November 9, 2010
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(book review) "The Christian Delusion" - Ch. 5: The Cosmology of the Bible (part 5)
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.
Chapter 5, "The Cosmology of the Bible" by Ed Babinski (part 5 of 5):
I decided to go ahead and add another part to my review of chapter 5 just for the sake of The Infidel Delusion (TID).In a post called, "Rock and roll," Christian reviewer, Steve Hays tells Babinski:
You keep taking refuge in your tattered chapter on “Biblical Cosmology,” as if that’s a given. But, of course, I subjected your chapter to a sustained critique. That’s why you’re currently in full damage control mode. So you can’t keep retreating into your tattered chapter, as if that’s a given.A sustained critique, eh? Interesting idea. Maybe I should try that sometime. Christian reviewer, Jason Engwer echoes the same sentiments in the comments of two posts, "Newton's bucket" and "Borrowed Cosmology."
Anyway, in TID, Engwer made 12 basic points, Hays made 21, and Christian reviewer, Paul Manata made 2. That's 35 points with many sub points on various items (especially when you splice in the three Appendixes aimed at Babinski). There are also 28 posts (so far, as of November 2010) at Triablogue elaborating, reiterating, defending, and/or interacting with Babinski. Talking points from those have been spliced in where I thought they were the most relevant. All told there are over 100 objections here to Babinski's chapter that I've responded to. The table of contents below can be used to quickly skim the entire interaction and see what the approaches basically amount to (and clicked on for detail). I don't think I've missed anything significant.
Engwer circulates and elaborates on many of the typical ambiguity issues addressed in part 1 of my series. It is about as bottom of the barrel as it gets though when apologists are forced in their worst case scenario to defend a model of inerrancy where the Bible authors believe x, but somehow don't mean x when they write x in documents that would later become the Bible (and apparently God doesn't mean it either). In the comments of a post called, "Newton's bucket," Engwer says:
In a discussion with WAR_ON_ERROR earlier this year, I said that I think the cosmological argument against the Bible has some merit. It is significant that so many false cosmological views and cosmological ignorance existed in the past, that the Biblical authors sometimes made comments that could be taken as false cosmological claims, etc. But I don't think the argument is significant enough to refute Christianity or Biblical inerrancy on its own. It can strengthen a cumulative case, but I don't think it's sufficient by itself. And I think the larger context favors inerrancy rather than errancy.
It seems that Engwer admits that Babinski's contribution to TCD was basically a success. I have to agree with Babinski though that in order to claim that inerrancy hasn't been refuted, one has to take what I call the "Mario-toe" position [see image >>>]. However even a cumulative case that doesn't establish the skeptical conclusion with 100% certainty so there's no real reason to defer to that possibility that would be just as equally "rejectable" with those standards (picture lots of Marios all standing on their one pixel tippy-toes).
It may be important to note where Hays is coming from. In "This Joyful Eastertide," which is a book length response to the skeptical anthology, "The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave," Hays explains:
The closest thing we can ever get to a direct description of the way things are is a description supplied by the Creator of the world.
It seems from Hays' perspective he has a lot of ideology on the line. The case in Babinski's chapter has the potential to either turn Hays into a flat-earther or refute his religion altogether:
Certainty is the yardstick of probability. And revelation supplies the yardstick. The explanatory power of God’s word is what makes explanation possible. Facts without values are literally meaningless. Only the Creator of the world is in a position to interpret the world. If there is an omniscient mind, and if that omniscient mind has revealed to us a finite, but interpreted body of knowledge about the way things are, then we know as much as we need to know.
And:
If Scripture claims to be wholly true, but is only partly true, then the claim is wholly false.
It's no wonder he's so irrationally defensive on this issue. Tucked away in the Appendixes of TID Hays admits:
...cosmology and prehistory is the area that Christian apologists find difficult to defend.Hays is being remarkably candid here and that's surprising coming from him. To summarize how he did, Hays starts off on the wrong note by misrepresenting and ignoring Babinski's main argument. Instead of showing us why we should ignore or consistently reinterpret a preponderance of evidence pointing to the conclusion the Bible embraces false cosmology, Hays spends an unnecessary amount of time trying to show that it was possible without the means of modern science to discover more accurate facts about cosmology. He does this despite the relevancy (and that no skeptic was saying otherwise), since human authors are not supposed to be the ones bringing inerrant content to the Bible. Another significant theme of his critique is the idea that if certain primitive cosmological ideas can be shown not to entirely make sense, that no one would have believed in them as though everyone always rejects ideas that don't entirely make sense. Also, if any primitive cosmology rhetoric can be associated with some other concept (like temple imagery, ANE mortuary customs, mystical experiences, etc.), that concept (in Hays' mind at least) gets full credit and it somehow always negates a belief in the primitive ideas as applied to reality. Hays nitpicks many random points against the general trend of the Biblical evidence, and attempts haplessly to sabotage the use of an appeal to a scholarly majority that presumably is against his perspective. There are a few instances where Hays defers to various other books with arguments he does not articulate (here, here, here, and here) and I will not be addressing those unless someone wants to send me copies of those books. Ultimately, Hays can be found to concede the basic points and is just making a special exemption for the Bible apart from it actually earning it on this particular issue.
Manata takes some lame shots at Babinski and contributes very little to the discussion.
There are a few loose ends which probably won't have much effect on the overall exchange here that can be tied up later. I'm sure I've gotten some things wrong here and hopefully some knowledgeable folk will take the time to correct me and improve the general quality of the response (and I mean you, Ed!). [note: Thanks Ed for the updates!]
Table of Contents:
I respond to Christian reviewer, Jason Engwer:1. Isn't the Bible ambiguous?
Sometimes...2. Couldn't the Bible authors have had no position on cosmology?
They sure did mention it a lot...Might the writers of the Bible have known they were ignorant of cosmology?
It is much more likely they did not know that they did not know and accepted an incorrect baseline of ignorance based on popular cultural beliefs.Are people who struggle to describe things beyond their area of expertise wrong?
There can be a kernel of truth to what they say, but they are still wrong to some degree.Should we believe that every author of the Bible had a fully developed view of cosmology?
No, but even the most basic incorrect ideas are still wrong.Engwer asks the question no Christian defending inerrancy should ask.Didn't some church fathers admit to their own ignorance on cosmology?
Yeah, they did, but this ironically demonstrates proof of concept for setting the boundaries of their ignorance incorrectly.Good luck.Couldn't a writer of the Bible believe a false cosmology, but not mean it when they wrote Scripture?
Even if we are allowing for other evidence of inspiration as Engwer would like, this is some serious stretching of credibility.
3. Couldn't the Bible rhetoric be non-literal?
Yeah...some of it.If other Christian literature hardly even comments on cosmology, why should we expect the Bible to?
The Bible mentions it a lot, hence the comparison seems meaningless.Should the Bible try to impress us with correct cosmology?
Perhaps it doesn't have to excel in every possible way, but if it is going to bother to go there at all, it wouldn't hurt to at least make it a non-issue.Isn't the Bible only trying to get the job done?
One has to significantly lower reasonable expectations to consider the Bible to have gotten the job "done."4. Aren't the Bible's mixed-metaphors proof that they couldn't have meant things literally?
The range of imagery still leaves various errant conceptual artifacts.Is the earth propped up on pillars or suspended on nothing?
Engwer does not discuss what Babinski says about the "suspends the earth on nothing" verse. He should.Should we think the ancient Jews thought there were really doors at the boundaries of the seas?
I don't see why not.Is Job 38:8 referring to an actual womb?
Nothing wrong with a little poetry on top of some bad cosmology.The idiom, "four corners" can be found to refer to four directions and pancakes are quite round.Not really, since pictures of it certainly aren't impossible to draw.Engwer doesn't have much of a case with his creative incredulity.7. Weren't there people who believed in a spherical earth even in ancient times?
If they weren't anywhere near a majority, I don't see how this matters.By this time it seems bad precedents have been set and followed by later generations of Jews/Christians who contributed to the Bible so it doesn't really matter.I respond to Hays: Don't the critical questions of the pagan critics of Augustine and St. Basil prove that the ancients were quite capable of taking false cosmological ideas to task?
