl (Bubo virginianus), the species that nests earliest in these parts. The first week of March is late, in fact, for me to be finding my first one. But I've been that busy lately that I haven't had a chance to check some of the likely spots near home, places where GHOWs have nested in years past. The one I found today is at above 6,000 feet of elevation, in an area where winter is still very much in control. The female was sitting tightly on her eggs while snow accumulated on her back.

Owls do not construct their own nests. So when an owl is found to be incubating on a nest of sticks, then that nest was originally constructed by another bird--raven, hawk, or magpie, perhaps--or by a pack rat. The early nesting by these owls often allows them to take over a previous year's Red-tailed Hawk nest (as in this case) before the hawks have returned from wherever they wintered. In my experience, if a pair of Red-tailed Hawks remains on their territory year-round, they generally are able to protect their favorite nest from use by a pair of Great-horned Owls.

At this point in the breeding attempt, I didn't dare approach the nest closely enough to photograph this particular female displaying the faithfulness of a postal employee ("Neither snow nor sleet..."). So instead I've shared below a photo of a different Great-horned Owl fom the same Oregon county and several years ago.

Sage Grouse Tracks

Since some of my readers don't get to see this in real life, here's a photo of the imprint made in snow of the spread tail of a Greater Sage-Grouse as it lands. Just doin' my job, bird-watching in remote and scenic places. Someone's got to do it.

Darwin's Proof

I'm reading Darwin's Proof, subtitled The Triumph of Religion over Science. It's by Cornelius G. Hunter, molecular biophysicist and science historian. Like me, he has a biologist's--an insider's, if you will--understanding of how meagre is the evidence in favor of neo-Darwinian evolution. And his contribution (in this and two other books) is to show how the vast majority of arguments offered in support of evolution are not scientific ones but religious ones, ones that presuppose a caricature of God that is little like the biblical portrayal.

I long ago came to see the modern acceptance of Darwinism as the real-life equivalent of the people in Hans Christian Andersen's story "The Emperor's New Clothes." I cannot remember whether I came to that realization independently, or whether I once heard an evolution skeptic draw the comparison. But now I've come across it again in Hunter's book (which I haven't read before), and so thought it worthwhile to share his version of the analogy.

The story is about an emperor who is fooled into wearing no clothes and the mob mentality that overtakes his subjects as they too are led to go along with the charade. All the people in the kingdom are told that the emperor has beautiful new clothes, and the emperor is convinced as well. When the people see the smiling emperor with no clothes, no one wants to point out the obvious.

More accurately, the people are told that only sophisticated people can appreciate the splendour of the new clothes, and so each of the onlooking mob dares not say that he sees nothing for fear of being labelled a rustic. Hunter continues...

When I first read the story, I was unimpressed. What was the point? The story certainly had no bearing on the real events of the world. Such an obviously false and absurd charade could never actually take place, and if it did, large numbers of people would never go along with it.

But now I appreciate Andersen's tale. It is indeed possible for people to go along with bizarre explanations. The problems with evolution are evident in nature itself. Biology is full of amazing designs whose evolution would apparently constitute nothing less than a miracle.

Yes, indeed. And those who look closely at the evidence will conclude--unless that have lost all use of a healthy 'baloney detector'--that the emperor is stark naked.

The Centrality of Miracles

In the last post, I tried to make two main points regarding miracle accounts in the Bible. The first is that, whatever else we do with them, it is illegitimate to explain them away as the naive, uncritical acceptance of the unnatural by the unsophisticated people of Bible times. The second is that the issue (of the possibility of miracles) really boils down to the metaphysical question of whether naturalism or supernaturalism (Christian theism) is a more accurate understanding of reality.

Today, I want to take on another modern claim made against the biblical miracle accounts. It goes like this...

There are miracle stories not only in the Bible but also in the sacred texts of other world religions, many of the latter of which you Christians would say did not actually happen. So isn't there a sense in which the miracle stories of all the world religions--including Christianity--cancel one another out? Or, to put it another way, if there's good reason to disbelieve the miracle claims of other holy books, aren't we equally justified in disbelieving the miracle claims of the Bible?

First, let me point out that this objection is not an argument. The move from the premises (such as "miracle claims of other religions are probably false") to the conclusion ("we are justified in dismissing biblical miracles") is not sufficiently supported. That is, the conclusion does not logically follow from the premises. So what we are dealing with here is mere opinion or conjecture, not logical reasoning of the sort that my regular readers like to see.

