This profound. Thank you, Malam (teacher) 
Thank you for writing what we would agree on.
Let’s see. Richard Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist and was at Oxford University a Professor for Public Understanding of Science. So I read Dawkins not for his understanding of theology, but for his explanation and understanding of evolutionary biology. Specifically, what about Dawkin’s evolutionary biology diverges EC’s evolutionary biology?
Like atheistic evolutionists, EC insists on methodological naturalism, and excludes a priori as illegitimate any evidence for design in nature. Other than tacking God onto evolution, how does EC inform your evolutionism? After all, if John Walton is correct, the Bible says nothing that can inform science. Walton’s biblical interpretation doesn’t inform evolution at all, but rather allows you to accept both evolution and the truthfulness of scripture.
Now to John Lennox. You are into credentials, authority and expertise. If a person doesn’t have the proper academic credentials, you seem to think they have nothing to say about a topic–a serious problem. First of all, Lennox is a philosopher of science. So rather than scrabbling around looking at the individual trees, metaphorically speaking, he takes a wholistic view of the forest. He addresses the question of internal coherence of evolutionary arguments. And in that context my question is, where do you see his argument breaking down? Or do you also reject his arguments a priori because he doesn’t have the credentials to be an evolutionary biologist? And perhaps one of the reasons that he wisely focused on mathematics is that he was told by his academic superiors that he would not succeed in the academy unless he gave up his irrational belief in God.
Like atheistic evolutionists, EC insists on accurate and honest weights and measures. Does that mean that having accurate and honest weights and measures is atheistic? You’ve got a bit of a logical fallacy there.
Personally, I don’t like the term “methodological naturalism” because it’s easily misunderstood, but in reality it does not mean this:
No. What it actually means is that if you are going to claim to have evidence for design in nature, you need to establish some clear unambiguous criteria by which design can be identified, and make sure that your evidence actually meets those criteria.
The problem is simply that nobody has managed to figure out how to do that yet. ID proponents have tried with hypotheses such as irreducible complexity, but they tend to jump the gun and claim that structures such as the bacterial flagellum are irreducibly complex when they are not.
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Fair enough.
Not necessarily true at all. I just think if you are going to hold someone up as successfully debunking consensus biology, they should be a biologist. Otherwise all I hear is that someone trained in another field is disputing experts in a field in which he is obviously out of his depth. It doesn’t matter how smart you are or how pristine your academic qualifications are, if you are going to discount facts that biologists accept as a mathematician, then it doesn’t hold much weight in my book.
Evolutionary arguments are based on making sense of evidence. You don’t “refute” them by treating them like rhetoric. Rhetorical arguments are evaluated for coherence. Scientific models are evaluated for making sense of a large body of observations, making accurate predictions, and standing up to multiple avenues of cross-checking and attempts at falsification. So, I reject the idea on principle that you can actually evaluate the scientific model of evolution purely on philosophy and logic.
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Just like God informs my understanding of ‘secular’ meteorology. God is sovereign over timing and placing, mutations in DNA included, integrally and not just ‘tacked on.’
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A college town like Ann Arbor is a very unusual place. My grandfather D.B. McLaughlin used to teach astronomy there, a long time ago. My mother had lots of tales of a rich intellectual community that thrived around the UofM, and the real story of famous astronomers from a kid’s/young adult’s perspective. I am overjoyed to hear that this basically hasn’t changed.
Most of the YECs I’m aware of didn’t grow up or live for a long time in rich intellectual environments like Ann Arbor. I think, they attack evolution partly out of fear, and partly out of genuinely thinking it is ridiculous. Most of them who have some technical training are engineers, jack of all trades farmers, tradesmen, etc. They are very good and honest at what they do, and you can count on them, but they don’t typically have the training that would help them understand the concepts.
I’m talking about the nuts and bolts; the deep understanding of biology and genetics to grasp the complexity of the field, and further, the mathematical models and the physics [and chemistry/biochemistry] needed to understand the mechanisms and processes that would integrate with such a vast ocean. It is humbling enough to walk through a library and realize how small a fraction of books I will ever read, appreciate, or even know about. With biology, no matter how deeply you have studied, no matter how broadly you have tried to train yourself, no matter how widely you have searched, it’s horrendously not enough. You must be content to be a mere hacker [, and the lowest-level “script kiddy” to boot.]