There are a lot of ironies here that backfire since both Augustine and Basil are defending primitive ideas they've lifted from the Bible against their more observant pagan counterparts.The evidence suggests that the Hebrews in particular were not ahead of the game in terms of science and cosmology and at best, this likely just causes other problems for inerrancy if an apologist is actually conceding the late dates.They demonstrate that by pointing out actual commonalities not present on the cosmology issue.OT prooftexts (like many of the ones Babinski appeals to) to the contrary is probably a strong candidate.10. Didn't early Christians hold a variety of views on cosmology?
Since when does the range of early Christian views impact what the canonical books are supposed to say?If "four corners" refers to "four nations" in Revelations 7:1 then how can Babinski use it as evidence of belief in a flat earth?
The four angels are standing on something flat regardless.No doubt that's the kind of reason why eventually false ideas were overturned, but doesn't do much against the case in Babinski's chapter.We should also be cautious of being implausibly agnostic on the issue.Inerrant documents should be inerrant and the other debates on equally dubious issues like OT prophecy and the resurrection of Jesus will have to wait.I respond to Christian reviewer, Steve Hays:Christian reviewer, Randal Rauser vs. Hays: In what way is Babinski getting Biblical hermeneutics wrong?
Both Christian reviewers appear to accuse Babinski of mutually exclusive versions of hermeneutical ineptitude.I respond to Hays:
1. Is it reasonable to assume that the ancients didn't understand cosmology like we do today?
Hays admits this is possibly the case for many ancient people, yet wants to make a special case for inspired authors who weren't saying anything different than anyone else.Did the difficulties of the ancient world tend to weed out the dummies?
Hays really does appear to defend a thesis where he believes many ancient people were really on the ball with cosmology even though he only defends this in hypothetical terms based on what makes sense to him.Hays takes up this line of argument to avoid the preponderance of evidence and instead contradict a straw man claim that says the ancients had no possible means of discerning some correct cosmology.Which is more unbelievable: A flat earth or a spherical one?
This depends on where you are coming from and Hays seems to want to show that no one could have ever believed in a flat earth.Did everyone know a competent sailor?
Probably not.3. Are the sun, moon, and stars supposed to be embedded in the firmament?
Yes, and that doesn't stop embedded things from moving like lights on a track.Why should there be seasonal variations in their perceived position if the earth were flat?
God controls things, not physics.Even if they had no concept of any kind of water cycle (or a pump that put it back up in the storehouses above the firmament), that wouldn't mean they didn't believe in it.The brute appearances would likely set the precedents, not the implications that could simply be left mysterious.Apparently Hays has never been to Sea World.I respond to Engwer: How can God smell things through the firmament?With God (or just a little imagination), all things are possible.I respond to Hays: Can critics of the Bible attack both the primitive cosmology of the Bible as well as whether Noah's Flood was global or not?Um...yeah.6. Isn't the earth only immovable in reference to earthquakes?
We know what Steve Hays thinks, but not what the Bible authors thought from his rebuttal.What happens on a flat earth when earthquakes happen?
Hays has some really bizarre ideas on this in order to attempt to show that no one could have believed in a flat earth.Did the ancient Jews understand the concept of relative celestial motion?
Even if they did, there's no reason to think they applied it to the earth and cosmology.7. Wasn't Joshua's request to God to hold the sun still just based on earth bound appearances?
Hays ignores that this was prefaced by Babinski with a verse that is from God's God-bound perspective.8. Didn't ancient travelers ever notice that the world extends beyond what you can see from any particular hilltop or mountaintop?
I'm sure they did, but how would we know that the author of Matthew was one of them?I respond to Engwer: 11. Can't Luke's version of the temptation of Jesus on the mountain resolve the apparent flat earth issue in Matthew's version?Somewhat for Luke, but that doesn't change what Matthew himself probably meant.9. Did Jesus ascend into heaven high up enough to imply he was aiming for the firmament?
Hays references other literature, but doesn't explain himself very well.Hays needs to explain why this matters.Why can't it be both?Were ancient Jews living in a metaphorical daze?
Hays continually denies it, but never seems to apply the implications to his own view.
11. Couldn't Daniel's world-tree just seem like it was visible to the ends of the earth?
If Daniel knew that the world was a sphere, he wouldn't have been fooled by appearances.Maybe.That's a great question that doesn't need an answer, but I'm going to say, "sugar and spice and everything nice."13. Why can't the Bible use dead metaphors?
In context, they seem quite alive.Maybe, but that doesn't mean the hyperbole starts where Christian apologists want it to.When the Bible says that everyone will "see" Jesus when he returns, couldn't it just mean that they know he's there?
Who knows, but at face value and in context of many other such indications, it probably means the authors believed the earth was flat.Doesn't mean the flat earth believing author didn't mean it anyway.What if Jesus hovered "in place" for 24 hours, then wouldn't everyone be able to see?
He might actually have to zigzag quite a bit to cover everyone or perhaps he could just get on CNN or do an Oprah interview.Real buildings can have dimensions with symbolic meanings, too, you know.Hays ignores the actual arguments presented in either case in order to make his comparison work.15. Can't God create things like stars that then have self perpetuating cycles?
Sure, why not.16. Isn't the meaning of the Hebrew word, "raqia" disputed in the scholarly literature?
Maybe, but one wonders if it is just the inerrantists who are disputing this.Can't "raqia" have a figurative meaning and not necessarily mean that the firmament is a solid dome?
Probably not.It can also indicate they thought the sky was hard.Wouldn't Revelation 6:13 mean the writer thought the cosmos was a giant fig tree?
It uses the language of a simile, which isn't the case for the vast majority of texts that have been referenced to show false cosmology in the Bible.If Hays wants to say that his views are more dominant in the scholarly literature at large, so be it (if he can show it), but if he wants to complain that Babinski doesn't agree with everything every scholar he cites argues for, that's petty.18. Does Babinski mishandle the mythopoetic passages in Scripture?
Not that I can tell, but I'd have to look into this more deeply when I have time.19. Isn't Paul Seely wrong about stuff?
Seely persuasively argues from the evidence rather than from convenient hypothetical premises that suit inerrancy.Hays just says no, but Seely seems to say yes and gives examples.Not necessarily, but it sure doesn't seem to disagree with them.Isn't the Bible often intentionally counter-cultural?
That may be the case, but it helps to actually rebel when you are rebelling.Isn't apologetics allowed to make a distinction between historical and cosmological statements and religious ones?
In other words, the Bible is allowed to get what we can verify wrong.I don't see why the case in Babinski's chapter doesn't qualify.If there is any variation of ancient cosmological beliefs does that mean Seely's case is nullified?
Hays continues with straw man misrepresentations.Are there only scientifically naive statements in the Bible?
Why not theological ones as well?Didn't the authors of the Bible combine their theological and cosmological assumptions?
Yes, and that appears to backfire on Hays' case since that adds to the probability that the theologians believed they knew what they were talking about in an inspirational way.Can Seely's argument from the surrounding cultures be weakened?
Hypothetically, yes, but the counter examples Hays provides reinforce Seely's case.What about the fresh water and salt water contradiction of an Apsu and Tiamut based cosmology?
Yet again, it seems Hays assumes all ancient people thought things through or couldn't have had their own excuses for getting around the problems.Did Seely admit most primitive people didn't think there was water above the sky?
I can't find the quote Hays alludes to.Was the aim of Enuma Elish cosmology or background info for Marduk's temple?
Yet again, why can't it be both?I'm not sure what the difference would be with the alternate meaning.Are the waters above the firmament merely a way to describe metaphorical judgment?
Hays, once again, tries to lamely associate away all actual belief in every single cosmological statement in the Bible.Does Hays recognize he's ad hocced a few too many times in his defense of the inerrancy of the Bible on this issue?
Wouldn't that be a relief from all this quibbling?Is the firmament not solid if there are spaces above and below it?
Um...no.Who cares?Aren't secondary sources not bound by the original intent of primary sources?
True, but there's no evidence I know of that the Bible authors departed from the general intentions of primitive cosmological statements found in other surrounding cultures.Does Babinski apply scholarly double standards with his citations and arguments?
