Review: Death Before the Fall — Ronald E. Osborn
by Jack Hoehn
By Jack Hoehn, March 3, 2014
Death Before the Fall: Biblical Literalism and the Problem of Animal Suffering, By Ronald E. Osborn
InterVarsity Press, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8308-4046-5 print
ISBN: 978-0-8308-4046-3 digital
Ronald E. Osborn is an Adventist voice many people are listening to. Reviewer praise from Fuller Theological, Columbia Theological, Westmont College, Northwest Nazarene, Woodstock Theological, Claremont School of Theology, and the theology department of the University of Notre Dame adorn his new book. John H. Walton, Old Testament scholar at Wheaton College and author of the bestselling,i “The Lost World of Genesis One” writes the introduction to the book.
Osborn does not hide his Adventist roots, and in fact admits he is writing his book to counter the literalism of Young-Earth Creationism that captivates our present SDA administration and a certain influential wedge of their approved theologians trying to add to the Bible text words that aren’t there, but they think should be, such as “recent,” “literal days,” “a week as we experience it today.” (The curse of Revelation 22:18 seems to have escaped their attention?)
So should Adventists pay any attention to one of our own who is getting such a large hearing in the non-Adventist world? After all, shouldn’t the remnant be worried “when all men speak well of you”? There are several reasons—beside the fact that he is a Sabbath-keeping, Adventist-educated, son of SDA missionaries—that Adventists too might wish to listen to him.
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Firstly, Osborn remains a Creationist. He believes in the Bible. And he is writing to those trying to understand the Bible, instead of ditching the Bible.
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Secondly, as mentioned he is a Sabbath-keeper. In fact the last chapter of his book is about the “thrilling romance” of Sabbath observance. He reminds his readers that “the Sabbath marks the first full day of the human pair’s existence in the Genesis narratives” and that “God does not give humans rest…after they earned it…. He gives it to them ‘on arrival’. He then expands the weekly Sabbath as including care for animals, “thy ox and thy ass,” as Sabbatarian concerns. And from there to the Sabbatical year as an economic policy, and there to the Sabbath of Sabbaths, the 50th year of Jubilee as the height of social justice.
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Thirdly, he is still an Adventist. “To Christianly keep the Sabbath is to eagerly await the Second Coming.”
So why should Young Earth Creationists in Adventism and their millions of adherents to our foundational doctrine of recent creation outside of Adventismii fear this book? Because the first half of his book is devoted to showing the weakness of faith and the danger to truth of the “Biblical literalism” advocated by Young Earth Creationists with their 6 x 24-hour days and mountain-topping global Noah's flood.
Who Made the Predators, and When?
This review is a simplification of a very scholarly book, but Ron Osborn starts with the observation that all can understand: natural life appears to be a combination of beauty, grace, design, and bloody predation. The Lion of the Tribe of Judah has teeth. So Osborn takes us to Zimbabwe’s Mana Pools and relives his own African childhood experience of “lions feasting on the carcass…panting heavily as they tore into its body, their chests and muzzles soaked in blood…”
He later pulls Jesus into the carnage quoting John 1:3 to us, “All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made.” Osborn then reminds us that the Lord boasts to Job (39:27,29,30) that vultures are commanded by Him to “make her nest on high” from where “she seeketh the prey” so that “her young ones also suck up blood…” As if this were not enough, he names Job’s Behemoth as a crocodile, listed (Job 40:15-34) as “the chief of God’s works, made to be tyrant over his peers; for he takes the cattle of the hills for his prey and in his jaws he crunches all wild beasts.”
Again he goes back to Africa to enhance the focus of this claim, traveling north from Zimbabwe’s lions to the crocodiles in Kenya’s Mara River. “I have seen crocodiles on the riverbanks…near the end of the wildebeest migrations, their bellies distended from feasting…they continue to kill even after they are engorged, without any interest in eating their prey…by early November desiccated carcasses litter the banks…one can smell this open graveyard…from some distance…Calves sometimes manage to cross the river only to find themselves trapped by its steep banks. They drown in exhaustion amid the bellowing of thousands of their kind preparing to plunge after them into the murky water.” And God claims that these massive carnivores are “the chief of His works?”
In Job 38 God doesn’t date his creation of these predators from after Adam’s fall, but back to the beginning, “when I laid the earth’s foundations…while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy” behold Behemoth!
Uncle Arthur Doesn’t Agree
Osborn admits, “Like millions of Christians, I was raised to believe that God created all of earth’s creatures in six literal days in the relatively recent past. In the beginning there was no mortality and no predation of any kind…this was radically altered as a result of Adam and Eve’s decision.” But who altered the creation? Fallen men and women were hardly able to do it. Was the cursed serpent responsible? But who let the serpent do it? So in the last analysis, “God himself was responsible for the transformation of all of nature in what amounted to a hostile second creation after…(the)fall.”
The question traditional Adventism has not yet answered asks, was it “very good” of God to permit or engineer this even after Eve and Adam’s fall? Is creation, imperfect as it now is, very bad or is it still good? God who brags of feeding the lions their meat, and helping vulture babies suck blood, and asking our humility before the ferocity of His crocodiles and killer whales, is this the same God revealed in Jesus?
I get the idea that it is perhaps okay with Adventists if this reign of animal suffering is for a very short time, but if God allowed this for deep time, for millions of years instead of a few thousand years, it would speak badly of His character. Really? Would it be okay for Hitler to permit the premeditated and intelligently designed murder of Jews for one month, but not for 5 years?
So Osborn is suggesting that the problem of innocent animals suffering for sins they have not committed is not really solved by a dogged holding onto a short creation chronology (in the face of much evidence that the world has always looked much like it does today from the Cambrian Explosion on down for the millions of years the evidence requires). And he does this by literally reading Genesis, not the imaginative Uncle Arthur version, but really reading what Genesis 1 and 2 say to us about God’s creation.
Reading Genesis again could surprise us.
Ron Osborn reads Genesis about creation, and it doesn’t come out in six 24-hour days a few thousand years ago, and it doesn’t come out a perfect world, it comes out a good world, but quite like the one we live in now. For example, in Genesis 1 light is created out of nothing, but plants are created out of the chemicals of the earth (verse 11): “let the earth bring forth…” “Earth itself participates as an obedient servant to God in the creation process/event…a strong impression of organic emergence.” Plants don’t come out of nothing, plants come out of earth. “The earth brought forth vegetation.”
Also in verse 22, it is not by magic that the earth is to be filled, “but animals themselves through procreative processes…are commanded by God to ‘Be fruitful, and multiply,’ to ‘fill the waters in the seas’ and to ‘multiply in the earth’… We are left entirely free to think that the Creator might be delighted to see His creation multiplying not only in number but also in kind.”
The verbs of God’s actions in Genesis 1 and 2 are not one word. This suggests much more than sleight of hand with God quickly pulling rabbits out of the earth, ta dah! In a hurry so he can make man, plant Eden, put man in there, and hurriedly bring him all the animals to name at 5 seconds/animal, so he can learn that unlike the animals he has no mate, feel lonely, have surgery, awake to Eve, fall in love and be married, all in 12 to 24 hours before sundown on the first Sabbath?
Please read the verbs of the true Creation record: creates, moves, says, separated, calls, makes, gathers, places, blesses, gives, completed, sends, breathes, forms, plants, causes, commands, brings, takes, closed, fashions, and rests.
Osborn suggests this shows that Freedom is one of the things that God creates. “But the only way that freedom can be created is by opening a space in which freedom occurs or unfolds. The key refrain Let—‘Let there be,’ ‘Let the waters,’ ‘let the earth’—should serve as a clarion signal that God’s way of bringing order out of chaos involves… granting, permitting and delegating.”
Would Adam and Eve be Asked to Subdue a Perfect Planet?
Osborn then reads us Genesis 1:28. “Adam is told to kabash or “subdue” the earth. Elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, the word kabash is used almost exclusively to refer to one thing: violent military conquest…The implication, then, is that there is a difficult…task for humanity in relation to the rest of the creation. Adam must literally ‘dominate,’ ‘subjugate’ or ‘conquer’ the rest of creation.” If earth were an Uncle Arthur paradise of tame herbivores outside of Eden, why were Adam and his helper before their fall required to militarily conquer it?
“As unsettling as it may be for some readers to discover, nowhere in Genesis is the creation described as ‘perfect.’ God declares his work to be ‘good’… at each stage and finally ‘very good’… at its end.” “God declares the creation to be ‘very good’ rather than ‘perfect’…. Because in an important sense, it is not entirely God’s work…animals, humans, and the earth itself have a God-given role to play as His coworkers. There is also a strong sense that while the creation is in one sense ‘complete’ at the end of the narrative, it is not yet ‘finished.’”
Isn’t Osborn just opening the door to some kind of Evolution?
Yes. “Such a reading of Genesis clearly opens the door to the possibility of ‘theistic evolution’—or better, process creation…” He then quotes John Stott. “It is most unfortunate that some who debate this issue begin by assuming that the words ‘creation’ and ‘evolution’ are mutually exclusive…. This naïve alternative…is false…both [the words ‘creation’ and ‘evolution’] have a wide range of meanings…which are being freshly discussed today.”
Ronald Osborn is clearly not supporting Darwinian evolution of all life coming out of competition and chaotic chance of random mutations. But after reading all 195 pages of his book, it is not completely clear to me exactly what kind of “process creation” he imagines, especially when he lumps “Creation Science” and “Intelligent Design” together several places in the book.
