Neville Clark's attack on evolution - 3

Part three of this critical examination of Neville Clark’s attack on evolutionary creationism concentrates on his misrepresentation of what evolutionary creationists believe, as well as his lack of familiarity in the fields of geology, palaeontology and evolutionary biology. With respect to why an increasing number of Christadelphians reject literalism, Clark asserts:

“Now why would somebody want to do that? Why would…want you try and even think that? I mean, you’re either an evolutionist or you’re not. Well the answer is because they look at the geological column which is…the description evolutionists have of…life and the age of life forms. And they say ‘Well, we’ve got life, we’ve got bones of dinosaurs which we think are 200 million years old. Adam only lived six thousand years ago. If we say that dinosaurs were alive at the time of Adam, or if we say that we’ve got bones of men that are 200,000 years old, we’ve got to have an explanation to answer that. Well, we’re going to use evolution to answer it, and we’re going to say that the scientists are right when…when they date bones, and therefore Adam wasn’t six thousand years ago: he was much longer ago than that, but we still want to use Genesis 1, because if we disagree with that then we disagree with the Bible we’re…not believers anymore. So we’re going to try and stitch those two ideas together and make up this intermediate idea called theistic evolution.’[1]

Speaking as an evolutionary creationist, I can confirm that what Clark has said is a distortion verging on parody. Given that websites such as this one have detailed what ECs believe for some time, either he has neglected to properly research his subject or he is wilfully distorting what ECs believe for polemical reasons

There are many compelling reasons to reject a literal reading of Genesis one, even before one examines the scientific evidence in detail. It is difficult at best to harmonise Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 if one reads them as literal, chronologically sequential creation events as they differ in time taken to create, the order of creation, as well as the depiction of God (immanent versus transcendent). There is also the fact[2] that Genesis 1:6-8 clearly refers to the creation of a solid firmament to separate waters above from waters below, a view that is consistent with the ancient Near Eastern view of the world, but one that is demonstrably false. Special creationists who insist in reading Genesis 1 literally are inconsistent when they reject the clear Biblical references to a solid firmament in favour of what modern science says about the non-reality of a solid firmament.

Even a strong concordist reading of Genesis 1 which tries to harmonise the fact of an ancient Earth with a literal reading of Genesis (either via literal days of recreation six thousand years ago or by postulating that each day represents a geological age) is untenable. The former is falsified by the fact that the geological record does not show an ancient Earth devoid of life until six thousand years ago. (Nor does it show a widespread global catastrophe around six thousand years ago, followed by re-creation). The latter is ruled out both on practical grounds (plants cannot wait untold ages for the creation of the creeping things that pollinate them) as well as the complete lack of concord between the sequence of events in Genesis 1 and the geological record.[3] Well before one even encounters the science in detail, the reasons for seeking a more credible approach to interpret Genesis 1 just from the narrative alone are compelling.

Clark’s misunderstanding of evolutionary creationism extends well beyond the motivation for rejecting literalism:

 “Well, we’ve got life, we’ve got bones of dinosaurs which we think are 200 million years old. Adam only lived six thousand years ago. If we say that dinosaurs were alive at the time of Adam, or if we say that we’ve got bones of men that are 200,000 years old, we’ve got to have an explanation to answer that. Well, we’re going to use evolution to answer it, and we’re going to say that the scientists are right when…when they date bones, and therefore Adam wasn’t six thousand years ago: he was much longer ago than that, but we still want to use Genesis 1, because if we disagree with that then we disagree with the Bible we’re…not believers anymore. So we’re going to try and stitch those two ideas together and make up this intermediate idea called theistic evolution.”

The reference to dinosaur bones is simply a red herring, while Clark is simply wrong when he claims that ECs believe Adam existed more than 6000 years ago. ECs such as myself who regard Gen 2-4 as essentially historical point out that Adam and Eve cannot have existed earlier than around 10,000 years as there is no evidence of animal and plant domestication in the ancient Near East prior to that date, and the events of Genesis 4 clearly indicate that both were domesticated at that time.

Clark has missed the fact that it is the existence of anatomically modern human fossils[4] at least 195,000 years ago, well before the earliest possible date for Adam that are the main archaeological and palaeontological facts which have further underlined the urgency of the need to look again at what the creation narratives are actually saying. To this we can add the genomic evidence that flatly rules out universal human descent from two people living several thousand years ago. When we look at the human genome by sampling representative genetic data from people across many racial groups, we see far too much allelic diversity to have emerged from just two people living 6000 years ago via the known rate of mutation.[5] In other words, we do not see a sharp genetic bottleneck that we would expect to see if the human race began from such a tiny number of people several thousand years below. The reference to evolution is a red herring as we are referring solely to anatomically modern human fossils - not earlier members of genus Homo or members of genus Australopithecus – and the genetic evidence flatly ruling out universal human descent from two people living 6000 years ago.

Clark’s gratuitous comment about ECs “still want[ing] to use Genesis 1, because if [they] disagree with that then [they] disagree with the Bible [then they’re] not believers anymore” serves merely to patronise and denigrate ECs. Needless to say, I don’t disagree with the Bible. What I do disagree with is Clark’s implicit belief, never justified rigorously, that his hyper-literal reading of the creation narrative is the only possible way to interpret the creation narratives.