Hays appears to ignore the qualifications of some of Babinski's scholars in a vain attempt to kick up some academic and political dust.Even what Hays quotes from their emails shows that Babinski is using a different standard of inerrancy than Hays has them reacting to.Was ANE cosmography pretty fluid on the number of cosmic "tiers?"
Yeah, and Hays is the only one that thinks this is a big deal.Are Lamoureux's criticisms of Beale's case for temple symbolism too literal?
Probably, but Beale's case doesn't negate belief in the primitive cosmology so it doesn't matter.
Did the authors of the Bible believe in absolutely every literal appearance?
Surely not, but why does this ridiculous extreme allow Hays to completely dismiss the idea of appearance-based beliefs in the Bible?Didn't the authors of the Bible see that rain clearly came from clouds?
Even Hays' proof texts appear to demonstrate a separation of origins between water from clouds and water from above the firmament.Why would the ancients believe in waters above the firmament that they could not see?
There's a mix of appearance-based beliefs as well as logical deductions from their primitive appearance-based beliefs.Regardless, that's just not where they put the luminaries and their light would have a much easier time coming from under the firmament rather than traveling through God's house, a store house of water, as well as some thick firmament that holds all that up.This doesn't deal with the verses that portray people under the earth and the spiritual implications of Jesus coming to see them after his death or resurrection, unless Hays thinks the Bible is referring to some very special coal miners or something.There's ambiguity, but there's no reason to assume absolutely no conceptual overlap between the visions and the beliefs.Hays needs to get specific, because I already refuted a similar point of J. P. Holding's.Does NASA believe in a three tiered cosmos when they use the term "up?"
Obviously not, and we know this from context.Should we think that Neil Gaiman believes in a two tier London cosmos based on his novel Neverwhere?
Obviously not, and we know this from context.Mostly Hays blamed me for calling him out on his straw man attacks and the conversations degraded into him making lots of spurious insults.I respond to Christian reviewer, Paul Manata:1. Is Babinski hypocritical for using poetic language to describe the earth in his own chapter?
When did Babinski ever say, "All poetry should always be taken literally"?Manata completely ignores the substance of Babinski's case and finds a trivial point of agreement between himself and ancient theologians as though that grants them credit on anything else.Does the Bible's creation accounts and cosmology only share insignificant similarities with its surrounding culture?
There's a lot of structure there that Manata seems to implausibly dismiss.Outro: TID's collective response to Babinski's chapter fails by any reasonable standard and when every logical fallacy and weak argument is said and done the Triabloggers basically admit it.
Jason Engwer
Engwer makes 12 points that he says:
...Edward Babinski either ignores or doesn't say enough about.So let's hop to it.
Engwer's point 1:
[Babinski] acknowledges that there's some ambiguity in ancient views of cosmology (115), and we know that ancient sources held a variety of perspectives.I covered this in my intro to part 2 of my review of Babinski's chapter (and here). Basically I agree there are ambiguities and uncertainties at play and I said we should go with probability and the full scope of the evidence rather than mere possibilities.
Engwer's point 2:
Agnosticism [on the part of Bible writers in terms of cosmology] was always an option.Again, already covered just above (and here). What are the odds that none of them ever believed in anything they appear to be advocating (see below)?
In the comments on a post called, "Newton's bucket" Engwer says:
When Steve gives examples of how ancient people could have realized that the cosmology Ed attributes to them was incorrect, we shouldn't just ask ourselves whether those ancient sources are likely to have figured out the correct cosmological position on a given issue. We should also ask whether they knew enough to be agnostic, to suspend judgment. Even if they didn't know the right conclusion, they could have known enough to refrain from reaching a wrong conclusion. If they realized their own ignorance, they wouldn't need to have as much cosmological knowledge as a modern person in order to avoid error.This would probably be the right time to point out that most people don't tend to be that provisional and tentative with their claims. That's a skill that has to be learned and acquired from years of experience. In the modern world we are presented with a great deal of information that serves to correct a great deal of common human biases and misperceptions. Anyone who pays attention in school or listens intently to science shows on TV will learn very quickly that it is very easy to be wrong about a lot of things humans tend to take for granted. We can't assume the best possible construction of just how intellectually responsible the many authors of the Bible were with their claims.
Engwer continues:
If I tell an auto mechanic that my brakes are squealing, he knows that I may not define "brakes" the same way he does, that it might be a problem with some part connected to the brakes rather than the brakes themselves, etc. Any mechanic with common sense is going to know that the average person often defines his terms differently than a mechanic does and often uses the language of appearances. He'll allow for some ambiguity and some phenomenological language without concluding that his customer is wrong.No, the customer is still often wrong (and I'll bet many mechanics have some choice words in mind and some laughs at their expense when the customer is gone). It's just that there is some truth to their inaccurate claims. We don't need a lesson on the perils of language and human epistemology here. We're talking about a supposedly inerrant set of ancient documents. God is not in our auto shop trying pathetically to describe the shape of a tire. That's not even a coherent direction to take the conversation.
Engwer continues:
Should we believe that every psalmist the critic quotes was claiming to have that much knowledge about the sky, stars, water, etc.? Every author of Genesis (however many the critic suggests), every author of Isaiah (however many the critic suggests), was claiming to have that much knowledge about such a vast cosmological system?Did they believe there was a vast cosmological system to know about?
Remember, there's that little category of not knowing what you don't know and erroneously believing you have enough information to make a conclusion. Happens all the time (probably in this very post of mine, since there are always so many scholarly tangents which simply can't be addressed). I know I'm going to be wrong about something. Perhaps many somethings. Perhaps even my entire argument. No matter how much I temper my claims with provisionality and uncertainty, I will still probably even be wrong at some point about that. I don't have a problem with presenting an argument and being contradicted by new information. That's business as usual. Not everyone has that attitude even though it should be considered healthy and normal. And I'd wager the vast majority would see this methodology as too threatening to apply.
Engwer continues:
At this point, the critic might acknowledge that most likely some Biblical authors were agnostic on such issues, but then reverse the argument. How likely is it that none of the Biblical authors thought they had so much cosmological knowledge?Indeed. That's exactly the kind of probabilistic question a reasonable person should ask. For sure, we don't know enough about any individual author of the Bible to say whether or not they had some ridiculously meticulous cosmological view worked out. An average Christian probably has some basic ideas about concepts like hell, for example, but doesn't stipulate things to the extent of a "Dante's Inferno." If hell doesn't exist, even the most rudimentary beliefs in it are wrong. Similarly, the authors of the Bible probably had some basic notions of a primitive cosmology as is evident in their writings. If there's no firmament, no waters above what's not there, and an entirely different shape of the earth...then obviously they were wrong. It doesn't matter how detailed their views were.
Engwer continues:
...most educated people are realistic enough to largely realize their own ignorance of cosmological issues (and many other things) in the modern world, and it seems likely that the same would have been true in the ancient world. Steve and I have already cited examples of church fathers acknowledging their own ignorance of cosmological issues. Educated individuals who placed confidence in the sort of cosmological system Ed refers to probably were a minority. (I refer to "educated individuals" for reasons Steve has explained in the past. All of the Biblical authors were literate, which by itself sets them apart from most other people in their day, and they seem to have been above average in some other ways.) It could be argued that the Biblical authors recognized their own ignorance of cosmology as individuals, but trusted a false cosmology they received from the educational system of their day, from religious authorities, or from some other source.Yet those church fathers cited weren't agnostic about false cosmological views that were lifted from the Bible! See the discussion on Basil and Augustine on Hays' comment below. I don't see how apologists can hope to properly identify exactly where even the most educated, intellectually honest writers of the Bible drew their own line of acknowledged ignorance. And in all likelihood, it was drawn in the wrong place.
Engwer continues:
But an argument would have to be made for that conclusion, and some accompanying problems would have to be addressed.Good luck.
