You are right. But because the same applies to the Omphalos Hypothesis and Russell’s Teapot, the argument is inconsequential.
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Not exactly.
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The Deceptive God objection (which does apply to the Omphalos Hypothesis) does not at all apply here, because the history we read from Genomes is not false. It is the real story of those “outside the garden.”
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The teapot analogy is not proposing anything different about what actually happened in the physical world. In this way, it maintains the standard non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA) division between science and religion. In contrast, however, the de novo creation of Adam is making a claim in the the physical world, which is ostensibly “science’s domain.”
Because of #1, the de novo creation of Adam is more reasonable than YEC, and because of #2 some feel the need to affirm it for the purpose of rejecting of scientism, over and above purely hermeneutical and theological concerns. For mirrored motivations, many will endorse the teapot analogy while entirely opposing the de novo creation of Adam.
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None of those things is relevant to your claim re evidence. You wrote that your claim is “not in conflict with the evidence.” That’s true, but it’s inconsequential. Omphalos and Russell’s Teapot are both ludicrous claims that are not in conflict with the evidence. There are infinite universes of undisproveable claims that anyone could marshal alongside those classics.
To advance a claim that is “not in conflict with the evidence” is to barely meet the most rudimentary evidentiary expectation. So, congrats: magic special creation of anything, anytime, by any god, is “not in conflict with the evidence.” This is the very essence of a vacuous assertion.
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I won’t get into it in detail here with you @sfmatheson. As you know, we both come from different points of view because I am a Christian and you are not any longer. I can respect that.
One of the foundational disagreements we will just have to live with is that I (along with most people) feel there is important truth in this world that cannot be proved or disproved by scientific means in general, or by genomes in particular. I, for example, believe that injustice is a reality of this world (a truth), even though science cannot name or adjudicate it, and is impotent to end it. Science’s failure here does not diminish in any way my affirmation of the existence of injustice as truth with which we as a society must grapple.
I understand we will disagree about science (though I am sure you care about injustice), but that seems like an intractable rabbit trail.
You would think so. Yet it is still common place to declare there is evidence against it. Why is that? Certainly correcting that false claim, to give a more accurate account of the science, is valuable to even you as an atheist. Right?
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I do not personally believe in de novo creation of Adam and Eve, but to defend Josh here, I think your charges are only valid if scientific evidence is the only way of determining the value of an assertion. For those who hold to de novo creation of Adam and Eve, they would say that Scripture provides “evidence” with its own truth value. I know you don’t accept that source of authority, fair enough, but let’s be careful about sweeping statements about truth.
My criticism of Omphalos is also from a theological perspective: I think it is theologically clumsy and calls in question the character of God.
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Hi Jay, this would be a bigly tangent to this thread and may need a new one but could you unpack this?
I’m still a Christian but I couldn’t claim that I will always be one… I can think of any number of synarios where I may choose to abandon my faith.
Thanks Larry
You are both mistaking my point, which isn’t about “truth.” (I didn’t use that word.) My point is very basic: any claim, whether it is based in “scripture” or in personal revelation or in hallucination, can be “not in conflict with the evidence” and still be vacuous and even ludicrous. And so, to claim as Josh did that special creation of some people is “not in conflict with the evidence,” wherein the context is clearly scientific evidence, is to make a vacuous claim. I did not write, nor did I mean to suggest, that claims about gods or their activities are not true or are themselves vacuous. “God exists” is not vacuous. “God exists and she is Alanis Morissette” is not vacuous. “My claim about God and Alanis Morissette is not in conflict with the evidence” is laughably vacuous.
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To this, I would agree. Things “not in conflict” with the evidence can still be false, and even ludicrous. They may also be vacuous. Moreover, if chosen at random, they are most likely (ultimately) false.
“Vacuous” I understand as lack meaningfulness. You are right of course, that many things that are “not in conflict” with evidence are also meaningless. The same is true the other way. Many things established by evidence are also meaningless.
In this case, clearly some people think the de novo creation of Adam is meaningful and established by evidence outside of genomes (the Scriptural account). So, at least for them, it is neither ludicrous nor meaningless nor random. Whether they are ultimately right or wrong, they should be allowed to make their case for its meaning without constantly fending off false scientific objections. [Valid objections to specific scenarios should be handled differently.] I am sure you would agree.
I do agree, but would not have written “false scientific objections.” Some objections are not false, and are in fact ruinous for some conceptions of special creation of anything. But that’s not the point here.
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And I agree too. There are certainly some conceptions of the de novo creation of Adam (e.g. that deny the population outside the garden) that are in conflict with the evidence, at least as I understand it. Valid scientific objections should be handled differently than the false objections. As you say, that is not the point here.
