TurretinFan (TF) has taken up the mantle for YEC’s of trying to respond
to some of my work on Genesis 1. While he does not respond to my actual thesis
paper or episodes dealing with my positive view, he does try to respond to my
article where I give rejoinders to some common arguments put forth by YEC’s.
I have a great deal of respect for TF (so no comments here should be read with
any level of hostility or animosity), but in this instance, his comments were
often assumptive, superficial, or just seemed to be a restatement of the exact
objection I was responding to and did not really deal with my comments. Like I
did with my responses to Steve Schramm who also gave responses to these
articles, I will give the list of objections and then comment on TF’s remarks.
1. OEC’s are intimidated by secular scientists
and so they reject what they know the text says.
TF’s first comment is simply that peer pressure is
real – the desire to fit in is a real thing, and, so he claims, it is one of
the reason that people are tempted by OEC models. Not only is this simply an
assertion, but the psychology of belief is so far outside of the realm of
expertise of TF or myself, (and of most who comment on these debates) that I don’t
really see any utility to it. Could we not also just arbitrarily say that the
desire to fit into the church culture that people are raised in also drives
people to believe in YEC? The genetic fallacy is a fallacy for a reason. But we
can say more beyond pointing out that infantile nature of such objections as
logically fallacious.
The main issue besides it’s blatant logically
fallacious nature, is that it ignores the reason that people give for accepting
OEC: that they become convinced of it, or at least convinced that it is the
consensus of science broadly across ideological lines. This is the same reason
many will believe in countless scientific views of astronomy and cosmology and
physics – I wonder if TF has done in depth study for himself of the chemical
composition of red dwarf stars, the Kuyper belt, heliocentrism, anatomy, etc.
or if he takes a kind of reasonable belief in the consensus view. As long as we
do not hold the scientific community to a kind of infallibility, I see no
problem with holding reasonable beliefs in the tentative conclusions of
scientists just like we do in numerous other fields that we are not specialists
ourselves in. For many, the simply find YEC a poor handling of the text, and
then they have major doubts about the “science” done by Creation science,
(often you do not need to be a good well trained scientist to see some major
problems with it), and they see a general consensus by geologists,
cosmologists, physicists, etc. that spans ideological lines (naturalists,
theists, Christians, etc.). This is not some intimidation by “secular” science
(again, I have no idea what that term even means in its broad use), but rather
is how we form and hold reasonable beliefs on a whole host of areas.
TF then criticized my statement that we should ask where
the evidence is pointing because, he claims, that “natural science can only
provide a natural explanation.” This is partly true. In some kinds of
experimental science, only natural explanations can be provided. This is simply
not the case in historical or theorhetical science, and in fact, ironically,
Creationists and apologists will often make this very argument – arguments like
the cosmological argument, fine tuning, specified complexity and a whole host
of others will argue that the evidences given to us by science, are best
explained by some non-natural or intentional/intelligent causal agent. TF will
likely respond that those are philosophy, and that is all well and good since I
never claimed that we will discover God in a vat or a test tube. But rather,
what the evidence is best explained by. TF says, “Scientists can be baffled and
unable to provide an explanation, but science cannot say, ‘that was
supernatural.’” I would simply say that that is not true and many scientists have made just such that statement. From
the earliest days of science, the founders believed that their findings pointed
to the Creator God and many scientists today believe the same. Here TF, would
need to do much more spade work on the kind of explanations that are available
to scientists and philosophers of science today.
Finally, TF seems to argue that we should be
skeptical of science because of what he calls the “failures of science,” such
as a stationary sun. Hopefully I can make the following statement without being
accused of sympathy for atheism (not everything they say is false) but we know
that certain scientific theories held by previous generations were false,
precisely because of advances in science. So while scientific theories are
always provisional and open to reinterpretation, overhaul, or complete abandonment,
it seems wildly ironic to attempt to jettison the very discipline used to
gather the information which overthrew the false notions. Such a view of
science proposed by TF simply seems inadequate to me. Science was also wrong
for a long time about what caused disease, so does TF think we should reject or
be highly skeptical of germ theory and medicine because we were wrong in the
past? Even though advances in the science of medicine is precisely what
overthrew previous false notions and came up with better ones?
2.
If you just take the plain
meaning of the text, it clearly means 6 literal solar days.
