Review - Grabbe, Lester L. Faith and Fossils: The Bible, Creation, and Evolution

Review - Grabbe, Lester L. Faith and Fossils: The Bible, Creation, and Evolution. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2018.

As the founder and convenor of the European Seminar on Methodology in Israel’s History, Lester Grabbe is not someone whom I would have imagined likely to enter the overcrowded field of evolution / creation literature, even though his expertise as an historian of ancient Judaism eminently qualifies him to comment on the biblical end of the subject. Having expressed my reservation up front, I am happy to admit that my reservations about the value of a book on evolution / creation by a specialist in Second Temple Judaism were ill-placed. Grabbe has written a book that not only is informative and accessible, but which deserves a place on the shelf of anyone seriously interested in the subject.

Review: Nathan H. Lents “Human Errors – A Panorama of Our Glitches From Pointless Bones to Broken Genes”

Review: Nathan H. Lents Human Errors – A Panorama of Our Glitches From Pointless Bones to Broken Genes (2018: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Cell biologist Nathan H Lents, professor of biology at John Jay College, The City University of New York has written an engaging, highly accessible book showing the interested layperson how the errors in our body from the gross anatomical down to the genomic levels attest to our evolutionary origins. Highly recommended.

Sociocultural analysis, the Second Amendment of the US Constitution, and Manners and Customs of the Bible. Yes, they do have a connection...

Last month, OT scholar John Walton gave a public lecture entitled “Do believers have to make a choice between science and faith?” at which he “explore[d] how we might faithfully read Genesis 1 and 2, in light of its Ancient Near Eastern context”. [1] Unsurprisingly, as Christadelphian - Origins Discussion noted, [2] Walton’s eminently sensible approach was met with unremitting hostility by an ultra-conservative part of the Christadelphian community which to date has twice attacked Walton, accusing him of denying the inspiration of the Bible and promoting an intellectual, elitist approach to the Bible. Christadelphiain - Origins Discussion has ably refuted these criticisms of Walton so there is no need for me to beat this particular dead horse into the dirt. However, the ongoing argument in the US about interpreting the Second Amendment of the US constitution provides a fascinating insight into the need for sociocultural analysis to more fully understand the Bible, which unlike the US constitution was written thousands of years ago in three different languages by people living in an alien culture to ours.

When YECs share Israel-related archaeology news without recognising how it undermines their worldview

A few weeks ago, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced [1] the discovery of the largest neolithic settlement yet found in Israel. Located near the town of Motza just west of Jerusalem, the 9000 year old settlement would have numbered around 3000, making it the Neolithic equivalent of a city. Given that anthropologists believed that at this time the area west of Jordan was largely empty, with large settlements on the eastern side of Jordan, this discovery is understandably being hailed as momentous.

I've noticed over the years that fundamentalist Protestant Christians, particularly those with an obsessive interest in eschatology who see every geopolitical or sociocultural event that even tangentially affects Israel as an alleged fulfillment of Biblical prophecy will reflexively share Israel-related news. Recently, I noticed that one obscure website had shared a Times of Israel article commenting on this discovery. Browsing the website quickly made apparent to me its evolution denialism, which immediately raised the question of why a website maintained by people who appear to believe the entire universe is 6000 years old bothered to report the discovery of a Neolithic settlement that is three thousand years older than the age of the universe according to their view of reality.

Too Much Natural History for a Young Earth...

Sometimes, it's the little things that highlight the utter absurdity of the YEC worldview which asserts that not only is the Earth a mere 6000 years old, practically all the fossils were deposited by a global flood in a period lasting under one year a mere 4500 years ago. One of the best sources of such YEC-defeating material comes from Dr Joel Duff, whose website Naturalis Historia has featured here more than once. The last few posts at his website have features some of these fascinating glimpses into the past, including:

• A communal latrine in Argentina approximately 200 million years old used by mammal-like reptiles
• Fossilised moa footprints in New Zealand around 1 million years old
• Fossilised snakes in a dinosaur nest from the late Cretaceous around 67 million years ago
• A 'lost Grand Canyon' in Egypt.