But let me also point out a couple of things that distinguish biblical miracles from those of other world religions. The first is this... whereas miracles are somewhat tangential or secondary to the truth claims of other religions, they are central and primary in Christianity. One can be a faithful follower of other religions while remaining skeptical of any of the specific supernatural elements in their scriptures. But miracles--especially the Incarnation and Resurrection of Jesus Christ--are foundational and necessary parts of the entire Christian claim. As the apostle Paul has it (in I Cor. 15:17, my paraphrase)

If Jesus was not bodily raised from the dead, then Christianity is a worthless undertaking.

This truth makes all the more incomprehensible the position of so many (in the past 100 years or more), those who claim to be Christian but who at the same time seek to divest the Bible of anything supernatural. They seek to find natural explanations for all biblical miracles, so that they can hold their heads high in a sophisticated, scientific age and culture. With Paul, I ask, "Then what's the point?"

A related distinction is this... The miracle accounts in the Bible (unlike those of other world religions) have a great deal of evidential value. They serve a purpose (or, in many cases, multiple purposes). Let's look particularly at the miracles Jesus performed--walking on water, multiplying loaves and fish, calming wind and waves, healing blindness, and raising people from the dead. For the Jews of the second-temple period (Jesus' day), the thing that distinguished the one true God from all other beings (real or imaginary, including humans, angels, demons, idols, and the false gods of the Greeks, Romans, and Canaanites) was His unique role as Creator and Sustainer of the universe. And what caused these strict monotheists (including the authors of every New Testament book) to make room in their concept of God for this man Jesus was his demonstrated power (in the miracles mentioned above) over the creation itself. The apostle John explains his reason for writing his gospel and, more particularly, for recording some of the miracles (signs and wonders) that Jesus performed (John 20:30-31)...

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

A Bit About Miracles

What are we to make of biblical miracle accounts? Take, for instance, the one about Balaam's Ass. You know, the one that in Numbers 22 speaks to its master, bringing to his attention the fact that a sword-toting angel was barring the path. The question is...

What's up with a talking donkey? What are we to make of stories like this one in the Old Testament that ask us to believe that an ass actually spoke?

It's a perfectly reasonable question, and I'd like to offer a reasonable answer. Though focusing on this particular miracle-story, perhaps we can learn something of how to approach the Bible's miraculous claims generally. After all, the greatest miracles--Incarnation and Resurrection--are the very heart of the Christian faith. So what we do with Balaam's Ass has far-reaching implications.

We need to recognize that many moderns attempt to divest the Bible of anything smacking of the supernatural. That is, it is fashionable to take a naturalistic approach to understanding the Scriptures. I find this unreasonable on at least two counts.

The first is that naturalism is a much poorer worldview than Christian theism. Though I cannot summarize it all here, let me just note that the latest scientific understanding from such diverse fields as astronomy, physics, biochemistry, and genomics has presented overwhelming problems for naturalism while comporting perfectly with the Biblical understanding. Naturalism does not provide the rational foundation for conducting science, has no explanation for the order in the universe, and provides no reasonable basis for trusting our reasoning capacities or our senses. (That is, reasoning one's way to naturalism is a self-refuting enterprise.) Naturalism cannot adequately account for the laws of logic or of mathematics, the existence of the universe, the design of the universe, the origin of life, the Cambrian Explosion, the origin of information (in the genetic code), the existence of irreducibly complex molecular machines, or the existence of consciousness.

Secondly, I wonder why those who take a naturalistic approach to Scripture would even bother. The Bible claims to be the Word of God, and this is what has always made it a runaway bestseller. If naturalism is true--if there is no God--than why would anyone read such a book? Those who approach the Bible naturalistically have failed to ask the most interesting question of all--is there a God? Or (perhaps I should say) they have answered it in their own minds a priori (before examining the evidence), and that in the negative. The reasonable position would be to be open to discovering the truth on this issue, rather than to rule out one of the possible answers beforehand.

You see, if there is a God--and by this I mean the exact sort of God of which the Bible speaks, one who both created the universe and acts in human history--then none of the miracle claims contained in His revelation to us can be rightly deemed unreasonable.

