Entertaining Creationists Argue Back
There are times I truly enjoy debating with creationists. One such example is when I stumbled across James Holding's critique of my book, Creationism: The Bible Says No! (The title of which is a play off of another book by Duane Gish, called 'Evolution: The Fossils Say No!')
I've included Mr. Holding's web-posting as one of my permanent links in the right hand column, not only because I found it so entertaining, but also because I want as many people to read it as possible to see just how fascinating it is when my proven points get underscored.
You don't really need a copy of my book to see where the flaws in Holding's arguments are, (though perhaps it might help). Essentially, I argue against biblical literalism, which is the cornerstone of creationism, by citing numerous scriptures which are irreconcilably contradictory or false. Holding answers these contradictions by accusing me of interpreting scripture according to a strict, fundamentalist, literalist view using modern, rather than ancient, standards of interpretation.
Guess what? Guilty as charged! I do indeed do exactly that. But that's because that's what creationists do as well! I was only using the standards of interpretation which were predetermined by evolution's opponents. Holding, however, holds to the Chicago Statement of Inerrancy, which says:
"We deny that it is proper to evaluate Scripture according to standards of truth and error that are alien to its usage or purpose. We further deny that inerrancy is negated by Biblical phenomena such as a lack of modern technical precision, irregularities of grammar or spelling, observational descriptions of nature, the reporting of falsehoods, the use of hyperbole and round numbers, the topical arrangement of metrical, variant selections of material in parallel accounts, or the use of free citations."
I'll admit it, I hadn't heard of the "Chicago Statement" until I read Holding's article. But I had certainly heard that particular argument many times before. (Really, who really knows or cares that some ecclesiastical magisteria stamped a label on it?) What's interesting about it is that, if one accepts it fully, then one has to apply ancient standards of interpretation, which means that the original, primitive author(s) of Genesis regarded Adam and Eve as literal history simply because they did not, in that era, make a distiction between literal history and mythology. This means that the proper interpretation of Genesis 1 and 2 is that it is metaphor, not fact.
Holding's position may, just may, smooth over most Bible contradictions by seeing them as the shortcomings of the ancient mind, or mind-set. But the price of this view is the lack of necessity on insisting that Adam and Eve were literal people. All that is required to be a Christian is to accept that humanity, at some point in its evolutionary past, went astray from God. Maybe that's why there are so many evolutionary scientists who are also Christian.
Perhaps his misunderstanding of my views can best be summarized in a statement he made at the end in reference to my citing of the mathematical contradiction regarding Solomon's gold from Ophir:
"Incredibly the only answer Hildeman knows for things like, "Did Solomon get 420 or 450 talents of gold from Ophir?" is stuff like, "It was two separate trips." [165] Huh? (And he even has one half of this problem listed as being in 2 Corinthians!) This one (and others, such as the age of Baasha [172]) is one of the simplest, easily attributed to copyist error, but Hildeman doesn't even mention or apparently know that this is an answer! If this is what Hildeman learned at Bible college, maybe it isn't all his fault that he is so badly educated!"
Of course it occurred to me that it could be attributed to a copyist error. In fact, that was exactly my point. A copyist's ERROR. Meaning that errors in the Bible are a scientific fact! And if errors in the Bible are a fact, then why do creationists even bother? (I guess I'm not so poorly educated after all.)
Do follow up on the links. Have fun reading them!
Eric
posted by SaganJr @ 9:22 AM
8 comments
8 Comments:
Hi Eric,
Good points you raised. However let me refer you to the well established legal formula for establishing the "truth".
The nature of historic documents is that if you compare let's say 4 witnesses' account of the same event, there will be core truths in common to all accounts and divergences where individual witnesses might have made errors or might be lying. If 4 independent witnesses agree on something then it's probably true, don't you think?
As to Genesis Ch1 and Ch2 we have 0 witnesses. As to Genesis Ch5 onwards we have normally 4 or more witnesses from that point onwards in time. For example some of the events are reelated in Egyptian pyramid texts, others Sumerian texts etc, so some truths should be discernable if we compare our accounts.
I am not advocating an unquestioning approach to the Pentateuch, but I am saying that if there is good agreement between several accounts written by different authors, then we can discern key truths.
e.g. The fact that person X says the Israelites spent 430 yrs sojourning until the Exodus and person Y says 400 yrs should give weight to a conclusion that the Israelites were at least 400 years without a home of their own until the time of the Exodus from Egypt. There is no valid argument that other aspects that both person X and person Y agree 100% on are thereby invalid.
