Creationism’s Issue-Groups
Oct 25th, 2007 by Micah Tillman | 10 Comments |
Continuing from before . . .
Just as there are three approaches to Creationism (of which I am aware), there are three groups of issues related to Creationism:
(1) How to understand what Scripture says
(2) How to understand what Science says
(3) How to understand what Philosophy says
In other words, we have to deal with claims of revelation, of discovery, and of reasonableness. We don’t have accept them, just deal with them. And “dealing” can mean rejecting (as when Kant, for the sake of reasonableness, rejects revelation. See his Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone).
Most questions for the Creationist are of the following form: “How do I correlate what Scripture says with what Science says?” Occasionally philosophical issues will arise, but I’ll deal with them later. For the moment I’ll focus on the Making-Science-and-Scripture-Fit problem.
The problem can first be formulated after we know what Scripture and Science say. Only then can you ask about “matching” and “contradiction.” But we always approach Scripture with the problem already formulated.
The very question, “Do Scripture and Science say compatible things?”, therefore, makes itself impossible to ask. It leads people to read Scripture with one eye on Science. And this means people miss what Scripture actually says. (”Does what this says match what Science says?” is a much different question than “What does this say?”, and leads to a much different answer.) And that means they can’t know whether it and Science agree.
Thus, I claim the 6-Day, Progressive Creation, and Theistic Evolution approaches to Creationism are all premature. We have to find a way of reading Scripture that will not make the compatibility question impossible to legitimately ask. I’ll discuss what I think that “way” is tomorrow.
I’m not sure exactly the problem you are describing. I understand that asking what something says /carte blanche/ is different from asking what something says when you have beliefs a priori in your mind.
But philosophically speaking, does this mean you are arguing that true empiricism is possible? That it is possible to read something like Scripture without a priori beliefs? I think this is the main problem in the Creation-Evolution discussion. Scientists believe that their a priori beliefs are objective and neutral (i.e. naturalism) while Christian’s a priori beliefs are subjective and biased. Christian of course admit the bias. Evolutionists do not.
But we are. There is no middle ground. Either I read Genesis believing in the supernatural or I read it believe in the natural. Either I read it believing it is possible God created the way it says, or I believe it is inaccurate (or missing some of the picture). Either I read it believing it is possible for God to have done something I don’t understand, or I read it believing that my mind must at least be able to comprehend something God does. All of these questions are a priori, with the answers brought to the text.
As I see it, one either asks “Does what I believe about Scripture get corroborated in science?” Or we are wondering, “Does what I believe about science get corroborated in Scripture?” This your compatibility question framed in two ways. But I don’t see any way to legitimately avoid the question.
On the naturalist side of things (working under an empirical epistemology) they look at the 6-days and critizise the viewpoint using science and everything empirically gathered and at the root (whether they know it or not) are unhappy with the way in which the 6-day gathers information or truth or his/her epistemology. The 6-day looks at the naturalist and sees a problem with the way in which he puts all his faith in empirical data that is subject to change and revision (due to the nature of science) and beleives that truth is to be gathered from revelation. Underlying these views are different presuppositions concerning the God or a god and what kind of god he is. I don’t beleive it is possible to serve these two masters equally, but I don’t think it necessary either but that would require a lot more words.
riddlej:
As I see it, one either asks “Does what I believe about Scripture get corroborated in science?” Or we are wondering, “Does what I believe about science get corroborated in Scripture?”
I don’t think these are the only questions.
My concern with the 6-Dayers is that they are asking “What science supports my interpretation of Genesis.” It feels like Christian scientists are building a model built on their beliefs; and that’s backwards. They are just pushing their agenda.
It would be like if Exxon paid scientists to refute global warming..
(I hope my tags work)
riddlej–
All excellent points! Well said.
Hopefully what I mean will be clearer after I post the next installment, but you’re right about presuppositions. I love Ken Ham’s, “It’s not a question of whether we’re biased or not. It’s a question of which bias is the best bias to be biased with” (Tillman’s paraphrase).
I don’t want us to read Scripture without presuppositions. I want us to be aware of the hermeneutical (sp?) effects of the questions we ask it (see an article I wrote on the issue here)
Again, I really like what you have to say in this comment. Thanks for saying it!
