July 16, 2010

• (book review) "The Christian Delusion" - Ch. 5: The Cosmology of the Bible (part 1)

  Intro: 

  This series is an atheist's review of an important anthology critical of Christian beliefs called, "The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails" (TCD), that is likely to be popularly discussed across the web.  I'll be reviewing the book in light of just about every other response to TCD on the web (pros and cons) and responding to new Christian objections as I find them.  I think this will be the best that I personally can contribute to improving the online dialogue between Christians and non-believers on popular battleground issues.

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  Chapter 5, "The Cosmology of the Bible" by Ed Babinski (part 1 of 4): 

  This is a very strong chapter and a great lead in to rocking the boat of Christian confidence in the inerrancy of Scripture.  While Babinski didn't address outlandish young earth creationist theories like Russell Humphries' White Hole Cosmology (where the firmament is actually 14 billion light years away, surrounding the entire universe) as I might have initially preferred (or just been looking forward to), he presented such a preponderance of evidence that it is really easy to see how the view fails.  In other words, it's a strong case that seems prepared to knock down just about anything that gets in its path.  The discussion is interesting.  The footnotes are good.  And all around, I'm happy with this chapter. 

  Babinski was even kind enough to answer all my random questions in email, provide some extra material for my reading consumption that he had to leave out of his chapter, and donated some images to spruce things up a bit.  Many thanks!  All in all this familiarized myself with the content in some detail and may be engaging reading for anyone who really wants to duke it out on either side of the issue.  And I think I've shown how apologetic responses fail.  Enjoy.

  Contents of My Review (the "CliffNote" version):

  Apologetic Considerations:

  1.  Ancient Hebrews lacked scientific terminology (J. P. Holding and on others unless otherwise specified):  Should we expect the inspired authors of the Bible to know what they are talking about?

  2.  Ancient Hebrews lacked certain mundane words (like "sphere" and "air"):  Is a deficient vocabulary an excuse to get things wrong?

  3.  The Hebrews weren't really thinking about what they said (J. I. Packer):  Did the Hebrews manage to never conclude anything about cosmology?

  4.  The Bible used phenomenological language (non-literal language of appearances):  Isn't the language of appearances really the beliefs based on appearances?

  5.  The Bible was vague:  Is the Bible always that vague when it comes to its cosmology?

  6.  The Bible used poetic language:  Can't Bible writers use poetry along with their fake cosmology?

  7.  We don't know what the authors were thinking: Do we have to be historically psychic in order to know what the Bible authors probably meant?
  
  8.  Not all characters in the Bible are inspired:  Don't the uninspired voices merely contribute to the overall false picture we get from all the voices in the Bible?

  It's not like anyone was correcting them.

  9.  The Bible speaks for itself only:  Does it matter what the Hebrews' neighbors believed?

  10.  The Bible used equivocal language (saying things it didn't mean):  Could the Bible ever say anything wrong and not get away with it?

  11.  The Bible can refer to things that are no longer the case:  Did things change or did the Hebrews just believe things that were always false?

  12.  An incredibly weak argument here is acceptable because of other strong evidence (Jason Engwer):  Is there a better case for inspiration and inerrancy that overrules the preponderance of evidence here?

  13.  Bible cosmology is intentionally a metaphor for the temple (G. K. Beale):  Is Biblical cosmology really just a metaphor for God's temple?

  14.  The Bible is actually describing a bizarre young earth creationist scheme (Russell Humphries):  Is the firmament 14 billion light years away?

  15.  It was so easy to figure out the earth is a sphere, that the Bible would never advocate a primitive view (Steve Hays):  Would everyone always figure out the shape of the earth no matter what they actually say? 
  

  Follow Up Posts on Chapter 5:

  (book review) "The Christian Delusion" - Ch. 5: The Cosmology of the Bible (part 2)

  I created a study guide to help readers with all of the Bible references and to have a decent idea of how apologists object.  Much of that will refer back to the points on this post.