In this section, I gave a list of problems with a
literal diachronic reading of Genesis 1 that have led many of use to reject
such a view (and this does not include my other work giving positive reasons
and evidences for holding to a literary polemical temple text view). TF goes
through these but honestly gives some of the same flawed responses common to
YEC polemics elsewhere. Let’s look through these in order:
-
Light before the sun. TF gives Biblical examples
where God’s glory illuminates the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:23) and Moses’ face radiates
after illumination by the glory of God. The main problem here is that Gen 1
says that God creates the light – he speaks
it into existence. So not only does TF give an option (God’s own glory) that
does not fit the account of Gen 1, he also ignores the major problem that the
criticism is getting at. Day 4 tells us that the sun and the mon are made specifically for the purpose of marking
out days and nights. Their function just was
to make the 24 hour day. So if that was the purpose and function of the sun and
the moon, to mark out 24 hour days by their light, then what light was created
in Day 1 to do that same task? So TF may say, “this is a trivial and absurd
objection,” but it seems only because he completely misses the mark on it.
-
This leads to the second problem. Why create
this unknown light on Day 1 with the same function of the luminaries on Day 4,
call it good like he does the rest of creation, only to scrap it 3 days later
and replace it with the sun? TF says that this is an “impertinent question”
because it ask a “why” question of God. I doubt TF would give such a response
to other why questions – why does God love the elect in Christ, why does he
call a people to himself, why does he judge people to hell, etc. Asking a “why”
question is not de facto impertinent. He then tries to answer it but his answer
is weird. He says, “the sun was created to rule the day, while the moon was
created to rule the night. In essence, these could be viewed as delegations of
God’s own power.” I would debate the final clause depending on what he meant by
it (if he means as evidence of his power then sure, but as delegates seems to
jump headlong back into the very pagan notions of a deified cosmos that I think
Genesis 1 is precisely rebutting), but ultimately his answer isn’t an answer to
the question. Saying what the sun and the moon are to rule over does not answer
the question about creating some abstract light on day 1 with the same function
of the sun, call it good like he does the rest of creation, only to scrap it
and replace it 3 days later. So TF’s answer isn’t an answer.
-
TF then says that we can have days without
having a tool to measure them – like how we can have distance without having a
ruler. Well yes and no. We do not have an “inch” without having a standard
inch. Such a distance exists in virtue of the standard measurement of an inch
existing as an inch – TF here is forgetting (or isn’t aware of, or for some
unstated reason rejects (the functional ontology of the ANE people. We have a
24 hour day because we have a solar day. We in the modern era know that the
earth rotates on its access at a specific speed and makes a full rotation
approximately every 24 hours. The ancients did not know this. This text would
be completely undiscernible to them if not for the sun and the moon to mark out
days and nights. We must always remember, the text of the Bible, in God’s
providence, while written for the benefit of the modern church, is not written to
the modern church. We are reading ancient mail. There was no concept of rotation
of the earth – it stool still and fixed, unmovable, with the celestial bodies
orbiting us in the firmament. To imagine that the author of Genesis (who TF and
I both likely agree was Moses, or in the Moses circle) meant the axial rotation
of the earth strains at credulity. And, if TF wants to ever make the perspicuity
objection, it would seem utterly bizarre to argue that the text is perspicuous
to us today but that it would have been opaque and foreign to the original
author who was writing it.
-
Finally there is the issue of the order of the
plants between Gen 1 and Gen 2. Here TF seems to adopt the common YEC view that
Gen 2 is referring specifically to cultivated plants, or at least, the plants
in the garden. He seems to think that the plants of earth grew before man in
Gen 1, and then that we should read Gen 2 that there were no cultivated plants,
so God watered the earth with a mist, before creating man. TF does not really
develop this but just quotes the surrounding verses as if simply stating them
resolves the problem (like none of us who make the objection has ever read
them?) There are two problems with this. Frist, the term for “field” here
simply does not exclusively refer to cultivated or agricultural plants. The
same term is used of the home of animals (שָׂדֶה
, sadeh) can mean a cultivated field (Hosea 12:12) but typically this does not
mean something like farm, like we would think of, but rather something like a
domestic or owned field which bears food (Deut 32:13). However, the term is
often used for the home of wild beasts (Ps. 8:8; 50:11; 80:14; 104:11; Isa.
