A debate played out in the comments (summarized here: Heliocentric Certainty Against a Bottleneck of Two? and story 1 here: Three Stories on Adam).
Very good question. I can’t be sure exactly why it played out the way it did. Maybe you can help me figure it out.
Those that showed Denis Venema (and BioLogos) was mistaken was Richard Buggs, Ann Gauger, and myself. This is not to diminish @glipsnort role. He was and always has been an honest voice in these conversations.
Buggs and Gauger disagreed with Venema from the get go. I started out agreeing with Venema, but then I changed my position. I acknowledged where I had mistakes. For me, retracting errors is a fundamental requirement of honest science. It appears that view was not shared. I expected the same from Venema and BioLogos, but did not see that happen. There was no reason to ban Gauger and Buggs, as both have always been outside “BioLogos”. I suppose I make them more uncomfortable.
This was also coming on the heals of the Genealogical Adam work, which they rejected for theological reasons (against the evidence, they insisted it was polygenesis/racist). On Oct 1, 2017, I published a blog post asking them to be honest with Tim Keller, and acknowledge there was no evidence against his position (In Defense of Tim Keller). They refused to be honest about it. That is when I made public I had left BioLogos (The Confessing Scientist). To be clear, they had already kicked me off the speakers bureau because of the Genealogical Adam (which they argued at the time was racist theology). The Keller exchange, however, took place immediately before the exchange with Venema-Buggs took place.
So there ended up being two things in a row where BioLogos was (and remains) unwilling to publicly acknowledge where they made large scientific errors. They did (once as an aside, and once directly) post that I was correct on the science (kudos to Schloss, Falk, Hardin, and @Kathryn_Applegate ), but they never acknowledged that they misrepresented the science to Keller or that Venema’s book was in error. I won’t get into the details, because this was all hashed out in conversations directly with them. It appears that they knew they were wrong, but wanted to save face by not admitting they were wrong, at least not publicly.
It should not have been a big deal. A simple clarification that they made a mistake and want to set it right was all that was needed. That, however, seems beyond their ability. We just passed the 1 year mark of their exchange with Keller. They overstated what science ruled out, creating an immense amount of unnecessary conflict, and they remain unwilling to retract. Give it a few months, and we will cross the anniversary of the Venema-Buggs exchange too. No retractions in sight. I think they just want to pick up and move on like nothing important happened. At this point, I understand why others will not trust them going forward. It might be too late to fix their reputation.
Any how, I suppose they banned me because I ended up accidentally at the center of two major errors they made, not just one. I was honest about these errors, and this honesty was inconvenient for them.
Do you have a better theory?
I still seek reconciliation with them. The official word, it seems, is that I am not worth their time, and they do not want me on their forum. It does not appear they want to reconcile.