Comments on The BioLogos Statement on Adam and Eve

A post was split to a new topic: Helpful Quotes by Burke on Genealogical Science

So @Jonathan_Burke, I want to give this another shot. I may have been a bit too defensive with you, and perhaps you have been too aggressive.

Do you really want to clarify my contribution? If you are up for it, I propose a “reset” and a new thread. I’ll list out the contributions I made, and you can let me know where I missed a precedent. That would be immensely helpful to me, and would hopefully make this less oppositional.

What do you think?

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No creativity needed to embrace evolution like the Catholic Church has and to read Genesis as allegorical.

Like you, he believe the original ancestors would be undetectable.

“His [the ancestor’s] part in the building up of any human fabric rapidly becomes insignificant. Something seems bent on working him out. As it does with his name and memorials—destroying the writing he has left behind, filling up the lettering on his tombstone with moss, wiping out all traces of him from the earth—so it does with himself and all that vitally represents his personality in the persons of his descendants.”, Henry Kendall, The Kinship of Men: An Argument from Pedigrees; Or, Genealogy Viewed as a Science (Cupples and Hurd, 1888), 33-34.

Obviously he didn’t know about DNA, but I suspect he based this idea on Mendel’s work since he uses the Mendelian term “hereditary transmission” (still used today), and speaks of physical characteristics as “transmissible by hereditary descent”. Regardless, the fundamental idea is the same; the ancestor becomes undetectable, a ghost, their physical heritage vanishes.

Sure, that would be fine.

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Well I’m with family a bit this morning (which is a good thing), but I’ll write some more when I get a chance. @Jonathan_Burke there are a couple issues here that I would like to keep separate.

  1. What my contributions are, and precursors to it.

  2. What the right strategy is in light of where things stand.

I want to emphasize that I have been looking around quite a bit for precursors. I’m not ignoring them. Kemp, Davidson, Opderbeck, Kendall (thanks to you!), Rhodes, Coop, and others are all discussed in thee book. If there really is precedent, I want to know so I can cite them. I’m not hiding that at all, but I’ve been scouring the literature for precedence. If you have more, please let me know immediately, as I only have a brief window to make edits to the book now.

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3 posts were merged into an existing topic: Helpful Quotes by Burke on Genealogical Science

But people had integrated the two. People have been integrating the two for a while.

[quote=“dga471, post:152, topic:5848”]
The point is that Josh is the one who has propelled GAE from merely being a reasonable suggestion, occasionally put forward, to one which interacts with the latest biblical, theological, and scientific data and is discussed as a “fifth option” in the debate.[/quote]

I think this is true within a narrow North American theological spectrum. There’s a whole planet out there in which other Christians have been way ahead on this issue for a very long time. This is why GAE wasn’t any surprise to me when I first heard it mentioned on Biologos. What really amazed me was that it took so long to appear there. Remember, North American evangelicals in general are still catching up to nineteenth century theologians on the matter of evolution. Even the original famous “Fundamentalists” were ahead of most North American Christian fundamentalists today.

I didn’t say it wasn’t a matter of choice, I said it shouldn’t be a matter of preference. As I said, you shouldn’t think that you can just arbitrarily choose an epistemology, and then change it from one day to the next, as if every epistemology is equally valid. They aren’t equally valid.

Can you give a definition of what “what” means? I am really not into word games.

I don’t care what choice most theologians would make. I don’t look to most theologians in order to gain information about reality. What would they know?

Sure. Why not? I can’t make them believe in something that’s unfalsifiable. My belief in God is a matter of faith; based on evidence, but ultimately a matter of faith. I don’t claim it’s a scientific fact, or claim that it’s scientifically testable.

Suits me. I am more interested in actual reality than in deaf ears in the world of theology.

This is the strategy which led medieval Christianity ex tenebris lux. It’s the strategy which helped differentiate Christianity from superstition during the most ignorant of times. It’s the strategy which gave us a host of shining stars, such as John Philoponus, Jean Buridan, Roger Bacon, the Oxford Calculators, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton. It built the Scientific Revolution, and laid the foundation of the Enlightenment (I just realized you might think both of those were shockingly bad ideas).

This is a central thread in historic Christianity. And you dismiss it as “a naive, scientistic approach to theology” (!). I guess you do think the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment were bad thing. How dare Copernicus and Galileo contradict the Holy Church!