  (book review) "The Christian Delusion" - Ch. 5: The Cosmology of the Bible (part 3)

  I take some time out to survey the internet for the range of general views (whereas part one, here, is about the specific breakdown of procedures for typical YEC inerrantists) on the issue and poke a little fun at them. 

  (book review) "The Christian Delusion" - Ch. 5: The Cosmology of the Bible (part 4)

  I respond to Christian reviewer, Randall Rauser's 7 posts on Babinski's chapter (and Babinski's response to Rauser).

  (book review) "The Christian Delusion" - Ch. 5: The Cosmology of the Bible (part 5)

  I respond to Christian reviewers, Steve Hays, Jason Engwer, and Paul Manata from The Infidel Delusion in addition to their 23 posts on the topic at Triablogue.

  [Note:  Links to future posts will not work until they are made public.] 
  

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  Apologetic Considerations:

  Christian internet apologist, J. P. Holding writes:

  [Skeptics] rightly [point] out that God would not make errors in his Word.

  That's a high standard.  We'll see how it holds up.

  There are many typical ways apologists and regular believers use to avoid the conclusion that the Bible embraces a primitive cosmology.  It can be helpful to survey them to get an idea of what's going on before getting into the long list of questionable verses.  I will be defending the hypothesis that the Bible authors basically believed in their own words and that this explains the relevant evidence much better than the idea that either they weren't commenting on it at all, meant something else, or that we can't be sure what they meant (or any other variation on those themes).  It will get to the point where I have to stipulate the skeptic's perspective so specifically because of the multitude of excuses that come about which test just about every single conceivable textual weakness there is.  Hence, every single angle has to be accounted for in order to have a robust case. 

  1.  Ancient Hebrews lacked scientific terminology - Holding writes:

  ...Hebrews, like all ANE cultures, obviously lacked the scientific terminology we use to describe things today. We should not expect descriptions of "tectonic plates" or of "molten lava".

  Primitive terminology to describe realities they shouldn't have been aware of could be detected (and many Christians try to say the Bible is doing just that sometimes), but instead we have wall to wall (or Bible cover to Bible cover) imagery based on a vastly coherent primitive cosmology that corresponds well with what we would logically expect from beliefs based on relative earth bound appearances.

  2.  Ancient Hebrews lacked certain mundane words - Holding writes:

  ...Hebrews lacked key words which would have been most useful in describing cosmological phenomena.

  Necessity is the mother of invention.  And apparently there was no necessity, since they maybe didn't believe the earth was a sphere (for instance)?  It's not like God couldn't have taken a moment to negate certain beliefs since that wouldn't require the addition of any new terminology or concepts.  "Hey, the earth isn't flat like everyone thinks, lol."  "Hey, the sky isn't hard like everyone thinks, rotfl."*  "These are mysteries!"  Job, Psalms, and Proverbs would make great locations for this kind of thing since God would supposedly be interested in impressing us with his superior knowledge of cosmology (and as before it should be mentioned that many Christians do believe that's what's going on in those books of the Bible anyway).  That would be a lot better than providing all the primitive cosmological concepts God himself does lay out.  Reminds me of that scene in the movie The 40 Year Old Virgin where the main character decides to "wing it" and describe what female breasts feel like.  Sand bags!  hehe 

  Further, notice that God may have been the one who invented their language in the first place (either through the adult creation of an articulate Adam or the divine instigation of brand new languages at the Tower of Babel).  Apparently the terms "sphere" and "air" weren't that important for the first few thousand years of human history?  Oops.  It's just all a big misunderstanding!

  *That should probably be "rolling on the firmament, laughing," btw.