This Books Most Serious Defect
This is my greatest disappointment in this most welcome and useful Adventist alternative look at creation. Both Ronald Osborn and his introducer John Walton in his own book sadly and seriously underestimate the scientific validity and the potential spiritual energy of the Intelligent Design movement. No doubt influenced by the theistic evolutionary scientists they are surrounded with, they both accept the lie that lumps the weak and often falsified “Creation Science” and “Flood Geology” with Intelligent Design. The theistic evolutionists that Osborn and Walton seem to be cozying up with often repeat the same tired misunderstandings of Intelligent Design. ID is NOT a “god of the gaps” argument. ID is NOT “Creationism by another name.” The prevalent mischaracterization of ID by its dogmatic opponents is a cheap rhetorical device designed to prevent serious consideration of the scientific evidence harmful to their own theories of origins and causation. They stick their fingers into their ears and cry, “I can’t hear what you’re saying, because you’re just a Creationist, la,la,la,la,la….”
That so called Creation Science including our own Adventist Geo-Science Institute (as presently managed by the General Conference and the opinions of its current administrators) is a pseudo-science that grabs little bits and pieces, quotes and misquotes, to support a religious belief against the weight of the evidence is clear to the careful observer.
That Intelligent Design is a scientific interpretation of the available data that does not require the God of Genesis or the rest of the Bible to support it or deny it, is sadly not well understood by many like Walton and Osborn who have been poorly informed. One sadly gets the feeling that they are critiquing ID without seriously studying it.iii The data that evolutionists use to support a random, chance, unguided development of life, has a different scientific interpretation available that is not faith based, but evidence based, this is the science pointing to Intelligent Design. ID says nothing about the age of the earth, and by intention is agnostic about the designer, it understands very well that things evolve, it just finds limits on the power of evolution that materialistic and theistic evolutionists have not yet openly admitted. That faith can use the scientific understandings of ID to remain both faithful and honest should be of great interest to all Bible students including Ronald Osborn.
Why You Should Buy Your Own Copy of This Book
You need to read more. You need to study “the enthusiasm to use the story of Noah’s flood.” You should absorb that the arguments for “apparent age” are disrespectful of the Creator’s integrity. Did you realize that the Gnostic heresy of early Christianity is being recycled by Biblical Literalists, and that making your interpretation of the Bible the arbiter of truth outside of the Bible is to create a “paper pope?” The evidence that great Bible students of all ages have had a different interpretation of Genesis than six short days a short time ago, can help you become more open and flexible to alternative interpretations of the creation story required by the evidence. And I already told you the last chapter is a wonderful meaning of the Sabbath expansion.
My personal favorite chapter is chapter 11, where he gives a fair and sympathetic hearing to C.S. Lewis (and by unnoted extension the Adventist Great Controversy doctrine) as an explanation of animal death before Adam and Eve’s fall, coming from the controversy of Christ with Satan beginning before the creation of earth. I have written my own Adventist version of this theoryiv. Although Osborn does not fully accept this theory suggested by Lewis, he explains it fairly clearly, and does linger over its attractions.
Ron Osborn opens his heart for our church most deeply on page 115, where you can almost hear the tears in his voice as he writes,
There comes a point at which the leaders of highly conservative faith communities must ask themselves how many more of their sons and daughters they are prepared to see walk out of the doors of their churches never to return again because these young people find no room for intellectual growth, intellectual honesty or openness to new ways of thinking within their community walls.
And I know he is still very connected with Adventism when he adds the following so sad but so accurate analysis of Adventist leadership today:
In the meantime the elders continue to respond to all outside challenges with the tactic of circling the wagons and fixing their foundationalist bayonets (rusted with age, dull as butter knives from overuse.)
And you may have read it first in Adventist Today. Now go buy your own copy. It’s in a Kindle edition as well as Paperback.
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i “The Lost World of Genesis One” by John H. Walton is Amazon’s number one selling book on “Creation ;” #4 best seller on “Old Testament;” and # 8th best seller on “Science and Religion.”
ii Most people now recognize the chain of influence from Ellen White to George McCready Price to American Fundamentalism’s literalism on creation. The 20th century’s Creation Science enterprise appears to be an offspring of Adventism even though it may not yet admit it.
iii See Casey Luskin February 2014, for more on this topic. https://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/02/why_do_theistic082421.html
iv Jack’s article is in the hands of the publishers of Adventist Today print magazine and should be coming out in a subsequent issue. It presents an Adventist way of looking at this Old Earth, using the Great Controversy as a new way of looking at the creation week. Although written before Ronald Osborn’s book was published their new understanding of the Creation story and having an open chronology of creation is sympathetic with each other. Ronald Osborn on page 119 quotes “Every human community shares and cherishes certain assumptions, traditions, expectations , and anxieties.. which encourage its members to construe reality in particular ways, and which create contexts within which certain kinds of statements are perceived as making sense.” Jack’s article is very much in this vein, putting the possibility of an “Old Earth-Creationism” into Adventist language and traditions, to keep it well within the SDA context. As Ron noted there may soon be 40 million people living in that context.
Actually NO one should own a copy of that book….for a multitude of reasons…
The multitude of reasons?
