Drive by shootings is exactly what this lookslike.
Thanks for the encouragement.
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Part 3 of the Joel Edmund Anderson response has been posted:
I hope Biologos has secured movie rights to this feud.
These types of comments and the 8 likes (so far) are a big part of why critically thinking Christians fail to take any organization like this one in a serious fashion. You commit a false analogy fallacy by comparing interpretation of scientific data with a scientific law, a branch of physics, a table of scientific data, and a branch of mathematics. Then you use another fallacy to insult a group of Christians by falsely accusing them of belonging to a cult.
What does this have to do with the topic?
This is not an issue of semantics. It is an issue of interpretation. Interpretation of The Bible and interpretation of scientific data. It has caused a serious division of brothers and sisters in Christ. A group of people who are commanded in John 17 to unite as one family in order to show the lost who their God is. It is not logical that both sides can be right in an argument. Either both sides are wrong or one side is right and one side is wrong. If we use critical thinking skills we must yield to what the authority of The Bible as God does not make it clear about the mechanisms used to create the universe. We can logically deduce that it could not be death as He is Life and makes it clear that death is from the kingdom of satan. Jn 5:26; Jn 6:48; Jn 8:51; 1 Jn 5:12; Rom 8:2; Rom 8:6; Heb 2:14; 1 Cor 15:21; 1 Cor 15:26; Lk 1:79; Rev 1:18; Rev 21:4
Tough to figure which is worse, cultist or heretic. Speaking of serious division of brothers and sisters, are you comfortable with the Calvin Smith article?
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The Bible does talk about those in terms that you have over looked. He commands us to study the universe and discover the secrets He has hidden there (genetics is a perfect example).
Mat 16:2-3 “He answered them, “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.’”
Job 37:11;17 “He loads the thick cloud with moisture; the clouds scatter his lightning.”; “you whose garments are hot when the earth is still because of the south wind?”
What’s the point of that remark? Putting @Christy in her place? Suggesting that the Forum shouldn’t discuss the AIG attack? Just getting something off your chest? Do you understand that you sound like a pretentious someone from senior management venting your spleen to a subordinate?
For all I know, you are senior management, but if you’ve got a point to make then you failed miserably here.
As far as “slagging” is concerned, if feel that some writers are “slagging” (and perhaps you would include me among the “some”), then direct your remarks to those writers. You’ll find that it is far more effective than sailing in, making a couple of pretentious “we can do better than this” remarks, then sailing out never to be heard again.
The article raises valid concerns that should be directly addressed and not waved away with arguments of semantics and subjects that have nothing to do with Calvin Smith’s accusations. I do not know all the details, but his approach is not appropriate for a public arena. Unless attempts to resolve this privately were made which it would then be appropriate for the family of Christ to know all of the details of the debate. We must keep in mind that all of God’s family still make mistakes and extra effort from both sides to forgive is required. However, the divisions must be resolved. I have proposed multiple times that all of the scientists and theogists from both sides should lock themselves in a meeting place until they can come to an agreement (much like a sequestered jury). If no agreement is found then the evidence must, at a minimum, be presented equally to all Christians to make a decision for themselves (the whole debate should be recorded, of course). Ideally, if no agreement is achieved then The Bible’s exactly terminology and the ancient Christians’ beliefs should be honored and no more ‘in-fighting’ should be observed by unbelievers.
And you commit a fallacy by ignoring the fact that interpretation of scientific data has rules. Interpretations must be mathematically and logically coherent, factually accurate and of satisfactory quality, and so too must challenges to those interpretations. Attempting to challenge interpretations in ways that fudge measurements, make invalid calculations, quote mine, misrepresent or cherry-pick the raw evidence, or exaggerate or downplay sources of error is dishonest, and should be called out and corrected as such, especially when the fallacies, misrepresentations and fudging are blatant. And when such correction is met with accusations of “heresy” or “secular humanistic religion” or “false teaching,” I’m sorry but it is hard facts that are being denounced in those terms, and for that, the term “cult” is completely appropriate. I’m sorry if anyone is offended by me saying that, but if you don’t want to be called a cult then don’t denounce facts as heresy.
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Agreed.
There is just a disagreement over how critical thinking skills relate to the questions at hand. I and others would say the Bible is not the only source of knowledge that must be evaluated as we are trying to come up with answers.
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A folk observation, which isn’t always correct, isn’t the same as forecasting the high and low temperatures tomorrow and getting it right, most of the time. Much less explaining why the folk observation is correct. That is the difference I was pointing out.
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I’m sure YEC advocates believe they are doing exactly what you propose already. But that overlooks the need to understand the ancient texts of the Bible. To read the English translation literally as if it were written for the day this audience would receive it is naive and gives encouragement to those who make no real effort to understand the Bible for what is and has to say for us.