Chuck–
I’m glad to hear the epistemology point being brought up. Both you and riddlej are dealing with some extremely important philosophical issues. Hopefully I’ll be able to deal with them more fully in a future post.
Mr. Salk–
That is a great way of putting it, I think. To select your scientific theory not on the basis of which one best fits the evidence, but on which one best fits Scripture does seem heteronomous (to use a Kantian term).
But, to appeal to William James, for many religious people (not all), what Scripture says is part of “the evidence,” and thus part of the network of experience that confirms or disconfirms statements.
So the religious scientist has two data sets with which she must deal: the empirical data and the revealed data. This makes her job much more difficult, in that she has to not only satisfy the scientific community’s demands, but the religious community’s demands. (I speak as if the two are separate. They aren’t always, but you get the point).
So the introduction of Scripture shouldn’t get the religious scientist off the hook. It should instead add another level of constraint.
Micah,
I’m way out of my league (with you and with Chuck) when it comes to the philosophical questions, but I tend to approach the problem a little differently. As I understand you, two possible approaches are (1) subjecting the results of science to the conclusions of Scripture or (2) subjecting the teaching of Scripture to the conclusions of science. (I’m not saying either are your position.) I actually prefer neither. I think we should take the best understanding we can of science and the best understanding we can of Scripture, and l lay the two side by side, and progressively refine the one in light of the other. We do this with Scripture in other disciplines: we take the best of philology or the best of historical research and apply it to our understanding of how to exegete Scripture. I think it’s fair to do the same to the creation issue. This is actually not a novel position; it’s well articulated by Charles Hodge of Princeton long ago (no liberal theologian, by the way). The most accessible presentation of his position that I know of is in Mark Noll’s “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind.” To state it a different way, as I was taught by the scientist at my alma mater, “All Truth is God’s Truth”, and therefore we need not be afraid of any of it, while at the same time acknowledging our epistemological limitations on both sides.
I acknowledge my ignorance here, and would welcome critique.
No critique here.
I think you state an attractive position. The question we have to ask when employing the “All truth is God’s truth” maxim is whether we do in fact have the truth (either on the Science or Scripture sides).
If we’ve got faulty interpretations of either Scripture or Science, then working the two sides together will only hurt both.
But that’s a basic caution that applies to all endeavors to understand, and nothing specific to your suggestion.
Thanks!
[...] novel-writing begins to play in background*) on reading the first three chapters of Genesis. In my second post on Creationism, I said I would talk about the right way to read Scripture’s account of [...]
Mr. Salk,
I appreciate your response. I agree that asking what type of science supports my view of Scripture is not, so to speak, the scientific way. However, you probably aren’t going to be able to convince the public not to do that. Most people I know (including the more politically correct environmentalists and health fanatics) look for scientific support to buttress their own ideas, creationist or not.
And, to be perfectly honest, I see scientists doing this as well. They seek out experiments and data that confirm their own theories, including evolution. I have a good friend in the scientific Academy who admits this is so. So let us consider for a moment that evolution, for example, was false. Is there any way that the scientific establishment today would find that out? Not unless they are willing to abandon their own self-fulfilling prophecies.
Moreover, I would argue that it is worse for scientists to commit the self-fulfililng prophecy than it is for religious people. At least the religious people are looking across subjects for confirmation. The scientists are possibly compromising the veracity of their own field—they are not willing to consider alternative sources of information, including Scriptures. They are conservative in nature, rather than progressive. It is not wise to close out other forms of revelation that purport to be truthful, even though I don’t mean to suggest that scientists should suddenly accept any one source of revelation wholesale or as the authoritative guide for their field. But wouldn’t the most popular arena of purported Truth be wise to check other sources out?
I believe this is what made scientists such as Newton, Kepler, Faraday, etc., so interesting. They were willing to see how a theistic view would inform their science. New Age scientists today do the same thing, especially in the fields of physics and pyschology. They are looking to see how their beliefs inform their science and largely find all kinds of confirmation. Time will tell whether this confirmation is deceitful or real truth, but I can’t say it is “bad” for them to be exploring so. Science is about exploration and would probably die out if the epistemology were standardized for too long. The religious nature of man has always encouraged his scientific exploration, and I would argue that today’s religion of agnosticism is currently the reigning paradigm doing so.