This is why that corona stuff has been so difficult. It’s an unfamiliar virus. Even though people have spent their life working on immunology, epidemiology, virology, etc., each of these things has its own vast knowledge base that must be absorbed, and knowing lots about influenza is of little help. You could spend an entire lifetime working on only one of these families of viruses (and maybe even on a specific genus within the family), with only a few transferrable bits of information that are applicable to the multitude of other viruses that are out there. … and these are just “viruses”, short sequences of RNA or DNA that contain a dozen or two, or three of proteins, depending on their level of sophistication. Actually, they are quite amazing little machines operating on imponderable simplicity, if they were not so cursedly wicked.
I will consider reading Lennox’s book. I have not read anything up to now from him. I didn’t find Dawkin’s work fallacious particularly. My reaction to his work was more toward the extremely partisan viewpoint, the paternalistic tone, and the refusal to accept that God might be infinitely bigger and far more brilliant than he is. God has to manage a universe (or maybe universes) with all sorts of stubborn-minded sentient life that don’t look up to the heavens and insist on having things their own way when they get greedy, selfish, grasping, and think they can write the laws without being called to account (in any heavenly court). What does Dawkins do? The basic thing is, you can’t win in those arguments because the arguments are limited to mechanisms and processes that we can measure. We cannot measure God, so we are basically screwed. However, just because we cannot measure God, doesn’t mean that our belief in God is false. In the end, that stuff becomes nihilistic because we can never prove that we should be moral. [without first accepting that, … well, … basically, … “God said so”.]
We have to acknowledge that we will have to answer for what we do in this life, and think about it from there. This includes EC, ID, YEC, or whatever other flavors there are out there. If any of us think it is to rap people over the head with a big black book, we’ve got it wrong. Jesus died on the cross for our stupidity, our stubbornness, and our wayward and selfish ways. Our eyes are to be fixed on Jesus, seeking the kingdom of God and its righteousness, learning to be forgiving, learning to be merciful, learning to love disreputable and frustrating people. That’s more than hard enough.
by Grace we proceed
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Or at least, one’s philosophy needs to expand its knowledge base to subsume concepts such as evolutionary biology. There is no doubt that it works, and it is used every day in a multitude of fields by many people to do many useful things. Although I struggle to use thermodynamics to predict RNA structure, most of the people who are successful at prediction use evolution. Thermodynamics must work, so this means we don’t understand it. However, since thermodynamics is still very poor at the job (and I have my own problems there too!!!), most people have given up. As a result, one could say that the science of protein and RNA structure prediction consists mostly of script kiddies. (Mind you, that is respectfully recognizing that it is not for lack of effort, just reality.)
Anyway, part of my long journey in education introduced me to synoptic philosophy. Synoptic philosophy works from the angle that you must deeply understand all forms of knowledge and integrate them into a whole picture. Nobody can really do that, but that is the noble and humbling objective. So effectively, philosophy qua philosophy should be a much bigger circle in which science is a subset. In principle, as believers in God, philosophy, as big as it is, is still only a subset of what God is. … I really don’t understand what that means …
I’m just nitpicking … 
but anyway …
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Before our Bible study last year, our leaders met for a series of discussions about dealing with racism and reconciliation. This was a diverse group of people, so there was a lot of beneficial discussion which involved correcting some views and much listening, and we came out unified in taking this seriously. One of the resources our teaching leader brought up was Ham’s One Race book. While I think there’s reason for concern due to the narrative it contributes to, it is a beneficial resource for some people. In our variety of books about racism that we consulted, we came out unified as a group because we discussed what was happening to God’s image in God’s world in light of God’s scripture. So I must admit that harm isn’t always done, and this agreement beyond the resources we consult is more important. We do have many values to connect with.
Despite the confident stance that speaking the truth in love might be harsh and offensive, it seems that in practice we respond more positively to gentle, kind, and patient loving suggestions. “Tough love” has often been preached in my experience. I don’t know how about this looks for anyone else, but I feel argumentative sometimes before I realize the gentleness that enabled me to be open and trusting. So even though people in the churches I’ve attended would teach that to state what you believe is true is more important than how your interlocutor receives your message and treatment, the teachers themselves would likely respond better to gentle suggestions.