But for the sake of argument, let me be more open here. Let's neither assume that there is (or is not) a God nor that the Bible is His revelation to us. What is the most reasonable explanation for why this particular story is imbedded in this larger book?

One option is that the author (I'll call him Moses) intended it as fiction. But this doesn't cut it. The larger narrative reads like history, not like The Chronicles of Narnia (where talking animals were the norm). More importantly, wherever the accuracy of this (larger) historical narrative can be tested, it has been verified.

A second option (perhaps the most popular among naturalists) is that the author did not possess the discernment to recognize the silliness of the idea of a talking donkey. It is likely, they say, that this story simply shows that the people of Moses' day were not as sophisticated as we are, and therefore were not taken aback by the insertion of this outlandish tale. While Moses' overall credibility did not suffer during his (and subsequent) generations, surely this particular gaff (that is, including such a story) is proof against our believing any of it.

But again, this explanation doesn't deal honestly with the available evidence. We have absolutely no reason to believe that Moses or his contemporaries were any less startled than we at the thought of a donkey talking. This is the only record in the Pentateuch (or, indeed, in the entire Bible) of an animal speaking. To suggest that the author or his readers accepted this any more uncritically than we would is unsubstantiated inference. To be sure, Moses (on his own account) was privy to other instances of this same Creator-God intervening in human history, and so was predisposed to accept a supernatural explanation for this particularly odd event. But that only leads us to a third--and most reasonable--explanation.

It could just be--as the whole Bible claims, and as a great deal of reason and scientific evidence can be shown to support--that there is a God who is both transcendent to and immanent in this universe. If this is admitted as plausible, then the most straightforward explanation for why Moses included the story of a talking ass in an otherwise historical narrative is that--in this one instance in all of human history--God chose to reveal Himself through the medium of the voice of an otherwise dumb animal.

When Balaam's Ass talked, it got the attention of Balaam, and reminded him that there is a God to whom he was accountable. It also got the attention of Moses, who was every bit as aware as we are that donkeys don't normally speak, and who nonetheless faithfully recorded the event. It got the attention of Moses' contemporaries, of readers throughout the ages, and of readers today. But even today, it is only reasonable to reject this story if the larger claim--that there is a Creator God who acts in human history--is demonstrably false. But that is not the case.


(I originally published a version of this post on March 17, 2007.)

More Snow

We had a rather large, wet snow today, one of those after which every branch and twig remains etched in white. The result was truly lovely, and we still need all the moisture we can get. The photo above was taken during a similar event, that one when Dawn and I were living at Silver Creek Nature Preserve near Picabo, Idaho.

Kuhn and Truth

A few posts ago (here), I cited Thomas Kuhn (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions) as testimony against Francis Collins (The Language of God). In today's post, I want to identify a significant problem (elsewhere) in Kuhn's thinking.

In his cutting-edge treatment of paradigm shifts in science, Kuhn ends up denying the correspondence view of truth. That is, he cannot bring himself to say that a more recent scientific pardigm (say, oxygen chemistry) is more correct than the paradigm it replaced (phlogiston theory). For Kuhn, the newer paradigm is merely more practical, better at making predictions, or simply more popular, than the older one--it is not a truer understanding of the world in which we live.

Such a denial is not a necessary part of Kuhn's thesis, but an unnecessary addition. And I am not the first to notice and be troubled by this Kuhnian aspect. In fact, he apparently caught a lot of flack for this position, since scientists and philosophers alike think that correspondence to reality is a pretty important part of learning generally and of scientific advance in particular.

In response to criticism, Kuhn attempts (in the postscript to the second edition) to defend this quasi-relativism, in what I find to be a bizarre and illogical way... he draws the analogy of an evolutionary tree, this one containing not living things but scientific theories. (The idea that living things can be represented by an evolutionary tree has fallen upon hard times, even among committed naturalists, but that's beside the present point.) If we can come up with criteria that would enable us to distinguish a more recent theory from an earlier one--without appeal to correspondence to truth--

then scientific development is, like biological, a unidirectional and irreversible process.

In other words, if we can accept a non-teleological view of life, than it ought to be a simple task to accept that what makes a scientific theory better than a previous one has little to do with the reality of the universe it describes.

