Natural Reading

You could've saved a lot of time by just posting that cartoon that says

Evolution: Here are the facts, what conclusions can we draw from them?
Creationism: Here is the conclusion, how can we make the facts conform to it?

Or words to that effect.

I have never read any of the Bible, so I am not certain about this, but surely the bible can be relied on in some circumstances to provide information about the Middle East during the time it was written? In that sense it could be said that the Bible is presenting true and scientific evidence for fields such as archeology? ;) Although I agree that its ability to provide any other scientific information is limited.

The Bible is a source of "revelation" rather than a source of "science."

Science studies dead spirit. Science is Spirit's coroner and nothing more! . . . Which admittedly is not a small thing! . . . Science dissects concretizations of Spirit. But where science is thought to be capable of defining "Spirit," by breaking it down into its component parts, there . . . what the scientist gains with the scalpel in hand, he looses with the other hand . . . which is busy as a bee polishing his manhood.

Hi Henry,

Welcome to PandasThumb. I'm one of the notorious YECs that visit from time to time here. :-)

The management at PandasThumb needs to add your bio to
List of Pandas Thumb Writers as it is very interesting.

I was not a YEC by upbrining, so my story is somewhat opposite yours.

Though I intensely disagree with your position, I feel what your write here at PandasThumb should be heard. Thank you for taking time to enlighten us on your views.

I had a discussion with Denis Lamoureux who seems to share your views at :

Lamoureux and Cordova : Discussion

and

Parallel Thread Lamoureux and Cordova

respectfully,
Salvador T. Cordova

What? Bees masturbate?

One of the reasons that it is hard to make sense out of much of the Bible is that the literary context is mostly missing. Like the Greeks, the Jews were latecomers to civilization and inherited a wealth of myth and legend, some of it recovered by archaeologists but much of it lost. We don't know, for example, whether in an earlier narrative Abraham did indeed sacrifice Isaac, who was later brought back to life---i gather that there was a minority Jewish tradition to that effect even in the time of the Rabbis. Similarly, the existing Book of Job appears to be an answer to an earlier version of the story, and in the older pantheon, Yahweh was apparently the son of El. The point is that any "natural" reading ignores the obvious fact that we came in on a dialogue well after it began. Far from reflecting primal wisdom, the existing text reflects the reworkings of older texts and many, many layers of editing as anybody can see who isn't blinded by belief---faith may be good for the soul, but it's deadly for philology!

No Ms. literal, bees don't, birds do it for them..., hello, hello, is this microphone turned on?

A footnote to my last comment. An excellent discussion of the issues I brought up can be found in Bruce Zuckerman's book The Silence of Job.

No Ms. literal, bees don't, birds do it for them . . . , hello, hello, is this microphone turned on?

Oh bugger I hate when I do that!

No Henry, the real reason is not religious. Or at least no always religious. There's plenty of agnostic like me that don't have a dog in the religious hunt that question some bits of neo-Darwinism.

The reason is the presupposition that all things must have a so-called natural explanation. You call the religious view "God of the Gaps". I call your view "Science of the Gaps" and laugh at both of you for your dogged determination to cling to things which are not proven and probably not provable.

When you see something in nature that so apparently designed as the DNA/ribosome machinery and encounter the chicken/egg problem with DNA needing proteins to replicate and proteins needing DNA to be constructed the most straightfoward, sane assumption to make in this case is that the silly thing was designed. You must make that assumption AT LEAST until a plausible path around design has been demonstrated. That path has not yet been demonstrated so the sane presupposition is still design.

A lot of people understand this intuitively. What they don't understand is why you and others like you cling pedantically to a definition of "science" which must always and without exception assume, contrary to all common sense, that all things are of natural origin until proven otherwise. In this particular case that's just not palateable to anyone who doesn't accept such a pure and uncompromising definition.

None of the school boards are asking that evolution be thrown out the window. None of the school boards are asking that design be taught as the only possible answer to unexplained origins. All they're asking is that the possibility of design not be discounted at least until a plausible alternative to is demonstrated.

If you can't budge even that much from your inflexible position then you have a problem. You're the one that is clinging to faith in things not seen. You're the one with the religious beliefs. Agnosticism is the only intellectually honest view and as an agnostic you do not rule out ANYTHING by faith. Not by faith in religion and not by faith that all things have a so-called natural explanation (as if intelligence somehow isn't natural).