Closed to new interpretations?
Danger of careful thought, study, prayer?
Fear of being wrong for so many years?
Unwillingness to consider alternative ways to honor God and praise Him for what He has really done, instead of what we wish He had done?
Fear of freedom to think of new ways to understand Creation?
Take your strong beliefs JaNe and read the book critically, then write your own review, it would be welcome and I am sure we could all learn something from your approach. But no one will learn anything by "don't read it".
Thank you Jack as always. I will get a kindle copy. It seems that our church is in the grips of a false dichotomy–six day creation or some form of evolution. Intelligent Design is simply not understood. Do you think this is because of lack of exposure to the science of ID for Adventists or that we are by and large subject to simplistic sound bit science?
I don't know exactly why ID has been dismissed by Adventist thinkers. Perhaps on the left because our theistic evolutionists were burned early in life by a stark literalism and are afraid of being hoodwinked by a pseudoscience again? And on the right by fear of chronology that would put Adam and Eve about 100,000 years ago and God's creation days Heavens Days not earth days of much longer duration? Sister Ellen's approval of the Young Earth model seems to be heaven sent, and holds back most of us. If we let her be God's messenger, but not an oracle, if we really accept that she could and did make human errors in being a Divine messenger, most of the problems dissapear. So one side of us needs to restudy the evidence that ID is truly science and not theology in disguise, and the other side needs to learn how to forgive an inspired writer for factual mistakes. We do have many reasons to not look to Ellen White as an authority on Chronology in history or in science. For example what her son W.C. White wrote about NOT using "mother" for these questions.
I’m just curious Jack, and this is not a trick question—I’m just trying to follow your thinking—do you use science to reject the Biblical record that Adam lived to be 930 years old?
No Stephen, I accept that when the Bible gives chronology it is usually very reliable (with a few minor exceptions you know as well as I do). I have no need to say that because humans now only live to a hundred or so, that the antediluvians were not long lived. My problem is not with Bible dates and chronologies, my problem is with imposing speculation on the Bible like adding up the numbers and saying, well the earth is only 6,000 years old. . That is not in my Bible or yours, that is an assumption that to me is no longer tenable based on many seperate and independent lines of evidence God has allowed men to discover in recent years.
Jack,
Thank you for your review. It is yet another that tells me not to put my hard earned $ into the book!
If I may, without getting you off side, as is often my habit, ask you for clarification on this point you made? I'll emphasise a few words.
"The data that evolutionists use to support a random, chance, unguided development of life, has a different scientific interpretation available that is not faith based, but evidence based, this is the science pointing to Intelligent Design. ID says nothing about the age of the earth, and by intention is agnostic about the designer, it understands very well that things evolve, it just finds limits on the power of evolution that materialistic and theistic evolutionists have not yet openly admitted. That faith can use the scientific understandings of ID to remain both faithful and honest should be of great interest to all Bible students including Ronald Osborn."
Questions:
1. What "limits" on the "power" of evolution do IDists find that theistic evolutionists don't?
2. The opening 2 sentences of this paragraph seek to be "data" or "scientific" based, yet the closing sentence leaps off into faith mode, how is this not contradictory?
3. If ID is agnostic about the "designer", what "faith", and "faithfull" to what? are you talking about in the last sentence?
You keep asking for answers that I tried below to give, but I'll number them.
1.) Evolutionists accept that someday they will be able to show the mechanisms for creating complexity and diversity by Darwinian mechanisms. They haven't and they won't. ID points out why.
2.) I have answered this below, but I'll repeat it again. ID studies the Data and offers a different scientific interpretation. Jack uses ID to support his faith based conclusions about the Designer, just like Dawkins uses Darwinian theory about science to support his faithless based conclusions. We both use science. This as I wrote before is not contradictory. I use gravity to ski. But gravity doesn't need my skiing to be true. I use ID for my beliefs. But ID doesn't need my beliefs to be true.
I've pointed out previously books sympthetic to the ID conclusions written by agnostic Thomas Nagle.
3. Again I use science to support my faith. This discredits neither the science nor my faith. I also use science to correct the errors in my faith. But I do not accept the non-faith position at all that says science has proven faith is a fools errand.
Please read the book and write your own review for us, don't review the reviewer before you have independantly read the book.
Jack,
Thanks for that…
A few clarifiers and comments:
1. I'm asking what "limits" on the power of evolution to IDists find that Theistic evolutionists don't?
Theistic evolution generally accepts that evolution occurred as biologists describe it, but under the direction of God in some greater or lesser manner. Is that not also essentially pointing out the "why" in point one? The difference between ID and TE thus is quantitative not qualitative. ie how much one or the other "claims" for the "intervener" or "theos" etc. Thus, as I see it, both accept "limits" to the power of evolution. That was my point and where I think you were being unfair to TE.