Engwer continues:
...even if we assume that a false cosmology was held by a particular Biblical author, the issue isn't settled. Assume, for example, that one of the psalmists believed in a false cosmology. Even assume that he often articulated that false cosmology when he spoke and wrote. A Christian could argue that the Biblical author didn't advocate that false cosmology when he was writing scripture. For example, even though the psalmist held a cosmologically false belief that the earth doesn't move, he was referring to the earth's stability in some other sense when he wrote his psalm. An argument would have to be made for extending the author that benefit of the doubt. And Christians do argue for the Divine inspiration of scripture. They don't just assume it without argument.I'm sorry, you'd have to have some an amazingly intimate case establishing how inspiration works and that it works to prove that, just to show that a person who says and believes x on Wednesday doesn't mean x when he writes part of what would become the Bible on Thursday. There's just no way that argument is ever going to outweigh all the information we are aware of and can reasonably justify. There'd virtually have to be a branch of the science of divine inspiration and if that were the case, obviously we wouldn't even need to concern ourselves with anything here or the rest of TCD (or any other skeptical book that's been written in the last 200 years or more).
Engwer's point 3:
Just as we today use poetic language or the language of appearances, for example, such as when referring to a sunrise or sunset, so could ancient people.Already covered here, here, and here. This is a poetry-by-association fallacy as though it is impossible to detect long standing erroneous cosmological concepts in play despite other poetic language. It also assumes the there was never any overlap between the language of appearances and beliefs based on appearances. The comparison to modern people is anachronistic since we have many good reasons to believe that modern people who use dated imagery also say and believe accurate things about cosmology in addition to that.
In a comment to me on a post called "The firmament" Engwer says:
It would be helpful if the Biblical authors had explicitly referred to the earth as spherical and had made other such comments. But we don't need such comments in order for belief in a spherical earth or agnosticism on the part of the Biblical authors to be a reasonable option. When later Christian sources do refer to the earth as spherical or express agnosticism in an explicit way, it's often just one brief comment accompanied by dozens or hundreds or thousands of pages in which they make no explicit comments on the subject. Many post-Biblical authors don't comment on the subject at all.The difference between the Bible and those later Christian sources who don't mention it for thousands of pages seems to be that the Bible does actually mention it quite a bit. And gets it wrong. If it brings it up and gets a bit intimate with it in various places , it should probably get it right if we are to take inerrancy seriously as anything more than a hopelessly ad hoc position.
Engwer continues in response to me:
The concept that God could "impress us with some divinely inspired realistic cosmology", while true to some extent, should be qualified. Since there were multiple lines of evidence for a spherical earth available in antiquity, references to a spherical earth wouldn't do much to create an impression of "Divine inspiration". Additionally, since there are extant records of people discerning the earth's spherical nature even in the B.C. era, critics would likely yet again raise the charge of Biblical borrowing from pagan cultures. How many atheists or other critics would be "impressed" and think in terms of "Divine inspiration"? They'd probably argue for naturalistic means of discerning the earth's shape or accuse the Biblical authors of borrowing from paganism, if not both.Right, well it would then be a non-issue. Wouldn't that be nice if it were a non-issue? But then again, if God wants to set the bar slightly higher than the surrounding cultures, would that really be a problem? Basically, critics expect the Bible to be impressive all the way around if it is going to get credit for being a divine book. Christians don't typically have a problem trashing the Koran or the Book of Mormon for their obvious defects, so we shouldn't be making special exceptions here. We don't like a long list of excuses and the primitive cosmology embraced by the Bible is just one such issue in a cluster of many many hits to overall credibility.
Engwer says:
The Biblical view of God involves a holy sovereign who selectively reveals Himself however much is needed to accomplish His ends. He isn't trying to convince everybody or "impress" maximally. The same God who provides evidence and redeems His people also judges other people and leaves them with the consequences of their sin. Even most liberal scholars acknowledge that the apostle Paul thought he saw the risen Christ, yet nowhere in his writings does Paul try to "impress" his audiences with detailed descriptions of what he experienced. What he did say was sufficient for his purposes. In our everyday lives, we often give less evidence for something than we could, because we don't think more is needed.Well supposedly Paul did perform miracles to impress his audience right? There were a lot of gifts of the spirit which would presumably be impressive? Granted he admitted the false apostles could do the same things. Assuming these miracles and counterfeit miracles were legit, where are they today? How is it somehow "sufficient" to not be that convincing and prop things up on ancient hearsay and pseudoscience? I've just plain never seen any magic and have no good reason to think the supernatural realm exists in any form of the Christian flavor or any other.
Aside from that, there's a question of plausibility. If God wants everyone to be saved, everyone needs to at least be in the know. That's basic marketing, 101. Paul may have been the most successful evangelist ever (and that's just for argument's sake), but what about the rest of the world in the first century? And before that? And all the world that hasn't been reached since? You guys find it fine to say that Satan showed Jesus supernatural visions on the mountain to avoid the flat earth implications, but why didn't Paul's evangelism get supernaturally streamed to all people on the planet? Satan's message of "not-Jesus" seems to have gotten much more around the block. And Jesus even admits he loses in Matthew 7:14 (if we are keeping score, of course, though Hays has denied it).
There are great indicators of a successful false religion, but not much more unless we drastically lower our expectations for implausible reasons.
Engwer's point 4:
One of the indications that a Biblical author didn't intend his cosmological comments to be taken as an equivalent of a modern scientific description is that the author uses multiple images to describe the same phenomenon.This could be a lucrative argument for apologists if they really could establish that the Bible is just throwing around all sorts of impossibly conflicting metaphors like a Shakespearean play. I don't really think that's the case though as I think can be shown from a review of all the verses. There can be a million crazy ways to describe Juliet's eyes, but we will still be left with the notion that she has eyes and that they are pretty amazing to look at. Similarly, despite all the metaphors applied to the hard sky and other concepts, we are left with the lingering impression the authors believed there was something hard up there in the sky with a layer of water above it where God built his house. They don't have to keep going back there in all the ways that they do, but they do.
Note, this is not an unfamiliar concept to the Triabloggers since in defense of other things in "This Joyful Eastertide" (which is a response to the skeptical anthology "The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave"), Hays explains:
Mixed metaphors are mutually inconsistent if taken literally, but a wide variety of metaphors can and do figurate the very same concept.
Exactly, Steve. Right on!
Engwer says:
Babinski cites references to pillars of the earth in Job (128), yet elsewhere he discusses Job 26:7 (n. 52 on 142), which refers to the hanging of the earth without reference to pillars. If pillars are referred to in some places, but aren't part of the imagery used elsewhere in the same book, a book that frequently uses poetic language, why should we think that the passages about pillars were meant to express belief in actual pillars and, thus, a false cosmology?As I discussed before, a reasonable interpretation of the "on nothing" verse (that Babinski talks about on those pages that Engwer references) is actually a reference to the earth in relation to the primordial waters it was created out of and has no bearing on the pillars that may or may not be beneath the land. So you can establish land on the waters, and perhaps the pillars grow down into the water in order to stabilize it? I don't see any necessary contradiction.
Engwer says:
Babinski cites another passage in Job (38:8-11) that refers to doors at the boundaries of the sea. Are we to believe that the author of Job thought there were actual doors there?Um, why not? Maybe they didn't, but why couldn't they?
Engwer says:
Is Job 38:8 referring to an actual womb?There's nothing that stops them from mixing genuine false beliefs with poetic imagery. Sorry.
Engwer's point 5:
If we're going to take references to something like pillars of the earth or corners of the earth as literal cosmology, then why not take the same approach toward passages that most naturally suggest a round earth, for example? Should we assume that passages about the circular nature of the earth's atmosphere (Job 22:14, 26:10, Proverbs 8:27) are meant to imply a spherical earth? A circular atmosphere could accompany an earth that isn't round, but a round earth would be a more natural fit.Babinski doesn't take the corners literally since that most likely refers to a directional mindset. In email, Babinski tells me:
Four corners simply meant four directions on the flat earth below, dividing the earth into quadrants. I don't know if they had compasses. They observed the stars, including a star in the north round which the others rotated, what we'd call the pole star. Circular images and speech regarding the shape of the flat earth were common. There are extremely few images of a square earth, except for Cosmas Indicopleustes' analogy of the earth to a square altar.The dome of the firmament has a clear spherical appearance just as the land has a clearly flat appearance. A talk of "natural fit" doesn't seem relevant unless we are speaking to modern ears.