Speaking of that - how can intelligence have arisen via natural causes in humans, as you believe it has, yet it is supernatural if it isn't human. Why can't intelligence have come about naturally in life we don't know about? Surely you're not going to hand me negative evidence as proof that no other intelligent life exists are you? I'm sure even you admit that negative evidence is not proof of anything.

"Natural reading" makes me think of original intent, original meaning, strict construction, etc, as applied to interpreting and construing the Constitution. With the Constitution, we go back only 200+ years, during which there has been the benefit of the printing press and the same language. But there are still difficulties in determining the meaning of the Constitution. With the Old Testament (and even the new), the same "benefits" were not available. Over thousands of years, there have been extensive interpretations and constructions of the Bible by clerical (and other) scholars, which are not necessarily consistent even within same faiths. So where does "natural reading" lead us, to the future or the past? Perhaps the hermeneutical approach is preferable. Or perhaps a "living" Bible similar to a "living" Constitution. Personally, when it comes to the Bible, I rely upon Mark Twain's "Letters from the Earth."

Hi Nic,

"Oh bugger I hate when I do that!"

Yes, I believe that Ronald Reagan had the same problem...

(And yes, I know that wasn't what you refered to, but the opportunity was too good to pass up.)

I have never read any of the Bible, so I am not certain about this, but surely the bible can be relied on in some circumstances to provide information about the Middle East during the time it was written? In that sense it could be said that the Bible is presenting true and scientific evidence for fields such as archeology? ;)

— Nic George

Philosophical, literary, historical, spiritual and any other sorts of value are simply not of concern here.

— Henry Neufeld

I consider it possible that someone can see design in the world around them without any necessary religious orientation. After all, we see things that are intricate and complicated. Any natural mechanism that may have caused these things is a very long way from being obvious. On the other hand, a lot of this stuff looks in some ways quite similar to what people may have designed deliberately, if only they had the technology. The similarity to human design even includes kludges, errors, inefficiencies, the appearance of cost-cutting and other attributes of what people come up with. Finally, the notion of design is appealingly simple, something even a child can understand. So long as someone is quite entirely ignorant of anything else, design seems like simple common sense.

Of course, the problem with a design explanation is that it explains everything there is in the same way, it can't be falsified in principle, it suggests no possible hypotheses that can be tested, it makes no predictions. Even those proponents of design who are best educated and most sophisticated can only speak wistfully about the unlikely prospect of someone someday thinking of some justification for a program to research design. Design, so far, has been supremely suitable for preaching, public relations, and politics. It has been inaccessible to science altogether.

What this means (as DaveScot tries to say, albeit somewhat incoherently) is that if we posit for the sake of illustration that a Designer existed or is currently active, and that what we suspect is designed *really IS* designed, we couldn't know this either. If we start with the unshakeable assumption that everything results from natural processes, we will necessarily explain everything in terms of natural processes even if this isn't the case. If no plausible natural processes can be found for some particular phenomenon, we place it into the "don't know yet" category and carry on. The presumption against design is impervious in this way as well.

So for pragmatic rather than philosophical reasons, we adopt the naturalistic presumption because it has proven far more useful in making successful predictions. It allows for hypotheses which can be tested, and it allows the accretion of a robust theory by a sequence of replicable results. Design might still be the right answer, but while design is simple and straightforward and doesn't require many years of detailed and strenuous study, it doesn't lead to any further understanding. It's a dead-end in this respect. It isn't science. At most, a schoolteacher can say "Some people believe life was designed. They may be right; they may not. We have no way of knowing. And *because* we have no way of knowing, it's not science and can never be science."

It's never clear to me whether those whose preference runs against natural mechanisms primarily do so because of Biblical training, or whether the Bible is more of a congenial resource for those who are more comfortable with simple answers, like a child satisfied with his parent saying "because I said so!"

Your article reminds me of similar observations I've made with regards to the "natural" reading of Scripture. In order to understand something (as opposed to merely memorizing some dictum without understanding it), you have to be able to relate it back to the understanding you already have. But the understanding you already have will have been heavily influenced by subjective factors: your own personality, your personal experience, education, culture, preferences, fears, ambitions, imagination, philosophy, and so on.

