Does acceptance of "deep time" or evolution imperil Christian belief?

Faith & Science Conversation
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I would agree, but reject the inference that means we can know nothing with assurance. Sure, the circular planetary orbits of Copernicus were supplanted by the elliptical orbits of Kepler, Newton’s calculation of those orbits supplanted by Einstein which explained precession, and we are still searching for a theory to reconcile relativity and quantum mechanics. All this supplanting of scientific ideas however, does not mean there is still hope that the firmament model of the solar system remains in contention.

You’re right, it doesn’t. But it does suggest that a currently prevailing scientific theory is no reason to abandon a straightforward reading of Scripture. I’m not a big advocate of creation science, but in the interest of fair play I don’t see why creationists shouldn’t take a cue from their secular counterparts and just keep searching for data that will fit their model. Natural scientists don’t give up in the face of numerous obstacles to, say, a coherent theory of abiogenesis, or in their search for viable precursors to the various Cambrian animal phyla, or in trying to explain the emergence of nested systems of specified complexity in terms of mutation and selection (and a half dozen other “mechanisms”); so why should creationists throw in the towel when they encounter obstacles of their own?

A young earth is to the temporal what the flat earth is to the spacial.

That’s a fair enough analogy at a glance; but it seems that the age of the earth is kind of an odd case in that it cannot be tested in real time. Normally a scientific test confirms an observable natural process or state. But the age of an ancient object is not really an observable process or state even in principle. (I say that as someone leaning young earth but not entirely committed either way.)

The point is that we are not babes in the woods who are dependent on an elite cadre of scientists who get to say whatever they want, and we either have faith in them or faith in some literalistic interpretation of scripture. We can see much for ourselves, and what we directly see fits with the science which comes out of the more exclusive world of arcane math and experimental precision.

That’s well stated, and I don’t entirely disagree…though I would probably disagree often enough with your interpretations (or the interpretations of a scientific consensus) of what we are seeing. Like it or not, any body of evidence will be consistent with a host of theories and interpretations. But I like that you are encouraging independent thought at least.

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Absolutely! And evolution has always been targeted for criticism among sober thinkers, probably no theory more so in fact! That’s why it is now probably one of the most robust theories around! And that is not the same as claiming that all evolutionary knowledge is settled or even correct - it’s just to say that no rival theories have even remotely approached the overall explanatory success that the basic evolutionary framework (as conceived by Darwin himself and others before him too) has acheived.

Doubtless you really believe all that, but it remains a matter of opinion whether the theory is really exceptionally robust or is really explanatorily successful (on the more structurally complex and “macro” scales), and I don’t have to mention that lots of observers would disagree with you.

The big question for me is whether the origin of biodiversity is actually explicable scientifically. I do agree that if we must explain the origins of the biosphere and of the countless functionally complex systems and subsystems it contains in scientific (naturalistic) terms, then evolution wins hands down. In fact I for one can’t even conceive of a naturalistic alternative. In that case, even if unmanageably complicated and weighted with countless ad hoc qualifications, evolution might be, as Feyerabend put it, “the best lousy theory there is” among a field of lousy competing theories.

I believe in God too - and that God created the universe and all of us in it. But as to making that into a theory with explanatory power in the scientific sense - if that’s so, then there should be predictions about nature and how it works if you’re wanting to advance this as a separate theory in contest with evolutionary theory.

That’s just it, though. I don’t want to advance a separate theory – at least not a scientific theory. I think we need to step back and consider the distinct possibility that not all of observable reality is scientifically explicable. Suppose for a moment that God created the universe and life within it without the aid of any natural processes. That would mean that he performed the initial act, or series of acts, by means beyond the capacity of science to discover. Speaking the biological world into existence and breathing life into it, to use the biblical language, do not appear scientifically testable activities and were likely never meant to be thought of as such by the biblical writers.

What should we be seeing if evolutionary theory is false and its rival theory(ies?) are true?

Specified complexity of molecular machines, organ systems, organisms and entire ecosystems; species remaining in stasis for hundreds of millions of years (“living fossils”); remarkably improbable prospects like the evolution of an eye being repeated some forty times or more; horizontal gene transfer, so-called convergent evolution and other data that appear to defy hierarchical nesting of the phylogenetic tree; and a systematically fragmented fossil record.

