At 07:23 PM 9/12/98 -0400, Howard J. Van Till wrote:
>Very interesting post re the similarities of YEC and Petersonmania.
Thanks.
>In a nutshell, 'folk science' is a set of beliefs about the natural world
>(whatever the source of those beliefs--whether some canonical text,
>professional science, amateur observation, or self-published books best
>suited for the psychoceramic file, etc) whose primary function is to
>provide their holder with *reassurance* that another set of beliefs about
>reality (basic beliefs already in place) can be retained at the desired
>level of certainty.
I would submit that there are shades of this 'folk science' which broad
reaches of Christianity engage in. I am keying off of your last sentence
about some canonical text 'whose primary function is to provide their
holder with *reassurance* that another set of beliefs about reality can be
retained at the desired level of certainty.'
First,off ALL Christians have to hold to a canonical text, i.e. the Bible,
to provide us with reassurance about ultimate reality. That IS the basis
of our belief system, the sine qua non of Christianity today. (Before one
says that the Resurrection not the Bible is the sine qua non of
Christianity, it is, but we learn of it from the Bible. Today, we have to
depend upon the cannonical text to tell us about the resurrection itself
which is the keystone of Christianity).
I will show that every formulation of the origins issue demands some of this.
YECS
But when it comes to origins issues, the question then becomes how much of
this canonical text we believe and that is where the different shades of
solution take their shape. The YEC use the canonical text to assure them
that their view of reality is true. They read the canonical text to relate
the following Biblical doctrines:
7 - 24 hr days
special/miraculous creation of animals
special/miraculous creation of man
nearly complete genealogies--thus a young-earth
global flood
But in accepting these doctrines they must reject the following sciences
)with examples):
biology--There is no evolution, no genetic relationships. Similarity MUST
mean design or special creation both of animals and men is wrong.
astronomy--distances to galaxies a fraud. If they weren't wrong, then the
universe is old.
geology--utter rejection of uniformitarianism and all geologic observation
that demonstrates that there was no global flood.
physics--rates of radioactive decay and/or speed of light different in the
past. If they weren't different, then the age of the earth must be old.
paleontology--no transitional forms, no explanation for the lack of modern
forms as fossils. This data disproves the global flood and it shows that
all living forms were different in the early rocks.
anthropology--fossil man is not evidence of evolution. The are ambivalent
about whether fossil men are apes or men destroyed by the global flood.
They seem to vary depending upon the point they are making. But they can't
explain within the global flood concept why man appears so late in the
geologic column.
They follow the Petersonian example of ignoring all the overwhelming data
which argues against their interpretation.
PROGRESSIVE CREATIONISTS
But the Progressive Creationists do the very same thing. They use the
canonical text to hold to their view of reality. The PC's believe that the
Bible teaches the following doctrines:
7- long ages during which animals were miraculously created.
special creation of animals
special creation of men
local flood
genealogies 'stretchable' to between 60 and 100 thousand years, thus an old
earth.
But in accepting this as the canon, the PCs reject areas of science they
don't like. They reject areas of:
biology--There is no evolution, no genetic relationships. Similarity MUST
mean design or special creation both of animals and men is wrong.
paleontology--there are no transitional forms. It ignores the fact that
there is a morphological gradational series between H. erectus and H.
sapiens which has taken place over the past million years. They also reject
the observational paleontological data that proves that the order of events
in those 7 days is NOTHING like the order found in the rocks. Some, like
Hugh Ross, try to say that the sun didn't shine on the earth's surface
until the Devonian period approximately. This ignores stromatolites made
in the Precambrian or Banded iron formations which are believed to be
varves deposited by microbial photosynthetic activity.
anthropology--fossil man is not evidence of evolution. They insist that
mankind was created less than 100 kyr ago and thus ignore the abundant data
for human-like activity prior to that time and ignore the data for
religious activity.
geology--Since most of them place the local flood in the Mesopotamian
valley, they reject the data of geology which shows clearly that no LARGE
scale flooding of that valley, sufficient to wipe out everyone in the
valley, took place during the Holocene.
archaeology--rejects the observation that there was NO interruption of
Mesopotamian civilization between 10,000 years BP and the present.