Best regards,
The Rev
"Legal formula?" Sorry, but after hundreds of years of jurisprudence fumbling the ball when it comes to justice, I'll have to insist we use scientific standards of proof rather than legal ones. And being an erswhile accountant, I must ask where you tallied 4 witnesses beginning with Genesis 5. If you mean 4 people in the Bible, that only counts as 1 author and 4 characters written about. If you are counting Egyptian and Sumerian texts, why is it that the Egyptian texts mention neither Moses nor the Exodus? Why to the Babylonian texts give an account of the Great Flood that is entirely contradictory to the Bible's version? Why does the Biblical flood parallel portions of the fictional Epic of Gilgemesh? Why do the earliest Chinese dynasties overly the proposed time period of Noah's Flood, without bothering to mention it, or even have styles of pottery disrupted? One doesn't even have verification of Israel's existence until the time of Saul and David, and that's only if one includes the Armani Letters, which don't parallel the Bible very closely in details. Your "witnesses" argue the contrary, even if one's willing to water one's truth standard down to mere legal formulae.
Take a look at the testaments of the 12 tribes of Israel (eg Testament of Levi, Testament of Reuben etc) written on the patriarchs' deathbeds (these are non Biblical sources). Then take a look at the chronology and dating in Genesis 11 and 30 (Biblical). There is 100% correspondence on dates. Then take a look at other sources of information (non Biblical) such as the Artapanus and Josephus accounts of Moses.
In the Leiden Museum in Holland is a papyrus describing the conditions that prevailed at the time of Moses. It reads, 'Nay, but the heart is violent. Plague stalks through the land and blood is everywhere … . Nay, but the river is blood. Does a man drink from it? As a human he rejects it. He thirsts for water … . Nay, but gates, columns and walls are consumed with fire … . Nay but men are few. He that lays his brother in the ground is everywhere … . Nay but the son of the high-born man is no longer to be recognized … . The stranger people from outside are come into Egypt … . Nay, but corn has perished everywhere. People are stripped of clothing, perfume and oil. Everyone says "there is no more". The storehouse is bare … . It has come to this. The king has been taken away by poor men.'
You can check these independent sources yourself, M'Lud.
You're kidding, right? I've read the Testaments of the Twelve Tribes. They are part of a two-part compendium of apocraphyl works published under the title of "The Lost Books of the Bible and the Forgotten Books of Eden." The works themselves stem from the 3rd century, and are obviously Christian. Josephus is at least a genuine 1st century Jewish author, but that makes him useless for verifying events that happened two millennia before he was born.
Now, I had not heard of the Ipuwer Papyrus before, so I found it interesting. River of blood, yes, that's Biblical. But the "king," that is, the Pharaoh, was not "taken away by poor men" according to scripture. I'm afraid this therefore doesn't count as a historical verification.
Honestly, you'd have an equally good case by citing the Book of Mormon as a historical source. I have nothing more to say to such ignorance.
Dear Mr Sagan Jr,
re your opinion that Chinese flood accounts do not exist, see the sub-article on China flood legends here:
http://echoesofeden.org/article.php?id=flood_legends
Christ taught that by Man came death, sin and suffering into the world.
Evolution teaches that by death, sin and suffering came Man into the world.
If Evolution is true then Christ was a liar. If Christ is true then Evolution is a liar.
Hence I'm not surprised at your denial of Christ or of the scriptural accounts of how Sin and Death came into the world through Man. Nor should you be surprised at my denial that there is any truth behind evolutionary theory.
And before we go accusing each other that our views are unscientific, we haven't scratched the surface on the evidence for creation versus evolution yet. If you believe there is evidence for evolution then let's examine it using scientific principles and I will do the same to defend the creation theory, again using scientific arguments and not dogma.
I am in fact a scientist myself with a top degree in Engineering. I'm not a Rev'd - that was just a nickname given to me by the motorcycle group I ride with.
Anyway, please explain to me how a vertically fossilized tree trunk can span 30 feet of three different layers of fossil bearing horizontal strata?
What conclusion do you draw from visiting this site, when the evolutionary dating method gives dates for the horizontal strata indicating that they were laid down at different times separated by over 10 million years?
Maybe your conclusion is that the tree trunk was inserted there by Christians 10 million years ago?
I always find it interesting when creationist engineers feel their physics and math skills somehow make them experts in biology or geology. Or theology, for that matter. Funny how that works.
You'd said:
"If Evolution is true then Christ was a liar. If Christ is true then Evolution is a liar."
That's flat-out wrong. If evolution is true, then certain scriptures are proven false, but that's a far cry from concluding that Jesus himself had lied. We have no empirical proof as to what Jesus said. All we have is the second-hand testimony of the gospels. It's far more rational to conclude that the gospel writers made mistakes, embellished the story, or outright made stuff up. The Bible is a blend of both truth and fiction.
"Hence I'm not surprised at your denial of Christ or of the scriptural accounts of how Sin and Death came into the world through Man."
I maintain that, if God exists, it is through science that one must find Him/Her/It. Therefore it is you who are denying God. Not I.
"Anyway, please explain to me how a vertically fossilized tree trunk can span 30 feet of three different layers of fossil bearing horizontal strata?"
Nothing in evolution precludes occasional rapid burial. Massive flooding is not discounted either. Scientists only say that the floods were non-global, however massive they were, and there were many thousands of them, not one big one. Nevertheless I challenge your claim of a 10 million year geochronology dating gap. Please cite your source.