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That approach assumes that the disagreement is over evidence. As Ken Ham admitted during his debate with Bill Nye, no amount of evidence will change his mind, and I suspect that is true for many creationists. The analogy that comes to my mind is a defendant’s mother who will claim her son is innocent no matter what evidence is brought to light. At a minimum, perhaps there could be a push for honesty when discussing the science.
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They sure want to get a lot of “false teaching organization” mileage out of one article BioLogos posted as part of a series intentionally commissioned to explore differing views on the atonement. (All having to do with the gospel, by the way, which allegedly BioLogos doesn’t talk about.) It’s right there at the top of the article "Part 2 of 7 in Atonement and Evolution: A BioLogos Conversation
Conversation is what gets promoted here, not indoctrination. I can understand that if all of your existence is wrapped up in a world dedicated to protecting boundaries and declaring people in or out of your group, then the idea of conversation about different ways of processing theological ideas would be intimidating. If you don’t have the critical thinking skills to evaluate other people’s different perspectives, then by all means, stick with groups that are only ever going to tell you what you already think and believe. I personally believe in a substitutionary atonement. But I don’t think it harms my walk with God to read an article that views God’s work through Jesus on the cross through a different lens. At the end of the day, Jesus is still glorified as Lord and humans are still in need of redemption through Christ, no matter which perspective you look at the atonement from.
In that same series, there were articles explaining other views of the atonement, like the one by Tim Keller. Tim Keller on Original Sin, Atonement, and Evolution - Article - BioLogos
It appears to me that the situation is that AIG cannot effectively deal with the evidence from science or Bible scholarship that indicates that the arguments they are promoting are not compelling. So the only tool they have left is trying to convince the people already in their tribe not to engage with compelling arguments by relying on fear-mongering and misrepresentation. They can say, “Ignore the people over at BioLogos or your soul is in peril” all they want. That doesn’t really constitute “an argument” that deserves a response, or make what they are selling more attractive to the people who haven’t already bought it.
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The problem is, well, there are many problems; one of which is that there is no chance that organizations such as AiG or CMI will ever agree to the facts of science, and the alternative is to agree to absurdities such a a six thousand year earth. Even were agreement were reached for a young earth, the fact would remain that the earth is on the order of four and a half billion years old.
There are Christians who believe on the basis of scripture that the world is flat, enough that Danny Faulkner of AiG has written the occasional article addressing them. You can argue about their interpretation, but the point is that whether the flat earth exegesis is right or wrong has no bearing on the actual shape of the planet. It is a sphere regardless of what anyone thinks, and it is billions of years old regardless of any agreement otherwise.
Interpretation of scientific data is not unconstrained and infinitely malleable. As @jammycakes correctly points out, careful and objective measurement, calibrated and controlled is the backbone of science. Generally, this leads to a conclusion which is a plain and simple outcome of that measurement. Put another way, Occam’s razor dictates that explanations based on processes we understand and expect are preferred to superfluous, arbitrary, or mystical ones.
For a simple example, consider tree rings. If I am a forester and core trees as they grow, over my career I will note that every year, exactly one ring is added, and that characteristics of the annual ring will vary with seasonal weather. The lumber in your house will follow that pattern. That observation has developed into the discipline of dendrochronology, which incorporates a great deal of advanced analysis and instrumentation to measure and extract detailed information, but underpinning it all is something anyone can understand - simple counting of rings. This has been very useful in archeology. Keep counting and the age of timbers in medieval building can be identified. Nobody disputes this. Keep counting and you go back to the times of ancient history. Keep counting. Nothing changes when you hit ring 4500. All is as regular as ever. Just keep counting. 6000. Steady as she goes. The continuous tree ring record goes back over 12,000 years. Yes, there is overlap matching that is involved. But tree cores do overlap, and they do match, and it really is that simple. The simple act of ring counting is also verified by advanced technologies such as radiometric measurement, and that measurement is exacting. Counting and measurement yield an inescapable conclusion that forests have been growing continuous and uninterrupted for over twelve thousand years.
Strict YEC cannot abide that result, so they a forced to invent another interpretation. So they come up with the idea that extra false rings lead to an overcount of years. Even though the application to archeology has been successful and the concept is child’s play. False rings is not a problem for millennia, and as soon as you go as far back as Noah, arbitrarily and without any reason from the scientific data, trees are held to produce dozens of rings each year. That is not an interpretation suggested by the data; that is a fabrication imposed by a rigid dogmatic commitment, which has nothing to do with the data. YEC is fond of saying that scientific data can be interpreted with a creationist lens, and that interpretation is a matter of worldview, but that is not true at all. It is a false equivalence. Interpretations of the scientific data by YEC lead to irrational absurdities such a speeded up radioactivity, dinosaurs descending off the ark, hyper evolution of kinds, and tectonic plates breaking speed limits, none of which are supported by scientific data, or found in the Bible for that matter.
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