2. "Jack uses his ID to support his faith based conclusions….Dawkings uses Darwinian theory to support his faithless conclusions…"
And I would say you are both wrong. Just as Dawkins may be better to say the scientific evidence "suggests", "points to", "makes it look extremely unlikely" etc, that there is not a God, so Jack may be better off using the same terminology about his Designer. See my point? Both of you are going beyond the pale of what science can "prove". You cannot use his bad use to justify yours!!
As for skiing and gravity… Yes, you can use gravity to ski, but you cannot "use" it, or even "have faith that you can" use it for actions which defy gravity. Thus, as you say in point three science can correct your faith! Absolutely so, and for this reason it is encumbent on you and other IDers to stop making claims for it which are faith based and beyond the pale of what ID can "prove" or "demand".
3. Again, if you choose to use science to support your faith, then do so with integrity and stop making claims for it that are not supported by it. And in case you don't get the point of that: almost every claim the Bible makes is beyond the pale of even generous ID.
I took issue in your blog, not over you review, but over your assertions in defence of ID and rather critical comments about TE and Ev. etc. Was not called for by the content of the book as I see it atm.
sorry, re Dawkins…:." extremely unlikely.. that there is a God…"
Is it too simplistic for us all to admit that we perceive our understanding of Genesis-creation through our individual human experience? Could our over-arching problem possibly be that our understanding of the concepts of time and space are not God's, and never can be this side of the new earth? Just maybe, none of us has it all correct yet. In the meantime (before we experience God face to face) let's be honest enough to know that we all "see through a glass darkly".
The limits of evolution are well demonstrated in every scientific study, except those based on speculation, but real examinations and experiments with evolution show that natural selection can select between things that exist, but have never demonstrated the origin of new structures or body plans and most evolutionist scientists have recognized this at least at the RNA/DNA level is not possible in a Universe only 13.8 Billion years old. . Michael Behe's The Edge of Evolution is ID's acceptance of evolution and natural selection as a reality, but showing its limits for originating new information. Evolutin only selects between preexisting options. That life requires information and design is an experiment everyone repeats day after day after day.
ID is science. Faith is not science, but faith can use science. This is not a contradiction. Science explains gravity. I ski using gravity even if I am not a scientist. This is not a contradiction it is a use.
Seventh-day Adventist Christians can use ID science to help understand Genesis 1. Genesis 1 is unnecessary for ID science. You never seem to get this difference. I hope others will. Read the book.
Huh? Lost me Jack.
Would it be tooo much to ask that you give a simple answer, as each relates to the 3 questions I put, in point form? I'm really have trouble understanding how what you have said ties in to each question.
Note. I did not ask about the limits on evolution. I asked about that in relation to IDists and Theistic Evos.
Also, perhaps I should use the term "non sequiter" instead of contradiction. How does the last sentence follow from the logic of the former? And faith in what? Genesis 1? With what "reading"? Theistic? IDist? Deist? Poetic? Mythical?
btw…. let me see if I do get one point.
Genesis 1 is unnecessary for ID science. OK, so much for science "helping to understand it", does this mean the rest of the bible is unnecessary for ID science?
If so,… I could live with ID because all I see honest ID can say with a straight face is that there is or appears to be, was, or could be, some kind of intelligence behind the science. Full stop, no more claims than that. OK, big deal, let's leave thay possiblity open and get back to science without the distraction. If science leads us towards more "evidence" for this designer.. great!
But, Jack, you know that is not the problem. Unless you can cover my questions better above than you have, it I fail to see it is the real issue. The issue is that you are determined to take the hints that there is a Designer and strecth its thin staws shore up your "faith" and "interpretation of a Book. That is why I will not be buying the book this blog is about, because every review and description I have read so far about it suggests an author seeking only such a level of "honesty" as to still leave faith standing at the end of the day. He also has his non-negotiables. I rarely buy books, but certainly not ones I suspect are hindered in their integrity by a desire to maintain a certain outcome.
Chris, your first two paragraphs above are welcome and in fact are the ID position. They say irregardless of religion or lack of it science alone reveals that life demands intelligence. Full stop.
It is left to revealed religions to help us discover who or what that intelligence is. That is my job, and that was your job. That is Adventisms job, that is Christianities job. ID's contribution is not to prove there is a God, it just says Science does not prove there is not a God. To use a double negative.
Or to use the positive, Science shows that life requires information, and all the discoveries of science lead to that conclusion.
ID does not prove that Adventism is correct. ID just says that Adventism and all faith based phiosophies are not fools errands, as materialists claim science has done. ID is the study of the science that says no it hasn't.
Jack,
I missed this comment earlier. On AT probably over 2 years ago, before you began blogging I think, in discussion with Nathan and Darrel I made the point that I actually have quite a bit of sympathy for ID. Sadly, I have less now than then because here on AT its propenents seem "hell bent" on taking it beyond its pale.