Engwer's point 6:
As Steve Hays has noted in his review of Babinski's chapter, there would be a lot of inconsistencies if we tried to combine all of the images the Bible uses when discussing these issues. The alleged Biblical cosmology that Babinski constructs doesn't even make sense.It seems to me that there could be land that was formed out of water, that has pillars beneath it that perhaps chill out with the underworld dead people, all the while the sun, moon, and stars travel underneath all of it, and also along the surface of a massive domed firmament (as well as the separate created light). [see the image above]
Dangling questions about how that all might work aren't necessarily going to push ancient minds into the correct cosmological framework just because we think in those terms. They might just generate a list of what would become cliche' philosophical questions these ancient people would get used to asking in reference to how this mysterious world works. It's a crazy picture, but then again, so is a spherical earth if you are coming from flat-earth sensibilities. Who are we to say in some a-priori way one way or the other what people wouldn't take seriously?
In the comments of a post called, "The logistics of hell," Engwer says:
We need somebody like Ed to draw us a diagram of the Bible's view of the afterlife, similar to the diagrams of Biblical cosmology that we often see. Apparently, somewhere in the universe of the Biblical authors there's a big Abraham, so big that all of the redeemed dead can fit inside his chest (Luke 16:23). (Or maybe individuals like Lazarus become small.) But people can see inside Abraham's chest (verse 23). Maybe his chest has a window.Um, I'm no expert on this, but according to answers.com, the phrase was used for normal sized people lounging "in" the vicinity of the chest area. We also commonly say that we get "in bed" even though we really mean "on the bed." While it is possible that those in bliss took turns lounging on a normal sized Abraham, the evidence and context suggests it is just a phrase. This is the kind of case that can actually be made from the evidence rather than despite it where apologists basically just hope that the authors of the Bible didn't mean what they seem to be fairly consistently saying.
Engwer asks:
How can the rich man see and recognize an individual like Lazarus inside Abraham's chest from such a distance, "far away" and separated by "a great chasm" (verses 23 and 26)? Apparently, the dead, at least the unrighteous dead, have substantially improved eyesight and vocal chords. [...] Maybe they were yelling really loud. But wouldn't people on the surface of the earth hear it, then? And how could the rich man see inside Abraham's chest if Abraham was so far away, with earth's surface and other objects between them? How could the rich man and Lazarus have the physical features described in Luke 16 if the resurrection hadn't occurred yet?Well they are dead and I'm sure the Jews knew that the bodies were still located near the surface of the earth. The witch of Endor summons the spirit of Samuel who presumably doesn't have a body and yet still has some kind of ethereal features which can be distinguished. I don't see why the authors of the Bible would have a problem with the spirits of the dead having different, more perfect, abilities than the living, so there's nothing really that crazy going on here as far as afterlife logistics go.
Engwer says:
That picture of the "woman" from the Song of Solomon link with all the metaphorical imagery taken literally is quite hilarious (please do click on that link). Aside from the obvious fact that the Song of Solomon is filled with endless overt similes, the analogy might actually work if the Jews lived in outer space and were as familiar with the appearances of correct cosmology as they were with the physical features of a beautiful woman.
Engwer's point 7:
Some people [of other cultures] believed in the spherical shape of the earth in ancient times, even during the Old Testament era.Some? Was it the OT writers? Maybe we should look at what they actually wrote. Babinski, liberal scholar Paul Seely, and conservative internet apologist J. P. Holding (though conservative apologist Gleason Archer seems amazingly denialistic) seem to think that most of the cultures did not have advanced views.
Engwer says:
Pliny the Elder, writing in the first century A.D., comments that belief in a spherical earth was the common view of his day (The Natural History, 2:2).Granted. So what? The sect or sects of Christians that wrote the original Christian writings may well have been punks who shunned the "evil" knowledge of the world based off of their readings of the sacred OT. Please note how much of that evil secular knowledge that modern Biblical inerrantists shun because of the precedence of both Testaments. We can pull a lot of primitive cosmology and anti-intellectualism rhetoric from the NT. How about pulling some advanced cosmology rhetoric for Engwer's case? Didn't think so.
Babinski, in email, tells me (quoting The History and Practice of Ancient Astronomy by James Evans, p. 46):
THE MOON'S ECLIPSES (480 B.C.)"Most of the Greek testimony attributes the discovery of the causes of the Moon's eclipses to Anaxagoras who taught in Athens around 480 B.C. . . . He explained eclipses of the Sun by the interposition of the Moon between the Sun and the Earth, and eclipses of the Moon by the Moon's falling into the earth's shadow. . . . Curiously, although he correctly explained lunar eclipses, he is said nevertheless to have maintained that the earth is flat. He held too, that the Moon is eclipsed not only by the Earth but sometimes by other, unspecified bodies lying below the Moon. Thus, it appears that by about 480 B.C. the correct explanation of lunar eclipses was already current, but that this knowledge had not yet been brought to bear on the question of the Earth's shape." [Anaxagoras also by argued that the Sun was "larger than the Peloponnesos"--a large section of Greece--at a time when most people thought the sun much smaller. Of course the idea of the Sun circling a flat earth was known in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.--ETB]
So it seems we have an ancient world that's slowing figuring bits and pieces of its way out of the most primitive ideas and of course no evidence the Hebrews caught on to any of it even in the more "recent" incarnations of Scripture found in the NT. Rather we have every reason to believe/assume they were rejecting this information (if they knew of it) and deferring back to what the OT had authoritatively laid out.
Hays adds:
I already did a post on Augustine and Basil the Great in which pagan critics lampoon details of a triple-decker cosmography as quite infeasible. People back then could and did ask common sense questions about the logistics of this or that cosmographical model.Hays doesn't seem to appreciate the irony that he's citing Christian defenders of primitive Bible cosmology against pagan thinkers. It's a variation where Basil believes in a spherical earth, but he still takes the hard sky and waters above seriously. This doesn't help Hays at all since why didn't Basil and Augustine ask those critical questions which would have rid them of the wrong beliefs? Weren't only the smartest ancient people alive since "dummies" would be weeded out by the difficulties of that time period? Didn't everyone know a sailor who knew better about everything? [insert every bizarre objection Hays brought up] None of it negates the fact that people originally believed in the false ideas and didn't always ask the right critical questions (even though they could have).
Engwer's point 8 merely references Hays' case concerning the possibility of ancient people figuring out correct cosmology.
Engwer's point 9:
The later critics date Biblical books like Genesis, the more they have to take into account advances in knowledge over time and the existence of belief in a spherical earth among later sources.I don't see how this helps conservative Christian apologetics since ultimately dating Genesis later undermines Genesis in just other ways and doesn't change the fact that even next door neighbors can still adamantly disagree with each other.
In a post called, "Borrowed Cosmology," Engwer adds:
Their desire to date a book late in one context works against their argumentation in another context. Giving Genesis, Isaiah, or Daniel a late date helps the critic in one context, but hinders him in another. All of our belief systems involve such tradeoffs, but it's important to be aware of those tradeoffs and their implications.Thanks for the heads up, but I don't think Babinski's case changes much. The case from the surrounding cultures is supplementary. It would still be rather amazing if every culture ever believed in the correct cosmology and yet the Bible never accidentally lets an obvious example of the truth slip through the cracks of poetry, hyperbole, and symbolism.
Engwer continues:
Skeptics often suggest that the Bible borrows much of its material from pagan sources, that some New Testament documents were written by unknown Gentile authors rather than the Jewish authors the books were commonly attributed to, that we know about such Gentile authorship because of common Gentile concepts and terminology within the documents, etc. Yet, in an area like cosmology, such Gentile influence would be favorable to the traditional Christian position rather than unfavorable.True, it could easily be favorable if in fact we found those advanced concepts actually in the NT documents. On a number of other issues, that is what we find, but not in terms of cosmology for whatever reason. Someone might even be able to give a great reason for that asymmetry, but the reason really doesn't matter if the end result is the same.
Engwer continues:
If a Greek or Roman argument for a spherical earth, for example, was convincing, what would prevent Jews or Christians from accepting it? They wouldn't accept another culture's cosmology just because that cosmology was popular in that culture or was part of that culture's religion, for example. But if there was good evidence for the cosmology, they could accept it, much as they could accept good clothing, technology, natural resources, and other products produced by other cultures. What Jews and Christians wouldn't be so likely to accept would be something inconsistent with the heart of their own culture, like the gods of other religions and their moral standards.To speculate, perhaps the Jewish Christians thought they had pretty good OT proof texts contradicting what the pagans were teaching on the subject. We can ask why more modern Christians don't accept an old earth despite the many convincing arguments from the "pagan" science world. Why don't you go ask Ken Ham from the young earth creationist organization Answers in Genesis? I'm sure he accepts all sorts of modern scientific concepts and ideas that wildly diverge from the beliefs of many of his Jewish and Christian ideological ancestors. But lo and behold if some aspect of it contradicts something that he thinks he has a good Biblical proof text on, guess what happens?
