SophistiCat

I didn't want to join lee_merril's sad trainwreck of a thread on alleged scientific correspondences in Genesis, but I do wonder about this issue. It is very common for Christians and Muslims alike to claim that the divine origin of the Bible (Koran) can be seen in the many alleged prophesies and other ideas that otherwise would not have been available to people at the time of its writing. The flaws in these arguments seem so glaringly obvious that I can't help by wonder, why are they so popular?


If one were to approach this argument objectively, one could compare two alternative hypotheses:

Divine: The Bible is a revealed truth

Human: The Bible is a human artefact

These hypotheses are evaluated on the support that they receive from evidence. One hypothesis receives more support than the other from a given piece of evidence if the evidence is more probable under that hypothesis.

For example, this evidence is often given to support the Divine hypothesis: the order of creation (inanimate matter - plants - animals - people) corresponds to the modern scientific history of the world. So it does, but that is not enough to claim support for the Divine hypothesis over the Human one. For that we also need to answer the following question in the affirmative: is the same evidence improbable under the Human hypothesis? The answer, I think, is obvious: the hierarchy is quite intuitive and does not require any scientific knowledge to come up with. Ask a primitive man today to arrange these four categories, and he would likely come up with the same order. So on this evidence we fail to distinguish the two hypotheses.


Another obvious failing of the argument is in the choice of interpretations. In order to support the idea that Genesis refers to sophisticated scientific ideas, we are asked to accept arbitrary and whimsical interpretations of certain verses.

For instance, some ask us to interpret the verse "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" to mean that space ("heavens") appeared first and matter ("earth") - shortly thereafter, which, amazingly, happens to accord with the Big Bang theory. If this interpretation were to be accepted, then, according to the hypothesis testing procedure described earlier, it would arguably grant the Divine hypothesis more support than the Human one. However, why should we accept this interpretation? It certainly does not constitute the plain meaning of the text. The exegete must choose one of at least two interpretations:

A: "Heavens" refers to the sky and "earth" refers to... well, Earth.

B: "Heavens" is an allegorical reference to the curved spacetime of the General Relativity, while "earth" is an allegorical reference to elementary matter particles.

The only reason to choose the latter interpretation is because it accords with science, while the former does not. There is no otherwise support to be found in Genesis for it. Which is fine if the exegete is merely trying to demonstrate that one can harmonise Genesis with science through creative interpretation. But then an apologist comes in and claims that not only does the verse accord with science, but the fact of that agreement lends support to the verse. This, of course, is circular reasoning. One cannot use the same evidence to both formulate the hypothesis (which in this case consists of choosing one of several possible interpretations) and to support that hypothesis. Only independent evidence can grant support to hypotheses, and in the case of creative verse interpretation, such evidence is lacking.


Thouhts?

Naved

As an ex-muslim that is hounded by Quranic scientific discoveries as "proof" of its divinity, I have found that the following line of reasoning goes a long way to shut up the apologist.

If scienctic knowledge is found in the Quran then I would expect to see the following scenario atleast once:

Scietist reads Quran -> Forms hypothesis based on his reading -> Tests & validates his hypothesis

But all we ever find is this

Scientist observes the universe -> forms hypothesis based on his observation -> Tests & validates his hypothesis -> Apologist finds this very scietific theory in the Quran

Funny how it always works that way!!!!

Niall Armstrong

:rolling:
Will remember that one for future use! Thanks!

CJD

But why must Genesis be made to say anything scientific (in the modern sense of that word)? It certainly doesn't purport to under its own accord. Maybe your skepticism is leveled largely against those who propound such notions (i.e., YECs) that there is a one-to-one correlation between the text and modern scientific theory? Why can't the creation narrative simply be a creative description about a god, YHWH, who subdues the chaos with a purpose (i.e., redemption)?

Gamera

Indeed, it would be remarkable if the authors of Genesis were undertaking even bad scientific inquiry given the empirical method really hadn't been rationalized yet.

SophistiCat

Naved: good point. Although scientists used to look for justifications in the Bible for their ideas, I don't think that any of the successful scientific ideas actually originated in the Bible.

Well, you'll have to ask the apologists who use this correspondence argument. Actually, they are more likely to be OECs, like lee_merrill. YECs more often find their literal interpretation in violent conflict with science, so they prefer to reject science. Although I am sure there are those YECs who do both.

CJD

To be fair, YECs deem science as objective as the scientist practicing it. If they find that the majority of scientists are naturalists, then they are going to be skeptical regarding their findings. But this is because they have an incorrect view of the relationship between science and theology (that both are saying different things about different things), just as the typical OECs do, with respect to their views that scientists and theologians are saying the same thing about the same things.

The truth is, the relationship is complementary: they are saying different things about the same things.