Even in your opening sentence you fall prey to this enthusiasm by suggesting that science "demands intelligence". Maybe, maybe not! If my points in the first two paragraphs above are in fact the ID position, then you cannot use the word "demands". I certainly have not. I've used words like "appears to be", "was" or "may be" etc. These are not the same.
I will be very interested to see how you answer Dr Taylor's question at the end of this thread, because as he suggests, there are two quite distinct foci in the terminology used. You seem to mix and match with abandon, so yes, which is it?
Sorry, "behind the science" in the second paragraph should be "behind the scences". Other typos regretted too:(
Science does not address the questions of religion and spirituality, and neither should we expect it to do so. Science attempts to understand nature without invoking "supernatural" causes. Sure there are sceinetists who happen to be either theists or atheists. In fact, the majority of American scientists believe in a transcendent being. When they offer opinions that are not within the realm of science, they do so not as a scientist. The present ID movement represents the resurgence of natural theology that was popular in the 17th and 18th centuries in a slightly different form. We can only comprehend secondary causation as primary causation is incomprehensible to human beings. In this sense, ID ultimately has nothing to offer in this regard and its arguments cannot be tested or proven in the realm of pure science. It must be emphasized that the starting positions in religion and sprituality are always faith-based and not science-based.
Paul as you know many philosophers who claim to be scientists have in fact claimed that science has "proved there is no god" or perhaps a little more dismissively led to the shrug of the shoulders statement that "God? I have no need of that hypothesis." They claim they can explain life in all its complexity by the tools of unilimited time, uncaused chance, and natural selection. These are conclusion that claim to be "scientific."
ID is not a theology proving the science is wrong, ID is the study of science proving the philosopical conclusions claiming to rule out need for external causes can not be correct. ID says that the evidence shows there is limited time (Big Bang), and that mutations are mostly harmful not creative, and that natural selection can select novelty, but not create it.
ID does not start with the hypothesis of God, ID starts with the evidence of what life is–what the age of the universe is, how it appears in the fossil record, and how we discover information (DNA/RNA) is the basis of all life, and says the scientific information demands intelligence. that you can not scientifically explain life as not needing outside cauation, given the facts of science.
Primary causation is incomprehensibel to human beings, but revelation claims to open that door. ID just says, science has not closed that door forever.
The starting positions in religion and spirituality was likely the warmth of the sun, or the fact that flowers are beautiful and smell good, or that sexual intercourse is wonderful. And then the amazement that humans are conscious and able to think about these things. This is all science.
Humans did not dig up a Bible and say, well "strike a light, there must be a God!" So I have to disagree with you when you say that "the starting positions in religion and spirituality are faith based." Religion is the human response to science, just the attempt to do what wonder, awe, fear, and love demand of us when we look at this world and universe we live in.
So I return my hypothesis, ID is not a religion, it is a scientific proposition, and can not be decided by atheists or theistic arguments, but is falsifiable and confirmable by strictly scientific evidence.
I who am faith based, on the other hand, care very much about the Bible I was handed and the religion I was raised in, and that is clearly why I write. I use ID science as Dawkins uses Darwinian science to inform my beliefs, as he claims to use his science to conform his beliefs.
But Hitchins, Dawkins, and company may attack my beliefs, as I attack theirs, but I will not permit them dismiss ID science as "mere belief" and I urge you not to accept that error.
Intelligent Design, "arguments cannot be tested or proven in the realm of pure science." Why do you say this Paul?
Paul is correct that science cannot handle the incomprehensive facts of "what was" prior to Earth's creation, and of occurrences since, are theoristic. Science must have physical specimens to examine to bring substance to their theories. By a closed mind to the spiritural and supernatural dimensions, they ignore what the majority of Earth's inhabitants have believed, since recorded history. If it can't be handled and tinkered with, it is of no use to Earth's science. Science being the beginning and end, the Alpha and Omega of what mankind needs to contend with. The expanses of infinite space of billions of "light years", ever expanding in 360 degrees of base center, and filled with matter of billions & trillions of galaxies filled with unknown suns, planets star clusters, gasses, and probably even numerous Universes. A reality that is so awesome, magnificent, beautiful, with a science, that utilizes some of basic Earth's science knowledge, but with a massive enigmatic formulary of complexity (as are Earthly life forms) with elements that are beyond mankind's (scientists) ability to comprehend, including the basis dimension of spiritual communication. Of instantaineous formation ofspatial objects that Earth's scientists could see and touch with glee, and examine for eternity, that which had no beginning, and will have no ending. Space transitions by thought process, light years being no limitation. And it all speaks to theistic INTELLIGENT DESIGN. So Earthly Science is not the Alpha & Omega of Life, of knowledge of cardinal understanding of all things. Breaking the genome of Earthly man, recently, is a touchstone of understanding, of simplistic discovery perhaps equal in scope to the discovery of the Rosetta Stone for deciphering the Hieroglyphics of Egypt. We are just beginning to break open the oyster of Earth's enigma, and woefully ignorant of heavenly knowledge. As long as scientists continue to get their hands dirty in sweat and exploration, seeking the answer to human life and destination, they will ignore the spiritual dimension of eternal wisdom of the ages, and will continue to look through darkened glasses of eternal knowledge.