Start showing how it aligns with observed realities even better than the prevailing theory and you will begin to get attention - win prizes even! And as many people as are ideologically driven to see these rivals succeed in showing the establishment how wrong it is … there is no shortage of funds to make that happen! And Nobel prizes in store too if you succeed.

Given that powerful organizations like the the National Academy of Sciences and the National Science Foundation, etc., are officially and steadfastly committed to defending evolutionary theory against anything that even hints of creationism, it would be exceedingly difficult for creationists to successfully make the case and secure the Nobel – regardless of their arguments and evidence. Imagine for a moment (it’s easy if you try, lol) that in strictly rational and evidentiary terms creationism somehow “won” this contest of theories. Such organizations, along with the courts, universities, etc., would feel socially pressured or even obligated at that point to promote creationism instead of evolution, even in public schools and against their previously stated determination to never do so. You can probably see, then, why creationism will not and cannot be recognized as the winner of the contest any time soon.

That’s right! But this isn’t a free pass for us to excuse shoddy and fallacious ideas. Tell me - should a flat-earther get equal time with those who’ve moved on from that nonsense? Should they be able to paralyze and hold up any progress of knowledge by dragging us back to things that people began to see through even in pre-Socratic times already?

Honestly I have never heard a flat-earth argument that made a lot of sense, or seen much evidence to think flat-earthism is true. But if I ever heard such an argument or saw such evidence, I would have to rethink my position on the shape of the earth. I hope you would, too. I have, however, heard strong arguments for creationism and intelligent design, and against evolution, which is why (for me at least) the flat-earth analogy fails.

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But you have done that very thing. A straight forward reading of Scripture says the world is flat with a dome overhead. It took a new scientific theory to get people to abandon the old straight forward reading and come up with the idea that the Bible uses accommodation.

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so then how do you explain the asteroid Ryugu apparently having the seeds of life on it?

  1. Did those seeds in fact come from the earth itself as a result of being ejected into space during the early stages of the flood or,
  2. is an asteroid actually God…and if so, where did the life on that asteroid come from?
  3. is the notion of God still outside of time and space and thus He performed a miracle, physically making a rock, and randomly hurling it through space hoping it would eventually hit a planet with the perfect location and conditions, thereby fufilling the statement “Let Us make man in Our image”?

wouldnt it logically be more sensible to just take the Genesis account exactly as written?

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hmmm…

According to Stephen Jay Gould, “there never was a period of ‘flat Earth darkness’ among scholars, regardless of how the public at large may have conceptualized our planet both then and now. Greek knowledge of sphericity never faded, and all major medieval scholars accepted the Earth’s roundness as an established fact of cosmology.”[5] Historians of science David Lindberg and Ronald Numbers point out that “there was scarcely a Christian scholar of the Middle Ages who did not acknowledge [Earth’s] sphericity and even know its approximate circumference”
Historian Jeffrey Burton Russell says the flat-Earth error flourished most between 1870 and 1920, and had to do with the ideological setting created by struggles over biological evolution.

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You’re asking the wrong guy. I’m not a big fan of ET, and think that the constant tie-in of anything organic in space to life has become tedious.

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Right. We are talking about the Hebrew Bible written well before the Greeks came up with the idea of a spherical Earth. You are confused. The Bible clearly describes a flat earth. An idea that was corrected later. A “historical misconception” doesn’t change the fact that the Hebrews imagined the world to be a flat disc. Did you not bother to actually read your wikipedia article?

I would suggest you work on your Google skills. Now if you want to read the right wikipedia article try this one.

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eh?

If you dont agree with it, dont complain to me…Its a Wikipedia article that clearly cites Jay Gould, David Lindeburgh, and Ronald Numbers.

i didnt bloody publish it…grumble to wikipedia not me. It says what it says and thats it!

Now so that you can get your knotted knickers sorted out…NOTE THE OPENING STATEMENT OF THE WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE:
The myth of the flat Earth , or the flat-Earth error , is a modern historical misconception that European scholars and educated people during the Middle Ages believed the Earth to be flat

BTW Bill, i can assure you that my upbringing is that in an environment where my father is a theologian…so i have had the fortune to be raised in a household where the study of deep biblical theology is prevalent. I also studied my education degree at a Christian university…i am very aware of the claim that the bible preaches flat earth.