It is a cardinal principle of Biblical interpretation that you let the clear and obvious passages guide your understanding of the difficult and obscure passages. But how do you know which passages are clear and obvious? Since "understanding" means relating something back to the understanding you already have, the passages that seem clearest and most obvious are going to be the ones that are easiest to relate back to the understanding you already have--the understanding that is heavily influenced by subjective factors.

When dealing with real-world issues, there is a certain feedback loop involved: you take a basketball, you face the hoop, and based on your past experience with basketballs, you understand how hard you need to throw the ball, and at what angle, in order to sink a basket. You throw, the ball bounces off the rim, and you realize subconsciously that your initial understanding was inaccurate. The real world provides a kind of quality control over the accuracy of your understanding.

This feedback loop is, shall we say, far less direct when it comes to evaluating the accuracy of one's understanding of Scripture. In many cases, if not most, the only perceptible feedback is "How well does this fit with my understanding of things in general?" So your purely subjective understanding becomes the basis for identifying what the clear and obvious passages of Scripture are and what they mean. Then you begin adding the more difficult passages by relating them back to the subjective understanding you already have, including your personal interpretation of the "easy" passages. Step by step, link by link, you forge a network of ideas that, in your view, appear to be the "natural" reading of Scripture. And every step of the way, your subjective understanding is defining, or at least influencing, what "natural" is. There's no objective measure of whether your understanding is actually accurate or not.

The result ultimately is a cohesive understanding of the Scriptures as a whole that is "obvious," "natural," incontrovertible--and heavily biased by the subjective nature of developing one's understanding in the absence of any objective standard of correctness. If anyone challenges your understanding of Scripture, you've got an endless supply of passages that back you up, and so does the guy who contradicts you, because you've each built up a network of understandings that encompasses the whole of Scripture while simultaneously reflecting your own unique and subjective understanding of how things fit together.

Once upon a time, it was clear and obvious that the firmament over our heads was a roof above which sat heaven, whose doors could be opened now and then to let water fall down as rain. But that's not the "natural" reading to anyone who has grown up since the invention of machines that could actually see and visit the regions above the clouds. The real world gave us a bit of feedback and corrected our understanding on that point. That's what science will do for you, if you let it.

Mark, would it be reasonable to summarize your position as "exegesis is definitionally subjective"?

If so, then it clarifies the issue from a fundamentalist point of view - indeed, from almost any religious point of view: many theists, particularly the more vocal, and intolerant ones, would disagree with the single word "subjective"; to them, any exegesis is purely "objective."

But part of this is a danger inherent in religion itself, which at least purports to give absolute answered to significant and fundamental questions.

The term rational theist might almost be an oxymoron.

I don't mean to disparage those rational theists who exist (such as the gentleman who began this thread), but they would appear to be a minority.

I had a discussion with Denis Lamoureux who seems to share your views

— Salvador

f Lamoureux were in my denomination I would re-commend his ex-communication and barring from the communion table. If he wants to align himself with the Darwinists leadership rather than the evangelicals FINE, but he should label himself as such : an NCSE Darwinist who rejected a central claim of the evangelical faith. He can call himself a liberal compromiser, a die-hard Darwinist, but he has no right to say he's an evangelical.

"Sane assumption"?

"Intuitive understanding"?

I was going to post something to the effect that, due to the different epistemological bases of science and religion, they are talking past each other.

I didn't expect to have a Jane Goodall moment in the process. Thanks, Dave Scott, that was exhibit A.

The reason is the presupposition that all things must have a so-called natural explanation. You call the religious view "God of the Gaps". I call your view "Science of the Gaps" and laugh at both of you for your dogged determination to cling to things which are not proven and probably not provable.

Folks need to be reminded that scientists formerly assumed that living things had been designed. A couple of hundred years of increasingly extensive and intensive research later, they assume they haven't been designed. If methodological naturalism is a prejudice, it's also a result.

That the supposed plain text or "natural" reading of the Bible done by modern Christians is anything but natural

PvM misrepresented: And asked for Lamoureux's ex-communication . . .

Seems Salvador has a problem with reading comprehensions. I am glad though that his only accusation of misrepresentation is the timeline which I did not really address.
Silly how Sal seems to cry wolf without much foundation. Makes one wonder about his other assertions of misrepresentations when it comes to for instance the work of Shallit and Elsberry.

