In a Guardian CIF article, Denis Alexander, as part of his hopeless quest to synthesise Darwinism with the Bible, asks the question, why did Jesus die? Good question; but he does not answer it in a coherent way. He gives no more of an answer than he did when he published "Creation or Evolution - Do we have to choose?".
Read it yourself and see if you can figure out the answer. Alexander himself during the article asserts that the Bible nowhere teaches that physical death is the penalty of sin (Alexander holds that death was always man's intended lot, a necessary part of the evolutionary process); yet also on the other hand asserts that Jesus died on the cross to pay the price for our sins.
Each time I come across something new from Dr. Alexander, I try to hunt for his explanation of how these two assertions harmonise. I'm not the only reviewer who's raised this issue and tried to get an answer; I'm not aware of anyone who's succeeded yet. Death is not the penalty for sin; Jesus experienced death as the penalty for our sins. I've read this latest one through three times, trying to spot the clue. I don't think there is one.
There's quite a few other give-aways about Dr. Alexander's departure from orthodoxy in the article; I've just chosen to highlight this big one in this blog.
Showing posts with label Denis Alexander. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Denis Alexander. Show all posts
Wednesday, 28 December 2011
Saturday, 15 October 2011
Genetics and a historical Adam and Eve
Several Christian supporters of Darwinism, e.g. Denis Alexander, state with great confidence that genetics proves Darwinism. Others go further and state that it rules out any kind of historic Adam and Eve (even the kind that Alexander prefers, which isn't itself compatible with the teachings of Scripture). Usually - and this is said especially for Christians trying to address other Christians - this is stated without any examination of contrary evidence. Many Christian Darwinists seem to have adopted the campaigning tactics of the new atheists: state your conclusions with great confidence and bombast, skip the critical step of careful and responsible presentation of counter-arguments, and simply employ scoffing and scorn to dismiss any objection. Do this in the name of science, and claim that nobody sane disagrees with you. This approach intimidates many people into piping down or following suit (lest they become objects of scorn too), but this is not the way that servants of truth should behave.
Here is one good article giving some of the other side of the case: The Non-Mythical Adam and Eve! - Refuting errors by Francis Collins and BioLogos.
Here is one good article giving some of the other side of the case: The Non-Mythical Adam and Eve! - Refuting errors by Francis Collins and BioLogos.
Wednesday, 15 September 2010
What theistic evolutionists believe
What do those who believe we can combine the Bible and Darwinism believe?
That "the Bible and Darwinism are consistent" is easy to say. But what happens when you try to work that idea out systematically, and answer the difficult questions? When you have to make hard choices over apparently conflicting ideas, what will give?
I took a look at that issue in the case of UK-based Denis Alexander and his recent writings.
Now Creation Ministries International have done the same with US-based "BioLogos", whom Alexander also works with.
What do they believe? In short, that when it comes to the interpretation of the Scriptures, Jesus and his apostles could have done with BioLogos being around to help them...
That "the Bible and Darwinism are consistent" is easy to say. But what happens when you try to work that idea out systematically, and answer the difficult questions? When you have to make hard choices over apparently conflicting ideas, what will give?
I took a look at that issue in the case of UK-based Denis Alexander and his recent writings.
Now Creation Ministries International have done the same with US-based "BioLogos", whom Alexander also works with.
What do they believe? In short, that when it comes to the interpretation of the Scriptures, Jesus and his apostles could have done with BioLogos being around to help them...
Monday, 4 January 2010
Throwing down the gauntlet to Dr. Denis Alexander
Regular readers will know that in the last year and a bit I've written a full-length response to Dr. Denis Alexander's insistence that evangelicals must make their peace with Darwinism. That response, tidied-up is itself now available as a book. I also contributed a chapter to the (IMO, devastating) IVP-published response, Should Christians Embrace Evolution?
Well, today I received something on the latter an editor at IVP. Dr. Alexander has finished reading it, and wants to contact the authors. He says that he does not have the inclination or the time to respond to the book as such, but just wants to alert us of a few factual points for correction. Hence he wanted to know our e-mail addresses.
Dr. Alexander has a pattern of avoiding meaningful interaction with people who disagree with him, so I didn't want to let this pass. Here's the reply I e-mailed to him and the other IVP authors, and I await his response. I've cut the quote referred to in the first paragraph as that was Dr. Alexander's own e-mail and I haven't asked him permission to publish it. (It's my own response; not all the authors are young-earth creationists as I am).
Well, today I received something on the latter an editor at IVP. Dr. Alexander has finished reading it, and wants to contact the authors. He says that he does not have the inclination or the time to respond to the book as such, but just wants to alert us of a few factual points for correction. Hence he wanted to know our e-mail addresses.
Dr. Alexander has a pattern of avoiding meaningful interaction with people who disagree with him, so I didn't want to let this pass. Here's the reply I e-mailed to him and the other IVP authors, and I await his response. I've cut the quote referred to in the first paragraph as that was Dr. Alexander's own e-mail and I haven't asked him permission to publish it. (It's my own response; not all the authors are young-earth creationists as I am).
Hi Dr. Alexander,
I'm glad you've read the book and want to talk about it. For my part (this is referring to what's quoted below), I would much rather you would find both the time and the inclination to make a response on the substance of it and not just have a little side-discussion about a few points here and there. I read your book and noted that the interaction with genuine present-day creationists and their writings was basically zero - it was all "some Christians believe" but these "some Christians" normally only had a limited likeness to the positions of actual mainstream Darwin nay-sayers. (Henry Morris got a couple of footnotes: living representatives of creationism as it existed in 2008 got none). Yet at the end of the book there was a stinging criticism of creationists as time-wasters who don't spend enough time dealing with the real problems in the world. The impression was that in your book you had actually refuted year-2008 creationism and not a "some Christians say", "Here's what I've heard some folk say as I've been on my travels" folk-creationism caricature. You can't have your cake and eat it - either interact with us and then say you've done so, or don't interact and then don't claim afterwards that you did.
You've had time in 2009 to do a tremendously large amount of pro-Darwin activity, so I find it hard to stomach the idea that you don't have time to interact in a deep way with the main response to your position that's on the table. If we're going to have this discussion, let's have it properly or not at all. You've written that you're concerned science should be done properly - well, let's do theology (what my chapter was about) properly too. Let's not just quibble about minors around the edge. If your concern is that a private discussion wouldn't be as effective as all the public activity that's keeping you busy then that's fine - let's have it in public. I think my position stands up to maximum robust public scrutiny and am sure you feel the same about yours. So what have you got to lose by taking the time to do it properly? I have a
blog and your institute has a website - anything you write to me or in the other direction I'd suggest the other person gets full rights to publish (in full, unedited) on our own websites. Then perhaps that'll sidestep your concern, if that is what you're thinking. Over to you!
(Obviously I'm just speaking for myself here, not any of the other authors).
God bless,
David
Monday, 4 May 2009
New Published Review
If you've been here before you'll know that I've extensively reviewed Dr. Denis Alexander's recent work in favour of theistic evolution, "Creation or Evolution - Do We Have To Choose?" (Monarch Books, 2008). The following is previously unpublished work - a mid-length review, peer-reviewed and now available in the print publication "Journal of Creation" published by Creation Ministries International, or online on their website here: http://www.creation.com/article/6556.
This is the review to read and recommend if you want something mid-sized. There is one particular two-line section which was added in the editorial process which I was not happy with, which has made it into the final review - I'm not sure if by oversight or because my objection was over-ruled.
This is the review to read and recommend if you want something mid-sized. There is one particular two-line section which was added in the editorial process which I was not happy with, which has made it into the final review - I'm not sure if by oversight or because my objection was over-ruled.
Saturday, 25 April 2009
Creation or Evolution - Do We Have To Choose? - Chapter 4
When I reviewed Dr. Denis Alexander's book, "Creation or Evolution - Do We Have To Choose?", I somehow omitted to write-up my thoughts on chapter 4. Here it is! The online, Word and PDF editions are also updated.
* * *
Chapter 4 - What Do We Mean By Evolution? Natural Selection And Reproductive Success
In this middle chapter seeking to explain the theory of evolution, Dr. Alexander seeks to explain the heart of modern Darwinian theory. Having discussed a little about the dating and genetics, we now get to the key idea: the combination of the continuous production of diversity, filtered by natural selection, to produce the useful improvements necessary to fill all the ecological niches of life.
Alexander explains the concept well. Three known processes (not just mutations, but also sexual reproduction and gene flow) produce variety. This variety is then put through the reality test. Those that are beneficial (in the sense of leading to longer life (and hence more time to produce offspring) or some other reproductive advantage) "survive" by being passed on to successive generations; the others are weeded out. The picture we're meant to have is well-described by Richard Dawkins as the "blind watchmaker" - there's an ever-rolling conveyer belt of possible modifications, and at the end the no-good ones are dumped in history's bin. The good ones survive, and thus the process is pretty much guaranteed to produce continual development.
Nice Story, But...
Now, though, we have to apply our own set of "reality filters" to this idea. The first thing to flag up is that creationism has no quarrel with the idea of "descent with modification". It's a truism that nobody is a clone of either parent. There's nothing innate in creationism that is against the idea even of one generation being better adapted to its surroundings than the one before. It's perfectly possible, as a concept, to believe that the Creator endowed his creatures with capabilities latent in their genes, that should only be activated or come to observable expression at a distant generation. In fact, creationists pretty much must believe this. If only a very limited number of animals survived the Biblical flood, then it has then to be believed that those animals had, within their gene-pool, sufficient potential to fill the earth again with all of its present variety.
Modification with descent, then, is not controversial. The big question is whether the modifications actually possible through this mechanism have limits or not. Put more simply - must a modified fish remain a fish, or can it eventually modify all the way to becoming a goat, as Darwinism teaches? Are the possibilities for change bounded, or unbounded? Strictly that's question that Dr. Alexander turns to in chapter 5. It's also to the point here, though, because in fact two of the mechanisms for generating variety that he describes do nothing of the kind - as concerns the kind of variety relevant to his purposes.
The Fifteen Of Squares
On page 80, Dr. Alexander complains that evolution is sometimes erroneously represented as only involving one process - genetic mutations - that creates novelty. Indeed it is so represented, by friend and foe alike - because that's the way it is. In sexual reproduction, there's a recombining of the genes of the parents - but recombination is not the generation of novelty. When a hand of cards is returned to the dealer, he shuffles and recombines them in interesting new ways, introducing a new game. But whatever happens in that game, it's still the same 52 cards, and you'll never turn over your hand to discover you've received the fifteen of squares, or that it's actually going to be a game of "Snakes and Ladders". Recombination shuffles what's there - it doesn't create genuine novelty. Alexander makes the point I've made above - that there can be apparent novelty, because the recombination could bring genes to express themselves in ways that they hadn't been able to in the old combination. That, though, is irrelevant to the point. The novelty gets expressed for the first time here - but it was generated previously. A mechanism that expresses already-existing potential is not a mechanism that makes potential: we have to go elsewhere to find that: which leaves us with two.
Gene flow is the same story. The duplicating, rearranging, inserting, etcetera, of information is a distinct concept from the generation of novel information. The question that the Darwinist cannot answer (because Darwinism is wrong) is "where does the information actually come from?" There is no problem for a creationist in believing in not just three, but three hundred million, if necessary, biological mechanisms for the shuffling of information. If you took a print-out of this review to the local copy shop, you might find that their machine has double-printed a page, or added a blank page, or output the pages in the wrong order. What you'd be a bit shocked to find would be that page 42 was now a report on the Boston Marathon, or the second act of Hamlet.
Dr. Alexander glosses over that critical distinction, and it's a weakness that surfaces several times in the book. The genetic code is a code, and as such can be analysed by the mathematical tools used to analyse codes. It is information, and as such falls within the boundaries of information theory. Throughout the book, Alexander either pretends that information theory doesn't exist, or when he addresses it tries to argue that it shouldn't be allowed to apply to biology, or that a special version should be allowed for dealing with biology. In this chapter he takes the "behave as if it isn't there" approach, and these issues are glossed over. From that angle, these parts of the chapter are simply an instance of the equivocation fallacy. There's no real distinction between the concepts of directionless change, change within a limit, and unlimited change. I can run round in a circle: it's change, but not getting me anywhere. I can train to run faster and faster - but never so fast that I run 100m in 3 seconds, or a marathon in a minute: the change has limits.
Can We Mutate Our Way There?