Engwer's point 10:
The early Christians held a variety of views of the shape of the earth. Theophilus of Antioch suggests agnosticism on the subject, at least apart from a Divine revelation (To Autolycus, 2:32). Athenagoras refers to the earth as spherical (A Plea For The Christians, 8, 16).The early Christians held a variety of views, period. Are the Triabloggers really going to accept that range of evidence on their Scripture on any other topic? Nope. The point is we know what all these different Christians believed from reading what they wrote. As Holding pointed out to defend the Bible in another way, the Bible has to speak for itself.
Engwer says:
While Babinks cites Revelation 7:1 as a reference to a flat earth (n. 57 on 144), the earliest commentary on Revelation sees the four corners as referencing "four nations" (Victorinus, Commentary On The Apocalypse Of The Blessed John, 9).As I've said before, Babinski (not Jarjar Babinks!) accepts that "four corners" talk refers to directions. The reason Revelation 7:1 can be cited as implying a flat earth despite this is because there are four angels standing at the far reaches of whatever flat shape the authors probably had in mind.
Engwer says:
Basil of Caesarea refers to a large number of cosmological views that had been held by people over the centuries and mentions doubts that were continuing to be raised against common opinions on the subject (The Hexameron, 3:4, 9:1).And no doubt that's why eventually those views were (haphazardly) overturned. That doesn't mean we can't find original source material housing those concepts yet to be overturned. Ta da: Bible!
Engwer says:
Babinski suggests that the New Testament repeatedly advocates a flat earth (127, n. 57 on 143-144). The diverse views of the early post-apostolic Christians, including some who believed in a spherical earth, give us reason to be cautious about Babinski's conclusion. While he cites post-apostolic sources who held something like the cosmology he assigns to the Bible (n. 59 on 144-147), we should keep in mind that many ancient sources, both Christian and non-Christian, contradicted that cosmology.The only way to establish variety in the sources is by actually establishing variety in the sources. Sorry. It's not like different authors of the Bible can't believe in different versions of primitive cosmology. So even the most divided/agnostic case still presents a probable case that no one in the Bible knew the earth was a sphere (or at least said so), and that in all likelihood many of them probably believed in what they did say about it (even if those views don't go together).
Engwer's point 12:
We should keep in mind that the issue here isn't just whether the Biblical authors, considered as normal individuals, are likely to have held correct cosmological views or to have been agnostic on cosmological matters rather than having held erroneous views. Rather, we also have to take evidence for the Divine inspiration of scripture into account. 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. But if there is good reason to believe in the Bible's inspiration, then that factor has to be taken into account.So my princess is in another castle? *sigh* I've addressed this previously and we'll get to that evidence in other chapters of TCD. Stand by.
Steve Hays
It seems appropriate to juxtapose what Christian reviewer, Randal Rauser opened with to what Hays opened with.
Rauser said:
When Babinski surveys that material he is reproducing information that is par for the course in biblical hermeneutics and biblical survey courses (except perhaps at The Masters Seminary and other fundamentalist/conservative strongholds).Hays says:
Chap 5 is an effort to show that Bible writers taught a flat-earth cosmography. In fact, this chapter is a showcase of Babinski's hermeneutical naïveté.*giggles* Liberals and conservatives...so funny. You're such a dumbass, Ed! I...I...just don't know why.
In all seriousness, someone needs to take the high road here and help out all the average folks figure out who is backed by the scholarly majority. There's no way anyone can read all the literature and confirmation bias either way simply will not serve the conversation.
In email, Babinski tells me:
The scholarly consensus among ANE experts who publish with Oxford (Bible Commentaries and Dictionary), Cambridge (Bible Commentaries and Dictionary), Yale (Anchor Bible Dictionary and series), and also Catholic scholars is flat earth. Only some inerrantist printing houses deny the flat earth-i-ness of the Bible's authors. And what's happening today is that Evangelical Christians who are OT scholars are also admitting it's a flat earth after all.Would anyone like to contest that assessment? This doesn't mean we dismiss the merits of the arguments of the underdog position, but whenever the debate "goes there" we have to be honest with which direction is academically uphill.
Point 1: Hays says:
Babinski says,...it's clear that the Bible is a product of the prescientific period in which it originated (132).It's important to keep this statement in mind as we evaluate Babinski's "evidence." For the principle he is enunciating is that Bible writers wrote what they did about the configuration of the world because ancient Jews were in no position to know any better. They didn't have the tools of modern science. So that's why they taught a flat-earth cosmography.Hays conveniently overstates Babinski's case and actually fails to quote his entire sentence:
In light of the preponderance of evidence presented here, it's clear that the Bible is a product of the prescientific period in which it originated. [emphasis mine]As you can see, Hays completely ignores Babinski's actual argument (so he can nitpick a thousand trees in Babinski's "non-forest") and substitutes in a completely different argument that takes the conversation in a completely ridiculous direction (and conveniently away from the explanatory fulcrum of the case in Babinski's chapter).
Does Babinski ever say the ancients couldn't have figured anything out? No. Is Babinski denying that there are clever ways of deducing certain cosmological truths that may not be immediately evident? No. Does that mean that all of the sudden every single Jew ever figured everything out just to make sure that the Bible is inerrant? Um...no (and isn't God supposed to be the one in charge of the "knowing things" department?).
When confronted about the misrepresentation, Hays merely repeats his same straw man:
Enns, Seely, Babinski et al. aren't contending that Bible merely could be mistaken. Rather, they contend that Bible writers were mistaken, and mistaken because they were in no position to know any better.Hays still fails to quote where any of them make that explicit argument and settles instead in many of his subsequent points to lamely contradict a premise not presented.
I've looked around for a little more insight into what Hays does with this critical juncture of explanatory power between the preponderance case in Babinski's chapter and Hays' critique. On his blog (in the comments) Hays says:Irrelevant. The question is isn't whether [Babinski] can cite "plenty of verses," but whether your interpretation is correct. [...] I already wrote a lengthy critique of your article, and ran through your major prooftexts.Hence, Hays references all his quibbling on individual cases (that we'll be getting to) to avoid the argument to the better explanation. Going with mere possibilities in many instances contrary to the most natural implication of many verses is special pleading overall.
Interestingly Paul Seely notes:Since, from a cultural standpoint, the Hebrews' pre-Solomonic architecture and pottery were "vastly inferior" to that of their neighbors, one might gather that the early Hebrews were possibly more scientifically naive than their neighbors, but certainly not less so. Similarly, the fact that it was not the Hebrews but their neighbors who led the technological advance from the use of bronze to the use of iron (cf. Josh 17:18; Judg 1:19) suggests, if anything, that the Hebrews were more scientifically naive than their neighbors. It certainly does not suggest that they were less so. Nor do we know of any evidence from biblical times that suggests the Hebrews were ever more scientifically sophisticated than their neighbors.Is Hays going to deal with any of that or just complain that skeptics have seemingly justified opinions?
In the comments of a post called, "The firmament" Hays expresses some other odd beliefs about ancient people that are a little too convenient:
I’d add, though, that surviving in the ANE was quite a challenge. It had a way of weeding out the dummies.He's really going with a "hardly any dummies" theory of ancient people? C'mon, Steve! Even if that's right as a rule, survival does not depend on figuring out cosmology unless you are like some action hero astronaut in an implausible space movie.
I wonder if Hays would challenge Plantinga's argument against naturalism or if he'd conveniently turn incredulous about the principle of "smart can equal survival advantage"?
In a later comment on that post Hays says:
I’m citing examples germane to specific cosmographical details which show that ancient observers were certainly in a position to know better. Such knowledge was easily available. And would, in fact, be common knowledge depending on where you live, what you do for a living, &c.If it were common knowledge, one would think a different spectrum of evidence would emerge from the ancient world. Otherwise, this is just speculation against all the evidence to the contrary.