  3.   The Hebrews weren't really thinking about what they said - Christian apologist, J. I. Packer writes (page 97):

  It may be doubted whether these forms of speech were any more 'scientific' in character and intent than modern references to the sun rising, or light-headedness, or walking on air, or one’s heart sinking into one’s boot, would be. It is much likelier that they were simply standard pieces of imagery, which the writers utilized, and sometimes heightened for poetic effect, without a thought of what they would imply for cosmology and physiology if taken literally. And language means no more than it is used to mean. In any case, what the writers are concerned to tell us in the passages where they use these forms of speech is not the inner structure of the world and men, but the relation of both to God. [emphasis mine]

  So it seems we agree that every single Bible author who A:  Didn't learn about cosmology in school.  B:  Used all the same primitive imagery and concepts their neighbors were using. And C:  All of them had no opinion on cosmology whatsoever.  Isn't that kind of like smoking, but not inhaling, or something? 

  4.   The Bible used phenomenological language (non-literal language of appearances) - Holding writes:

  ...we will not address certain words and verses that use "phenomenological" language - i.e., sunset, sunrise, or references to sun and stars moving. As we still use such terms today, in spite of hundreds of years of "knowing better", it should not reflect badly upon the use of such language in the Bible.  [...]  (And once again, this is a phrase we STILL use, so we cannot really be that critical.)

  Modern people actually present a mix of new and old (for instance Babinski regularly calls the earth a "sphere" and yet also calls the earth a little boat bobbing in the vast sea of interstellar space, even though he doesn't think the earth is boat shaped), not cover to cover imagery based on a vastly coherent primitive cosmology.  We will throw out all sorts of conceptual garbage in our normal rhetoric without thinking about it.  We park on driveways and drive on parkways, etc. and when we try to combine all the things we say it doesn't always make a lot of sense.  However, when Genesis sets things up, and then the authors continually refer back to those concepts and make use of them in new and intimate ways, it gets harder to defend the "throw away rhetoric" thesis. 

  5.   The Bible was vague - Holding writes:

  So what can be said here? It is far from clear that any of the original verses cited referring to the "ends" of the "earth" are indicating a flat earth with edges. They might be - but they might not be.

  Here and in many places Holding will try to defend an agnostic position.  Holding would like us to believe that whenever the Bible speaks on cosmology its specific word use is sufficiently vague and no primitive concepts are in use.  However, he over-focuses on key words (opting for only somewhat possible alternative meanings) often at the expense of the passage, and the overall trend of passages on the same subject as will be clear from the overview of snippets presented in the my next post.  The only way to show that is to get into specific examples.  And we will.  Readers can then judge for themselves.

  6.   The Bible used poetic language - Holding writes:

  We are obviously dealing with poetry here - not a scientific treatise.

  Another move typically made is what I'm calling a "poetry by association" fallacy as though flat-earthers can't use poetic language on top of  (or as a lingual extension of) their primitive cosmology.  Apologists will object that this is arbitrary and demand to know where the poetry stops and the false beliefs begin, and yet if there is clearly a lingering conceptual artifact across many texts that squares well with what we might logically expect from a belief based on appearances (combined with a network of intimate implications that presuppose the literalness of the false cosmology), it seems the more transient poetry is quite identifiable and quarantine-able after all (with perhaps a few minor exceptions).  It's not quite an all or nothing deal as they'd like to imagine.

  Engwer puts it this way:

  We don't assume that a poet who uses the language of appearance intends to deny a scientist's explanation of the same phenomenon.

  Not everything cosmological is poetic in the Bible and where it is poetic, it merely echoes the same primitive concepts.  One has to ask the question, "Why are they choosing this imagery rather than all the other varieties of imagery" which wouldn't suit a flat earth or hard sky interpretation.

  7.  We don't know what the authors were thinking - Holding writes:

  One would have to get into the minds of the writers to know for certain that a flat earth is intended.

  Obviously skeptics aren't mind readers and presumably Holding believes he is arguing reasonably with the other considerations, but since I think I've shown this is not the case (or will be showing it further) this is a bit of the conveniently unfalsifiable sort.