His concluding remark about evolutionary creationists trying to stitch together evolution and Genesis again exhibits an agenda to brand ECs as hopeless compromisers, as well as further evidence that he does not know what ECs really believe. I do not believe that there is any reference to evolution in Genesis. Any interpretation of Genesis that tries to harmonise it with evolution is doomed to fail. However, I do not believe there is any reference to modern science at all, which means that both literalism and strong concordism are also doomed to fail. The reference to the solid firmament in Gen 1:6-8 alone demonstrate that we are reading a narrative that simply cannot be interpreted according to modern standards of historiography. Genesis 1 is ancient cosmology, not modern science[6] and must be read not as a modern audience would read it, but as an ancient one would. Its purpose is not to tell us how and when God created, but who did it, and why. As CC Walker noted:

Moses’ testimony is not so “plain” that it cannot be misinterpreted or misunderstood. He speaks of “the heaven and the earth” as being in existence “in the beginning;” and therefore it does not seem to be inadmissible to suppose that “the host of heaven” was likewise then in existence. Moses’ testimony was given to Israel in what might be called the infancy of the world, when men did not know the extent of the earth, let alone that of the sun, moon, and stars. And, as we believe, it was given (by God through Moses), not so much to instruct Israel in cosmogony in detail, as to impress upon them the idea that The Most High God is the Possessor of Heaven and Earth (Gen. 14:22). And this against the claims of the gods of the nations, as was abundantly proved in Israel’s history.[7] (Emphasis mine)

Ccontemporary Biblical scholarship echoes this point:

Genesis is not only monotheistic but is actually anti-polytheistic. Genesis takes every opportunity to deny divinity to heavenly bodies, referring to them as simply lights. In the same way, the account denies divinity to sea monsters, listing them as creatures God created in the same category as ordinary fish and fowl. Further evidence of the apologetic and polemic nature of the Genesis account is found when we compare it with the other Old Testament references to creation. Psalms, Job, and Isaiah include references to creation that use mythical language and refer to mythical forces that Yahweh subdued such as “Rahab” and “Leviathan,” whom he crushed and slew (Ps 89:9–12; Job 9:13–14; 26:12–13; Isa 27:1). In contrast to these references, Genesis leaves not a vestige of mythical language or thought; Genesis is a complete denial of the polytheistic and mythological worldview. No doubt the other biblical creation passages also attacked these views, but they employed a different strategy. Isaiah and Job asserted the superiority of Yahweh over the hypothetical mythological creatures and over every putative supernatural power, while in Genesis their very existence was denied. 

The importance of these points of contact is that they highlight the differences between the accounts, giving the impression that the Genesis narrative was probably written with the Babylonian epic in mind and with the intention of refuting it. Enuma Elish begins with the existence of the watery chaos in the form of two deities, but Genesis begins with no preexistent matter at all and God creates from nothing. The chaotic waters are not deities in Genesis but material that God made and also controlled.[8]

If Genesis was written not to instruct Israel in cosmogony in detail, but to serve as a polemic against pagan cosmology, then the meaning of Genesis has been effectively decoupled from scientific questions about how creation took place, making questions of how the diversity of life firmly in the scientific domain. While I accept that science has confirmed the reality of an ancient, evolving creation, my interpretation of Genesis owes nothing to evolution, a point which Clark’s misreading of evolutionary creationism fails to acknowledge.

Conclusion

Parts 1 and 2 of this series showed that Clark’s assertion that creation took place in six days not only cannot be reconciled with the evidence from the natural world, but runs counter to what Christadelphians in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were acknowledging as the geological and palaeontological evidence began to accumulate providing evidence against that view. This part has highlighted how he has distorted what evolutionary creationists actually believe, as well as ascribing incorrect motives for their re-evaluation of how the creation narratives should be interpreted. The fact that he has both misunderstood the considerable scientific evidence against literalism and failed to accurately summarise the views of the evolutionary creationists he criticises, is a poor foundation for the rest of his argument.

References

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQF9WRXEsH8#t=346
[2] Enns P "The Firmament of Genesis 1 is Solid but That's Not the Point" Science and the Sacred Jan 14 2010
[3] Seely P.H. “The First Four Days of Genesis in Concordist Theory and in Biblical Context” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith (1997) 49:85-95
[4] McDougall I, Brown FH, Fleagle JG “Stratigraphic placement and age of modern humans from Kibish, Ethiopia.” Nature (2005) 433:733-6
[5] The facile answer that the mutation rate was increased is impossible, as this would increase the rate of deleterious mutations causing crippling genetic diseases which in a tiny population would rapidly become fixed in the population, causing it to acquire a crippling load of genetic mutations which would see it crash into extinction.
[6] Walton J “Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology” (2011: Eisenbrauns)
[7] Walker CC “Is it “Wrong” to Believe that the Earth is a Sphere?” The Christadelphian (1913) 50: 348.
[8] James McKeown, Genesis (The Two Horizons Old Testament Commentary; Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2008), 14.