This will, of course, be unsatisfactory to those of us who do not accept a non-teleological view of the world, who--when faced with overwhelming evidence for design in the universe in general and in living things in particular--cannot kid themeselves into thinking of design as only apparent or illusion. But many non-theists (among scientists and philosophers) are likewise unsatisfied by Kuhn's reasoning here. There just doesn't seem to be any logical link (a link apparently assumed by Kuhn, since never spelled out) between a speculative (and now rejected) biological tree and the epistemological tree he would plant in the path of a serious question, to wit, "Why shouldn't we expect a scientific theory to better approximate reality than the theory it supplants?"

Underdogs

So, I was rooting (mildly) for the Arizona Cardinals in last Sunday's Superbowl. What's more, I know a lot of folks who, if it's not their favorite team playing, will cheer for the team--or the athlete--that is not given much of a chance. Sure, we get excited about Olympic champions, but all the more if their's is a rags-to-riches tale. We enjoy stories--and movies (many of them, for some reason, set in Indiana)--in which the Cinderella team overcomes all odds to find success.

And what I want to suggest is that this is at odds with the tendencies of most people in most cultures throughout most of human history. That is, cultures from time immemorial have glorified the strong and the powerful, sometimes to the point of worship.

My further point is that it is in Judeo-Christianity that we find the foundation for this heart for the underdog. When Yahweh chose the nation of Israel to be His people, He made it clear that it was in part because they were a small and insignificant people. And He charged them with taking good care of the downtrodden, the widows, the orphans, the stranger, and the oppressed. Through the prophet Isaiah, God rebukes His people...

Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow's cause. (Is. 1:16-17)

And this theme runs throughout the Scriptures, Old Testament and New. Jesus Himself says (in Matthew 25) that what will separate those who will enjoy eternal fellowship with the Father from those who will not is whether they fed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, welcomed the stranger, clothed the naked, visited the prisoner, in short, had compassion on the "least of these."

In our age, God continues to call His people to act out that same compassion on His behalf to the least of these in our own communities and around the world. And His people are answering the call in amazing and creative ways. Overwhelmed by the grace by which He has reconciled us to Himself, we cannot but want that same reconciliation for others, particularly those who have no one else to care. Are you being caught up in God's grace and compassion in a way that changes lives? I pray that it is so; it's the most exciting game going!

Four Models

In the last post, I mentioned four models for the interaction between religion and science. A reader asked what those four models are. Actually, what I shared in class that night was four categories of models, as outlined by Ian Barbour. They are: Conflict modles, Independence models, Dialogue models, and Integration models.

Conflict models are those that hold that either science is right and religion wrong or (a particular) religion is right and science is (almost entirely) wrong. Examples of the first would be Richard Dawkins and other 'New Atheists,' whereas some 'biblicists' and fideists would adopt the latter view. In class this week, I'll be examining the 'conflict thesis,' the popular but erroneous view that religion (specifically Christianity) has always impeded scientific progress. We'll see, of course, that just the opposite is true--that it was within a Christian worldview that modern science was uniquely birthed, and that Judeo-Christianity provides the necessary philosophical assumptions that make scientific endeavor worthwhile.

Independence models are those that see science and religion as completely separate as to their subject matter and their methodology. Scientific proponents of these models would include Eugenie Scott (spokesperson for the National Center for Science Education) and the late Stephen Jay Gould, the Harvard paleontologist who formalized this view with his idea that science and religion occupy "non-overlapping magisteria" or NOMA. An example of a religious proponent of an independence model would be theologian Karl Barth. Most philosophers of science would reject independence models, since a closer examination shows that science and religion (especially, say, Christianity) share a great deal of subject matter and methodology, and that almost no one is really willing to compartmentalize their life according to such models.

That leaves (as the only live options) Dialogue models and Integration models, which differ only in the degree of overlap (between science and religion) that they acknowledge. Dialogue models would see less overlap, with the two disciplines sharing information mainly about methods and establishing boundaries. Integration models (some form of which I take to be the most accurate) see a great deal of commonality between the methods and the subject matter of science and religion (at least if the religion in view is Judaism or Christianity).

Hope that helps (thanks for asking, Jordan).

Science and the Bible

Tonight I begin teaching a 14-week class at Kilns College titled "Science and the Bible." I'm really looking forward to it. In this first, introductory, class we'll be looking at 4 models for the relationship between science and religion, and then we'll examine the Christian doctrine of dual revelation. This should set the stage for a semester of examining both the Scriptural and scientific evidence with regard to some of the controversial issues of our day. Sounds fun, eh?