56:9; Joel 2:22) or even as the opposite land to that of a mountain (Jer.
18:14) or as opposed to a sea (Ps. 96:12). The idea most common to this is that
it is an wide open field, sometimes even with the notion that it is not frequented by people (Gen. 24:63,
65). A simple word study of the term would suffice to show that one cannot simply
assume that just because it says field that it must mean domesticated and
cultivated ground. It can mean that, but there is nothing in the context that
makes it mean that.
This
leads us to the second response. Notice that God does not create the garden
(i.e. the only place we could confidently call a specifically cultivated land)
until 2:8 after he creates man in
2:7. So the plants of the field being watered in 2:5 likely could not be the
cultivated plants in 2:8.
So
TF’ response here is not only undeveloped, but also inadequate to the task.
3. Genesis is literal history and not allegory.
Here I argue that this typical statement is simply a
false dichotomy. I’m somewhat confused by TF’s response since he seems to agree
with me that this is a false dichotomy. He gives several examples where historical
accounts can be told in various genres and for different purposes. I would
agree with this. But here TF likely grants more than he means to. The issue
here is that the typical YEC presupposes that the genre of literature is a historical narrative. If TF is conceding
that it is not historical narrative
then he would then need to argue exactly why we should read it as literal
diachronic history. If he is not conceding that, then he would need to argue
why we should read it as a literal historical narrative. So as of right now, I’ll
leave TF to update his own response to this point because I am simply not clear
what point he is trying to take here.
4. Jesus took Genesis literally and so should we.
Here TF attempts to say that there is good reason to
think that Gen 1 through the law code that begins midway through Exodus is
historical narrative. His reason for this is that Jesus takes the historical
people and places as historical. This hardly proves that it should be the genre
of historical narrative. We know that Deborah’s song and Moses’ song were about
historical events, but should we think that their songs (poetry) were actual
historical narrative because the people and places were historical? Obviously
not.
This response also has a kind of all or nothing feel
to it. It ignores the literary features in Gen 1:1-2:4 specifically that make
many of say that that portion of
Genesis likely isn’t historical narrative. To make the argument that TF makes
is to say that because the rest of the
bulk of Genesis and Exodus is historical narrative (it isn’t in fact – there are
several other genres throughout) that the first section of Genesis must be
also. Well even if I agreed that the rest of Genesis is historical narrative
(prophetic, parable, and poems aside), it does not follow that Gen 1 is. I
agree that Adam and Eve and Abraham were real people and Sodom and Gomorrah
were real places. I am in absolute agreement with Jesus here – I could echo his
exact statements. It’s them a non sequitur to say that this shows Gen 1 is
historical narrative also.
Here I would simply say that I think TF is not quite grasping
the problems with saying that Mark 10 proves that Jesus held to a young earth.
Simply saying, “from the beginning” here does not tell us how long ago that was
– merely that from the beginning of humanity, God made them male and female.
There are no time markers here. And if one tries to push it too far, then they
would contradict themselves because it would not be literally “from the
beginning” but rather from a week after the beginning, that it happened. The
salient point seems to be that from Adam and Eve, God made humanity as male and
female.
Here TF takes an exception to my statement that the
creation week would be the most important thing never taught in scripture, by
simply begging the question that it is taught in Gen 1. He then makes passing
reference to the statement in Ex 20:11. Which is the next objection.
5.
Moses bases the Sabbath as
the 7th day on the 7 literal day structure of Genesis 1.
I made a statement that Moses wrote Ex. 20 and TF,
correctly, points out that it is retelling what God wrote on tablets. Fair
enough. But so what? Moses also wasn’t there to see Gen 1 and was writing God’s
word under inspiration. It seems we could make a large number of poor
exegetical inferences if we try to press who the author of a text was between
the human the divine. This would break our doctrine of inspiration in two.
TF then simply begs the question that the days of Ex.
20 were conventional days. Unless he is merely speaking of the labor days of
the Israelites, this is precisely
what is being asked. Now, I may make TF’s head spin in reminding him that I
absolutely think that the days mentioned in Gen 1, are meant to be understood as solar days. I think the author was
clearly building the narrative around solar days. I just don’t think that is
enough to make us read the text as a modern astronomy text book. The days, I
think, are being used analogically as a framework by which the narrative is
hung to polemicize Egyptian polytheism and present God as the creator and
singular sovereign of his celestial temple. This is why I disagree with Day-Age
proponents who try to read millions of years into Genesis 1. I think both kinds of interpretations of the
text are simply anachronistic mishandlings.