If you read the article carefully you will note the following…
In Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians , Jeffrey Russell describes the Flat Earth theory as a fable used to impugn pre-modern civilization and creationism

Then note the 20th centuary commentary in the wikipedia article…

Since the early 20th century, a number of books and articles have documented the flat-Earth error as one of a number of widespread misconceptions in popular views of the Middle Ages. Both E. M. W. Tillyard’s book The Elizabethan World Picture and C. S. Lewis’ The Discarded Image are devoted to a broad survey of how the universe was viewed in Renaissance and medieval times, and both extensively discuss how the educated classes knew the world was round. Lewis draws attention to the fact that in Dante’s The Divine Comedy , about an epic voyage through hell, purgatory and heaven, the Earth is spherical with gravity being towards the center of the Earth. As the Devil is frozen in a block of ice in the center of the Earth, Dante and Virgil climb down the Devil’s torso, but up from the Devil’s waist to his feet, as his waist is at the center of the Earth.

Now we could actually throw another curve ball out there…

take a look at the way egyptians illustrated life forms in their pyramids…news flash guys, according to drawings in pyramids, the Egyptians heads and faces were all flat :astonished:!!!
image

Obviusly we know Egyptians heads and faces were not flat…but it highlights an important fundamental…in order to avoid misconceptions, we need to appropriately cross reference biblical passages. This should help ensure we get our bible theological history right, particularly when it comes to things like flat earth claims!

So to sum up…

The myth of flat earth gained popularity in the last 3 hundred years or so. It was not a middle ages (or earlier) view of the world as is claimed.
The idea of flat earth seems to have been raised in modern times in order to try to debunk creationism! It does this because it must maintain the view that early man was primative and of lower intellect than modern man and that God was able to reveal Himself and His creation to us in terms that Adam/Eve, and all of the patriarchs and prophetgs could understand…something that is simply not supported biblically (that has nothing to do with science btw). I would suggest that if God was able to give visions…its impossible to argue he couldnt illustrate visually how the earth was created!

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The nested hierarchy is a natural outcome of common descent. YEC attempts to diminish this by suggesting that convergent evolution breaks the cladogram. Consider for instance the body plans of plesiosaurs, sharks, and whales. An anterior hydrofoil does not fit into a unified nested hierarchy, so creationists consider that to nullify the hierarchy. Convergence is portrayed as a rescue device, and design offered as the preferred alternative. This objection rests on very shallow analysis, however. Convergence is actually a vivid demonstration of evolutionary principles, and validates concepts of phylogeny and environmental adaptation.

An illustrative case would be the pectoral fin or flipper of sharks, whales, and marine reptiles such as Mosasaurus and the dolphin like Shonisaurus. Superficially, it appears that the same trait, the anterior hydrofoil, appears across unrelated branches. But it does not require a particularly close inspection to reveal that these are distinctive. A shark’s fin has no bone at all, consistent with its classification as a cartilaginous fish. Whales are tetrapods, and the fossil sequence shows the progression of forelimb adaptation to an aqueous environment. Dexterity does not hold the same value in the open ocean as it does for terrestrial life, yet the typical arrangement of bones of the whale’s pectoral flipper are found as would be expected by heritage. The roll call of humerus, radius, ulna, carpals, metacarpals and phalanges are present in the flipper as in your arms, although some are fused and a few whales have lost their thumb homolog. Creationists of course promote common design as a basis for all these bones represented, and that they are somehow needed for flippers to flip, but it all does look rather over-wrought for the purpose.

If a creature such as pakicetus found some advantage in foraging in water, that would be leveraged by adapting to the aqueous environment. What is optimum on land does not work so well in water, which is why whales are hopeless in track and field. Convergent traits are an outcome of the core evolutionary principle that fitness and natural selection are in respect to the organism’s environment, and so whales and sharks share similar body plans. The major differences are due to the evolutionary constraint that features cannot be added from nowhere - they must be adapted, perhaps kludged, from existing and heritable traits.