Eric
Eric,
You asked, "Nevertheless I challenge your claim of a 10 million year geochronology dating gap. Please cite your source."
Well as you now know, I'm just a lowly engineer so I can only do physics and maths. The geochronological experts among us did the rest.
I cite your colleagues in the Wiki article here. I then extrapolated to provide an estimate for the tree trunk example. Here are my datum points:
From Wikipedia, the geochronology of the Grand Canyon:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_the_Grand_Canyon_area
"Bass Limestone (averages 1250 million years old) – Wave action eroded the land, creating a gravel that later lithified into a basal conglomerate. This formation is known as the Hotauta Member of the Bass. The Bass Limestone formation was deposited in a shallow sea near the coast as a mix of limestone, sandstone, and shale. It is 120 to 340 feet (37 to 100 m) thick and grayish in color. This is the oldest layer exposed in the Grand Canyon that contains fossil—stromatolites."
The next layer cited is "Hakatai Shale (averages 1200 million years old)"
So, I understand from the above that geochronologists state that over a period of 50 million years the base limestone layer was deposited in the Grand Canyon, approx 50 m thick. This gives a mean deposition rate of 1 million years per meter, do you agree?
The fossil tree trunk photograph shows a tree trunk approx 10 meters long embedded vertically through limestone and shale layers. Hence my guess (as a lowly engineer) is that a geochronologist might assign 10 million years to the deposition of the horizontal layers, at 1 million years per meter.
Anyway I don't necessarily assume all geochronologists follow the same logic from one minute to the next. So I'm very pleased to hear from you that rapid deposition of limestone and shale strata can occur.
Since we both agree that the current fossilized tree example proves say 10 meters of limestone and shale were laid down in a few days, can we also agree the possibility that 1000 meters of sediments and fossils can also be deposited in a period of less than a year?
Or, do I have to send you a picture showing a 1000 meter vertically fossilized tree trunk?
-----------------------
Anyway, let me ask you a question ... What is the probability that life began by random processes, versus the probability that life began by intelligent design?
The possibility of occurrence of life through random processes was proved as almost 0% by some very prominent mathematicians from MIT at the 1966 Wistar convention. (ref Paul Moorhead and Martin Kaplan, editors, "Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution").
The corolloray is that the pobability of life beginning by a process of intelligent design is almost 100%.
So, which of us is the scientist here?
Rob
Your estimate of the deposition of the limestone and shale layers of the Grand Canyon is essentially right. There's an amount of compression, these being the deepest layers, which might have flattened the rock somewhat, but not enough to cause a significant difference.
Now, I rafted and hiked the entirety of the 277 miles of the Grand Canyon with other members of the National Center For Science Education back in August of 2005. Nowhere did I see, or ever hear about, a fossilized tree, and if there were one, I'm sure it would be a nice tourist magnet. Different limestones and shales were deposited at different rates at different epochs of history, so it would be wrong to extrapolate your calculations onto a different part of the world. If your photo of the 10 m tree stump is the same one I'm thinking of, then it's nowhere near the Grand Canyon. It was found in Germany, and is in a coal seam rather than limestone or shale. So yes, I would like to see the photograph to make sure we're referencing the same thing. Please send the attachment to CarlSaganJr@aol.com. It would be easier to conduct our conversation via that address in future. Our communications can be much longer than on a blog post.
Regarding your reference to the calculations of the probability of life emerging, I'm sorry to say that your information is out of date. Back in 1966, all the factors involving the emergence of life were not known. In fact, they're STILL not. So, without all the factors (and as a mathematician you know this all too well) one cannot do a probability calculation. For myself, being a "retired" accountant, if there's one thing I cannot stand, it's funny math.
Since 1966, some beautiful new findings have emerged: Cyril Pompaneruma took the famous Miller-Urey experiment to new levels, producing all the building blocks and amino acids necessary for life, many of which self-organized. Sydney Fox discovered that the products of these naturally occurring molecules can form protenoid microspheres, which act like proto-bacteria. When these microspheres join together, as they often do, they act like a miniature mitochondria. I wonder what Moorhead and Kaplan would have said regarding this?
Now, let's talk scripture. Compare the genealogies leading up to Jesus in Matthew Ch. 1 vs. Luke Ch. 3. They're entirely different (and no, Luke's version isn't Mary's line, because the text clearly doesn't say "son-in-law"). Also, compare Mark Ch. 5, 1-8 with Luke 8:26-39 and Matthew 8:28-29. Mark and Luke say that one demon possessed man was cured, but Matthew state that there were two. Which is it? In Matthew 27:5, Judas throws the money for Jesus betrayal away, goes off and hangs himself. The priests then use the money to buy a field. But in Acts 1:18, Judas keeps the money, buys the field with it, and then fell and all his intestines burst out. Even if the hanging and falling asunder were the same event, who took the money and bought the field with it? Judas or the priests?
Given these contradictions in scripture, and many others, is it not reasonable to conclude that a literalistic interpretation of the Bible, and in particular, Genesis, is based on a false premise?
Eric
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