Mainstream geology has no problem explaining these discoveries, but as Duff points out, YECs who start with their conclusion - a young Earth and a single recent cataclysmic event operating over a few months as the mechanism which created these phenomena - have insuperable problems to face. 

The Priestly Vision of Genesis 1 - Part 2: Creation via Divine Might

Creation as Divine Might

The first Biblical model of creation Mark Smith explores in The Priestly Vision of Genesis 1 [1] is creation as divine might, which looks at how creation emerges as a result of God’s victory of cosmic enemies. Smith notes that the best example of this model of creation is found in Psa 74:12-17 [2]

Yet God my King is from of old, working salvation in the earth.

You divided the sea by your might; you broke the heads of the dragons in the waters.

You crushed the heads of Leviathan; you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.

You cut openings for springs and torrents; you dried up ever-flowing streams.

Yours is the day, yours also the night; you established the luminaries and the sun.

You have fixed all the bounds of the earth; you made summer and winter.

Also of relevance is the narrative in Psa 89:8-13

O LORD God of hosts, who is as mighty as you, O LORD? Your faithfulness surrounds you.

You rule the raging of the sea; when its waves rise, you still them.

You crushed Rahab like a carcass; you scattered your enemies with your mighty arm.

The heavens are yours, the earth also is yours; the world and all that is in it—you have founded them.

The north and the south—you created them; Tabor and Hermon joyously praise your name.
You have a mighty arm; strong is your hand, high your right hand. 

The Priestly Vision of Genesis 1 - Part 1

Most would be aware that there are two creation stories in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 which if read literally differ in the length, order, and duration of creation events, not to mention the nature of God’s involvement in creation as either transcendent or immanent, even if that awareness derives from an awareness that fundamentalist Christians vehemently deny this fact and have spent no little energy in patently unconvincing attempts to explain away this problem. [1] Fewer though would be aware of the existence of other creation narratives in the Bible, which while sharing motifs and themes [2] likewise differ from each other. The idea of a single unified creation text in the Bible is one that is not supported by the evidence. There are many creation narratives in the Bible, which share common themes but also differ thematically, and to insist on a single Biblical teaching on creation runs the risk of muting these voices in order to force the polyvalent Biblical teachings on creation both to conform to a fundamentalist concept of inerrancy as well as to function as a crude anti-evolution polemic. The science denialism of contemporary fundamentalists should never be the hermeneutic by which we read the creation narratives.

Posting Frequency

The two or three people who still read the blog will of course be aware that posting frequency has dropped considerably over the past few years. The main factor behind this is the fact that after a while, pretty well everything that one can say on the issue from a scientific and theological point of view has already been said, and further posts run the risk of being repetitive. Given this, I have been striving for quality rather than quantity.

Debunking a "Scientific Dissent From Darwinism" - yet again

In 2001, the Discovery Institute, an advocate of the pseudoscience of intelligent design released A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism to which a small number of people of varying professional backgrounds had given their assent. [1] The statement, which professed scepticism of the ability of random mutation and natural selection was widely criticised in the mainstream scientific community on many points including its misleading phrasing, designed to make the layperson think criticism of a subject implied wholesale rejection, as well as its straw man presentation of modern evolutionary theory as simply random mutation and natural selection. Recently, this statement has been popping up across the Christian world due to the fact that this list has now managed to garner 1000 signatories. Despite the fact it has been ably demolished, [2] another ritual flogging would not go astray.

Appealing to Mark 10:6-8 doesn't mean there aren't two divergent creation accounts.

Outside of the extremes of fundamentalist Christianity, there is a strong consensus that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are two separate creation accounts which when read literally differ significantly in terms of the duration of creation, order of events, and the nature of God as revealed in how he is described as creating. [1] One common fundamentalist attempt to argue away this problem an appeal to Mark 10:6-8, where Jesus quotes from both Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. Their argument is that by quoting from Gen 1 and Gen 2, Jesus is showing that he believed the accounts were not in tension. This is of course patently unconvincing if only because the differences between the creation narratives are not resolved simply by appealing to the NT passage. Context is also important as the point being argued was divorce rather than creation.