Distinctive ancestral adaptions are the general case for convergence. Bats and hawks both have wings, but those of bats and hawks are distinct in ways that are very clearly due to ancestry. Convergence does not violate any principle of evolution, and the detailed anatomy validates phylogeny. The nested hierarchy remains compelling evidence of common ancestry.

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Orlando Ferguson Flat Earth Map A
Orlando Ferguson Flat Earth Map A1920×1321 514 KB

Scripture
Scripture2074×228 169 KB

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I have no problem with the wikipedia article, but it doesn’t say what you appear to believe it says. It’s talking about a number of widespread misconceptions in popular views of the Middle Ages", not what people who wrote the Bible believed. The wikipedia article I provided does talk about that and it appears you didn’t bother to read it as it would refute what you are trying to argue.

No the idea of a flat earth is what ancient cultures believed. If you want the Biblical proof just visit any flat earth society web page and you will find an abundance. I sat through any number of sermons where the passages that show the earth is flat were explained away as God accommodating the limited knowledge of the authors.

Yes He could have done so, but didn’t. There is a Hebrew word for spherical shapes which was never used to describe the shape of the earth. Why do you think that is?

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From the time I first began reading the Bible in earnest, that the world is flat with a dome overhead never struck me as something the text actually said. Thus for me, and for the strong majority of Christians throughout history as it happens, flat-earthism is not the product of a straightforward reading of Scripture. So when I read that the “firmament” divided the waters under it from the waters above it, I wondered exactly what that meant, figured it had something to do with the earth’s atmosphere, and kept reading. But when I read that God called the earth to bring forth grass, or sea creatures or birds, or when God created cattle, or “creeping things,” or “man” (male and female), each multiplying “according to its kind,” I had the clear understanding that God created a certain number of original categories of creatures separately and that those categories remained separate.

Now when I say “a currently prevailing scientific theory,” I mean to emphasize the more broadly speculative aspects of so many theories. It’s true, I think, that there are beliefs most of us hold that are on a par with empirical observation and yet were once largely hypothetical. The idea that living organisms are uniformly composed of cells, for instance, was at one time a fairly abstract matter but now is easily verified with powerful microscopes. In such a case the theory has become more of a matter of observation, owing to advances in technology; no further inference is required. The spherical earth theory is arguably an observable fact more or less along the same lines. By contrast, evolutionary theory infers a multi-billion year macroevolutionary history of life on earth descending from a common ancestor, a history that in principle cannot be replicated or verified. Intelligent observers, Christians included, disagree about whether the evidence cited for it is sufficient to justify that inference.

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Of course, you already knew it was wrong to interpret the text in that manner.

You have it backwards. Portions of the Hebrew Bible are written from the perspective of a flat earth with a fixed dome over head. That is what the text says because that is what the authors of the text believed. After contact with Greeks authors of later portions of the OT did adopt a spherical earth. So what do Christians do with the flat earth verses? They, and you, change their interpretation based on the introduction of new knowledge.

Same thing can be said of evolution.

You are wrong. The theory of evolution has been verified repeated. People that are opposed to evolution do so not because they think the theory is wrong. They don’t like what the theory can do to their theology, primarily it means a literal Genesis 1-3 is wrong. So no 6 literal day creation which destroys for some the meaning of the sabbath. For others it would mean throwing out the Fall which is key to their theology.

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I would far rather explain what kinds of literature the Genesis Creation accounts are and show the richness of the messages that come from those – messages that are lost in YEC dogma.

A “straightforward reading of scripture” would be one where it is understood as the ancient literature it is, according to whatever literary genre a passage is, under the worldview of the writer and his original audience. Reading it as though it is supposed to teach science is not straightforward, it’s the same error that has resulted in a variety of false teachings down through the centuries: imposing one’s own worldview on it.

What a waste of time and effort! Creationism does nothing to convict of sin or support the Gospel. Jesus didn’t say, “Go and force the scriptures to fit your worldview”.

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It’s the only thing that explains the distribution of fossils in rock.

It won’t be “the winner” ever because it doesn’t address the scriptures honestly.

I would call that an uninformed reading of the scripture because it presumes that the writers intended to teach cosmology.

It doesn’t have anything that hasn’t been found in interstellar clouds, so logically it has material from the cloud our sun formed from.