In a post called, "The Argonautica," Hays finally concedes:
I don’t question the fact that uninspired people living long ago probably had many inaccurate conceptions of the natural world.Whew... So why do these Hebrews seem particularly inspired here again? And when is Hays going to actually apply this somewhere?
Remember when I said:
In a proper meritocracy we treat all religious texts the same in the sense that each of them is judged by their actual contents and cultural context without favoritism.And Hays said:
Which is something I do.Perhaps Hays meant that he does that in his spare time when he isn't doing Christian apologetics?
Point 2: Hays says:
Apropos (1), Babinski says[quoting Horowitz], "the earth's surface ends at the horizon, the place where heaven and earth meet…Some texts suggest that the ends of the earth's surface are marked by cosmic mountains, while others suggest that the cosmic ocean extends to the ends of the earth" (115).i) Stop and think about this for a moment. Imagine that you're an ancient Jew or ancient Near Easterner.No, wait, let's stop and think about THAT. If we know how ancient Jews thought apart from any of the evidence, then why in the world are we even making a case here? Don't we already know? All of us? We're all already experts on how ancient Jews interpreted the evidence available to them, so why even bother with this back and forth? I mean,seriously . All people of all times think exactly alike when presented with the same evidence. Write that down somewhere.
In a post called, "Geoplanar tectonics" Hays incredulously mocks the idea of life on a flat earth as though no one ever could have believed in it. During an earthquake the earth would tilt like a pizza and everyone would fall off! Curiously his incredulity mirrors the incredulity of flat earthers who scoff at the idea that anyone could walk on the other side of the earth without falling off. Taken together, I suppose no one could ever believe in a flat or spherical earth.
Yet Hays persists with this non-sequitur in a post called, "Rock and roll":
I’d suggest you try a novel experiment, Ed. Novel for you, that is. Why don’t you actually try to think. To think through the implications of a position. I don’t believe that’s asking too much of a free-thinker.Remember, everyone always thinks things through and therefore everyone was always right about everything. But wait, isn't Babinski not thinking things through and not accepting the correct conclusions as Hays see it? So if Hays is right he is wrong. And if he's wrong he's still wrong. And knowing Hays, somehow that will mean he's right about everything.
Back in TID, after getting into some inane detail about how a horizon line shifts given the relative vantage point of the observer, Hays says:
Let's also keep in mind that many ancient near Easterners were travelers. For example, some were sailors. As such, ancient sailors knew that the dry land didn't consist of one central landmass or supercontinent surrounded by the cosmic sea. They also traveled along far-flung trade routes. Over mountain passes. They knew from experience that the hills and mountains on the horizon of their hometown didn't represent the outer limits of the world. They knew from climbing the local hills and mountains that the sky wasn't a solid dome, resting on the summit.Hays must think Babinski's claim is that ancients were really stupid rather than just ignorant and preoccupied with more pressing concerns (like religion). Does Hays really think ancient sailors didn't have any false cosmological beliefs? Did every sailor intermingle with the Jewish priestly cast (or whomever) that was molding the religious texts? Did everyone have to think the sky dome was propped up on their local mountain ranges? It's not like we find them saying (or Babinski claiming) that the only purpose of all mountains is to hold up the sky. In fact Babinski has already explained himself in the chapter (page 115, the very page Hays quotes from above to go off on his tangent) and points out there were a number of similar primitive views around in the ancient world.
Hays says:
...didn't ancient sailors, who sailed by the stars, ever notice that the position of the constellations varied depending on where you were? Is that what we'd expect from a flat earth–or a spherical earth?Perhaps and maybe word just didn't get around that much until later in history?
Hays says:
Needless to say, sailors were also acquainted with the phenomenon of relative motion, viz. passing ships. So appearances could be consistent with more than frame of reference.They could have figured it out, therefore they did. Priceless. I could go on endless rants about how many concepts people are well aware of in their ordinary lives that they never manage to apply in other areas to solve important philosophical problems. If I secretly live in a world full of non-conceptually challenged folk, I must really be delusional.
Hays says:
And sailors also saw ships "sinking" below the horizon (or "rising" above the horizon). Yet they knew from their own experience that those ships hadn't gone over the edge of the earth–like a cosmic waterfall.Hays' "everyone knows a sailor" theory is silly (or we might call it "the six cosmological degrees of ancient sailors"). These are all great reasons why humanity inevitably did not continue to believe in primitive cosmologies indefinitely (as even wikipedia describes). They are not great reasons for overturning what certain ancients actually said on the topic (and therefore probably believed).
Point 3: Hays says:
Babinski says [quoting Denis Lamoureux], "The sun, moon, and stars are placed in (Hebrew b) the firmament on the fourth day of creation, above which lay 'the waters'" (123). i) But if the firmament was a solid dome, with sun, moon, and stars embedded in the firmament, then they'd be frozen in place.In email, Babinski says:
The Hebrews were not known for their astronomical acumen. Not like the Babylonians. And different views existed side by said. One I mention in my chapter was that the stars were painted on the bottom of Marduk's heaven. Compare Genesis 1 which says the sun, moon, and the stars also, were "made and set" in the firmament (above which lay "the waters above the firmament"). Did they know or care how the stars also moved? Did they think mechanically about such matters? Did they think of the stars as lumps of matter burning naturally or as something else, something indescribable? An ancient Mesopotamian astronomer wrote about the star that we today know as the planet Venus being "set" in the sky, but in the same text they also noted its motion. The Babylonians also noted the motions of the stars in general saying Marduk moved/directed them. They didn't have big debates over "how," and attempt to redefine the entire flat earth cosmos. The earth's flatness and the "creating and placing" of everything above the earth (AFTER the earth's own creation), in order to set up sacred periods of time by which the worship of their gods was performed ("seasons" means religious festivals in the Pentateuch) was what both the Hebrews and Babylon creation stories had in common.So it seems many ancient minds were stuck with, "The stars are stuck up there somehow...and they move." Just called it like they saw it, I guess. There's no reason to think the Hebrews thought that mechanically, but if we had to go there, lights in auditoriums can be secured on the ceiling in addition to being on moving tracks.
In a post called, "Newton's bucket" Hays asks:
Why should there be seasonal variations in their perceived position if the earth were flat? Wouldn’t that involve a static relation? Seasonal variations in their perceived position assume a spherical earth (i.e. axial tilt) revolving around the sun.Because God controls the seasons, not physics. Duh.
Point 4: Hays says:
Babinksi says,"The Flood ended only after God 'closed' the floodgates of the sky…" (123).But if we take this literally, what does it imply? A closed system–like an aquarium or snow crystal paperweight. The firmament is like a dam that keeps the upper waters from inundating the earth. It rains or snows when God opens a "floodgate." But an obvious problem with that depiction is that rainwater would have nowhere to go. There is no drain. So every time it rained, the sea level would rise a bit more. Surely there were smart, observant people in the ANE who could figure that out.
Well let's ask them. Ecclesiastes 1:7 says:
All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again.Maybe they were cognizant of some kind of water cycle and maybe they weren't. It doesn't really matter though since for example Christians back themselves into impossibilities and contradictions all the time. That doesn't mean they ever resolve the issue or change their beliefs accordingly. It just means they think they have really good initial reasons to take the upfront qualities seriously and will leave any contradiction in attributes as a mystery. Christians will think the same thing about atheists. Does that mean atheists give up their positions? My general point is that Hays' argument, "This doesn't make sense therefore no one would believe in it," is absofreakinglutely ridiculous. Lots of people believe in things that don't make sense when you think them through and this is true no matter what worldview you subscribe to.