Thanks Sal, you never fail to support my arguments :-)

In 'Sola Experientia-- Feyerabend's refutation of classical empiricism' (Philosophy of Science, Vol 64 385-395 1997), Bas van Fraassen does a beautiful job of laying out the problem of interpretation for 'sola scriptura' approaches to religion, drawing on the old Jesuit argument against this naive Protestant approach to the bible. The three key questions are,
What is scripture?
How do we interpret it?
How do we reason from it to its consequences? (Formal logic alone just won't cut it here.)

The upshot is, "we cannot apply the rule (sola scriptura) without identifying, intepreting and extrapolating from Scripture." And all these endeavours will be fraught with controversy. So sola scriptura is an untenable epistemology. M

I don't have much hope that this will change many minds, but it should at least challenge a few people to think more clearly about where their convictions come from, and whether they are justified...

An excellent discussion of the issues I brought up can be found in Bruce Zuckerman's book The Silence of Job.

the status of the evidence provided by the Bible is elevated above that of scientific evidence.

William Lane Craig, wrote on pages 36-37 of Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics (1984, revised 1994):

"Should a conflict arise between the witness of the Holy Spirit to the fundamental truth of the Christian faith and beliefs based on argument and evidence, then it is the former which must take precedence over the latter, not vice versa."

"...as long as reason is a minister of the Christian faith, we should employ it..."

"The ministerial use of reason occurs when reason submits to and serves the gospel. Only the ministerial use of reason can be allowed."

"The Holy Spirit teaches us directly which teaching is really from God."

"The fact is that we can know the truth whether we have rational arguments or not."

Dave Scot, go to talkorigins.org

The reason is the presupposition that all things must have a so-called natural explanation. You call the religious view "God of the Gaps". I call your view "Science of the Gaps" and laugh at both of you for your dogged determination to cling to things which are not proven and probably not provable.

"Probably not provable?" That's an odd universal statement for an agnostic. Theists have been disappointed in the past when an "unsolvable gap" was eventually solved by science. So, IMO, putting God where science is currently ignorant is bad for religion in the long run.

If science doesn't presuppose "that all things must have a so-called natural explanation," what do you recommend that it presuppose as an alternative? Apply science in some places but not others? And, who determines what "mysteries" science should investigate and what "mysteries" it should stay away from?

I don't think there is any other workable alternative then to assume that everything has a natural explanation and is therefore solvable. If that turns out not to be a safe assumption/presupposition, then "reality" will take care of itself -- namely, science will remain unable to solve a particular puzzle. But, I don't think science should pre-judge a "mystery" as "knowable" or "unknowable."

If God meant for us to fly, he would have given us wings. So, tell the Wright Brothers to get a life.

"I don't think there is any other workable alternative "

We have, in science, things such as the "Heisenberg Uncertain Principle", and "Goedel's Formal Undecidability theorem" and "Arrow's General Possibility Theorem". In short, a number of places where information is "unknowable" to human measurement.

It's not science that can't tolerate uncertainty, it is that science can tolerate quite a lot of uncertainty, and ID wants that uncertain filled in NOW, rather than when we have the ideas and observations to fill it in.

We should not rule out that there will be information that we cannot find, we still don't know what waves in the wave function, nor will we ever know, in all probability, all of the details of selection that have produced the state of living populations on earth. Science teaches one to live with these tensions and gaps.

"If God meant for us to fly, he would have given us wings. So, tell the Wright Brothers to get a life."

Good line

Those of us involved in the debate about evolution are often amazed at how little impact the enormous evidence for evolution has on anti-evolutionists. Each piece of positive evidence is treated in isolation and belittled, while every open question is treated as proof of the demise of evolution.

...the presupposition that all things must have a so-called natural explanation.

— A commentator

Neufeld: If we did not have a story of creation in the sacred literature of the dominant religious tradition in America, and if that story was not being taken as some sort of scientific evidence, the debate would not be between special creation and evolution, but rather would be between the dominant understanding of evolution and various modifications that might be made to it.

DaveScot: Agnosticism is the only intellectually honest view and as an agnostic you do not rule out ANYTHING by faith.