Mutations, then, are the only potential source of real improvement into the genome, with other mechanisms later perhaps allowing the changes it brings to actually be expressed. Can they do the job? Alexander of course thinks they can; there's no actual mathematics in the chapter or references to it to establish the point. Again that's related to the Achilles heel - no application of information theory. If an organism has been adapted down the years (or rather, its ancestors were selected down the years) for survival, then that makes it a finely-tuned organism. It's a good match for its environment (or strictly, its parents were for theirs). What, then, is the likely effect of a random alteration to its genetic code? What are the statistics? Information theory teaches that random alterations to a finely-tuned code cannot improve it, with any likelihood that could be considered within the realms of possibility even given billions of years of attempts. The sums simply don't add up. We all know intuitively this by experience. Printing errors when running-off essays do not produce new and brilliant analyses of the topic that the author never intended. Scratches on installer CDs for a computer program don't result in brilliant new features in the code. Dropping your cheap Chinese mobile in the washing up bowl won't make it behave like a top-of-the-range Nokia. Finely tuned codes, when altered, can never produce something useful, within the limits of reasonable mathematical possibility unless the possible age of the universe is stretched by obscenely large numbers which nobody (of whatever persuasion) has ever suggested. Monkeys on type-writers won't ever produce the works of Shakespeare; it can't be done. Dr. Alexander passes over all such questions, because his take is that Darwinism is true and therefore the mathematics must work out somehow. But if your favoured theory results in two plus two equalling seventeen thousand and twenty three, you're theory is false and that fact can't be changed: the laws of mathematics don't work like that. The problem for Darwinism is that it's caught between pincers. There must be a certain average number of mutations being produced from one generation to the next. That number has to be enormously high in order to generate, amongst all the randomness, all the useful changes to take us from single-cells to man in the small number of years available for it (a billion is not a big number in the context of the complexity of the human genome). But, if the number is not very very small, then the number of dangerous mutations would mean the organism would have no hope of survival. It's an unsolvable problem. Too few mutations means that not enough of the magicly-right ones to generate the new complexity could come about. But if enough good mutations do take place in an organism, then because of the facts regarding tuned information, enough bad mutations will also have happened to be fatal.
It's telling that all Alexander's examples in the chapter are of the kind that creationists refute before breakfast. They're all of the "change within limits" kind. There are no genuine examples of true novelty in the sense of new useful capabilities through the addition of new information. There are moths of this colour or that colour, or bacteria resistant to this drug or not resistant to this drug. There are sub-sections of the population that die of malaria and some that don't because of sickle-cell anaemia. But nowhere are there fish that become reptiles, or dinosaurs that become birds. He does a good job of illustrating all the kinds of "evolution" that are not controversial - and has nothing to illustrate the kinds that are. In a book positively comparing full-blown evolution with creationism, it's a telling omission: after so many years of creationists making this criticism, if there were good answers and examples we'd have heard them by now.
More Than Genes?
Another issue that Dr. Alexander glosses over, both here and in the rest of the book, is the theological implications of this scheme. Darwinism implies that every human ability is the result of survival advantage. Whatever you possess, coded somehow in your genes, must have survived because, well, it was helpful for survival. It was a help to your ancestors to mate more, and/or have healthier offspring. That's what the filter of natural selection is. This precise observation is often glossed over by all kinds of Darwinists, not just those with a theistic evolutionary axe to grind. It's not just that feature X is supposed to be somehow useful - it's got to be specifically useful for surviving.
Is that really true? No - it's a flat denial of the Bible's doctrine of man, as made in the image of God. The image of God, with all its attendant potentialities, is not simply something that arises through the struggle for limited resources. According to Scripture, it's a special endowment from God, given for us to use to glorify him. Art, music, culture - all these things are wonderful gifts. The Darwinist viewpoint, though, is that somehow they had some usefulness in our caveman past and allowed one Og to out-club Ug and so pass on his genes. Darwin himself, in his book The Descent Of Man, goes through case after case of human faculties, to try to make plausible some kind of explanation in this region. If you allow that, though, you have fundamentally denied the doctrine of man in the Bible, and the reasons assigned there for his uniqueness. The genius of the chess grandmaster, the budding Mozart infant prodigy, the literary genius of the expert novel writer - these are not features that arose from the earth : they were handed down from heaven.
The Blind Watchmaker
It's a bit of a jolt on page 86, to read Dr. Alexander speak of this unending upwards development through natural selection having taken place "under the sovereignty of God". Cells-to-cellists evolution, as just described, is a blind algorithm. Supposing we could make the sums ad up and it were a possible, it's then inevitable. Given the unending production line of genetic change, and the continual selection of the useful changes, and given the earth environment, it's then inevitable that every ecological niche will be filled. That's what the algorithm does. That's Professor Dawkins point when he speaks of the "blind watchmaker". It doesn't need providential oversight - it's an algorithm and it does what it does. If it needed sovereign oversight, then it would be something else. Darwinism is a deistic scheme - the results are programmed by the initial conditions. Note that Darwin himself was a deist - a point rather lost on Dr. Alexander when (elsewhere in the book) he argues that Darwinism has no theological implications. The only other use of Scripture in the chapter is a rather bizarre use of the parable of the sower (Matthew 13) as an example of natural selection.
A Hostile World
Another major theological problem here is spotted when you look more closely at what's embedded in the idea of natural selection. It assumes the idea of a hostile environment. For there to be progress (in the evolutionary sense), the less-well-fitted organisms have to die out. Just because one offspring has in some way better able to reproduce is in itself not particularly significant - if his other brothers and sisters can reproduce too, then all of their genes will be passed on, not just the favoured one's. The reason why his genes survive, in the Darwinian scenario, while theirs don't, is because of necessary competition. Resources are scarce; nature is red in tooth and claw; it's a dog-eat-dog world, and only the fit will survive. The world has to be hostile for Darwinistic development scenarios to play out. If it's not, then all the genes survive, and there's no significant development. There's just endless shuffling, as a dog gains better genes and then loses them because he didn't need them: his neighbour didn't need to eat him.
That's a scenario that sits OK with the budding atheist - and it's realising the implications of that that played a part in paving the way for the horrific atheist regimes of the 20th century. (The introduction of competition brought evolution back in a meaningful way in Stalin's Russia and Hitler's Germany - where previously charity and compassion had been allowing the unfit to survive.) It's not a scenario, though, that can fit with a Biblical view of creation. Even if, like Alexander, you take the line that Genesis is totally theological and a-historical, yet you've got to then deal with the actual theology that's there. At a minimum, the world was a "very good" place, designed for man to live in a blissful paradise, without suffering, pain or death (these coming from sin). In Genesis, man's not in a dreadful battle for survival, a fierce competition to get the food and the girl before his brother does. Man lives in wonderful harmony with creation which is fruitful for his sake - because all is at peace under God's loving care. This isn't a question Alexander begins to face until much later in the book - and the aspect that the idea of development through natural selection inherently requires a hostile world is one he never addresses at all.
The Best Inference?
At the end of the chapter, Alexander makes an apposite statement that he never realises the implications of or gets round to applying. It is that the business of science is to make an inference to the most plausible explanation. Yes. But, how can an explanation be known as the most plausible one unless there's another theory that is shown to be less plausible? Throughout the book, Darwinism is simply described and asserted. How, though, would a creationist deal with the issues of this chapter? What does he say about natural selection and genetics? How does his interpretation of the data differ with the evolutionist one? What are his objections, and how would Alexander deal with them? Dunno. Alexander's aim is to persuade his reader there's only one game in town. If you think you hear the noise of another one over the other side, he'll simply shout louder about his one. It's only persuasive until you start to tune out the shouting and be a little more critical. Dr. Alexander is a good describer. He describes the Darwinian theory well. But he doesn't bother to allow real-life creationists to put their case, and answer their writings; he simply behaves as if they don't exist. "The first to present his case seems right, till another comes forward and questions him" - Proverbs 18:17.
* * *
Chapter 4 - What Do We Mean By Evolution? Natural Selection And Reproductive Success
In this middle chapter seeking to explain the theory of evolution, Dr. Alexander seeks to explain the heart of modern Darwinian theory. Having discussed a little about the dating and genetics, we now get to the key idea: the combination of the continuous production of diversity, filtered by natural selection, to produce the useful improvements necessary to fill all the ecological niches of life.
Alexander explains the concept well. Three known processes (not just mutations, but also sexual reproduction and gene flow) produce variety. This variety is then put through the reality test. Those that are beneficial (in the sense of leading to longer life (and hence more time to produce offspring) or some other reproductive advantage) "survive" by being passed on to successive generations; the others are weeded out. The picture we're meant to have is well-described by Richard Dawkins as the "blind watchmaker" - there's an ever-rolling conveyer belt of possible modifications, and at the end the no-good ones are dumped in history's bin. The good ones survive, and thus the process is pretty much guaranteed to produce continual development.
Nice Story, But...
Now, though, we have to apply our own set of "reality filters" to this idea. The first thing to flag up is that creationism has no quarrel with the idea of "descent with modification". It's a truism that nobody is a clone of either parent. There's nothing innate in creationism that is against the idea even of one generation being better adapted to its surroundings than the one before. It's perfectly possible, as a concept, to believe that the Creator endowed his creatures with capabilities latent in their genes, that should only be activated or come to observable expression at a distant generation. In fact, creationists pretty much must believe this. If only a very limited number of animals survived the Biblical flood, then it has then to be believed that those animals had, within their gene-pool, sufficient potential to fill the earth again with all of its present variety.
Modification with descent, then, is not controversial. The big question is whether the modifications actually possible through this mechanism have limits or not. Put more simply - must a modified fish remain a fish, or can it eventually modify all the way to becoming a goat, as Darwinism teaches? Are the possibilities for change bounded, or unbounded? Strictly that's question that Dr. Alexander turns to in chapter 5. It's also to the point here, though, because in fact two of the mechanisms for generating variety that he describes do nothing of the kind - as concerns the kind of variety relevant to his purposes.
The Fifteen Of Squares
On page 80, Dr. Alexander complains that evolution is sometimes erroneously represented as only involving one process - genetic mutations - that creates novelty. Indeed it is so represented, by friend and foe alike - because that's the way it is. In sexual reproduction, there's a recombining of the genes of the parents - but recombination is not the generation of novelty. When a hand of cards is returned to the dealer, he shuffles and recombines them in interesting new ways, introducing a new game. But whatever happens in that game, it's still the same 52 cards, and you'll never turn over your hand to discover you've received the fifteen of squares, or that it's actually going to be a game of "Snakes and Ladders". Recombination shuffles what's there - it doesn't create genuine novelty. Alexander makes the point I've made above - that there can be apparent novelty, because the recombination could bring genes to express themselves in ways that they hadn't been able to in the old combination. That, though, is irrelevant to the point. The novelty gets expressed for the first time here - but it was generated previously. A mechanism that expresses already-existing potential is not a mechanism that makes potential: we have to go elsewhere to find that: which leaves us with two.
Gene flow is the same story. The duplicating, rearranging, inserting, etcetera, of information is a distinct concept from the generation of novel information. The question that the Darwinist cannot answer (because Darwinism is wrong) is "where does the information actually come from?" There is no problem for a creationist in believing in not just three, but three hundred million, if necessary, biological mechanisms for the shuffling of information. If you took a print-out of this review to the local copy shop, you might find that their machine has double-printed a page, or added a blank page, or output the pages in the wrong order. What you'd be a bit shocked to find would be that page 42 was now a report on the Boston Marathon, or the second act of Hamlet.
Dr. Alexander glosses over that critical distinction, and it's a weakness that surfaces several times in the book. The genetic code is a code, and as such can be analysed by the mathematical tools used to analyse codes. It is information, and as such falls within the boundaries of information theory. Throughout the book, Alexander either pretends that information theory doesn't exist, or when he addresses it tries to argue that it shouldn't be allowed to apply to biology, or that a special version should be allowed for dealing with biology. In this chapter he takes the "behave as if it isn't there" approach, and these issues are glossed over. From that angle, these parts of the chapter are simply an instance of the equivocation fallacy. There's no real distinction between the concepts of directionless change, change within a limit, and unlimited change. I can run round in a circle: it's change, but not getting me anywhere. I can train to run faster and faster - but never so fast that I run 100m in 3 seconds, or a marathon in a minute: the change has limits.
Can We Mutate Our Way There?
Mutations, then, are the only potential source of real improvement into the genome, with other mechanisms later perhaps allowing the changes it brings to actually be expressed. Can they do the job? Alexander of course thinks they can; there's no actual mathematics in the chapter or references to it to establish the point. Again that's related to the Achilles heel - no application of information theory. If an organism has been adapted down the years (or rather, its ancestors were selected down the years) for survival, then that makes it a finely-tuned organism. It's a good match for its environment (or strictly, its parents were for theirs). What, then, is the likely effect of a random alteration to its genetic code? What are the statistics? Information theory teaches that random alterations to a finely-tuned code cannot improve it, with any likelihood that could be considered within the realms of possibility even given billions of years of attempts. The sums simply don't add up. We all know intuitively this by experience. Printing errors when running-off essays do not produce new and brilliant analyses of the topic that the author never intended. Scratches on installer CDs for a computer program don't result in brilliant new features in the code. Dropping your cheap Chinese mobile in the washing up bowl won't make it behave like a top-of-the-range Nokia. Finely tuned codes, when altered, can never produce something useful, within the limits of reasonable mathematical possibility unless the possible age of the universe is stretched by obscenely large numbers which nobody (of whatever persuasion) has ever suggested. Monkeys on type-writers won't ever produce the works of Shakespeare; it can't be done. Dr. Alexander passes over all such questions, because his take is that Darwinism is true and therefore the mathematics must work out somehow. But if your favoured theory results in two plus two equalling seventeen thousand and twenty three, you're theory is false and that fact can't be changed: the laws of mathematics don't work like that. The problem for Darwinism is that it's caught between pincers. There must be a certain average number of mutations being produced from one generation to the next. That number has to be enormously high in order to generate, amongst all the randomness, all the useful changes to take us from single-cells to man in the small number of years available for it (a billion is not a big number in the context of the complexity of the human genome). But, if the number is not very very small, then the number of dangerous mutations would mean the organism would have no hope of survival. It's an unsolvable problem. Too few mutations means that not enough of the magicly-right ones to generate the new complexity could come about. But if enough good mutations do take place in an organism, then because of the facts regarding tuned information, enough bad mutations will also have happened to be fatal.
It's telling that all Alexander's examples in the chapter are of the kind that creationists refute before breakfast. They're all of the "change within limits" kind. There are no genuine examples of true novelty in the sense of new useful capabilities through the addition of new information. There are moths of this colour or that colour, or bacteria resistant to this drug or not resistant to this drug. There are sub-sections of the population that die of malaria and some that don't because of sickle-cell anaemia. But nowhere are there fish that become reptiles, or dinosaurs that become birds. He does a good job of illustrating all the kinds of "evolution" that are not controversial - and has nothing to illustrate the kinds that are. In a book positively comparing full-blown evolution with creationism, it's a telling omission: after so many years of creationists making this criticism, if there were good answers and examples we'd have heard them by now.
More Than Genes?
Another issue that Dr. Alexander glosses over, both here and in the rest of the book, is the theological implications of this scheme. Darwinism implies that every human ability is the result of survival advantage. Whatever you possess, coded somehow in your genes, must have survived because, well, it was helpful for survival. It was a help to your ancestors to mate more, and/or have healthier offspring. That's what the filter of natural selection is. This precise observation is often glossed over by all kinds of Darwinists, not just those with a theistic evolutionary axe to grind. It's not just that feature X is supposed to be somehow useful - it's got to be specifically useful for surviving.
Is that really true? No - it's a flat denial of the Bible's doctrine of man, as made in the image of God. The image of God, with all its attendant potentialities, is not simply something that arises through the struggle for limited resources. According to Scripture, it's a special endowment from God, given for us to use to glorify him. Art, music, culture - all these things are wonderful gifts. The Darwinist viewpoint, though, is that somehow they had some usefulness in our caveman past and allowed one Og to out-club Ug and so pass on his genes. Darwin himself, in his book The Descent Of Man, goes through case after case of human faculties, to try to make plausible some kind of explanation in this region. If you allow that, though, you have fundamentally denied the doctrine of man in the Bible, and the reasons assigned there for his uniqueness. The genius of the chess grandmaster, the budding Mozart infant prodigy, the literary genius of the expert novel writer - these are not features that arose from the earth : they were handed down from heaven.
The Blind Watchmaker
It's a bit of a jolt on page 86, to read Dr. Alexander speak of this unending upwards development through natural selection having taken place "under the sovereignty of God". Cells-to-cellists evolution, as just described, is a blind algorithm. Supposing we could make the sums ad up and it were a possible, it's then inevitable. Given the unending production line of genetic change, and the continual selection of the useful changes, and given the earth environment, it's then inevitable that every ecological niche will be filled. That's what the algorithm does. That's Professor Dawkins point when he speaks of the "blind watchmaker". It doesn't need providential oversight - it's an algorithm and it does what it does. If it needed sovereign oversight, then it would be something else. Darwinism is a deistic scheme - the results are programmed by the initial conditions. Note that Darwin himself was a deist - a point rather lost on Dr. Alexander when (elsewhere in the book) he argues that Darwinism has no theological implications. The only other use of Scripture in the chapter is a rather bizarre use of the parable of the sower (Matthew 13) as an example of natural selection.
A Hostile World
Another major theological problem here is spotted when you look more closely at what's embedded in the idea of natural selection. It assumes the idea of a hostile environment. For there to be progress (in the evolutionary sense), the less-well-fitted organisms have to die out. Just because one offspring has in some way better able to reproduce is in itself not particularly significant - if his other brothers and sisters can reproduce too, then all of their genes will be passed on, not just the favoured one's. The reason why his genes survive, in the Darwinian scenario, while theirs don't, is because of necessary competition. Resources are scarce; nature is red in tooth and claw; it's a dog-eat-dog world, and only the fit will survive. The world has to be hostile for Darwinistic development scenarios to play out. If it's not, then all the genes survive, and there's no significant development. There's just endless shuffling, as a dog gains better genes and then loses them because he didn't need them: his neighbour didn't need to eat him.
That's a scenario that sits OK with the budding atheist - and it's realising the implications of that that played a part in paving the way for the horrific atheist regimes of the 20th century. (The introduction of competition brought evolution back in a meaningful way in Stalin's Russia and Hitler's Germany - where previously charity and compassion had been allowing the unfit to survive.) It's not a scenario, though, that can fit with a Biblical view of creation. Even if, like Alexander, you take the line that Genesis is totally theological and a-historical, yet you've got to then deal with the actual theology that's there. At a minimum, the world was a "very good" place, designed for man to live in a blissful paradise, without suffering, pain or death (these coming from sin). In Genesis, man's not in a dreadful battle for survival, a fierce competition to get the food and the girl before his brother does. Man lives in wonderful harmony with creation which is fruitful for his sake - because all is at peace under God's loving care. This isn't a question Alexander begins to face until much later in the book - and the aspect that the idea of development through natural selection inherently requires a hostile world is one he never addresses at all.
The Best Inference?
At the end of the chapter, Alexander makes an apposite statement that he never realises the implications of or gets round to applying. It is that the business of science is to make an inference to the most plausible explanation. Yes. But, how can an explanation be known as the most plausible one unless there's another theory that is shown to be less plausible? Throughout the book, Darwinism is simply described and asserted. How, though, would a creationist deal with the issues of this chapter? What does he say about natural selection and genetics? How does his interpretation of the data differ with the evolutionist one? What are his objections, and how would Alexander deal with them? Dunno. Alexander's aim is to persuade his reader there's only one game in town. If you think you hear the noise of another one over the other side, he'll simply shout louder about his one. It's only persuasive until you start to tune out the shouting and be a little more critical. Dr. Alexander is a good describer. He describes the Darwinian theory well. But he doesn't bother to allow real-life creationists to put their case, and answer their writings; he simply behaves as if they don't exist. "The first to present his case seems right, till another comes forward and questions him" - Proverbs 18:17.
Wednesday, 15 April 2009
Denis Alexander review available in more formats
There has continued to be interest in my extended review of Dr. Denis Alexander's recent pro-Darwin book, "Creation or Evolution - Do We Have To Choose?". This has included people who've e-mailed me to say they printed it out in full for themselves or others. (It actually extends to 56 A4 pages, including the appendices!).
As a result, I've now made it available in more convenient formats:
As a result, I've now made it available in more convenient formats:
- The whole review, as a Microsoft Word (.doc) document
- The whole review, as an Adobe PDF document
- The whole review on a single web page
© David Anderson 2008-9. Please copy and redistribute as widely as you please (no modifications are permitted without permission). Last updated: 15/04/2009. Feedback: use the e-mail address on my homepage. Or for more open discussion, use the comments facility on my blog.
Thursday, 15 January 2009
Dr. Denis Alexander in the ET: final instalment!
Continuing from here...
This mere assertion is not contained in Dr. Alexander's book, or expanded on here, so we can only speculate about what these pastoral problems are. I suppose, based upon the general tenor of his book, that DA would say that creationism pits science against faith and forces believers to choose between two truths. Whatever the precise line of argument, though, it's moot. If creationism is true, then teaching it may indeed cause problems (especially with such as DA teaching so dogmatically that it's false) but it's our duty to believe and proclaim whatever God has made known. If it is false, then to say that spreading it causes problems is telling us nothing new. Either way, DA adds nothing here to his argument except polemics. As DA's never taught creationism, we can only speculate as to what experience he has that underlies this assertion.
DA states this in his book too. Who are these atheists? Where is the documentation where we can follow these assertions up? Either way, though, this statement again adds nothing to the argument. If there are atheists who were turned away by creationism and creationism is true, then they were turned away by the truth. Are we supposed to preach lies in the hope that it will persuade people to make professions of faith? If on the other hand creationism is false, then this argument is redundant - we all agree that in that case it shouldn't be preached. Again, more polemics, intended simply to intimidate creationists to pipe down on the basis of undocumented authoritative-sounding assertions, rather than on the basis of argument.
Since DA's played this card, though, let's see if he's willing to take on a wager. Suppose that we can count up the number of atheists who turned away from a profession of faith because their church taught them that they had to accept creationism as true, and who will freely confess that, after it's been explained to them that Darwinism and the Bible are fully compatible, they will gladly return to Christianity. Suppose on the other hand that we count up the number of atheists who won't accept Christianity because they find that theism actually really is incompatible with Darwinism, and therefore they judge Christianity false because they think Darwinism is true. Which category's going to have more people? DA may be able to do the mental gymnastics to persuade himself that the Bible and Darwinism don't contradict each other a hundred times. I'd be be pretty confident on the other hand, though, that he's in a slim minority. As the expression goes: a simple man can persuade himself only of some things; but an educated man can persuade himself of anything.
Again, same empty argument. If creationism is true, then this is something DA will just have to put up with - unless he believes that we should actually trim and prune our beliefs according to what our present society deems acceptable. This argument can also be reversed. DA's the one trying his darndest to make belief in a young earth seem ridiculous - which he does throughout his book using the method of never representing or interacting with actual creationist arguments, but by setting fire to a succession of straw-men. If he's actually concerned about the effect on preaching the gospel of making creationism seem ridiculous, why is he doing it?
Do people really find the idea of a "young" earth ridiculous? The earth in fact can only be as young or old as it is. It can only be termed "young" in relationship to something else. In this case, it's supposed to be "young" in relation to the telephone-number figures circulated by such as DA. I seriously doubt that more than the tiniest fraction of people have ever looked into the arguments for or against the age of the earth, or considered how to evaluated the two competing paradigms. (DA himself never approaches the matter in terms of paradigms - it's simply infallible, objective science says so...). They simply accept it on authority because people like DA say so; just as they accepted eugenics, geocentricism and other mistaken science in previous generations. This argument is ultimately a naked appeal to authority.
As the letter comes to a close, DA is really piling up the vacuous polemic. Of course, no creationist actually believes that science and faith aren't friends. They simply dispute whether Darwinism and faith are friends, or whether Darwinism and science are. Whilst in his book he falsely, without providing any references, teaches us that creationists claim that Genesis is written in the genre of a modern scientific journal, the reality is that it is DA who is forcing a dichotomy where none exists by forcing us to choose either between choosing to believe in what he terms "science", or to read the book of Genesis as self-conscious, accurate history. DA's reading forces us to accept it only as "theology"; an interpretation of events, but not actually recording events in a historical way. DA forces us to choose between evangelical Bible interpretation, or having his like poor thinly-veiled contempt down on us and accuse us of all manner of sins, pastoral problems, spoiling evangelism, spoiling the relationship between science and faith, etcetera. Still, that's the way it is - and we have to choose our lot.
Young earth creationism causes serious pastoral problems.
This mere assertion is not contained in Dr. Alexander's book, or expanded on here, so we can only speculate about what these pastoral problems are. I suppose, based upon the general tenor of his book, that DA would say that creationism pits science against faith and forces believers to choose between two truths. Whatever the precise line of argument, though, it's moot. If creationism is true, then teaching it may indeed cause problems (especially with such as DA teaching so dogmatically that it's false) but it's our duty to believe and proclaim whatever God has made known. If it is false, then to say that spreading it causes problems is telling us nothing new. Either way, DA adds nothing here to his argument except polemics. As DA's never taught creationism, we can only speculate as to what experience he has that underlies this assertion.
There are atheists in the scientific community (some very high profile) who used to be practising Christians in their teenage years, but who were turned away from the faith because their church pitted science against faith.
DA states this in his book too. Who are these atheists? Where is the documentation where we can follow these assertions up? Either way, though, this statement again adds nothing to the argument. If there are atheists who were turned away by creationism and creationism is true, then they were turned away by the truth. Are we supposed to preach lies in the hope that it will persuade people to make professions of faith? If on the other hand creationism is false, then this argument is redundant - we all agree that in that case it shouldn't be preached. Again, more polemics, intended simply to intimidate creationists to pipe down on the basis of undocumented authoritative-sounding assertions, rather than on the basis of argument.
Since DA's played this card, though, let's see if he's willing to take on a wager. Suppose that we can count up the number of atheists who turned away from a profession of faith because their church taught them that they had to accept creationism as true, and who will freely confess that, after it's been explained to them that Darwinism and the Bible are fully compatible, they will gladly return to Christianity. Suppose on the other hand that we count up the number of atheists who won't accept Christianity because they find that theism actually really is incompatible with Darwinism, and therefore they judge Christianity false because they think Darwinism is true. Which category's going to have more people? DA may be able to do the mental gymnastics to persuade himself that the Bible and Darwinism don't contradict each other a hundred times. I'd be be pretty confident on the other hand, though, that he's in a slim minority. As the expression goes: a simple man can persuade himself only of some things; but an educated man can persuade himself of anything.
Preaching the gospel is made much harder when it becomes associated with beliefs, such as a young earth, which most people find ridiculous.
Again, same empty argument. If creationism is true, then this is something DA will just have to put up with - unless he believes that we should actually trim and prune our beliefs according to what our present society deems acceptable. This argument can also be reversed. DA's the one trying his darndest to make belief in a young earth seem ridiculous - which he does throughout his book using the method of never representing or interacting with actual creationist arguments, but by setting fire to a succession of straw-men. If he's actually concerned about the effect on preaching the gospel of making creationism seem ridiculous, why is he doing it?
Do people really find the idea of a "young" earth ridiculous? The earth in fact can only be as young or old as it is. It can only be termed "young" in relationship to something else. In this case, it's supposed to be "young" in relation to the telephone-number figures circulated by such as DA. I seriously doubt that more than the tiniest fraction of people have ever looked into the arguments for or against the age of the earth, or considered how to evaluated the two competing paradigms. (DA himself never approaches the matter in terms of paradigms - it's simply infallible, objective science says so...). They simply accept it on authority because people like DA say so; just as they accepted eugenics, geocentricism and other mistaken science in previous generations. This argument is ultimately a naked appeal to authority.
I would urge Christians to hold science and faith together as the friends they have traditionally been, not force them apart for biblically unnecessary reasons.
As the letter comes to a close, DA is really piling up the vacuous polemic. Of course, no creationist actually believes that science and faith aren't friends. They simply dispute whether Darwinism and faith are friends, or whether Darwinism and science are. Whilst in his book he falsely, without providing any references, teaches us that creationists claim that Genesis is written in the genre of a modern scientific journal, the reality is that it is DA who is forcing a dichotomy where none exists by forcing us to choose either between choosing to believe in what he terms "science", or to read the book of Genesis as self-conscious, accurate history. DA's reading forces us to accept it only as "theology"; an interpretation of events, but not actually recording events in a historical way. DA forces us to choose between evangelical Bible interpretation, or having his like poor thinly-veiled contempt down on us and accuse us of all manner of sins, pastoral problems, spoiling evangelism, spoiling the relationship between science and faith, etcetera. Still, that's the way it is - and we have to choose our lot.
I also hope that readers will not accept the representation of my book that McIntosh provides, but actually read Creation or Evolution - do we have to choose? for themselves.The End!
Editor's note: Our reviewer, Andy McIntosh, will publish a reply to Dr. Alexander's letter in February's ET.
Saturday, 10 January 2009
Dr. Denis Alexander in the ET - why Jesus had to die
McIntosh asks, 'Why did Jesus die physically if the wages of sin is not physical death?'
This is a question which also arose strongly in my own review. It is a natural consequence of Dr. Alexander's altered doctrine of the Fall – which he makes an invisible, spiritual event. He denies that it had any impact on the workings of the physical creation – a denial that he has to make because Darwinian orthodoxy will not allow that the creation suddenly came into bondage to decay only a few thousand years ago. According to Darwinism and hence according to Alexander, all those things that Christians have historically identified as being part of the deleterious results of Adam's sin (thorns, pain, suffering, death, etc.) are original parts of the cosmos, not later intruders. Hence the question arises – if the Fall was not a physical event, why is redemption (the incarnation, Jesus' sufferings, death and resurrection) so physical; has Alexander's Darwinism not made the essence of the gospel incoherent?
The answer is in Hebrews 9:11-28, and the fact that Jesus died to save us from eternal separation with God, the 'second death' (Matthew 1:28; Revelation 2:11).
Again (and as commonly done in the book as well as in this letter), Alexander simply ducks the question and answers a conveniently different one of his own devising. The question is highlighting the physical nature of Jesus' death; Alexander instead merely states why Jesus had to do something to save us. The answer may well be in Hebrews 9... but what is that answer, Dr. Alexander? How does it relate to the question you were being asked? Just how and why did Jesus experience physical death in order to liberate us from a fate that you see only in terms of the non-physical?
Paul in Romans (6:21-23 and other chapters) is speaking of spiritual death. As Jesus explained to Nicodemus in response to his question (John 3:4), rebirth is spiritual, not physical (v. 5).Here in his letter, as in his book, Dr. Alexander introduces the strong dichotomy which he relies upon to evade the fundamental problem with his teaching – that between “physical” and “spiritual” death. He merely insists that this idea is what is being spoken of by this or that Bible passage. The point is, though, not whether you can super-impose this idea upon passages of Scripture as DA does... but whether it actually reads out of any passages themselves. Here's Romans 6:21-23:
What fruit did you have then in those things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now being free from sin, and having become servants unto God, you have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.
Where do these verses teach Dr. Alexander's particular distinctive doctrine, namely that the Fall was a non-physical event, and that physical and spiritual death must be sharply distinguished? Of course, they don't. Dr. Alexander is guilty of reading a text through his own pre-supposed hermeneutical grid. His doctrine does not read out of the text – it has to be read in.
The idea that Jesus, in John chapter 3, was teaching or even implying to Nicodemus that the Fall was an event without physical consequences is exegetical madness. The idea is not even in the remote horizon of the exchange. Here, DA has plucked a verse wildly out of context to suit his purpose. Nicodemus thought of redemption in earthly and political terms – Israel being liberated from the Romans, and a new kingdom like David's being established. He needed to see that the true enemies of God's people were spiritual – sin, Satan and death – not military. He needed to see that he was in bondage to sin and that this was a more ultimate reality than Israel's political subjugation. He stumbled at Jesus teaching of the need for inward renewal and cleansing. I don't personally think that his question about being born again from his mother's womb was intended by him to be taken literally – it was simply a way of expressing his surprise at Jesus' teaching and pushing him to clarify what he meant. Alexander, though, rips this all out of context and makes Jesus teach not merely that we need inward and spiritual renewal by the Holy Spirit, but into a denial that man dies because Adam sinned! The fact that his doctrine can only be supported by ripping passages out of context in this way, and not by direct appeal to any texts where the subject is being addressed directly shows us the lack of Biblical support for the idea.
DA then proceeds to state his neo-Gnostic view of the resurrection and the future state:
We have to physically die to fulfil God's purposes, for 'flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable' (1 Corinthians 15:50).
In this verse, Paul gives one of the subsiduary reasons why our resurrection bodies must differ in some ways (whilst still having continuity – see earlier in the chapter) with our present bodies. The state of glory is of an order which we can hardly yet imagine. To enter it, we must be changed. This change, though, does not actually necessitate death; Paul makes that explicit by saying (emphasis mine): “We shall not all die, but we shall all be changed” (verse 51). Those who are still alive when the Lord returns shall not go through death, but shall be changed without it into a fitting state for glory. Hence there is no necessity for death for us to enter that state, contrary to what DA says. I label DA's view “neo-Gnostic” because his denial of a physical Fall leads him to effectively deny that Christ's physical death is related to our physical redemption which culminates in physical resurrection and transformation. He rather views this present mode of existence as being a classic Gnostic prison, and Jesus liberates us from it – he doesn't so much redeem and glorify a Fallen world as take us out of it into something else of a totally different nature.
DA's view makes no sense of the whole thrust and purpose of 1 Corinthians 15. There must, contrary to the deniers at Corinth, be a resurrection because without it Jesus' victory over sin would be incomplete. The first Adam through his sin caused us all to die (Romans 5:12-14); to reverse that, Jesus himself died and rose, and must raise us too. His physical resurrection is the great announcement, realisation and proof that the consequences of Adam's rebellion have been overcome. His physical resurrection is such a proof precisely because Adam's rebellion brought in physical death. Cut that vital link in Biblical theology, and you're left floundering around to explain all of this. DA never answers the pertinent questions raised by McIntosh's review. Why did Jesus physically die? Why did his punishment include physical sufferings if physical sufferings are not in fact in this world as a consequence of sin? Why would he endure such a penalty if it never was part of the penalty God imposed? Just why did Jesus endure physical death save us from a spiritual separation? He doesn't answer them because ultimately the truncated doctrine of redemption which his Darwinism leads him to... can't.
Friday, 9 January 2009
Dr. Denis Alexander in the ET, part 4
McIntosh claims that I maintain certain positions in my book which in reality I definitely reject, which also make me wonder whether he has actually read the book!
I remarked a few times during my extended review that DA often seems as interested in giving off an air of intellectual superiority, that creationism is beneath his level, as much as he is interested in actually interacting with brethren who honestly disagree with him. This was evidenced mainly in the fact that in 353 pages he references precisely one creationist... who's now dead. Current creationists, their books, journals or other writings: zilch.
For example, he suggests that I 'read' evolution into Scripture, whereas I spend a whole chapter explaining why biblical texts need to be understood according to the literary style they represent, not as if they were scientific texts. Scientific literature as we know it today, with its highly specialised language, did not exist when the Bible was written, so to seek to press the language into that literary genre is an abuse of Scripture. Of course evolution is not taught in the Bible, any more than relativity, thermodynamics or quantum mechanics.
Here, Dr. Alexander simply talks past his reviewer. Nowhere does Professor McIntosh's review state the idea that Dr. Alexander refutes here: i.e. that he "reads evolution into Scripture" in the sense that he says that Scripture actually explicitly teaches evolution as if it were scientific literature, using specialised language like textbooks on thermodynamics. That's a straw man; there's not a word in AM's review that approaches suggesting that the Bible teaches matters like relativity or quantum mechanics. The false dichotomy that Dr. Alexander makes in reading Genesis between "science" and "theology" or between science and history, is the one that the Professor actually took him to task for - to simply repeat it in the answer will only give more ammunition should the Professor wish to charge him with not having properly read his review. It smacks of a "canned response". That Dr. Alexander actually does read evolution into Scripture, in the sense that AM meant, is stated baldly on page 232, where after reviewing the present mainstream scientific (Darwinian) thinking on the history of man, he then goes on to begin considering the Scriptural data by stating:
"It is against this cultural and historical background that one needs to consider the early chapters of Genesis."The idea that one should - indeed, must - begin with fallen man's fallible speculations about history, and then read God's inspired account against that background, is precisely what "reading evolution into Scripture" means. Methinks that DA knows he's guilty here, and simply answers a different point instead because he suspects that the ET's readers are too conservative to follow him if he spells out his full position candidly here.
McIntosh also claims that my book suggests that some humans may still languish outside the God-called community of humanity, whereas I make precisely the opposite point (p.238) — that God graciously bestowed his image upon the whole of humankind with Adam as the federal head
What is this image? DA doesn't give a full answer, but says that there are two important aspects for his purposes (p192-3) - the delegation of authority and the potential for relationship with God. So, when God made Adam (or rather, when he was born to his parents or had grown to an appropriate age afterwards), God extended a benefit to the whole of humanity as well as to him. Dr. Alexander then goes on to ask what the Fall would have meant for those, such as the Aboriginals (p275) who were part of Adam and Eve's family - and concludes that we can have no real idea. It is this that Professor McIntosh understands as suggesting "that some Australian Aborigines may still languish outside the God-called community of humanity because they are not descendents of Adam and Eve". I presume that the logic here is that as they were perhaps (DA's suggestion) not affected in any practical way by the Fall, by logical consequence, neither are they subjects of the redemption from that Fall achieved by Christ - AM doesn't make it explicit. If they are not part of the fallen creation, then presumably not part of the redeemed. I'm not sure I'd have imputed this line of thinking to DA though; elsewhere his teaching implies that he doesn't really see Christ's work in terms of leading to a redeeming of creation so much as in terms of replacing of it (here AM's imputed more orthodoxy to DA than he should have done!). What exactly DA does mean by this speculation and how it is systematised in his thinking is not clear, because he doesn't really clarify it - he does, as he states in this rebuttal, teach that the divine image, whatever its exact content, was extended to Aboriginals; thus, by implication, giving them the capacity for relationship with God. Hence on the precise point itself, I agree with him that AM has missed an element of his thought and drawn a conclusion that he doesn't hold.
To be continued...
Tuesday, 6 January 2009
Dr. Alexander in the ET, part 3
Continuing from here. Quoth Dr. A:
It is of course a truism that Professor McIntosh, as a creationist, is out of step with what is acceptable thinking in the mainstream scientific community as regards origins. Dr. Alexander, however, goes further than this and borrows an argument that previously I'd only seen in use by the "village atheist" crowd. That is, that the Darwinian theory and theories about the age of the earth somehow represent "huge swathes of contemporary science". This is pure rhetoric, and pure rhetorical hogwash at that. I type this on a laptop computer, with its intricate maze of transistors, liquid crystals, magnetic disks and so on, connected to a mobile phone which beams its packets to the nearest mobile mast... which beams it on, eventually via the satelites that connect Kenya to the rest of the world, along various fibre-optic pipes, and through all the chain of equipment until eventually it arrives in your room. I may not be a professional biologist, but trust me: Darwinism has nothing to do with any of this. And that's the story throughout. Even in biology, Darwinism as Darwinism has proved to be a theory of no practical use - the so-called now rejected "science" of eugenics being its main contribution to history. Descent with modification is a fact with practical implications; but Darwinian speculation about the supposed unlimited potential of that modification over periods of millions of years in the past has proved remarkably unfruitful for a theory that's alleged to be true. Neither does speculation about the age of the earth have any practical value in any of the scientific advances that we enjoy in day to day life. Medicines we take to cure illnesses, the vast reams of technology especially in communication, the blessings of modern transport, and so on... interesting stories about how the Earth supposedly cooled down over a period of billions of years have nothing to do with any of this.
That's why I've only previously heard this argument from Internet atheists before... as someone who did a Masters in a scientific discipline and spent large amounts of time with other scientists discussing our studies, I know that assertions that Darwinism or theories about the age of the cosmos are basically irrelevant to real, here-and-now operational science and rarely either come up for discussion or are assumed as implicit in any practical matter. Perhaps DA made the guess that most readers of the ET will simply take his word for it because they've never interacted in that world. I think he's over-reached himself, because if you want to stake out an influential position in the long run, you need to appeal to the knowledgeable and critical readers, and false rhetoric of this kind will turn them off.
Only Possible Explanation?
Concerning common descent, it's interesting that here in this letter DA says that it is a fact established by "huge swathes" of evidence, "beyond any reasonable doubt". In his book, he seemed to be relying ultimately upon a single argument that was ultimately theological. He argues that similar gene sequences in humans and other ape-like creatures are so similar, including in claimed genetic mistakes and unused genetic material, that unless its origin was common descent, God would in effect be deceiving us. I think that argument is rather weak when DA asserts it as the only possible explanation. For one thing, it's a genuine evolution-of-the-gaps argument; genetic material that is presently thought to be the result of copying mistakes or unused may later be discovered to have some function that our present knowledge hadn't equipped us to identify. At that point, DA's argument would vanish. The argument as a whole, though, is weak because in his book DA never compares it to any other alternative (as part of his general strategy of not representing creationist arguments, I think because he wants to give the air of them being beneath his level). There are other alternatives. Man and other creatures may have a similar genetic toolbox because... they have the same designer. Moreover, on the Biblical assumption that that Designer wishes man to investigate and harness the powers of the world that he made, it would be even less surprising. If God wants us to investigate and harmonise creation, it would be massively harder if every living entity was constructed along fundamentally different principles. The fact that they're constructed on a shared set of principles is a testimony both to his wisdom and to his desire that we should to some extent investigate, understand and harness what he has done. Moreover, the Bible teaches that the creation physically fell, because God cursed it when man sinned. That had some impact or other on actual biology, though it is not the Bible's purpose to explain things on that level. If we are looking at things on that level, though, why should it be unreasonable to believe that God should have brought about similar defects in DNA in similarly-constructed creatures? What is the theological reason why God must have, as Dr. Alexander is insisting, made such genetic changes at the Fall in arbitrary or random ways? Whether the lines on which I'm speculating here are correct or not is not important - the point is that DA's assertion that there is no possible explanation either existing or even possible for what he sees in DNA except man's common descent from other ape-like creatures is simply bluff.
There is an another aspect of DA's argument here that can be played back against him. In his book, DA attempts to argue that information theory should not be applied to biology, and even that biology should be allowed to have its own definitions of information - and that attempts to apply information theory represent misunderstandings by engineers and computer scientists. This is an exceptionally weak argument which itself represents a misunderstanding of and rejection of mainstream science. Information theory is universally applicable, and there is no justification for someone to put their hand up and say "you can't apply that here!" Information is a universal fundamental, and whether the encoding takes place on paper, on computer disk, or in DNA, it must apply everywhere or not at all. The point is that the application of information theory to biology and DNA leads to the necessary conclusion that DNA is an encoding by an intelligent agent, a conclusion which fundamentally contradicts Darwinism.
All Truth Is God's Truth?
The larger point, though, which DA never discusses in his book but simply assumes, as also in this letter, is his overall approach to Scripture, revelation and authority. You need to note here exactly what ideas are being packed into the slogan "all truth is God's truth". In itself, it's unobjectionable. But if you tease out the strands of what DA means by it, as hinted here and shown more fully in his book, it's simply not Christian.
DA's doctrine of authority, science and Scripture is basically a baptised Enlightenment-mode of thought. Scripture is theological, science is historical, and the twain shall scarcely meet. When Science speaks about matters in its own domain, it speaks with authority. It is effectively a second book of revelation, complementary (not competing) with the written one, and each has its own domain. In particular, Scripture cannot speak to correct science, because Scripture's domain is different: value-laden interpretations of the world and the physical facts that science unearths. And to Dr. Alexander, science speaks with authority when the peer-reviewers, applying the objective and unbiased process of impartial scrutiny, accept a theory into the mainstream consensus. Predictably, Dr. Alexander never addresses the obvious historical objection to this last idea - all the junk science that has at one time or another been mainstream, such as eugenics which we mentioned above. What you won't find anywhere in DA's book is an explanation that Genesis also speaks directly to historical matters, and that when it does so it speaks with unrivalled authority, such that any conclusions of contemporary scientists, no matter how numerous and how authoritative the journals they publish it in, must bow before it. That's because DA doesn't believe that idea - rather, in his book, he explains that Darwinian theory is the background that we must read Scripture against if we wish to harmonise it with contemporary science.
So, "all truth is God's truth" is in itself, one of God's truths. But on DA's lips, what it means is that the consensus of contemporary science ought to be treated by us as if it were revealed from heaven, and hence we ought to patronise fellow-believers in the manner in which Dr. Alexander does here. It is interesting, though, to note that this letter continues the theme in the book: that the truth is established mainly by science. This isn't a Biblical argument that DA's making: it's simply that mainstream science says so.
Here DA repeats his point to underscore it. So there's no excuse for not identifying the lines on which his thought runs: mainstream science is itself an all-but infallible authority, and there's no need to launch any actual Biblical response to Professor McIntosh's Biblical argument - the fact that contemporary journals don't accept it as the consensus is sufficient repudiation. DA here makes a pure appeal to authority - those in the seats of power in the mainstream scientific community say so, so you'd better tow the line or I'll patronise you for being an idiot, even should you yourself be a Professor! DA has so folded this idea of science's basic infallibility into his axioms of thought that he doesn't think this should need explaining, even to readers of so conservative evangelical a newspaper as the ET... when this can happen then truly the Enlightenment is still riding strong. In this letter, as in the book, DA does nothing to hint that he's aware of the idea that scientific research is done within paradigms, and is not simply a straight-forward simple fact-based procedure. Mainstream scientific journals reject ideas that Professor McIntosh's promotes foundationally because they reject the Biblical paradigm that it is conducted within. "Evidence" is not a simple up and down matter - it must be interpreted. A presuppositional Christian, such as AM, asserts that, especially when dealing with a matter such as origins, our paradigm must be explicitly Christian. That's anathema to the secularist thinking that dominates the academy, and so hence the chasm between it and Christian orthodoxy. DA, though, here promotes pure Dawkins-style Scientism - the idea that science is simply a paradigm-free, unbiased inquiry into neutral facts and proceeds simply based upon evidence.
To save you the trouble, dear reader, I did download and digest the paper that Dr. Alexander refers us to. Its thought is the same as DA's. There is no discussion of the relationship between Scripture and other supposed authorities, or a comparison of their relative fallibilities, or a Christian view of authority, etcetera. Nope - it's asserted that science proves this and that, that therefore the earth is very old... and now let's hunt for a way to interpret God's word (which is after all a theological text, not one that deals with real-world facts of history) that agrees with this assured result of modern man's cleverness. Science first - then we'll see what we can do with the Bible. That's exactly the wrong way round, as far as evangelical religion is concerned. As with DA's own writings, there's also a few arguments and bits of rhetoric borrowed from the atheists - Christians who disagree are termed "fundamentalists", and creationism is falsely said to be a late 20th Century American import (in fact the oldest anti-evolution society (now known as the Biblical Creation Society), is British... and the two most well known creationist organisations today, Answers in Genesis and Creation Ministries International, both of which DA avoids any mention of in his book, originated in Australia). Oh come on, can't you do better than this?
To be continued...
We also differ in that I accept current mainstream science, not uncritically, but all truth is God's truth — whereas McIntosh rejects huge swathes of contemporary science, including that which establishes beyond any reasonable doubt the great age of the earth (about 4.6 billion years old) and our own common descent.Mainstream Science
It is of course a truism that Professor McIntosh, as a creationist, is out of step with what is acceptable thinking in the mainstream scientific community as regards origins. Dr. Alexander, however, goes further than this and borrows an argument that previously I'd only seen in use by the "village atheist" crowd. That is, that the Darwinian theory and theories about the age of the earth somehow represent "huge swathes of contemporary science". This is pure rhetoric, and pure rhetorical hogwash at that. I type this on a laptop computer, with its intricate maze of transistors, liquid crystals, magnetic disks and so on, connected to a mobile phone which beams its packets to the nearest mobile mast... which beams it on, eventually via the satelites that connect Kenya to the rest of the world, along various fibre-optic pipes, and through all the chain of equipment until eventually it arrives in your room. I may not be a professional biologist, but trust me: Darwinism has nothing to do with any of this. And that's the story throughout. Even in biology, Darwinism as Darwinism has proved to be a theory of no practical use - the so-called now rejected "science" of eugenics being its main contribution to history. Descent with modification is a fact with practical implications; but Darwinian speculation about the supposed unlimited potential of that modification over periods of millions of years in the past has proved remarkably unfruitful for a theory that's alleged to be true. Neither does speculation about the age of the earth have any practical value in any of the scientific advances that we enjoy in day to day life. Medicines we take to cure illnesses, the vast reams of technology especially in communication, the blessings of modern transport, and so on... interesting stories about how the Earth supposedly cooled down over a period of billions of years have nothing to do with any of this.
That's why I've only previously heard this argument from Internet atheists before... as someone who did a Masters in a scientific discipline and spent large amounts of time with other scientists discussing our studies, I know that assertions that Darwinism or theories about the age of the cosmos are basically irrelevant to real, here-and-now operational science and rarely either come up for discussion or are assumed as implicit in any practical matter. Perhaps DA made the guess that most readers of the ET will simply take his word for it because they've never interacted in that world. I think he's over-reached himself, because if you want to stake out an influential position in the long run, you need to appeal to the knowledgeable and critical readers, and false rhetoric of this kind will turn them off.
Only Possible Explanation?
Concerning common descent, it's interesting that here in this letter DA says that it is a fact established by "huge swathes" of evidence, "beyond any reasonable doubt". In his book, he seemed to be relying ultimately upon a single argument that was ultimately theological. He argues that similar gene sequences in humans and other ape-like creatures are so similar, including in claimed genetic mistakes and unused genetic material, that unless its origin was common descent, God would in effect be deceiving us. I think that argument is rather weak when DA asserts it as the only possible explanation. For one thing, it's a genuine evolution-of-the-gaps argument; genetic material that is presently thought to be the result of copying mistakes or unused may later be discovered to have some function that our present knowledge hadn't equipped us to identify. At that point, DA's argument would vanish. The argument as a whole, though, is weak because in his book DA never compares it to any other alternative (as part of his general strategy of not representing creationist arguments, I think because he wants to give the air of them being beneath his level). There are other alternatives. Man and other creatures may have a similar genetic toolbox because... they have the same designer. Moreover, on the Biblical assumption that that Designer wishes man to investigate and harness the powers of the world that he made, it would be even less surprising. If God wants us to investigate and harmonise creation, it would be massively harder if every living entity was constructed along fundamentally different principles. The fact that they're constructed on a shared set of principles is a testimony both to his wisdom and to his desire that we should to some extent investigate, understand and harness what he has done. Moreover, the Bible teaches that the creation physically fell, because God cursed it when man sinned. That had some impact or other on actual biology, though it is not the Bible's purpose to explain things on that level. If we are looking at things on that level, though, why should it be unreasonable to believe that God should have brought about similar defects in DNA in similarly-constructed creatures? What is the theological reason why God must have, as Dr. Alexander is insisting, made such genetic changes at the Fall in arbitrary or random ways? Whether the lines on which I'm speculating here are correct or not is not important - the point is that DA's assertion that there is no possible explanation either existing or even possible for what he sees in DNA except man's common descent from other ape-like creatures is simply bluff.
There is an another aspect of DA's argument here that can be played back against him. In his book, DA attempts to argue that information theory should not be applied to biology, and even that biology should be allowed to have its own definitions of information - and that attempts to apply information theory represent misunderstandings by engineers and computer scientists. This is an exceptionally weak argument which itself represents a misunderstanding of and rejection of mainstream science. Information theory is universally applicable, and there is no justification for someone to put their hand up and say "you can't apply that here!" Information is a universal fundamental, and whether the encoding takes place on paper, on computer disk, or in DNA, it must apply everywhere or not at all. The point is that the application of information theory to biology and DNA leads to the necessary conclusion that DNA is an encoding by an intelligent agent, a conclusion which fundamentally contradicts Darwinism.
All Truth Is God's Truth?
The larger point, though, which DA never discusses in his book but simply assumes, as also in this letter, is his overall approach to Scripture, revelation and authority. You need to note here exactly what ideas are being packed into the slogan "all truth is God's truth". In itself, it's unobjectionable. But if you tease out the strands of what DA means by it, as hinted here and shown more fully in his book, it's simply not Christian.
DA's doctrine of authority, science and Scripture is basically a baptised Enlightenment-mode of thought. Scripture is theological, science is historical, and the twain shall scarcely meet. When Science speaks about matters in its own domain, it speaks with authority. It is effectively a second book of revelation, complementary (not competing) with the written one, and each has its own domain. In particular, Scripture cannot speak to correct science, because Scripture's domain is different: value-laden interpretations of the world and the physical facts that science unearths. And to Dr. Alexander, science speaks with authority when the peer-reviewers, applying the objective and unbiased process of impartial scrutiny, accept a theory into the mainstream consensus. Predictably, Dr. Alexander never addresses the obvious historical objection to this last idea - all the junk science that has at one time or another been mainstream, such as eugenics which we mentioned above. What you won't find anywhere in DA's book is an explanation that Genesis also speaks directly to historical matters, and that when it does so it speaks with unrivalled authority, such that any conclusions of contemporary scientists, no matter how numerous and how authoritative the journals they publish it in, must bow before it. That's because DA doesn't believe that idea - rather, in his book, he explains that Darwinian theory is the background that we must read Scripture against if we wish to harmonise it with contemporary science.
So, "all truth is God's truth" is in itself, one of God's truths. But on DA's lips, what it means is that the consensus of contemporary science ought to be treated by us as if it were revealed from heaven, and hence we ought to patronise fellow-believers in the manner in which Dr. Alexander does here. It is interesting, though, to note that this letter continues the theme in the book: that the truth is established mainly by science. This isn't a Biblical argument that DA's making: it's simply that mainstream science says so.
On scientific questions McIntosh cites only authors who are not published in peer-reviewed scientific literature, whose views are rejected by the scientific community, not because the scientists are `anti-God' but because the views lack good evidence. Readers interested in the age of the earth may download a free Faraday Paper (No. 8) from www.faraday-institute.org, Faraday Papers Folder) by Prof. Bob White FRS, an evangelical believer who is Professor of Geophysics at Cambridge University.
Here DA repeats his point to underscore it. So there's no excuse for not identifying the lines on which his thought runs: mainstream science is itself an all-but infallible authority, and there's no need to launch any actual Biblical response to Professor McIntosh's Biblical argument - the fact that contemporary journals don't accept it as the consensus is sufficient repudiation. DA here makes a pure appeal to authority - those in the seats of power in the mainstream scientific community say so, so you'd better tow the line or I'll patronise you for being an idiot, even should you yourself be a Professor! DA has so folded this idea of science's basic infallibility into his axioms of thought that he doesn't think this should need explaining, even to readers of so conservative evangelical a newspaper as the ET... when this can happen then truly the Enlightenment is still riding strong. In this letter, as in the book, DA does nothing to hint that he's aware of the idea that scientific research is done within paradigms, and is not simply a straight-forward simple fact-based procedure. Mainstream scientific journals reject ideas that Professor McIntosh's promotes foundationally because they reject the Biblical paradigm that it is conducted within. "Evidence" is not a simple up and down matter - it must be interpreted. A presuppositional Christian, such as AM, asserts that, especially when dealing with a matter such as origins, our paradigm must be explicitly Christian. That's anathema to the secularist thinking that dominates the academy, and so hence the chasm between it and Christian orthodoxy. DA, though, here promotes pure Dawkins-style Scientism - the idea that science is simply a paradigm-free, unbiased inquiry into neutral facts and proceeds simply based upon evidence.
To save you the trouble, dear reader, I did download and digest the paper that Dr. Alexander refers us to. Its thought is the same as DA's. There is no discussion of the relationship between Scripture and other supposed authorities, or a comparison of their relative fallibilities, or a Christian view of authority, etcetera. Nope - it's asserted that science proves this and that, that therefore the earth is very old... and now let's hunt for a way to interpret God's word (which is after all a theological text, not one that deals with real-world facts of history) that agrees with this assured result of modern man's cleverness. Science first - then we'll see what we can do with the Bible. That's exactly the wrong way round, as far as evangelical religion is concerned. As with DA's own writings, there's also a few arguments and bits of rhetoric borrowed from the atheists - Christians who disagree are termed "fundamentalists", and creationism is falsely said to be a late 20th Century American import (in fact the oldest anti-evolution society (now known as the Biblical Creation Society), is British... and the two most well known creationist organisations today, Answers in Genesis and Creation Ministries International, both of which DA avoids any mention of in his book, originated in Australia). Oh come on, can't you do better than this?
To be continued...
Friday, 2 January 2009
Denis Alexander in the ET, continued
We continue reviewing Dr. Alexander's letter in the "Evangelical Times" in favour of his recent book promoting Darwinism to evangelical Christians, in response to Professor McIntosh's recent review of the same, in the same.
Yesterday we saw DA listing a number of doctrines which he said that both AM and himself both held. These were intended to show that there was no real difference between them on the major points of creation doctrine. Having read the book, which I suppose only a minority of ET readers will have done, I was able to point out that the agreement on these doctrines extended not much further than the ambiguous labels DA has given to them. It's one thing to list labels that you could both accept as describing your doctrines - but those doctrines themselves in this case are very different things. It's in DA's strategic interest to paper over these differences and behave as if being able to keep the labels was enough, because it's DA who has departed far from the historic norms. He wants to carry those who still hold them with him into embracing Darwinism, and highlighting the other adjustments they'll need to make further down the road won't suit him. It's in AM's interests and mine to point the gaping chasm between him and them out. DA basically de-historicises the story of redemption with a sharp dualism. In the Bible, man is the climax of creation and its destiny is integrally tied up with his. In DA's reconstruction, the physical side of existence began, carried out after the fall and will to the end basically unaffected, until at last Jesus replaces it with something completely different, dying in a Gnostic-style redemption in order to release us from the prison of this painful world that the Father made into a better one that hadn't been tasted before or even anticipated until he came and told us about it. In the Scriptures, the Creation itself falls because of Adam's sin, bringing in pain, suffering and death, and Christ dies physically in part to redeem, recover and glorify this physical creation. It is not evangelical theology to paper over that yawning gap by applying the trite label "a historical fall" to them both. But we pass on.
Interestingly, DA nowhere in his book actually addresses the Biblical case for a world-wide flood; there are simply a few scientific ones scattered statements here and there. There is no systematic consideration of the question anywhere. This is part and parcel of his general refusal to engage actual creationist arguments (there being precisely zero references or footnotes to any contemporary creationist author or publication in his book), because he wishes to maintain a superior aloofness. This sentence, in this letter, is the first time I recall coming across DA making a Biblical argument against a global flood (the ones in the book I recall were based on reconstructions of history, e.g. based on what it is supposed we can deduce from chalk deposits).
It is a shame that we only have one sentence of argument from DA on this subject, but this rather trite dismissal misses the following points:
To be continued...
Yesterday we saw DA listing a number of doctrines which he said that both AM and himself both held. These were intended to show that there was no real difference between them on the major points of creation doctrine. Having read the book, which I suppose only a minority of ET readers will have done, I was able to point out that the agreement on these doctrines extended not much further than the ambiguous labels DA has given to them. It's one thing to list labels that you could both accept as describing your doctrines - but those doctrines themselves in this case are very different things. It's in DA's strategic interest to paper over these differences and behave as if being able to keep the labels was enough, because it's DA who has departed far from the historic norms. He wants to carry those who still hold them with him into embracing Darwinism, and highlighting the other adjustments they'll need to make further down the road won't suit him. It's in AM's interests and mine to point the gaping chasm between him and them out. DA basically de-historicises the story of redemption with a sharp dualism. In the Bible, man is the climax of creation and its destiny is integrally tied up with his. In DA's reconstruction, the physical side of existence began, carried out after the fall and will to the end basically unaffected, until at last Jesus replaces it with something completely different, dying in a Gnostic-style redemption in order to release us from the prison of this painful world that the Father made into a better one that hadn't been tasted before or even anticipated until he came and told us about it. In the Scriptures, the Creation itself falls because of Adam's sin, bringing in pain, suffering and death, and Christ dies physically in part to redeem, recover and glorify this physical creation. It is not evangelical theology to paper over that yawning gap by applying the trite label "a historical fall" to them both. But we pass on.
Where we differ is that McIntosh believes in a worldwide flood, whereas I believe in a local flood (the Old Testament often refers to the 'whole earth' or to the 'whole world' as relating to the local extended area; e.g. 1 Kings 10:24; Jeremiah 51:41; Lamentations 2:15; Ezekiel 34:6; Habakkuk 1:6).
Interestingly, DA nowhere in his book actually addresses the Biblical case for a world-wide flood; there are simply a few scientific ones scattered statements here and there. There is no systematic consideration of the question anywhere. This is part and parcel of his general refusal to engage actual creationist arguments (there being precisely zero references or footnotes to any contemporary creationist author or publication in his book), because he wishes to maintain a superior aloofness. This sentence, in this letter, is the first time I recall coming across DA making a Biblical argument against a global flood (the ones in the book I recall were based on reconstructions of history, e.g. based on what it is supposed we can deduce from chalk deposits).
It is a shame that we only have one sentence of argument from DA on this subject, but this rather trite dismissal misses the following points:
- All the verses that he quotes above come from the Old Testament after the crucial chapters of Genesis 1-11 - the "universal" chapters. From Genesis 12 onwards, the focus switches to Abraham and God's covenant with him, and thus, as it is worked out, to the twelve tribes and ultimately even more narrowly to the line of Judah and David. God's universal dealings cease (not that he ceases to be at work elsewhere in the world in a total way, of course - neither in providence generally, or even in redemption specifically, e.g. the book of Jonah, or Ruth), and the focus switches to his special plan for Israel. The nations in general are left to darkness - darkness that is only dispelled when at long last, thousands of years later, the Christ comes and commands his gospel to be spread throughout the nations. DA quotes from these chapters, but not from Genesis 1-11, the "universal" chapters. In other words, he ignores the context. In Genesis 1-11, we learn about the origins of the whole world; the first man and woman, the first temptation and the first sin and judgment, the first murder, the development of the godly and ungodly lines, the universal judgment of the flood, the origin of the nations around the world at Babel, the beginning of languages, and so on. Here, the context is on the beginnings of the nations, and talk of "the whole earth" in such a context cannot be exegeted by arbitrary appeals to passages in another situ.
- The account of the flood in Genesis 6-8 does not simply use an expression such as "the whole earth" once, but piles them up. There is repetition, there is emphasis, there is variation. In short, there are a range of techniques employed to make clear what the author's intention is to teach us. DA ignores all these literary clues - they don't suit his purpose.
- The last of the citations that DA gives, from Habakkuk 1:6, is not an example of what he is looking for - "the Chaldeans... shall march through the breadth (merchab) of the land (erets)". Here in context, "erets" is clearly writely translated as "land" and is a straight reference to the promised land of Canaan and its invasion by the Babylonians, not to an indefinite extended (but localised) area. I don't know what translation DA was relying on for this one.
- There is no reason to insist that Jeremiah 51:41 or Lamentations 2:15 are localised. It was quite literally true that Jerusalem was the joy of the whole earth. It was an essential truth of the Israelite faith that their God was the universal creator, and had chosen only Israel and only Jerusalem above all the nations and cities of the entire created world. This was not a localised or relative truth. Indeed, that's one of the points of Genesis 1-11 - to remind Israel that its God was not a localised deity, but the universal Lord. I wonder what DA actually means by alleging that these statements were intended to be understood only in a localised sense as if Jerusalem was only special in a restricted eastern context... is he actually saying that somewhere else, on another contintent perhaps, there was another people and nation that God had chosen too? Perhaps Joseph Smith really was on to something? :-)
- Ezekiel 34:6 is clearly a poetic and indefinite reference, not directly to any particular local territory at all: "My sheep wandered through all the mountains, and upon every high hill: yea, my flock was scattered upon all the face of the earth." The prophet does not intend to identify particular mountains and specific hills any more than he believes that God's people were literally sheep. In the historical sense, possibly this is a reference to the exiles of the northern kingdom some time before and more lately the south in Babylon. That is the ultimate referent of Ezekiel's words, but the poetic metaphor is meant to be understood through this lens, not literally read as if it were not poetic at all. This is not a proper parallel to a historical narrative such as Genesis 6-8.
- DA doesn't anywhere consider the point that the Hebrew erets covers a wide semantic range, and can be translated world, earth or land, depending on the context. Hence it can refer to the whole globe as in Genesis 1:1 ("In the beginning, God created the heaven and the erets" - we presume DA doesn't merely hold that to be teaching that God only made the Middle East...), or at another extreme simply to a specific country (e.g. Genesis 41:55, "... all the erets of Egypt was famished..." - here in fact a metonym is used to put the territory for the people). Context must decide, otherwise you fall into a semantic fallacy, using cases of one illegitimately to determine the meaning of others that appear in quite different settings. I noted in my extended review that DA relies heavily on quiet a number of semantic fallacies throughout his book. It's one thing to note that the word in the dictionary can mean one thing, but then to use that as evidence that it does mean that in a specific context is simply bogus exegesis, unworthy of a first term seminary student, let alone someone setting themselves up to write books to teach the evangelical world.
- 1 Kings 10:24 is also a metonym. Obviously the "earth" did not seek out King Solomon; there were no clods of soil or piles of rock forming an orderly queue to come and find him. The meaning is that the inhabitants of the earth did - where they heard of him. In that sense, it is both a local and universal reference; wherever his fame went, people were sent to search him out. In what way, though, this is supposed to be parallel to the usage of the term in Genesis 6-8, is lost on me. Such things need longer to explain than in just a letter in the ET... which is why it's a shame that DA simply ducks such issues in his actual book, whilst finding multiple pages still to discuss in depth such irrelevancies as Gosse's Omphalos.
- Thus, it is clear that DA here has indulged in "proof-texting" - he has grabbed some similar words out of context, without regard to whether or not they are legitimate parallels, and used them to support a pre-existing doctrine. He has not derived his doctrine from these texts, but simply roped them in to support the existing construct. Proof-texting is right and necessary when done properly... this isn't it.
- But, having said all of that, I can still concede that the Bible can, in some contexts, use the language in this kind of way, speaking of the "whole earth" when it means less than the entire totality of the globe. I would argue, as I have hinted above, that in such cases there are actual contextual clues, whether in the immediate or the wider context. For example, the wider context of the writings dealing with Paul's ministry means that we know he didn't actually preach the gospel to every living being under heaven - for one thing, Romans 15 shows that he still had plans to visit Spain. Here, the reference seems to me to be another "universal-local"; Paul preached the gospel fully and widely throughout the regions of Asia Minor, such that it was a known and public thing in every place he went. But wha is the context of Genesis 1-11, where the flood account appears? It needs a strong argument for DA's view, because the default presumption simply from that context, even before you come to details of the account, is strongly in favour of a global flood. Hence DA's neglect of this question is a major weakness in his case; I noted elsewhere in my reivew that he has quite a penchant for side-stepping hard and necessary questions in favour of his own chosen issues.
- When we actually look at the details, we find that the Noahic flood had such features as:
- requiring a gigantic boat to evade it that took 120 years in construction (don't you think Noah could have moved out of the east with a journey of slightly less than that amount of time if he merely needed to evade a regional downpour?)
- it killed even the birds and other creatures which could likewise have easily migrated to avoid a local flood, and required them to be on the boat to be saved. When the flood ended, a bird was released, but could not find anywhere to land and returned - perhaps in DA's scenario the problem was the poor thing was just feeling a little weary that day?
- The flood waters rose and prevailed for 150 days, the whole time that Noah had to remain upon the ark being a whole year, and covering even the tops of the highest mountains. We presume that DA knows that water flows downhill. How can all the mountains be covered in any particular area of the east for such a vast period of time without the flood extending globally, or at least across the entire contintent, as opposed to DA's mere regional flood? DA's theory would require some kind of enormous basin to countain the flood in a localised part of the east only - but we know that he rejects all such ideas that require any modification to orthodox mainstream scientic thinking.
- Moreover, God promised never to send such a flood ever again. There have been many immense and catastrophic local and regional floods since. On DA's account, God broke his promise. But when we presuppose the truth of the Bible as the ultimate arbiter of truth, and use it to reconstruct history instead of using a foreign history reconstructed from something else to intepret the Bible, a different picture emerges. This promise means that the Noahic flood must have been immensely greater than any subsequent flood, and so DA's belief must be wrong. Again, he never addresses this argument in his book. The implication of God's post-flood promise is that the flood at least dramatically interfered with the seasons (if they are assumed to have been operating before, which I am not commenting on either way here). That is not possible though for a local flood; or if the meaning is simply that the localised flood disrupted the seasons locally, then this again leads to the unthinkable conclusion that God's promise was broken.
- Again, DA never addresses the "table of nations" in Genesis 10 or the Babel account in Genesis 11. According to his theory, multiple languages existed long before Adam let alone Noah, and so did the nations. What significance do these chapters actually play in his scheme? It's all very well to promote a general theory that "Genesis is theological, not scientific", but if you want to sustain that argument, then in a 350-page book that concludes that creationism is dangerous and embarassing you ought to actually find some space to address these historical narratives. Genesis 1-11 records that the nations, such as Egypt (Mizraim), descended from people who came out of the ark. DA's Darwinian dating requires him to believe that Egypt was flourishing independently long before the flood, and does not permit him to believe that the nations all descend from people who were in a localised flood in the east. The bottom line is that ultimately you can't hold both Darwinian and Scriptural orthodoxy, and DA jettisons the latter in favour of the former by treating the Bible in Enlightenment style as purely "private values", "theological truths" for believers, rather than a true and historical revelation from God about the origins of our race.
To be continued...
Thursday, 1 January 2009
Dr. Denis Alexander in the ET
I've started so I may as well finish... January's "Evangelical Times" (http://www.evangelicaltimes.org) carried a letter from Dr. Alexander whose book I have reviewed at length here
Unsurprisingly, Dr. Alexander's letter didn't totally agree. In this post, I'm going to begin going through Dr. Alexander's letter, with the hope that it'll shed some more light on the issues for my readers. Here we go.
We shall see...
This letter, then, is aiming to downplay the differences between Dr. Alexander's attempt at a Christian Darwinism, and Professor McIntosh's (in my opinion, Biblical) creation theology. Along those lines, Dr. Alexander then lists a number of doctrines which he says the two of them both agree on.
In fact as I read this, the appropriateness of Rrofessor McIntosh's invocation of the "downgrade" metaphor was impressed upon me. One of the striking features of the decline from evangelical orthodoxy in the late 19th century, and one that allowed it to escape from under the radar of many sincere evangelicals (or often those who should have known better but had no stomach for a fight) until the rot was well and truly endemic, was the use of orthodox terminology by downgraders. The liberals believed in the divinity of Christand the divine inspiration of the Word of God... it's just that by "divinity" they didn't mean "deity" as Christians had historically done, and by "inspiration" they didn't mean "plenary inspiration", that word having now to be added for clarity's sake.
By referring to this, what I mean is that Dr. Alexander is being more than a little disingenuous. By this late stage in doctrinal debate in Christendom, we surely all ought to know that the mere heaping up of phrases to identify doctrines that we can all tick the box for, does not mean much. To make his Darwinian teaching acceptable to evangelicals he needs to minimise the difference between it and the historical faith, but I don't think he's being accurate in doing so. That is:
To be continued...
Unsurprisingly, Dr. Alexander's letter didn't totally agree. In this post, I'm going to begin going through Dr. Alexander's letter, with the hope that it'll shed some more light on the issues for my readers. Here we go.
Do we have to choose?Yes!
Dear Sir,
Given the level of angst in Andy McIntosh's article in October's ET (`The Downgrade Controversy of the 21st Century') critiquing my book "Creation or Evolution - do we have to choose? (Monarch, 2008)", the reader might be forgiven for thinking that the theological gulf between us is rather wide.
But this is not the case.
We shall see...
McIntosh and I both believe in the full plenary inspiration of the whole of Scripture as the Word of God; in a literal Adam and Eve; a historical Fall leading to separation from God of all humankind; and our deliverance from both spiritual and physical death through the death and resurrection of Christ.
This letter, then, is aiming to downplay the differences between Dr. Alexander's attempt at a Christian Darwinism, and Professor McIntosh's (in my opinion, Biblical) creation theology. Along those lines, Dr. Alexander then lists a number of doctrines which he says the two of them both agree on.
In fact as I read this, the appropriateness of Rrofessor McIntosh's invocation of the "downgrade" metaphor was impressed upon me. One of the striking features of the decline from evangelical orthodoxy in the late 19th century, and one that allowed it to escape from under the radar of many sincere evangelicals (or often those who should have known better but had no stomach for a fight) until the rot was well and truly endemic, was the use of orthodox terminology by downgraders. The liberals believed in the divinity of Christand the divine inspiration of the Word of God... it's just that by "divinity" they didn't mean "deity" as Christians had historically done, and by "inspiration" they didn't mean "plenary inspiration", that word having now to be added for clarity's sake.
By referring to this, what I mean is that Dr. Alexander is being more than a little disingenuous. By this late stage in doctrinal debate in Christendom, we surely all ought to know that the mere heaping up of phrases to identify doctrines that we can all tick the box for, does not mean much. To make his Darwinian teaching acceptable to evangelicals he needs to minimise the difference between it and the historical faith, but I don't think he's being accurate in doing so. That is:
- Dr. Alexander and Professor McIntosh both believe in a "literal Adam and Eve"... but the Professor's Adam is the first human being, specially created from the dust on the sixth day of the world's existence, the historical father of all humanity, whose sin brought physical suffering and death into the world, and from whose rib Eve the mother of all the living was created. Dr. Alexander's is a Neolithic farmer who appeared at one second to midnight on the evolutionary clock, the descendent of thousands of years of prior humans who had lived and died with art, culture and religion, and ultimately the offspring of ape-like creatures, fish and ultimately bacteria. He did not bring in physical suffering or death, and is not the father of many people alive today (such as the Australian Aboriginals). Dr. Alexander does also explain in his book that he sees his "literal" Adam and Eve as only a possibility, and also allows that a rank liberal approach, where the whole thing is just a metaphor not referring to any particular couple or set of events is also possible within the Biblical text... but, I presume because it's his aim in this letter to say things that a more conservative evangelical readership in ET will find palatable, he doesn't mention that here. Hmmm.
- Whereas they both believe in the plenary inspiration of Scripture, Dr. Alexander also brings to the Bible the prior doctrine and hard distinction (as he'll explain later in the letter), that the Bible is a "theological" and not a "scientific" one, and that therefore it simply does not speak of creation as a historical matter. That is, anything it has to say along those lines is screened out in advance by the hermeneutical grid he brings to the text. It's all inspired - but there are also presuppositions that will disallow it from giving us a deliberate history of the world's formation. Dr. Alexander believes that science is a second book, whose results in research into the past, can reach an equivalent level of truth with Scripture such that Scripture is not allowed to contradict it. Professor McIntosh, on the other hand, comes with the classical Christian presuppositional approach - that is, that Scripture is the ultimate and unrivalled source of knowledge, that must be consulted first and gets to set boundaries on all other fields, ruling out certain theories (such as Darwinism) in advance. The Bible is not an equal source of knowledge with Science, but science's lord.
- Dr. Alexander's "historical" fall is "historical" in the sense that it corresponds to an event in space-time. But to compare this to Professor McIntosh's fall, which agrees with that of historic orthodoxy, is to compare chalk with cheese. Dr. Alexander believes that the physical world, with its thorns and sweat coming from the brows of the sons of Adam, was that way before, during and after Adam's sin. He believes that pain, suffering and death is essential to a physical world of this sort with carbon-based life - "biology is a package deal". The fall was, according to him, purely in the spiritual realm: a relationship with God was offered and rejected. Professor McIntosh, on the other hand, holds that death came into the world because Adam sinned (Romans 5), and the whole creation came into bondage (Romans 8) and now dwells under a curse, suffering, disease and pain not being part of God's original "very good" creation. It is not intellectual integrity to seek to paper over the gaping chasm between these conceptions with the word "historical".
- Again, when Dr. Alexander says he believes in "deliverance from physical ... death" through the death of Jesus, he means something quite different to both the Professor and historic Christian thought. In his system, death is not (as we've already remarked), an unwelcome intruder, a curse placed by God upon rebels. He explains at length in his book that it was normal, part of reality, embraced by those who came before Christ with little or no realisation that something else would one day come until the apostles revealed that fact. Christ delivers us from physical death, not because that was part of the curse which he has redeemed us from by himself being cursed, but simply because the future creation and future kingdom are something of a different order, something better. Dr. Alexander's doctrine of salvation is basically Gnostic - creation is not redeemed, restored and glorified, but replaced with a different order entirely, an event which in the final analysis makes Christ's physical death theologically incomprehensible; we'll come to that later in the letter. The Professor, on the other hand, holds and teaches that physical death is an integral part of the curse (man being made body and soul, and so bearing the curse in both), and Christ had of necessity to come in the flesh and to suffer and die in it, to redeem us from that curse and eventually to purify the whole cosmos in the future re-creation.
To be continued...
Saturday, 27 December 2008
"Creation or Evolution" review in a more permanent/accessible form
Here, in a more permanent form, is my extended (20 parts!) review of Dr. Denis Alexander's plea for evangelical Christians to embrace Darwinism:
http://david.dw-perspective.org.uk/writings/creation-or-evolution-dr-denis-alexander
If you think it's worthwhile, please pass this link around as far as you can - the material's only as useful as the number of readers it gets.
http://david.dw-perspective.org.uk/writings/creation-or-evolution-dr-denis-alexander
If you think it's worthwhile, please pass this link around as far as you can - the material's only as useful as the number of readers it gets.
Tuesday, 16 December 2008
Some more bits on Denis Alexander's book...
Anonymous has published a few good comments on the post "Synopsis of the theology of 'Creation or evolution....'" which are worth reading through.
Thursday, 11 December 2008
Synopsis of the theology of "Creation or evolution - do we have to choose?"
In my last post, a commenter asked me to give some kind of descriptive overview of Dr. Alexander's theistic-evolutionary theology, how it deals with the various issues, etc. You're welcome! Here are what he says on the major points, in some kind of order, without comment:
I think I've made it clear enough throughout the review that by explaining DA's system, I'm seeking to expose how far from evangelical orthodoxy theistic evolution ends up being when you try to hold to it consistently.
- The book of Genesis in particular and the Bible in general is a theological, not a scientific narrative. This means in practice that we are not to read it as a necessarily historical account or a chronological one in its description of the acts of Creation in Genesis 1-2. To read details of those chapters as if they were historical is to treat the Bible as a science text book.
- The mechanisms of creation is not to be thought of as supernatural/miraculous. This is because the key vocabulary of miracles is not used in the Genesis account or otherwise when reference is made to creation. DA applies this specifically to the development of life and implicitly to the origin of life, but does not discuss the origin of space/time/matter. God's overall sovereignty over the (Darwinian) creative process is not in terms of engineering a pre-determined outcome, but in terms of a general directionality and overall purpose; though the facts imposed by God through the periodic table and other laws of his operation themselves likely are sufficient to guarantee the emergence of life as we know it now.