So with that, I don’t particularly care if the days
of Gen 1 and Ex. 20 are meant to convey solar days. I think what is more likely
of importance is the 7 fold paradigm of 6+1 (a ubiquitous structure of cultic
significance throughout the ANE). This is why we see Moses base the Sabbath
years and Jubilee years on the same paradigm just as easily.
TF also takes the highly unusual position that the 7th
day was a regular solar day. Most YEC’s that I know do not adopt such a view
(though some do) because not only is the 7th day missing all of the
features that they argue show a solar day (morning and evening formulae
primarily) but the author of Hebrews seems to think that God is still enjoying his Sabbath rest (Heb. 4),
as does Jesus who seems to make just such an argument to demonstrate why he too
can heal on the Sabbath (Jn 5:17). This is an incidental point, but to hold
such a view opens TF to problems on other texts while he tries to maintain a
consistency of Gen 1.
6. Yom plus “morning and evening” in the Hebrew always refers to a literal
solar day.
TF doesn’t comment here much except that he doesn’t like
such arguments, though he simply asserts that the “underlying point of the
argument is correct, namely that the fact that verse specifies what kind of day
we are talking about.” As I have said, I don’t have much of a problem with the
use of solar days as an analogue, but here I’m simply pointing out that poor
attempt by YEC’s to make an exegetical case for a Historical Narrative. TF did
not really address that issue. And remember, this is about arguments used by
YEC’s to argue that Gen 1 must be
read as literal history. Why can TF not simply admit these are bad arguments to
that effect, not supported by the text or Hebrew grammar itself?
7. Yom plus an ordinal or cardinal number in the Hebrew always refers to a
literal solar day.
One again, TF says he doesn’t really like these kinds
of arguments but says that he would say that yom+ordinal/cardinal usually means a normal day. Again, fair
enough and I don’t mind the analogical day in Gen 1 either. But he then says
that the burden of proof is on the non-literal folk to prove that it’s not. I
would say that is simply false. The burden would fall on all exegetes to properly handle the text and so anyone who wants to
advance of view of what is in reference carries a burden. We know countless
terms in the Bible have a normal meaning and a rare meaning. This is the task
of any exegete and we cannot simply pawn it off to views that we disagree with
to prove our unproven assumptions wrong. And once again, why can TF not simply
admit these are bad arguments to that effect, not supported by the text or
Hebrew grammar itself?
8. We see the use of the waw-consecutive
construction in the Hebrew which is how Hebrew marks out historical narrative
and thus we should take Genesis 1 as literal history.
Here, TF simply
says that he doesn’t like those kinds of these arguments that uses supposed
grammatical rules and makes no other comments. But once again, why can TF not
simply admit these are bad arguments to that effect, not supported by the text
or Hebrew grammar itself?
All in all, I don’t think that TF really was able to show any problems
with any of my comments in the article and did nothing to advance the cause of
YEC against what myself and many others (even YECs) find to be formidable
objections to the YEC position on Genesis 1.
Aside: I have been impressed by many YEC’s who have come around to
seeing Genesis 1 as a literary polemic presenting a temple text, and who agree
with me that this says nothing about
the age of earth. Many have expressed their gratitude for helping them to
better understand the text and resolve so many of the tensions and unanswered questions
that they had. They still believe that the earth is young based on what they
believe about what science shows us, but they have been able to move beyond the
rigid literalism that caused them so many exegetical and hermeneutical fits. As
I have always said, I’m not actually objecting to any certain view of the age
of the earth, nor am I advancing one. My position has always been a marked
agnosticism on that issue. Rather, I’ve been trying to handle what I think the
text does teach and respond to some
of the views of Genesis 1 and other relevant passages that I think are problematic.
For more of my work on Genesis 1, please see my collected works here: https://freedthinkerpodcast.blogspot.com/2018/06/tylers-collected-works-on-genesis-1-and.html
For more of my work on Genesis 1, please see my collected works here: https://freedthinkerpodcast.blogspot.com/2018/06/tylers-collected-works-on-genesis-1-and.html
You've made some decent points there. I checked on the web to find out more about the issue and found most individuals will go along with your views on this website.
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