Thus the PCs use the canonical text for assurrance that their view of
reality--i.e. no evolution, is true and they reject whatever observation
disagrees with that view.
THEISTIC EVOLUTIONISTS.
Theistic evolutionists believe:
Local Flood
special creation of man and animal only in a restricted sense (long
temporal planning)
In general the theistic evolutionists don't reject observational data
depending upon what they do with the local flood. But the problem they
have is that pure theistic evolution in which God works in the background,
is observationally identical to Naturalistic evolution. In some sense it
IS the ultimate God of the Gaps explanation because it places God into a
gap where He can't be observed. Why does the theistic evolutionist hold
that there is a God back there? Because he is relying on a canonical text
for his documentation that God exists. But ultimately, moving God to the
plane of the unobservable ends up making the theistic evolutionist ignore
BIBLICAL data much more than observational/scientific data.
As a theistic evolutionist, I am troubled by this aspect of my own views.
This is why I have made the formulation of the origins issue as I have. I
want to move at least as many of God's actions into the realm of the
observable. God acted in THIS universe and His actions had effects. But
unfortunately much of the data surrounding the actual origin of life, the
origin of man etc is not subject to direct observation. This leaves the
Flood as the best place and earliest Scriptural event in which we can find
or not find, observable events consistent with the Bible. Without such a
formulation, one is left with the following Biblical problems.
7 days means very little, indeed it seems to mean whatever one wants it to
mean even if it doesn't match paleontology or God's actions.
special/miraculous creation of animals is a God of the Gaps solution. God's
actions are indistinguishable from atheistic evolution. It is this that
rightly troubles Phil Johnson and his minions.
special/miraculous creation of man is a God of the Gaps action i.e., God
inserts the invisible, unobservable soul into man. But the lack of direct,
special divine activity in the creation of man implies that man is not much
more special than the rocks that were also created by the same forward
planning that created man. Don't get me wrong, I do believe that God did
institute the universe by means of planning and that evolution's course was
largely along that line, but at some point we either believe that God can
and does intervene in the world to create us or that the story which says
He did isn't true. There can be some ignoring of the anthropological data
depending upon when the individual TE decides to have God insert the soul.
Of the genealogies, the theistic evolutionist must view them as very
incomplete if not totally fanciful. I prefer incomplete as that doesn't
raise the question as to their truthfulness.
local flood--Since most theistic evolutionists also place the flood in
Mesopotamia they reject the geological observation that no such flood
occurred.
Now that I have picked on everyone else for engaging in folk science, I
will freely acknowledge that my formulation of theistic evolution is
designed to uphold as much observational data as I can, but I developed it
because I hold to a canonical text and desire that the description of
reality given by that canonical text is true. And what science do I
ignore? My view ignores the data suggesting that there has been no
population bottleneck for the past 30 million years (and indeed, some work
suggests no population bottleneck for 65 million years):
"The coalescence theory of population genetics leads to the conclusion that
the DRB1 polymophism requires that the population ancestral to modern
humans has maintained a mean effective size of 100,000 individuals over the
30-million-year persistence of this polymorphism. We explore the
possibility of occasional population bottlenecks and conclude that the
ancestral population could not have at any time consisted of fewer than
several thousand individuals. The MHC polymorphisms excluded the theory
claiming, on the basis of mitochondrial DNA polymorphisms, that a
constriction down to one or few women occurred in Africa, at the transition
from archaic to anatomically modern humans, some 200,000 years ago." ~
Francisco J. Ayala, Ananias Escalante, Colm O'hUigin and Jan Klein,
"Molecular Genetics of Speciation and Human Origins," Proc. Natl. Acad.
Sci, USA, 91:pp6787-6794, July 1994, p. 6787.
Belief in a literal Adam and Eve requires a population bottleneck and the
evidence seems to go against it.
So in conclusion, all Christians, including me, engage in some form of
'folk science'. How much is too much? And if one engages in any of it, do
they have a right criticize others who engage in a larger portion of 'folk
science'?
glenn
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
Foundation, Fall and Flood
& lots of creation/evolution information
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm