folk science

yes indeed.

Very interesting way of looking at it. I agree completely that the real debate here should be between theism and naturalism, but the YEC's seem to forget that we are on the theistic side, and opposed to the naturalistic side. In order to maintain their VERSION of the Christian approach to origins, they attempt to dismiss TE'ism AS naturalism.

THe real battle should not be whether the earth is young or old, whether God used evolution or not. It should be opposed to atheistic, naturalistic thought. And by presenting THEISTIC evolution, that is what TE's are doing. We are countering naturalistic and atheistic viewpoints with: GOD DID IT! The problem comes in with YEC's yelling, not alongside us with the clarion call GOD DID IT, but off on the side, with "God did it THIS WAY, and only THIS WAY!".

I think this addition to the essential call is both unecessary and distracting (even damaging) to the call itself. In order to "undo" the potential damage of this unecessary addition, we TE's have to spend an inordinate amount of time explaining to YEC's why they should not insist upon that addition (both in that we believe it is wrong and that it is unecessary), and convincing non-Christians that they need not be distracted from the essential call by this unecessary addition.

In order to maintain their VERSION of the Christian approach to origins, they attempt to dismiss TE'ism AS naturalism.

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I think however that we have to be charitable to them. YECists operate from a strong literalist viewpoint and don't see the point of the "myth-truth". So we must understand that there is no desire to be simple or backward in and of itself. It's not as if YECists have bumpkin chapters dedicated to the opposition of science. (Although it certainly seems so at times! ) YECism is as much a defence of the Bible to them as TEism is to us. I think that often, when we try to work against their scientific arguments, we are missing the point: it is the worldview which necessitates their scientific arguments.

The problem is that this worldview is utterly opposed to the idea of the "myth-truth". So how do we bring them to accept that what we are saying has merit, without attacking them? Can we show that our worldview is acceptable without assaulting theirs? That really is the key: people are resistant towards new world-view ideas only because their own are under siege.

shernren said:

I think however that we have to be charitable to them. YECists operate from a strong literalist viewpoint and don't see the point of the "myth-truth". So we must understand that there is no desire to be simple or backward in and of itself. It's not as if YECists have bumpkin chapters dedicated to the opposition of science. (Although it certainly seems so at times! ) YECism is as much a defence of the Bible to them as TEism is to us. I think that often, when we try to work against their scientific arguments, we are missing the point: it is the worldview which necessitates their scientific arguments.

The problem is that this worldview is utterly opposed to the idea of the "myth-truth". So how do we bring them to accept that what we are saying has merit, without attacking them? Can we show that our worldview is acceptable without assaulting theirs? That really is the key: people are resistant towards new world-view ideas only because their own are under siege.

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Oh, I agree with all of this completely. The problem is that our worldview is actually exactly the same as theirs. They are opposed to naturalism, WE are opposed to naturalism. They believe that God created everything, WE believe God created everything. But since we believe that God created in a different way, they see this as a threat to their interpretation on the details and feel the need to condemn it. The easiest way for them to do this is to simply associate the TE position with the common enemy: naturalism. Voila! TE is tar-babied.

I can see them wanting to defend their literal interpretation, that is natural. But, in defending their interpretation, they are being a bit lazy. Rather than deal with TE'ism as it really is, they instead take the easy way out. They attack a phantom version of TE that very few, if any, TE's ascribe to. They equate TE'ism with naturalism, with disbelief in the supernatural, with dismissal of God's power, with a worship of science, with a disbelief in Scripture, etc, etc. Strawman, false dichotomy, poisoning the well, there all there.

Vance said:

Oh, I agree with all of this completely. The problem is that our worldview is actually exactly the same as theirs. They are opposed to naturalism, WE are opposed to naturalism. They believe that God created everything, WE believe God created everything. But since we believe that God created in a different way, they see this as a threat to their interpretation on the details and feel the need to condemn it. The easiest way for them to do this is to simply associate the TE position with the common enemy: naturalism. Voila! TE is tar-babied.

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Perhaps they react to as 'fundamental' and as 'literalistic' atheists,
who keep telling them science 'proved' there is no God,
just look at the arguments of many atheist here,they keep repeating
that the Bible is just an old book,of some deluded ancients,and science
proved the Bible wrong.
Of course they feel hurt,and as they do know there is God,from their own
life,they don't see that these self called clever and uptodate people,
are just usingg science to justify their own lack of believs.