Very interesting! Could this relate to the principle of the Body of Christ being diverse and interconnected to be a fuller experience of Christ to the world?
Hi. I’m not from the US so I’m not familiar with the term “racial reconciliation”. Would you mind expanding on that? And, on a tangent, do you see this reflected in the AIG website (which is all I have to go on)?
To the first part, … at a basic level, it means that we acknowledge that a lot of really rotten stuff happened in our history that fell along racial lines; blacks with slavery, the Indians with finding every excuse to take their land because some people could, with Asians, it was exploitive labor, with Latin America there was also a lot of nonsense, and with most minorities, various forms of discrimination that minimized them or denigrated them. So, at the basic level, we should at least learn from it and try to construct laws and a society where that doesn’t happen anymore.
As a nation, I feel like our recent direction has been of reneging on reconciliation, unfortunately. Maybe I’m wrong, that this is my feeling.
I cannot say anything to the second part of your question. It would be nice to know that AiG has actually done something I do agree with. I think the white supremacists tend to seize on the son of Ham nonsense, so if AiG has distanced itself from that stuff, that is at least one thing they have done right. … but then, with 96% of the human genome still in Africa, we’d have to admit that we all were once black. I reckon, that might be a tough one for some people to accept when they get to those pearly gates.
… well, anyway, by Grace we proceed.
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Well, I was mulling over the observation that even though I have a fair amount of scientific training under my belt, I still find no viable pathway that crosses the great divide between my faith in the Lord and the science, logic, indeed philosophy that I learned. If I put myself only in those intellectual shoes, I am like the rich man looking up at Abraham and Lazarus. A great chasm lies between them. So, maybe in a sense, a fuller experience of Christ in the world is exactly what got me to the other side. It’s not by our own power and strength that we are saved, it is by grace through faith.
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In the spirit of this forum–what can we say positive about Ken Ham?
AIG has two museums with professional world class presentation that are a credit to our mutual faith.
In addition to the creation presentation, there is also a clear presentation of the gospel to the millions who have visited.
And our visit to the museum helped us share the Good News with a family camped next to us on the way back.
We visited the Ark and the Creation Museum about two years ago. On the way back, there was a Mormon family with three boys camped next to us who had also visited these museums. We shared our thoughts on young earth creationism, and also the gospel. Then the father helped me tie back on our RV bumper that was close to falling off.
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Not really.
An important and essential point. Science is built on a foundation of philosophy, and when science and philosophy are decoupled, serious problems arise.
This is one arena where Lennox excels. Lennox has an interesting and insightful book, God and Stephen Hawking where he shows how such a brilliant scientist as Hawking falls off the rails when he ignores the philosophical implications of his argument–that because the law of gravity exists, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.
An important observation was made that I want to affirm, although I don’t find the original post. That was that often, questioning and dissent in the church from our youth is squelched, and this is unhealthy.
I couldn’t agree more. Essentially, youth hear, “You shouldn’t ask questions about what we teach here. We teach from the Bible, and when the Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it for me. So sit down, shut up and listen up.”
Shutting down questions and honest doubts is one of the most effective ways of discouraging or destroying faith. And it is not just on the issue of creation, but of all apologetic issues including the problem of evil.
Rather, we should encourage questions and the expression of doubt. Sometimes I ask what questions and doubts their friends have to give them an opportunity to open up and speak freely about the questions they undoubtedly have themselves.
When people are shut down, the questions and doubts remain, but unaddressed and hidden.
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I appreciate this point. As I’ve said before, while it’s good to seek answers, this over-reliance on answers can tend to discourage questions by default – it can communicate the idea that we’ve already answered all the most important questions, and therefore even asking anything is a sign of disobedience or rebellion.
I hope that those who are invested in apologetics will move toward a more open and humble posture rather than letting fear of kids leaving the faith cause them to clamp down even harder on questions (and therefore honesty).
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Yes, isn’t that like saying because counting exists, apples will count themselves?
Did you guys consider How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi, a Black scholar?
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Yes. What is it that Lennox says? The laws of mathematics says that $1000 dollars plus $1000 dollars is $2000. But the law of mathematics never put anything in my wallet.
And sometimes our answer needs to be, “I don’t know.” Maybe we can work on finding an answer together.
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