- The universe is about 15 billion years old, and the earth about 4.6. Basically all dates are as claimed by the scientific consensus. Man has only been present in the universe for the last second of evolutionary time, if we think of time as a 24-hour day. There is no reason why in principle there cannot be alien. life, and if there is it will probably be very similar to life on earth.
- Adam was most likely (though we musn't be excessively dogmatic) a historical individual. The chronologies (which otherwise are not mentioned - I would have liked to ask what DA makes of the large ages in Genesis 5, because these contradict the scientific consensus which DA elsewhere always accepts as true) indicate he would have lived about 6000-8000 years ago.
- This means he would have been a Neolithic farmer, most likely somewhere east of Palestine.
- Human physiology, language, culture, etc., were all well developed by this time. Adam would have had human parents. But they were not made "in the image of God"; Adam was the first "homo divinus". The image of God means that there was the possibility of friendship/relationship with God.
- Moreover, Adam's human ancestors were themselves descended from ape-like hominids, which in turn were from other life forms, all the way back to the original single-cell organisms. There are no separate "kinds" - no boundaries which evolution has not crossed, but a single biological tree of life.
- We are not to think of man as bipartite (body/soul); this is not what Genesis 2:7 is telling us; we should think of him as a whole.
- Adam was only "theologically" speaking, not literally, made from the dust. Eve likewise was not actually made from Adam's rib, but was descended from her own parents in the ordinary way - to say otherwise is to read Genesis as if it were a science book. There was no talking snake. There were many other humans around at the time, which is proved by Cain's fear of someone else killing him. Not all humans in the world today are descended from the Biblical Adam and Eve; e.g. the Australian Aboriginals.
- Physical death was God's intention from the beginning, treated as perfectly normal throughout the Old Testament, which never hints there is anything unnatural about it. Adam and his ancestors were all subject to death and the Fall had no impact here.
- Likewise, pain, suffering, disease and so forth were all also original features of the creation, for men and animals of all kinds. They are endemic to carbon-based life - biology is a package deal and you can't be a sentient being without these things. Similarly, the Fall did not bring in any creation-wide principle of decay or corruption into the created order - it continued as it had ever been.
- The Fall was a spiritual, not a physical event. It did not lead to any kind of decay or degradation in the physical world (such as pain, suffering or disease).
- So, what was lost at the Fall was an offer of spiritual life as God revealed himself to Adam and Eve but they rejected him. Salvation is conceived of primarily in terms of friendship with God, as Christ offers us again the life that Adam and Eve rejected. The death which Adam and Eve brought in was a spiritual one, which means ignorance of God.
- How we inherit Adam's sin and the connection between his sin and ours is never discussed.
- The new creation to be brought in in future by Christ (which will lack pain and suffering) is not a restoration and glorification of an original state that was spoilt through sin, but is the beginning in of a new order of a thoroughly different kind. The resurrection from the dead is only dimly hinted at in the later parts of the Old Testament and those before had no expectation of it. Jesus' healing ministry does not point to him as the redeemer of something lost, but purely points in a future direction to the kingdom to come.
I think I've made it clear enough throughout the review that by explaining DA's system, I'm seeking to expose how far from evangelical orthodoxy theistic evolution ends up being when you try to hold to it consistently.
Wednesday, 10 December 2008
"Creation or evolution - do we have to choose?" - The postscript
Two and a half pages end the book - the first bit with a summary of all that's gone before, the second with the forward-looking statement summing up where to go from here. DA's got a good, systematic mind and ties the book up in a straightfoward way consistent with what's gone before.
The first half then repeats what's been argued for. Science is essentially an objective, value and presupposition-free zone; ideologies are bolted on by others. Science looks at the historical reality what God did; the Bible gives us the theological interpretation. Evolution is compatible with believing in a God of intentions and purposes for the world. (In my review of the preceeding chapter I, to save space, passed over commenting on the very weak form of sovereignty DA argues for in evolution, explicitly disavowing the concept of a total control in favour of a general directional influence). DA argues that we can hold to both Darwinism and all the historical Christian doctrines of sin, the Fall and redemption. Arguing that is water under the bridge now. I think it's DA makes it clear as he argues those things that he holds those doctrines in a severely modified form that does not cohere with historical evangelical orthodoxy, and at times is grotesequely dualistic in some areas, even approaching a new Gnosticism (e.g. the interaction of science and the Bible, the connection between theological and physical facts, and the relationship between the present creation and the new creation to come).
In the final part, DA takes the gloves off. The moderate language of the earlier book (though unless my detectors are wonky, it was always with a heavy dose of condescension) gives way to something quite different. At the beginning of the book, DA told us that these were matters of comparative indifference, that Christians must differ on them amicably, and that there is no excuse for any kind of harsh language or anathematising of any others because of different views on Darwinism. Either amnesia struck DA, his editors and proof-readers, or that was just flannel and now he tells us what he really thinks, or perhaps this last section was written after getting out of bed on the wrong side and he doesn't really mean it. Because now, he tells us that Christians who reject Darwinism are "embarrassing and bring the gospel into disrepute", are (via a quote from Augustine on a different matter) "dangerous... talking nonsense... embarassing...", create intellectual barriers that prevent scientists from taking the gospel seriously, have caused very high-profile (but unnamed) scientists to give up their profession of faith, and to cap it all are following the theology condemned in the book of Galatians!
This then leads into the most cringe-worthy example of double standards, where DA, after writing a 353 page long book on the question of Darwinism, launches a stinging diatribe against Christians who waste time discussing Darwinism when the world has so many other problems to spend time on. Christians who reject evolution, he says, are "divisive" and hypocritical, talking about creation but not being the ones who spend time caring for it. They invest time in magazines about creation and fail to put money into helping the poor, tackling HIV, or funding orphanages.
I wish I could say I've never read this kind of thing before. I've probably done it myself; it's a striking example of the blindness of fallen man that someone who's just spent such a large amount of time on disagreeing with other Christians over the question of evolution can then launch such a vitriolic attack on anyone who else who dares to do the same. But we know what he really means, don't we? He means, it's an evil waste of time and resources to address this matter unless you agree with me. This argumentation is silly and unworthy. It's also a false dichotomy. The creation God has made is very big - immense. God commanded us to subdue the earth - to have dominion over it (Genesis 1:28). Our hopes of doing that were ruined by sin, but restored and indeed made certain in Christ (Hebrews 2:6-9). Man is commanded to explore, harness and glorify God in every aspect of creaton - physical, spiritual, intellectual, etc. Other than the gross generalisation in the above criticism, it's a clear fallacy to criticise Christians for spending time discussing and critiquing Darwinism and its effects on a Biblical world-view as if God commanded us to spend all our time building orphanages. That's a modern Western sentimentality that fails to get to grips with the vastness of the task that God set us in the creation mandate. It's a silly and cheap criticism easily turned back on the one issuing it. Why is Dr. Alexander living in the luxury of 21st century Cambridge, in the ivory towers of the Faraday Institute, when he could come out here and join me in Africa? There are slums with hundreds of thousands of people round here I can point him to. Why is he wasting time behind his desk penning insults against creationists when he could be down on the ground, caring for orphans and widows? I presume he has a good reason - and I can think of many excellent ones. The point is, though, that these are cheap shots whoever is making them and whoever they are made against, whether they like Darwinism or not.
The note we end on has two more points. First, DA criticises creationists for not being enthusiastic enough about combatting global warming. It has occurred to me over the last year or two that anti-creationist critics, whether Christian or atheistic, are necessarily committed to being fully convinced of disastrous man-made global warming theory. Once you take the position, as they do, that the mainstream position has to be the correct one (because of the unbiased and virtually infallible nature of the scientific process, cough cough), and that if Darwin deniers can't get published in mainstream journals then that must in itself prove they're wrong, then you have no option but to unquestionningly accept it all. It's the consensus position, and peer-review guarantees its truth. The parting shot is a final cheapie that follows on from this criticism - creationists are like the man who buried his talent in the ground instead of being good stewards of creation, for which DA references Matthew 25:14-30. He doesn't go on to explain whether, as it actually states in Matthew 25:30, he means to say that creationists are going to be cast "into outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth". Perhaps I'd better not ask; I wasn't feeling the lurve, anyway.
That's all for now. There will be more God-willing at another time - I intend to write a review to encapsulate the whole book, and put these up in a more permanent form somewhere. If you had anything to say in the comments though, now's the time!
The first half then repeats what's been argued for. Science is essentially an objective, value and presupposition-free zone; ideologies are bolted on by others. Science looks at the historical reality what God did; the Bible gives us the theological interpretation. Evolution is compatible with believing in a God of intentions and purposes for the world. (In my review of the preceeding chapter I, to save space, passed over commenting on the very weak form of sovereignty DA argues for in evolution, explicitly disavowing the concept of a total control in favour of a general directional influence). DA argues that we can hold to both Darwinism and all the historical Christian doctrines of sin, the Fall and redemption. Arguing that is water under the bridge now. I think it's DA makes it clear as he argues those things that he holds those doctrines in a severely modified form that does not cohere with historical evangelical orthodoxy, and at times is grotesequely dualistic in some areas, even approaching a new Gnosticism (e.g. the interaction of science and the Bible, the connection between theological and physical facts, and the relationship between the present creation and the new creation to come).
In the final part, DA takes the gloves off. The moderate language of the earlier book (though unless my detectors are wonky, it was always with a heavy dose of condescension) gives way to something quite different. At the beginning of the book, DA told us that these were matters of comparative indifference, that Christians must differ on them amicably, and that there is no excuse for any kind of harsh language or anathematising of any others because of different views on Darwinism. Either amnesia struck DA, his editors and proof-readers, or that was just flannel and now he tells us what he really thinks, or perhaps this last section was written after getting out of bed on the wrong side and he doesn't really mean it. Because now, he tells us that Christians who reject Darwinism are "embarrassing and bring the gospel into disrepute", are (via a quote from Augustine on a different matter) "dangerous... talking nonsense... embarassing...", create intellectual barriers that prevent scientists from taking the gospel seriously, have caused very high-profile (but unnamed) scientists to give up their profession of faith, and to cap it all are following the theology condemned in the book of Galatians!
This then leads into the most cringe-worthy example of double standards, where DA, after writing a 353 page long book on the question of Darwinism, launches a stinging diatribe against Christians who waste time discussing Darwinism when the world has so many other problems to spend time on. Christians who reject evolution, he says, are "divisive" and hypocritical, talking about creation but not being the ones who spend time caring for it. They invest time in magazines about creation and fail to put money into helping the poor, tackling HIV, or funding orphanages.
I wish I could say I've never read this kind of thing before. I've probably done it myself; it's a striking example of the blindness of fallen man that someone who's just spent such a large amount of time on disagreeing with other Christians over the question of evolution can then launch such a vitriolic attack on anyone who else who dares to do the same. But we know what he really means, don't we? He means, it's an evil waste of time and resources to address this matter unless you agree with me. This argumentation is silly and unworthy. It's also a false dichotomy. The creation God has made is very big - immense. God commanded us to subdue the earth - to have dominion over it (Genesis 1:28). Our hopes of doing that were ruined by sin, but restored and indeed made certain in Christ (Hebrews 2:6-9). Man is commanded to explore, harness and glorify God in every aspect of creaton - physical, spiritual, intellectual, etc. Other than the gross generalisation in the above criticism, it's a clear fallacy to criticise Christians for spending time discussing and critiquing Darwinism and its effects on a Biblical world-view as if God commanded us to spend all our time building orphanages. That's a modern Western sentimentality that fails to get to grips with the vastness of the task that God set us in the creation mandate. It's a silly and cheap criticism easily turned back on the one issuing it. Why is Dr. Alexander living in the luxury of 21st century Cambridge, in the ivory towers of the Faraday Institute, when he could come out here and join me in Africa? There are slums with hundreds of thousands of people round here I can point him to. Why is he wasting time behind his desk penning insults against creationists when he could be down on the ground, caring for orphans and widows? I presume he has a good reason - and I can think of many excellent ones. The point is, though, that these are cheap shots whoever is making them and whoever they are made against, whether they like Darwinism or not.
The note we end on has two more points. First, DA criticises creationists for not being enthusiastic enough about combatting global warming. It has occurred to me over the last year or two that anti-creationist critics, whether Christian or atheistic, are necessarily committed to being fully convinced of disastrous man-made global warming theory. Once you take the position, as they do, that the mainstream position has to be the correct one (because of the unbiased and virtually infallible nature of the scientific process, cough cough), and that if Darwin deniers can't get published in mainstream journals then that must in itself prove they're wrong, then you have no option but to unquestionningly accept it all. It's the consensus position, and peer-review guarantees its truth. The parting shot is a final cheapie that follows on from this criticism - creationists are like the man who buried his talent in the ground instead of being good stewards of creation, for which DA references Matthew 25:14-30. He doesn't go on to explain whether, as it actually states in Matthew 25:30, he means to say that creationists are going to be cast "into outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth". Perhaps I'd better not ask; I wasn't feeling the lurve, anyway.
That's all for now. There will be more God-willing at another time - I intend to write a review to encapsulate the whole book, and put these up in a more permanent form somewhere. If you had anything to say in the comments though, now's the time!
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