  In a post called, "The Jell-O dome," Hays says:

  Scholars work with ancient texts. Archeologists also work with coins, pottery, and so on.  One can glean a lot of useful information this way. But you can’t know what it’s like to be alive at a certain place and time except by being alive at a certain place and time. There’s no substitute for the actual experience.  Ancient texts don’t attempt to exhaustively describe how people viewed the world. So much was taken for granted. Subconsciously registered. And even if they did attempt to be exhaustive, there are aspects of experience remain resistant to literary reproduction. There are things you can’t capture in words on a page. Moreover, it’s not as if ancient texts go into Proustian detail about what it felt like to be alive at a certain time and place.  The scholars that [Babinski] is fond of quoting or misquoting didn’t live in the ANE. They’re simply working with ancient texts. Suppose you study a photograph of roast pheasant. You could learn a lot from pouring over every detail of the photograph. But you’ll never know what roast pheasant tastes like by seeing a color photograph of roast pheasant.

  We can only work with the information we have, to be sure, but that doesn't mean one case isn't going to be a lot better than another. 

  8.  Not all characters in the Bible are inspired - Holding writes:

  At the very worst it is simply a quote of the belief of Hannah, Eli's mother. 

  Another move that apologists will make that skeptics often seem to ignore is the idea that the inerrant Bible (according to inerrantists) is free to record accurately errant human dialog.  This makes enough sense to me. However these errant humans are not corrected in context and aren't saying anything different in content for the most part than the rest of the Bible on the same issues.  So it can add some more weight to a compelling case otherwise.  Subsequently, I will be be adding in the names before each snippet of who is supposed to be responsible for the claim (according to conservative scholarship anyway).  This actually backfires pretty horribly on them when they find a verse they like, but then the character of God actually comes along (with some flamboyant flat-earthie rhetoric) and rebukes the character for his general ignorance.  D'oh!

  9.  The Bible speaks for itself only - Holding writes:

  ...we must come to the text itself and ask what it says.

  Apologists want to say that kind of thing in order to disown association from the equally primitive cosmologies of the surrounding cultures and so we don't read these verses expecting to see primitive cosmologies in an "inspired" book.  But it is also free to apply when they don't want it to.  And it is true that any given specific culture may well be saying its own thing that may diverge from the norm.  Hence there are limits to "contextualism" (epistemic arguments from context) but that doesn't mean they can't be informative, or that they can't add some weight to a collective case.  It is also especially relevant when ancient concepts that are found outside of the Bible actual help to clarify distinctly what may be described vaguely.  So it comes down to should we accept a mundane good fit for a naturalistic approach or should we accept an ad hoc unknown to save a sacred text from the humiliation of being merely a trumped up human document? 

  10.  The Bible used equivocal language (saying things it didn't mean) - Holding writes:

  Concepts of which human beings are thoroughly ignorant, and would require several steps of scientific exploration to understand, are merely simple matters in the mind of God. To the Hebrews and other ‘scientifically naive’ peoples, basic cosmology was still in this realm. But it was not beyond God’s ability to present the truth without any mix of error. Equivocal language, terms left precisely undefined, served until such time as our own understanding was sufficient to comprehend the wonders of God’s creation.[...] [There is...] the example of a mother telling her four-year-old: ‘you grew inside my tummy’—this is not false, but language simplified to the child’s level. ‘Tummy’ is equivocal language—it can mean ‘stomach’ or anything within the abdominal cavity. Conversely, ‘the stork brought you’ is an outright error. 

  The "strategically vague rhetoric" theory actually translates as, "I can opt for the least plausible interpretation of word use in every single case and gerrymander my way around the elephant concept in the exegetical room."  Not very compelling.  Holding is basically admitting that the Bible says the wrong thing (and insults those ancient Hebrews' ability to understand a slightly more advanced concept even though he's against that kind of thing every other day of the week when skeptics do it), but that in each and every case he can find a way to convince himself that the Bible never really means it.  Really, just after every set of verses, just skip the actual quoted Holding response and see:  But there's a slight chance they didn't mean it! 