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Just to be clear, this was the conversation preceding this post:
Christy: I think the argument goes that there is no way to prove scientifically that a single couple was not specially created and then their descendants went on to mix with the existing non-specially created human population, hence all the signs of evolution.
gbrooks9: But isn’t that still a spurious kind of logic?
Swamidass: No. That is how science works.
That led me to believe that you were saying that your proposal was scientific, but it appears that I misread your responses.
I would also agree with your description of your position. With science you need some positive evidence, but you are taking a different position in saying that your proposal is not falsified by scientific findings. I would say that you are breaking the rule of parsimony, but that is only a rule of thumb to begin with and not a natural law.
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I find it remarkable how easy it is to come to terms with atheists on complex issues like this. Tongue in cheek, you are both a credit to your “kind.” In all seriousness, most atheist scientists I’ve interacted with entirely endorse efforts to truthfully explain science in non-combative and inviting ways. In the end, this advances science and serves the common good.
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Casper, that fits very comfortably with my world view. At the moment of conception, each of us has the genetic information to become an adult Homo sapiens. As a fetus, our brains have more potential neural circuits than the IBM Watson computer. Ideally, beginning even in utero, these circuits are being made and broken as a result of experience, and it is this experience that eventually can make us truly human. That is an awesome responsibility that God places on parenthood. And that is why a step parent can take as much honest pride in how their children turn out as the biological parents can.
The Homo sapiens brain, like the Neanderthals, Denisovans, etc, is an exaptation–useful for making hunting tools and fur clothing, but also, _if properly programmed,_useful for making space ships to explore the planets and stars. We may never know exactly how that brain → Mind transition took place, but the best guess of when is approximately 50K years ago when archeologists see evidence for a Great Leap Forward in Homo sapiens culture. The sudden appearance of a love of beauty and art and a belief in life after death is surely sufficient evidence of a new era of creation appearing in the Universe God began some 13+ billion years prior. To me, this makes Him even more worthy of awe and worship than had He created Adam with just a “Poof”.
Al Leo
Maybe God made Adam as a child who went through the vagaries of childhood like every one of us. What is intrinsic to the phrase “de novo creation” that leads you to a specific scenario, when many many more are proposed in traditional discourse on Genesis? And many more are available to our imagination?
Yes, sorry. I don’t think my answer deserves another thread, because my reasons are strictly personal. I have had experiences in my life that make it impossible for me to disbelieve. It has nothing to do with reason or intellect. Hope I didn’t disappoint you!
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I’ve often wondered why Adam and Eve are always portrayed as adults, when so much of the language in their story suggests they are children, or at least child-like.
Although Casper’s point is still true if they were created as children. There would still be the issue of them “skipping” some part of normal human development.
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Those who believe in the de novo creation of Adam vastly underestimate the amount of learning that takes place during childhood. Just consider what occurs with brain development. The brain is only 28% of its adult size at birth. In the first year of life, the brain grows tremendously fast, and social interaction is crucial during this phase. Throughout childhood and into adolescence, the brain continues forging new connections and pruning away others, and all of this late brain development takes place in the content-rich environment outside the womb (unlike primates or early Homo). Take away those years, and I don’t know what you have, but it wouldn’t be a “normal” human being in any sense of the word.
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Right, I totally agree, and this is one of the (many) reasons I personally do not agree with the de novo view. No matter how you slice it, de novo involves some element of the Omphalos hypothesis. I think the “immediate” creation of Adam and Eve is a literary device, like everything else in the story. It becomes absurd if you push it too far or ask the wrong questions about the text. I talked about this a bit in my recent article about Adam and Eve.
It strikes me that humans actually have no way of fully conceptualizing an event that does not involve a prior process. Everything in our reality involves process. (This is just a musing, not a broad theological statement.)
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Come on guys. This isn’t as complex as your making it. Maybe Adam was a baby. Maybe he was specially created in a woman’s womb (perhaps observed therefore as a virgin birth). This objection does not apply to the whole class of special creation scenarios. Moreover the importance of the objection is entirely predicated on a presupposed theology. There are a whole range of reasons that might be offered for why God did this including simply, “well God does surprising things like send His only son to suffer and die, so I’m not going to pretend my objections matter much to what I think he is clearly telling me happened.” (Though I would dispute that this is what Scripture is clearly telling us).
To this day, there is no agreed upon and unquestioned understanding of the Virgin Birth, even though most Christians believe it. I think (some one can verify) the Virgin Birth is in the Belief Statement too. We take it as a confession, without agreement on how to understand it, and for many people de novo creation is a similar confession.
Not that I understand. There is no false appearance anywhere that we observe in the evidence. There need not even be maturity at that time.
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I don’t understand what you are saying here. If a tree is supernaturally created with one ring, or with fifty rings, it’s Omphalos either way. Can you explain your response further?
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