Thank you Earl, yes the "discovery of the Rosetta Stone for deciphering the Hieroglyphics of Egypt" is a perfect example that ID is/must be the subject of pure science.
So to remind readers all: This is a book review!
I find it fascinating that the first response from JaNe on the right, was "No one should read this book."
And the second response was from CB25 on the left was, "I rarely buy books."
Adventism once promoted "Righteousness by Works."
Then we moved on to "Righteousness by Faith."
Are these voices from the right and the left now promoting "Righteousness by Ignorance?"
🙂
Read the book friends. It will do us all good on both sides of these arguments!
Jack,
"Righeousness by ignorance". Please think it through… If I had to buy every book available on imortant topics, such as this, to remain "UN-ignorant" I would need more money that you and I probably have!!
If I can read an array of analyses, reviews, arguments etc about and over a particular book to the point where I can know its key arguments, points, logic and conclusions: How is that promoting ignorance? It is not.
What is promoting ignorance are statements like this:
"Religion is the human response to science, just the attempt to do what wonder, awe, fear, and love demand of us when we look at this world and universe we live in."
Jack, religion and its causes are far more complex than that, and so is science. To simplify and conflate the two in this way seems to me to do justice to neither.
If you are going to accept simplistic definitions, try this one:
Religion is the human response to what we do not understand And yet how often it claims to know the answers in the absence of science? Science is the human endeavor to understand what we do not. And it makes no claims beyond the borders of its discovery.
My friend, religion is the earliest human response in the ABSENCE of science! It is a complex human thing, but imho it definately is NOT a RESPONSE to science. In fact where good science takes place it is usually least prevalent. That alone should cause caution on your claim.
Can I morph one of your quotes from the review:?
"They stick their fingers into their ears and cry, 'I can’t hear what you’re saying, because you’re just a Evolutionist, la,la,la,la,la….'".
If you get the IDea!
btw, still waiting for your 3 point answer, or are you jack of me? 🙂
Your definition of religion is the defintion of the irreligious. I'll stay with mine.
I've tried again to answer your "questions" but since I generalized, I've written them numbered above under your original post.
Materialism sees intelligence as a byproduct of an unintelligent material nature. It philosophically follows that they consider the evolutionary process to be a blind mechanism that acts like an intelligence and can even create intelligences (the Blind Watchmaker).
The evidence for this, however, is in the same category as the evidence for the alchemists' Philosopher's Stone, which was said to be able to turn dross into gold. If "this process" science and has happened many times, then lets see it happen in the lab!!
"We are getting there; some day soon we will see it happen in the lab!" Darwin of the gaps?? ID on the other had is not 'god of the gaps' because we argue from the Positive Evidence of what we DO Understand, that is, the evidence of information systems that give all the appearance of being highly designed for purposes beyond their own existances.
A 2014 article in Chemical Reviews, surveying the field to date, notes that "Even the simplest microorganisms known on Earth are breathtakingly complex," with the result that the probability of a random series of events of physics and chemistry leading to a bacterium by spontaneous self-organization of biomolecules "is negligibly low."
I guess we all read things with our own presuppositions in place and impose meanings on what we read in terms of these presuppositions. However, Jack's suggestion that the comment of CB25 represented the "left" and thus "Rigtheousness by Ignorance" does not compute. All CB25 said was commenting on the printed form in which he usually obtained his information. As I read the comments about the book "ftrom the Adventist left," it is uniformly positive. I don't know where Jack places himself on the range of theological perspectives in the Adventist Church, but I assume he thinks of himself as in the "moderate middle"? However, in his support of ID, some might wonder.
By the way, the constant comment in one form or another that contemporary evolutionary biology depends on a "random series of events" to accomplish genetic modifications misses the main point. In part it relies on random genetic modifications of genetic materials through mutation, but at that point very specific adaptive selection takes over which is hardly "random."
Ervin, please enjoy my little jab of "Righteousness by Ignorance" without taking it personal, I was just poking at those who oppose Old Earth Creationism without reading it, and those who dismiss ID without carefully studying it.
I have always made it clear that I am a creationist, and I find theistic evolution an inadequate way to combine faith and science. I do so for scientific reasons. I do so for theological reasons. But I stand with the left in accepting science as a valuable contributor to my understanding of revelation.
The lack of "random" selection in nature is in fact the point. I agree that "very specific adaptive selection…(is not) random," Nothing in life is random including the evolution of life, it follows a plan that permits freedom within very real and intelligently designed mechanisms that are not possible without design. Design is not just "apparent" in nature, as proposed by philosophical materialists. Design is inherent at every level from Universe to Cells to Nuclei, to Biochemistry, to Orgnic Chemistry, to Physics to Mathematics. Things evolve, because there are mechanisms that make this possible. And this conslusion is made by scientists and philosophers of science without regard to Genesis. ID is not "creation science" in disguise, and those who are willing to study it without dismissing it out of hand, usually become respectful even if not converts.
"… just poking at those who ….those who dismiss ID without carefully studying it."
What a bold and arrogant statement. As if Jack is the only one who has done so adequately because it is right and he says so, and anyone, anyone, yes, anyone who does not get it has not studied carefully…
Jack, I told you above, IF ID stuck with the simple claim that complexity suggests there may be a Designer behind the scenes – fine NO problem – leave it at that and keep doing science going wherever it leads, but it does not, and you definately do not. As Ervin noted above – reading your defenses of ID makes one wonder. …
Spare me…
You can be spared, just let my posts be mine and don't try to make them yours.
I am not ID, I study it and agree with it, and it helps me understand my Adventist faith and improve my doctrine of Creation.
Jack, please.. Just because I seek to question or clarify some things you say is not seeking to make your blog mine…. When I do a blog I value such discussion – it gives a blog life. What do you want… silence?
Now in light of my saying above that I would say both you and Dawkins were wrong in the context of your statement, and to give you a smallest quasi valid reason to acuse me of taking over your blog, have a look at this and see if you can keep a straight face when making some of the claims for ID that you do:
https://www.ted.com/talks/richard_dawkins_on_militant_atheism
Seriously…
Jack–Perhaps I misunderstand your view on ID. To ask the point cb25 raised as a question: Is your own view about ID ways of approaching this topic is that, in yout opinion, ID ideas provide reasonable arguments to the point that there may be a Designer or is your view that ID ideas and arguments establish the fact that there is a Designer? It seems to me that these two positions are quite different.
Let me give you back the question, and perhaps we can meet in the middle.
Do you think that whatever form of Darwinian theory we now live with establishes that there is no God? or that we just don't need any God to explain life? I suspect you will say that Science can't prove there is no God, but just that God remains an option outside of science, but not necessary.
Then I'll answer that ID suggests that whether there is a God or not is not proven, but that there must be a source of information outside of natural processes to explain the university we live in and life upon it. They stop there on purpose.
Some ID scientists choose to say, we agree, but we can't know what that source is, and remain atheistic or agnostic about that source information.
Others of us say, hum, we think we know that source based on our religion. And since it is not attacking our belief in a designed and created universe, it helps us listen with less fear and loathing to the science they study to help modify our faith based beliefs, without making belief trivial as Darwinian dogma does.
Jack–May I suggest that your closing words "as Darwinian dogma does." reveals your bias. But since we all have bias of one kind or another, that's fine. May I also suggest that contemporary mainline science simply offers no opinions on the subject of theism as the rules of baseball offer no suggestions as to how to play football (or soccer, if you wish). My understanding of the ID positiion (please correct me if I am in error) is that, to quote you, "there must be a source of information outside of natural processes" to explain the universe we live in. That means, by definition, that ID is a point of view outside of how science deals with the world. It does not mean that ID is not correct or more correct, but just that by introducing a non-natural process, we have left the discourse of science. Would you not agree?
My bias is clear. Fossils, cells, Fruit Flys, E. Coli by the millions all say the same thing. Programmed. I don't step outside of science to say Programmed. That is a completely scientific theory, not a religious one.
Religion comes when I say, the Programmer is nice. Then I have stepped outside of science.
If the materialist says, It can't be Programmed because that would require a Programmer and the rules of science forbid you and me to consider that possibility, so make up another theory, that is dogma, not science.
Neer the twain shall meet. Friends, this subject of ID versus evo will not have aamicable acceptance of both particular positions held by dyed in the wool, evo's, and those of ID faith. The evo's are in love with what can be replicated by scientific testing, however, as the impossibility of knowing for a certainty the origin of life forms, many extrapolate the Earth's known tools of physics, and the Darwin influence, to theorize that life forms just happened, by Earthbound influences from the very first protein, one cell life, until today we have humans standing tall as the fittest survivors, including all the monster creatures buried in the earth, so the unknown magic of "happenings" required only lapses of time, and "natural selection", (WHATS THAT???). All mutations and changes from simple to complex "just happened", all without any outer space input or ID.
ID'er's, while in great appreciation of Earth's Sciences, and fabulous discoveries of physical scientists, that have made life easier and so much more enjoyable, in the first world countries, believe that none of mankind's & other life forms origins & accomplishments would be possible without a grand master plan of intelligent design. Every form of life has a complexity of infinite design of its onboard systems and is intirely a different species. And there are billions of different species. And this is the evidence, ID'ers insist it is an impossibility that all we behold and comprehend, "just happened", with out any designing force into the reality of life origin and present existence. Without the element of concern for other life, a sense of live and let live, the barbarian way would still be with us. But sciences contribution to WMD, caused the barbarian tribes and clans into a semblance of societal detente. Where we are today.