  11.  The Bible can refer to things that are no longer the case - Holding writes:

  The biblical description accords with an accepted creationist paradigm that postulates the pre-diluvian existence of the ‘fountains of the great deep’ (Genesis 7:11) which produced most of the water of the Genesis Flood. It would be perfectly proper to have described the land as having been ‘spread out’ over this vast subterranean water source. It would also be perfectly proper for what was left of this water source to continue to be referred in the same terms after the Flood when it would still be a source for underground springs (Genesis 49:25,  Deuteronomy 33:13).

  And if the earth had been created as a flat pancake, and God changed it into a sphere at a later date, it would be perfectly justifiable to continue referring to it as though it is still flat, right?  Holding is so funny. 

  12.  An incredibly weak argument here is acceptable because of other strong evidence - Christian apologist, Jason Engwer says:

  We would also take into account the evidence we have for the reliability of the Biblical authors. There's no way to avoid addressing issues like prophecy fulfillment and Jesus' resurrection. If a Biblical document is defensible without taking such factors into account, then a Christian may defend it in that manner. But if we have evidence for the Divine inspiration of a document, then critics of the document can't approach that document as if it's in the same category as any other piece of ancient literature we possess. If a scientist and a five-year-old both refer to a sunrise, we give the scientist a benefit of the doubt that we don't extend to the child. The child may think that the sun actually rises. Any Christian who thinks a Biblical author is like the scientist rather than the child would have to argue for the Divine inspiration of the Bible. He couldn't merely assert it.

  Basically Engwer is saying that it might be okay to go with the "worst explanation" in terms of interpreting each verse if we have really good reasons to suspect the documents are inerrant for other reasons.  That might justify using the apologetic smokescreen laid out above.  I at least appreciate Engwer's perspective more than others, because of its apparent honesty and self awareness.  If you are actually coming from somewhere else, it is a confusing mess to try to debate with someone on the specific topic where they have nothing particularly convincing to say.  Some people don't ever bother getting around to telling you that.  I also appreciate the idea that at least in principle (even if those cases for prophecy, see Tobin's chapter, and the resurrection of Jesus, see Richard Carrier's chapter, turn out to be faulty for other reasons), that Engwer is at least arguing like a rational person.  Obviously rational people can still get things wrong. 

  And I think the problem is that we are forced to conclude (at most) that the Bible only contains some inspired material we'd have to sort out for ourselves.  Some Christians are already at peace with that.  Many aren't.  Babinski's case (or rather as Babinski points out, "[a case] made by OT and ANE scholars and even by respected Evangelical Christian OT scholars") breaks the seal of all around divine authority and specific arguments then have to be made for specific line items if Christians are going to fall back to other arguments.  At which point, this opens the door to the other chapters of TCD that attempt to demolish those fallback positions.

  Engwer insists though:

  I'm not just appealing to evidence for the Bible's inspiration. There's a lot of textual and contextual evidence against the diagram at the beginning of this thread, even apart from a consideration of the inspiration of scripture.

  I can only imagine he's referencing the general case made by the Triabloggers in TID which I address at length here.

  13.   Bible cosmology is intentionally a metaphor for the temple - Apparently there is another school of thought out there that wants to approach all of the rhetoric as a metaphor for God's temple.  Unfortunately I do not have a copy of G. K. Beale's book, "The Erosion of Inerrancy in Evangelicalism: Responding to New Challenges to Biblical Authority" that elaborates on the view.  And Peter Enns' one paragraph response to Beale's two chapters isn't enough to have much of an idea of what is going on there.  On page 134 in TCD, Babinski tells us there will be another response forthcoming at this website.  It has just recently been posted here and I will review it shortly.  Unfortunately (if correct) it seems that someone invented the term "both" and so there's no particular reason that the application of a temple metaphor negates a flat earth and hard sky belief rather than reinforcing it.  The temples being referenced don't look like Epcot center as far as I know.