Yes indeed it is. Thank you for confirming their approach is not the Biologos approach.

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He did not know of Kendall. Also you are missing what is new here. Part of it is a rediscovery of old ideas, which is still a discovery. There are however several new things here, which are distinguished for recovering the traditional view.

This is getting to the point. Why do you think it took so long?

I found out when I meantioned it. It was being actively suppressed. Why do you think that was?

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Because they weren’t very interested in pursuing a historical Adam and Eve. When they realized that the science ruled out a de novo created Adam and Eve with no ancestors, as sole genetic ancestors of the entire human species, they decided to just drop a historical Adam and Eve altogether, in favor of a view which wasn’t going to run into difficulties with science.

As I mentioned before, they did what Peter Enns does these days, insulate Bible interpretation from reality by isolating it in a bubble which science can’t reach. I think Peter was just prepared to go further, earlier, which is why he left. I haven’t read Peter Enns’ work for a long time. It looks to me like his version of theology is now 80% handwaving and 20% saying “It’s a mystery! We’ll never know! It’s totally incomprehensible, and that’s not only ok it’s actually great!”. I still have some of his earlier work, which I think is great, and I think he absolutely destroys Augustine here.

I think it’s because in their view a non-historical Adam and Eve was going to be a lot easier to insulate from scientific scrutiny, even though the theology was going to be more difficult (within a North American evangelical context, anyway). The whole thing looks like a dodge.

I feel that in this case they failed their own principles; they didn’t put the science first, they were spooked by some of the science, then decided to cut and run with a hermeneutical dodge, to avoid going deeper into the science in case they didn’t like what they found. You might know I haven’t been at Biologos for close to a year. There’s just nothing in it for me, and I have other priorities.

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I agree with your assessment. What are your priorities?

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I have preaching work in my local area, I have apologetic work to do for my own Christian community, and I have personal Bible studies I’m interested in. There’s just plenty of other stuff I should be doing.

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Alternatively, you can do something more meaningful and more useful with your life. :sunglasses:

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I volunteer with local charities and social welfare foundations, especially in the indigenous community, so I like to think my life isn’t entirely useless.

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Your volunteer work is admirable. I would never say that your life is entirely useless. You are loved by your family and you are a fine human being who can live a great life of purpose and meaning. You are an intelligent, educated person of 21st century human knowledge, reasoning, and empathy. You have the opportunity to live a long life of purpose, meaning, and happiness of your choosing. Live long and prosper.

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It’s good that we now agree that what Josh has done is a scientific/theological (whatever you would call it) advance in the North American world. That’s where most of the discussions around GAE have happened.

People arrive on their epistemology in different ways. Consistency with mainstream science could be one thing, but not the only one. By its very nature, it is difficult to directly compare epistemologies and say which one is “valid”, other than, say, bare logical consistency. What is the criteria by which we determine an epistemology is valid? Isn’t the point of an epistemology to determine what those criteria of validity are?

And nobody is suggesting that PS endorses arbitrarily changing epistemologies from day to day. That’s a strawman. Rather, different groups of people come to the table with different epistemologies from the very beginning. One can still hold to one’s epistemology while being willing to put yourself momentarily in your interlocutor’s shoes, in order to be able to communicate with them and get towards something productive.

Frankly, I don’t think the most pressing matter is to make sure that the TE, ID, YEC, OEC camps all resolve their disagreements and adopt the same epistemology. Jesus is greater than evolution. Christianity is greater than evolution. It’s better that the church can talk about these issues in a civil, loving and productive manner.

Do Theologians Know Anything About Reality?

This is quite shocking coming from a Christian. What do you mean by reality? These are not just word games. I genuinely don’t understand how you can be a Christian and yet claim that theologians don’t know much about reality. Is God not part of reality?

It doesn’t matter that it’s “ultimately” a matter of faith. Even if we agree that science can’t prove the existence of God, we can still talk about philosophical arguments for the existence of God, the nature of God, how God could act in the world, and so on. These are all part of the theological landscape. Theology is far from being a form of fideism. It adopts a set of presuppositions different from natural science, but otherwise also claims to speak about the universe and the creatures and people living in it.