No matter how I disagree with YEC,I feel for them,because God they love is being attacked,his word is being branded outdated and silly.

From that position,it is hard to see the real intentions,and to try to see
the Bible,the God from a different light.

I can see them wanting to defend their literal interpretation, that is natural. But, in defending their interpretation, they are being a bit lazy. Rather than deal with TE'ism as it really is, they instead take the easy way out. They attack a phantom version of TE that very few, if any, TE's ascribe to. They equate TE'ism with naturalism, with disbelief in the supernatural, with dismissal of God's power, with a worship of science, with a disbelief in Scripture, etc, etc. Strawman, false dichotomy, poisoning the well, there all there.

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I don't think of them as lazy,I think of them as hurt,and scared.
The more you beat themthe more immune and defensive they'll become,show them respect,love and patience,slowly reason,agree with them,and then offer a different angle,and they may want to have a look,don't you think?

They are opposed to naturalism, WE are opposed to naturalism.

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It's rather more nuanced than that. It seems to me that the problem with YECism is that it's essentially "naturalism +" - that in other words the world is "natural", God is "supernatural" and therefore God can only work through "supernatural" means. Therefore, the idea is that creation is a kind of "miracle." Fair enough. But there's also a strong "natrualist" streak in their "supernaturalism" - hence the need to try and prove "spernatural" events using "natural" means. That leads to their distortion of science to fit their "supernatural" model.

So it's kind of schizophrenic - they want the "supenaturalist" cake fed to them with a "naturalist" spoon. But if God created the world in the six days that the Bible says, and the evidence says otherwise, then surely they can just say it's a miracle and therefore not open to scientific enquiry? (Oh, but that opens up another can of worms...)

What they can't seem to grasp is that God can work (and does every second of every day) through entirely natural ways to create and sustain the universe, because that God's existence wouldn't be "obvious." You can - and people do - spend your whole life looking at the universe and its wonders and not see God, because our perception of God is not something open to naturalistic evidence. What YECists want is "certainty", almost a way of pinning God down to a set of propositions that can be observed; but they look for it in the very place you can't find it: in science.

It comes down to this: if you can't read the Bible literally here, then you can't be certain you know what it means (all allegorical and non-literal readings of any text are, by definition almost, provisional); and if you can't be certain what it means, then who controls what the Bible means, not just here but anywhere else? Does that mean that anyone can read the Bible and interpret it? I'm afraid it does. It's about control.

I think that it's really all about literalism. Take away the need for literalism and all the evidence points the "wrong" way.

It also might help if TE's don't go to the open forum and take positions with atheists to bash and ridicule the YEC view....

Yes, artybloke, I agree with what you are saying completely. What I meant by naturalism was the philosophical naturalism that says that God is not in it at all. I agree completely that God should be seen IN the natural as much as in any supernatural action He takes, and that this is a big part of the problem for YEC's. They seem to think that ascribing a basically natural process to something that traditionally had been seen as supernatural is somehow both diminishing to God, and a denial that God acts supernaturally at all.

I do think the issue of "control" is important here too. I'm not just talking about the relative "authority" of the Bible, church and reason either. We could argue that one till the cows come home.

It seems to me that there is among some Christians an almost pathological need to control the meaning of the Bible. It has to mean this or that because if it doesn't, then what certainty is there? If they or someone else deviate from a narrowly-focussed set of meanings for what the Bible says, they start to feel threatened.

Whether you're a liberal or conservative Christian is not at issue; whether you're a TULIP Calvinist or an Arminian, or YEC or TE, is not at issue. It's when those things become so fixed and immobile that everything outside becomes the outer darkness that your religion has started to ossify, and it becomes a religion of fear and conformity rather than one of freedom.

One always makes choices; I choose to be liberal, you may choose to be conservative. Some of those choices are made for complicated personal and intellectual reasons. But if they ever become so totally fixed and immobile that nothing can shift them, then they almost become a wall. We can hide behind a wall; but it also stops us developing.