  14.   The Bible is actually describing a bizarre young earth creationist scheme - Readers should probably also be aware of an interesting young earth creationist interpretation of Biblical rhetoric.  Russell Humphries writes:

  ...the Bible implies that the real universe indeed has a center! Appendix B of Starlight and Time details much of what follows. After creating a light-years-size ball of water (Genesis 1:2, "the deep ... the waters"), God said, "Let there be an expanse |or "firmament"| in the midst of the waters" (Genesis 1:6, italics mine). So the expanse started near the center of the large ball of water as a thin spherical layer separating a planet-size ball of water inside it from the much larger amount of water outside it (Genesis 1:7).  Then Genesis 1:8 adds, "God called the expanse heavens." [...] The distinction between "atmosphere" and "outer space" is a modern idea that is foreign to the original meaning of the word.  Next God stretched out the expanse. Not only is the idea of "spreading out" implicit in the Hebrew word for expanse, but seventeen verses in the Old Testament affirm it, such as Isaiah 40:22, which declares that God "... stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in."  God wanted the expanse to be big enough to contain all the stars He created (Isaiah40:26) on the fourth day (an ordinary-length day by earth's clocks): "And God made the two great lights ... and the stars ... and placed them in |not 'above'| the expanse of the heavens" (Genesis 1:16-17, my translation and italics). So the heavens include everything from the earth's surface out to "the waters above" the expanse. Psalm 148:3-4 implies that "the waters above the heavens" still exist and are above the stars and "highest heavens."

  I'll give him an A for effort and creativity.  I will be pointing out the places where I don't think his view is textually feasible.  There's a whole section that seems to describe the firmament or the heavens where God lives, as not being that far away and certainly not 14 billion light years away. 

  15.  It was so easy to figure out the earth is a sphere, that the Bible would never advocate a primitive view  -  This bizarre non-sequitur comes from Steve Hays in The Infidel Delusion: 

  Surely there were smart, observant people in the ANE who could figure that out. It wasn‘t easy to survive in the ANE. It took a lot of practical intelligence to make it from one day to the next in those harsh, inhospitable conditions.

  Just because they could figure it out, doesn't mean they did.  And just because we may find things that don't totally make sense in their primitive cosmology doesn't mean they didn't believe in it anyway.  It's not like everyone always thinks everything through to make sure it is logically consistent (and I don't know why this point is entirely lost on them).  Has Hays never lived on earth before or met people?  Using Hays myopic logic, he could prove (from his perspective) that there couldn't be such a thing as atheists because something about their perspective doesn't make sense (insert everything he says doesn't make sense about atheism).  Hence, even if it really really seems like atheists are saying God doesn't exist, that's not what they meant to say and we shouldn't take their atheist-sounding rhetoric at face value.   

  Hays seems to be trying WAY too hard here to overturn skeptical assumptions about the primitive people Hays inherited his religion from.  There may well have been ancient people who figured some things out beyond what we might expect.  But what do our sources actually say?  And were those the class of people who wrote the Bible?  Why are we not letting the Bible speak for itself because you can have someone who believes in a flat-earth living right next to a person who believes in an egg shaped earth.  They could even be roommates and have passionate arguments about it all the time.  Hays' perspective is absolutely useless.

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  Outro:

  To conclude here, these are all the rational sounding gimmicks that any apologist for any religion (with texts that didn't explicitly focus on cosmology but did on occasion "go there") could use in order to obscure the fact the their collection of ancient holy books embrace and endorse a fake cosmology.  So with the grid of excuses in mind (and their methodological flaws), we will charge forward into the forest (or, as apologists like to refer to it:  "just a whole bunch of trees").

  Also, if I find any other approach, I will be sure to record it here.  Obviously, just a search of the internet won't turn up everything.  I focused on Holding mainly because his content is so readily accessible online, he covers the most ground, he's probably had the most run-ins with atheists and skeptics over the years of many apologists (making his responses more calibrated to contention than others), and his answers aren't that atypical as far as I can tell.  If anyone knows better, please let me know.

  Ben
  

  • 10:57 am
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