How Science Works

I've read the same illegitimate argument twice in the last week, so it's probably worth bolgging about it, exposing its problems. The conclusion that we are to draw at the end of this argument is, "Rest assured, if evolution were wrong, so many scientists wouldn't hold to it." (I blogged about a similar, but slightly different, argument a few weeks ago in this post.) The following passage comes from the bestseller The Language of God, by Francis S. Collins, who was the head of the Human Genome Project.

One of the most cherished hopes of a scientist is to make an observation that shakes up a field of research. Scientists have a streak of closeted anarchism, hoping that someday they will turn up some unexpected fact that will force a disruption of the framework of the day. That's what Nobel Prizes are given for. In that regard, any assumption that a conspiracy could exist among scientists to keep a widely current theory alive when it actually contains serious flaws is completely antithetical to the restless mind-set of the profession.

The main problem with this line of reasoning is simply that it's not true. That's not the way science works. But let me pause here to make a point, one that comes up over and over again. Collins is here pontificating on an area outside of his training and expertise (which is why his reasoning goes so far astray). Collins is a biochemist, geneticist, and medical doctor. The issues involved in his claim here--the process of discovery and how scientists behave--are the subjects not of biochemistry and genetics but of philosophy of science, history of science, and sociology of science. And the experts in these fields would sharply disagree with the fairy-tale scenario at the heart of Collins' argument.

The essential book on this topic is by Thomas Kuhn, and is titled The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. His theses are well-regarded among historians and philosophers of science, and his book is considered one of the 100 most influential books of the 20th century. And apropos to Collins' claim, Kuhn's main theses are these... That most of scientific endeavor is what he terms normal science, which is merely the further extension of an existing paradigm (such as Newtonian physics or neo-Darwinian evolution), and that paradigm shifts (or scientific revolutions) occur only with a great deal of hesitation and angst among a community of scientists most of whom can never accept a different paradigm than the one in which they were raised. In other words, the overwhelming majority of scientific research is done in an effort to bolster a currently-held view, no matter how wrong later scientists will come to consider it.

In direct contradiction to what Collins claims, Kuhn writes the following (and where Kuhn mentions 'paradigm,' think of neo-Darwinian evolution, which is the paradigm in biology today),

Mopping-up operations are what engage most scientists throughout their careers. They constitute what I am here calling normal science. Closely examined, whether historically or in the contemporary laboratory, that enterprise seems an attempt to force nature into the preformed and relatively inflexible box that the paradigm supplies. No part of the aim of normal science is to call forth new sorts of phenomena [say, irreducible complexity]; indeed those that will not fit the box are often not seen at all. Nor do scientists normally aim to invent new theories, and they are often intolerant of those invented by others. Instead, normal-scientific research is directed to the articulation of those phenomena and theories that the paradigm already supplies.

Kuhn would probably have answered Collins that one need not appeal to 'conspiracy' to challenge neo-Darwinism. Rather, the paradigm of neo-Darwinism was so fundamentally a part of the education and training of today's biologists, that they cannot even see or think clearly about any evidence that would call that paradigm into question. Kuhn avoids using the word 'indoctrination,' but his descriptions of the normal training of scientists makes it clear that the result is the same.

The study of paradigms [again, think 'evolution']... is what mainly prepares the student for membership in the particular scientific community [biology] with which he will later practice. Because he there joins men who learned the bases of their field from the same concrete models, his subsequent practice will seldom evoke overt disagreement over fundamentals. Men whose research is based on shared paradigms are committed to the same rules and standards for scientific practice. That commitment and the apparent consensus it produces are prerequisites for normal science, i.e., for the genesis and continuation of a particular research tradition.

Collins might be excused for his general lack of understanding of these things, since he is not a philosopher or historian of science. (Though, by the same token, he ought to be admonished for making such confident claims in fields in which he betrays himself as grossly undereducated.) But glaring counterexamples should cause him to question his claim, and only a few pages later he discusses one such example (without, apparently, recognizing that it refutes his earlier statement).