You don’t need to remind a physicist on the importance of the Scientific Revolution. :sweat_smile: Although I do have to remind you that the history of the Copernican and Galilean controversies were not as clear cut as many scientists tend to portray them. While I acknowledge that the scientific revolution was an advance (such that I’m willing to dedicate a decade of my life studying physics), I also acknowledge that there is much, much more to Christian theology than what Bacon, Galileo, or Newton had to say about the subject. There needs to be respectful and careful dialogue between scientists and theologians, and it seems at the moment that the approach here at PS has potential to do things that the Biologos approach can’t.

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I’m glad there is agreement there. However, Dennis Alexander (in England) missed this too. And @Jonathan_Burke’s excellent reference to Kendall shows that an American minister figured this out 130 years ago. He is noting people in his local community who, undoubtedly, have been influenced by him.

[Note: we figured out that Kendal was from England]

It should be fairly obvious that Kendall’s work has been forgotten for a long time, and several people have been poking around the idea for while (including @jongarvey, @davidson, Kemp, @anon46279830, @AntoineSuarez, Opderbeck), with varying degrees of lucidity and clarity. Rather than focused development, however, everyone in this group was being wrongly dismissed for putting forward polygenesis. There also remains no book (until mine) that explains how this with meshes with the new findings of genetics that Kendall himself did not know of, and perhaps the findings are part of what made his idea fade way from memory.

I’ll write my contributions down in a bit, but it is clear that part of what was at play was this:

So we have much more in common that the initial conflict lets on. At no point have I meant to imply I am the first person to think along these lines. Quite the opposite. Rather, I am the first scientist to bridge the remaining scientific gaps (and there are a few), to demonstrate how it meshes with genetic findings, and to create the space for other scholars to pursue it.

I’d say a lot of harm was done to the scholarly conversation as the GAE was suppressed. Now, it won’t be ignored. You might be validated through this @Jonathan_Burke. I don’t think there is really reason to be oppositional with us. I think we are actually on the same side.

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That is the version of YEC I aim to end, hopefully in my lifetime.

I think there still may be YECs in the world, but hopefully a less toxic version, even if most of us are convinced they are wrong. Most of them that leave YEC, however, are not going to the mythical Adam camp. It is far more likely they will move to GAE, and be split between OEC and evolution.

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I said “within a narrow North American theological spectrum”, not “in the North American world”.

Yes. Some people don’t care about reality, they just care about what they prefer to believe. For them, consistency with mainstream science is unnecessary.

That depends on what you think the purpose of an epistemology is. If you think the purpose of an epistemology is to enable you to justify the way you prefer to see the world, then the only criterion for a valid epistemology will be if it produces results which do that. If you think the purpose of an epistemology is to arrive at facts and create an accurate model of reality, you use the kind of criteria I mentioned previously.

I didn’t say that PS endorses this.

Of course you can. I am not contesting this.

It might not be the most pressing, but it should be considered one of the most pressing.

It’s better for the church to speak truth than to encourage falsehoods.

Why? Do you look to most theologians in order to gain information about reality? In your physics studies, do you consult theological commentaries or physics papers most frequently?

Yeah they are.

I did not say theologians don’t know much about reality. Please read what I wrote.

Yes. So what?

I agree.

But you sound like the kind of physicist who will turn around and say “Of course we physicists are just big sillies playing with numbers (and what are numbers? we still don’t even know!), we don’t really know much about reality, we have all our fancy ideas and such, but we don’t really know if they’re true and we have no way of knowing, so we can’t say for example that YECs are wrong, they might be more right than we are!”. You sound like the kind of physicist who thinks we don’t even know what reality is.

Yes, we agree on that.

Yes. But I’m talking about science. Let the theologians do theology, and let the scientists do science. We’ve had 1800 years of theologians doing theology and calling it science, while opposing actual science, and it has been a disaster. There are people out there who still believe demons make people sick, and witches turn people into goats. Thanks theologians!

I think the Biologos approach has the correct balance; let the scientists do science, and let the theologians do theology. I think the people who don’t like scientists find Peaceful Science a more comfortable place because Peaceful Science doesn’t require them to accept science or integrate it into their theology. Peaceful Science can give them reasons to accept their theology while rejecting science they don’t like.

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@Jonathan_Burke

I think this assessment deoends in whcu GAE scenario is adooted.

The #1 scenario, with Genesis 1 discussing the image of god carried by population of evolved humans is pretty solid.

How did you perform this quantitation, Daniel?

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