You mean as a polemic using the Egyptian creation story as a template to make an account that is two literary types at the same time, right? Because that is how it was written.

Greek knowledge is quite late to the party. The flat Earth with a metal-hard dome was the universal ancient near eastern cosmology when Genesis was written. In fact Thales and Anaximander held the same view (though as I recall Anaximander did away with the pillars supporting the Earth, holding that the Earth floated on the waters below). And the first to propose that the Earth is a sphere did so not because of science but because the sphere is the most beautiful solid. It wasn’t until Pythagoras that anyone actually presented evidence that the Earth is a sphere.

If I’m remembering my history of science right it took the Hellenization of Jewish culture thanks to Alexander the Great for Jews to change their worldview.

You have not cited anything supporting the point you put in parentheses.

Nope. It was a bit of cultural imperialism intended to show how foolish Italians and Spaniards were.

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Nor does Isaiah use it in the passage about “the circle of the Earth”. The circle was the world enclosed in the hemispherical metal-hard dome.

The problem here is that what the Creation accounts appear to be in translation is not what they were in the original. The first audiences would have recognized that the first account used the Egyptian creation story but changed it, and that the writer brilliantly blended two distinct literary types together. They would not have thought it was a historical narrative because that literary type didn’t exist.

It was a belief they shared with every other culture they knew, right up until the time of Alexander the Great. The difference is that in the Hebrew version all the ancient near eastern deities – sky, earth, sun, moon, etc. – aren’t deities, they’re creations of YHWH-Elohim.

Their first error is to think that a modern scientific-materialist worldview has anything to do with the scriptures.

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Did I now? If you’re saying that I knew it was wrong on the basis of a scientific theory, then you cannot maintain that I am willing to reject all scientific theories to preserve a favored reading of the text – which would undercut your main argument with respect to evolution.

Portions of the Hebrew Bible are written from the perspective of a flat earth with a fixed dome over head. That is what the text says because that is what the authors of the text believed.

Is it possible you’re begging the question? It seems to me that we can know what the authors of the text believed only by rightly interpreting what the text says. Again, I for one have never perceived anything like a flat earth or a dome in my readings.

After contact with Greeks authors of later portions of the OT did adopt a spherical earth. So what do Christians do with the flat earth verses? They, and you, change their interpretation based on the introduction of new knowledge.

Suppose that’s true. It would follow that evolution is not actually knowledge (more precisely, I don’t personally recognize it as knowledge), because otherwise as a Christian I would have changed my interpretation based on the introduction of it by now.

You are wrong. The theory of evolution has been verified repeated.

Note that by “the theory of evolution” I meant not simply the belief that allele frequencies in a population tend to change over time, but belief in “a multi-billion year macroevolutionary history of life on earth descending from a common ancestor.” If you honestly think the latter can be directly observed or replicated, I would like to know how.

People that are opposed to evolution do so not because they think the theory is wrong. They don’t like what the theory can do to their theology, primarily it means a literal Genesis 1-3 is wrong. So no 6 literal day creation which destroys for some the meaning of the sabbath. For others it would mean throwing out the Fall which is key to their theology.

That’s a genetic fallacy, and it doesn’t make a lot of sense. If I honestly thought that evolution was correct (not wrong), and that evolution being correct meant that Genesis 1-3 is wrong, then clearly I would have to conclude that Genesis 1-3 is wrong. Why would you accuse me of willingly living with extreme cognitive dissonance for the sake of creationism, when (by your own reckoning) I am not willing to do so for a flat earth?

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Haha! Also they are terribly overweight and out of shape. They typically say it’s “water weight” but that sounds like a lame excuse to me…

Seriously, I just wanted to say thanks for your considered and apparently well-informed reply re convergence. I will try to answer it sometime this week, but if I don’t, I did want to make sure and acknowledge that I had read it.

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Which requires reading each text as the type of literature its writer intended.

That’s because translators have a bad habit of not being quite clear. “Firmament” is still probably the best rendition for raqiya; it has the concept of “firm” in it – but the word actually refers to something beaten out of metal.

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No what I was saying is you are quite willing to change a reading of the text in one case but not another. Never said you are unwilling to reject all theories to preserve a favored reading, just that you have done so in at least one, and possible more, cases. And like any good slippery slope, once you have started why stop.