Einstein's famous equations clearly led to the revolutionary notion that the universe is expanding and that it had a beginning. But this conclusion was at odds with the paradigm of his day, which held that the universe is eternal and static. Far from recognizing this as his chance for greatness as an innovator, Einstein succumbed to the herd mentality and introduced (without any other justification) a fudge factor into his equations that neatly avoided these clear conclusions. Even Einstein could not trust his own reasoning and equations, but made them subservient to the 'inflexible box,' the scientific (and metaphysical) paradigm he had been taught.

The bottom line is that consensus among biologists is a bad argument for the truth of neo-Darwinism. It is fallacious (it's an example of the ad populum fallacy); and Collins' version of it is dead wrong. Questioning the paradigm that one has been taught is extremely difficult for scientists. To the biologist today, "evolution is fact" is merely a way of saying that all they have ever been taught leads them to see the world through evolutionary lenses, and that they are simply unable to recognize--much less deal seriously with--evidence that would call that paradigm into question.

Comeback Victory

(The post below is best read with a British accent.)

Monday evening, the Antioch men's indoor soccer team evened their new season's record at one game apiece with a stunning come-from-behind victory over Fuerza Uno. Trailing 4-1, 5-2, and 7-5, the men in the white jerseys eventually combined commitment to defense, strong open-field passing, and relentless pressure on the opponents' goal to produce a sparkling 8-7 win.

Missing some of its top players, the Antioch side started off tentatively, especially on defense, and found themselves on the wrong side of the ledger throughout the first half. Indeed, the visitors only drew level in the fortieth minute of the (44-minute-long) game and never led until the forty-second minute. They enjoyed balanced scoring, however, with two goals apiece from Emi Popa (on loan from the Romanian league) and Kesh Phillips (seeing his first action of the year), and a hat trick from Nate Gerhardt. With the absence of midfield partner Tyler Fetters, Gerhardt was asked to control the center; he did himself credit, and Phillips, Popa, and steady defender Jason Wilkins helped him to keep the home team continually on their heels in the second half.

Landon Miller added a crucial goal late, and his presence in the opponents' box kept their defenders busy. Antioch also received valuable minutes from newcomer Chris Sterry. Jasper Gerhardt anchored the defense with a gutsy, hard-fought performance, and his telling runs forward repeatedly created scoring opportunities (and two assists) for his mates. Popa's two goals were the critical ones, with the first knotting the score and the second proving to be the game-winner.

Antioch will look to build upon this big win in their next game, Wednesday, January 28th. Some seats are still available for that game (with a 10:10 start time) at the Central Oregon Indoor Soccer Center.

Lecture on the Environment

Next Sunday evening (January 25th from 7-8:30), Kilns College will be having its spring semester kick-off event at the Kilns Bookstore. As part of that event, I'll be giving a lecture on Christianity and the Environment. It's a timely and relevant issue, of course, and one that (like an outdated lightbulb) seems to generate more heat than light.

I'm an ecologist by training and trade, and have always been somewhat of an environmentalist (the two are not the same thing, though they are often conflated in our day). Though I will undoubtedly offer some suggestions for navigating our way through some of the complexity of modern claims about particular environmental issues, that won't be my main focus. Rather, I hope to examine the biblical grounding for creation care and what that means for followers of Christ in our day and age.

I had the opportunity to hear a lecture just the other night (and also in Bend, Oregon) on the very same topic. At this point, I can only promise you that I will come from and to quite different positions than did that lecturer. I'm really looking forward to it.

Signs of Spring (09)

(I hope that my ski-bum friends will overlook this post.)

Today I saw and heard three avian evidences that spring is just around the corner.

Red-tailed Hawks (Buteo jamaicensis) are carrying sticks to refurbish old nests or begin new ones (which of these it is likely depends upon whether one of the pair is new to the territory) and roosting for the night in their nest trees.

I heard a male Red-winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus) calling from an elevated perch. This species has spent the winter in complete obscurity and anonymity, remaining on the ground, silent and out of sight. Today, at least one has decided that it's time to find a high perch and both visually and vocally set up shop and start courtin'.

Similarly, the Horned Larks (Eremophila alpestris, one of our area's earliest nesters) were today singing and chasing one another as though last week's snowdrifts are a distant memory and it's time to get down to it.

Oh, there're still plenty of wintering birds around, and I look forward to seeing Northern Shrikes and Rough-legged Hawks for several weeks to come. But today's sights and sounds are a reminder that days are getting longer and this wonderful ball on which we live is steadily making its way along its orbit.