A Bible that contains poetry, myth, parable, story, metaphor, allegory, whatever other genres and literary devices it undoubtedly does contain, inevitably is an uncertain Bible. You can't say with any absolute certainty that even things in the Gospels are neccessarily always "historical" or factual. In one way, the YECer's are right, it does add an element of doubt into the equation to say that the first 11 chapters of Genesis are not historical. We can say, yes, but the Gospels are part of the genre of history, and to a certain extent we may be right; but genre criticism is as uncertain an art as every other form of criticism. It will never give us black-and-white answers. Its answers will always be nuanced and raise as many questions as it answers. That's the nature of the game.

In some ways, I suspect that trying to control the meaning of the Bible by saying "It has to mean this or that" is a way of protecting ourselves from the possible harm of wondering if we've got it all wrong somehow.

But I don't know anywhere that Jesus promised us "certainty." Jesus promised to take us on a pilgrimage into the light, which is sometimes going to involve struggle and uncertainty. If that means giving up "knowing" what the Bible means all the time (we can be sure that we think we know what it means) then so be it.

Very well stated. I do think the fear of uncertainty is the key. Think of how many times the YEC response is "well, if that was true, then what about X, which would lead to Y, and then where would we be!?" The battle is rarely over the specific issue at hand, but about their fear of a slippery slope to something actually important.

[Pokes head round corner]

I seem to recall identifying a few features a few months back on the TE only forum, which to my mind typify the YEC mind-set

1) Preference for literal truth. Symbolic truth is always second best in the YEC mind. To them, a symbolic truth is a form of "not really true". Ironically, this is a supremely modernist position. Fundamentalism is, however, a modernist movement. TE comes hard to the modernist mindset, because it cuts against the modernist literality=truth tendancy.

So modernism produces either Classic "Bishop of Woolwich" liberalism - "Genesis 1-11 is wrong", or fundamentalism - "The Bible is right and therefore the world was made in six days". Perhaps the movement of western society into a more post-modern mindset spells better days for TE; but perhaps not, because post-modernism (and note how this is co-opted by the normally fiercely anti-pomo fundamentalists) is equally likely to be sceptical of scientific over-arching narratives, like evolution.

2) Missing the real choice. The phantom choice is presented of "The Bible or Scientists - who do you believe?" But that's not the real choice presented. The real choice is "If your interpretation does not match up with reality, do you change your interpretation or deny reality?"

I'd like to add another - the Philip Johnson syndrome, aka "not doing science the way science is done". Kenneth Miller goes into this in Finding Darwin's God - on reading Johnson's book, Miller was waiting for Johnson to reveal his better scientific model, as a scientist would. But Johnson didn't. Then he realised; Johnson was arguing like a defence lawyer. And a defence lawyer has only to attempt to create reasonable doubt in the jury's minds. What creationists say, frequently, boils down to "mainstream science isn't absolutely proven and therefore it's reasonable to believe in a completely unevidenced alternative model." It's the same logic as "because I can't be absolutely sure that the roulette ball won't finish on on any arbitrary number, it's perfectly reasonable to believe that it will and put my entire fortune on that number".

But then what help am I? I identify with the great Martyn Joseph:

I'm a liberal backslider - been sliding 'bout ten years
They ask me how I'm doing and I confirm all their fears
Swearing like a trooper; drinking like a bum
I'm a liberal backslider, and it sure is a lot of fun.

But there's the irony. I post on other Christian boards where evolution is officially a Dead Horse and will not be discussed on the main discussion fora; there I'd probably be going hammer and tongs up agin' Vance and RMWilliams and so on. What's funny here is that the YECs lump us together, because anyone who's not YEC is seen as a suspect liberal, and yet I'd bet that besides this issue I'd hardly find a point of agreement with, say, Vance. I'm wobbly on the virgin birth, think it matters far more that Jesus is alive than that He physically rose from the dead, and suspect that when the "book of the law" was found when spring cleaning the temple the ink was suspiciously wet. I doubt the conquest of Canaan really happened, and the historicity of Abraham.

Hey, why not be hung for a sheep rather than a lamb? But I'm blathering.

Oh yes, and whilst cards are on the table I don't give a monkey's what consenting adults do in private with their genitalia, and care no more what gender partner you want to marry.

And the funny part, Karl, will be that a YEC would come in here and point at you and say "SEE, SEE, that is what comes of accepting evolution!", entirely ignoring the rest of us who believe the same as they do on almost every point you just raised, but STILL believe in evolution, an old earth, etc.

You will, without doubt, become the strawman TE. :0)