Point 5: Hays says:
Ancient observers saw the sun (and moon and stars) go "around" the sky, from east to west. Then what happens? If the earth is flat, you'd expect the sun to stop at that point because it simply can't go further. The sun literally "lands" or touches down at one end of the earth. It can't pass through the solid surface of the earth. At that point, the logical way for the sun to get back to the east is to reverse course. So, if the earth is flat, we'd expect the sun to alternate between clockwise and counterclockwise motion. Instead, it reappears every morning in the east, right where it started! Wouldn't this suggest that it went "around" the earth, in empty space–just as it went around the sky?Hays continues the non-sequitur theme of, "The ancient Jews simply must have thought things through just like I do." His ping-pong sun and moon theory is quaint, but entirely irrelevant. The appearances that the earth seems flat and that the sun doesn't ping pong back and forth would naturally weigh more heavily in their view. By Hays' logic, as I told him in the comments, if we are too disregard the appearances precedent in favor of "how it should work" we'd insist that God would turn the sun off like a light switch at night. Honestly if we had to, we could invent the "sun, moon, and stars tunnel theory" where there are little arced tunnels that allow them to travel underneath everything. I'm sure that was a fascinating debate at one time, but not a very helpful one today.
Babinski, in email, tells me:
We don't have to focus on Hays' words when we have the words of the ancients themselves to go by [...] below is an edited transcript of a lecture Paul Seely gave in 2009 at a conference of Christians. As Seely points out, we have the ancient's own words as to where they believed the sun went on a flat earth:Seely: Using the historical-grammatical method of interpretation, we must ask, what is the historical sense of the words used by biblical writers? What did they mean in biblical times?In Old Testament times the Egyptians thought of the sun's motion as literal rather than as mere appearance. We know this because they often wrote about the journey of the sun at night. The noted Egyptologist, Eric Hornan [sp?], tells that the Egyptian 'Book of Gates' is concerned with the nocturnal journey of the sun. He also says that the theme of the Egyptian 'Book of Caverns' is the nightly journey of the sun through the netherworld, and the 'Book of the Anduat [sp?] which is the Egyptian name of the underworld, describes the journey of the sun god through the twelve hours of the night from his setting to his rising in the morning. Egyptologist John Wilson tells us that "the snake Apophis which is frequently encountered in literature attacking or opposing the sun is the hostile darkness which the sun defeats every night through the netherworld from the place of the sunset in the west to the place of the sunrise in the east." We see from the fact that the sun is given a detailed description of its journey at night when it cannot be seen through our eyes, through the underworld, which also cannot be seen by our eyes, from the east to the west, that this is talking about a literal motion of the sun.
In Old Testament times in Mesopotamia people again thought of the sun as literally moving as is evidenced again by their belief that the sun continued traveling at night. As the Sumerologist Kramer noted, "The Sumerian sages held their view that the sun after setting continued its journey through the netherworld." Another scholar says, "According to one tradition the sun god after crossing the skies by day spent the night traveling through the underworld." In a hymn to Shamash the sun god, we read, "To distant stretches which are not known in uncounted leagues Shamash you work ceaselessly, going by day and returning by night." We can see than as occurred in Egypt the sun in Mesopotamia was depicted as traveling at night through the underworld from the west back to its starting place in the east. This belief was the standard for hundreds of years. It lasted well into Christian times.
At the beginning of the Christian era we read in 2nd Enoch, "Thus he [the sun]" goes through a cycle and he goes down and he rises up across the sky and beneath the earth. The first century Greek geographer, Strabo [not a flat earther like the author of the Book of Enoch, but a geocentrist], about the same time wrote, "When a revolution of the universe produces a day and night it is because at one time the sun moves beneath the earth, and at another time above the earth." Philo [another geocentrist, and contemporary with the apostle Paul] wrote that "Because every period of time is a series of days and nights, and these can only be made such by the movement of the sun as it goes over and under the earth." The people of the ancient world from Old to New Testament times and on until the coming of Copernicus understood the sun to be literally moving.
The historical-grammatical interpretation of Scripture then is that the words of Scripture relating to the movement of the sun are literal. Ecclesiastes 1:5 confirms that Scripture is speaking of a literal moving of the sun when it says, "The sun rises, and goes down, and hurries to the place where it rises." As long as we interpret the Old Testament within its historical context there's no question that the language used concerning the sun's movement is literal.
Lastly, though the Old Testament refers to the sun "rising" since OT writers regularly used the Hebrew word "ala" [check spelling] which means "to go up," the Hebrew never uses the word "go down" to depict the sun's movement at the end of the day. The primary Hebrew word "yarad" [check spelling] which is used over 350 times to mean "go down" in regard to other subjects is never used of the sun. Instead, when speaking of the sun "going down"--that's the way it's often translated at least--a Hebrew word is used that appears nearly 2,000 times elsewhere in the Bible, but never means "go down." The primary meaning of this Hebrew word is "to enter."*** The reference is, as one might deduce based on all that has been pointed out above, to the sun leaving this world "to enter" the underworld to begin its trip back toward the east. Psalm 51 speaks of the earth "from the rising of the sun," literally "unto its entrance." Babylonian texts similarly speak of what we call "sunset" as "the entrance of the sun." The implication is that the Bible is talking about a literal journey of the sun.
Wow, just like I speculated.
Engwer directed me to an article by Glenn Miller on the "thinking things through" point, but I was not making any special claims about any period of history. It's just a fact that people in any age (even the smartest person on earth today) doesn't always think things through. Sometimes things even get stuck culturally in "doesn't really make a lot of sense" limbo. Any argument that merely presupposes they simply have to think things through and reject beliefs that entail problems is fallacious.
It seems Hays has some imagination (as long as he is thinking pro-Bible thoughts), but doesn't seem to have a point
in his post called "Angels in wetsuits:"It isn’t easy being the angel Gabriel. You see, commuting from heaven to earth and back is a cumbersome and perilous exercise in a triple-decker universe. To begin with, the only way for Gabriel to get here is through the sluice gates of the firmament. So every time he makes the trek, he has to don a wetsuit to keep his feathers dry. The wetsuit has zippers on each shoulder so that once he makes it through, he can unzip the shoulders to stretch his wings. But sometimes the zippers get stuck, which makes for a hard landing. Needless to say, every angelic apparition is preceded by a quantity of rain. For every time the sluice gates of heaven are opened to let Gabriel come and go, there’s a downpour as the cosmic sea pours through the drain. So keep an umbrella handy whenever you’re expecting a visit from your guardian angel. Gabriel also has to wear a football helmet so that he doesn’t suffer a concussion from banging his head against the solid dome of the firmament when he returns to heaven.Is Hays saying that there are no Star Trek transporters in heaven? Seriously? How lame is that! Or how about an elevator like you see at sea world? C'mon! If a skeptic said things like this, these apologists would be all over the incredulous lack of imagination when it comes to unfavorable conclusions like a lion on a lame zebra.
Engwer says:
[Babinski] refers to beings ascending and descending from Heaven, manna falling, smoke from burnt offerings rising up to God, etc. (130-131). But if there's a solid dome and water over the earth (122-125), how are such objects getting through? [emphasis mine]Since when is anything too difficult for God to figure out? Please. Has no one ever heard of vents? Magic? Windows of heaven that are not hermetically sealed? Seriously, this is a huge non-problem for the creator of the universe if he wants to make sure he can smell things through his watery floor boards. Personally, I'm imagining Dr. Floyd's house in the movie 2010 with the dolphin tanks that come right into the house. I would like to think God would pimp out his space place with something like that.
In a post called "The flood and the flat-earth" Hays claims:
On the one hand, critics tell us that the narrator subscribed to a triple-decker cosmography. On this model, the earth was flat. The “earth” comprised a single landmass or supercontinent, with mountains at the “corners” or “ends” of the “earth” to support the sky. The sky was a solid dome with sluice gates allowing the cosmic sea to precipitate rain and snow. Under and around the supercontinent was the primeval sea. When, however, critics attack the coherence of the flood account, they pose objections like this: How did all the animals cross natural barriers to reach the ark? And how did they disperse? How could the ark accommodate so many species? How could animals adapted to very different climates and diets survive on the ark? How much water would it take to submerge Mount Everest? What would be the rate of precipitation to generate so much water? What would be the rate of runoff for the floodwaters to subside? But an obvious problem with this whole line of attack is the way in which these critics using the wrong model of the world to attack the flood account. Notice the systemic failure to use a triple-decker cosmography as the point of reference when disputing the logistics of the flood. Yet the same critic assures us that the prescientific narrator was operating with a triple-decker cosmography.Hays is basically saying the Bible can't be wrong in more than one way or that skeptics can't tackle an issue in context of setting aside other issues for the sake of argument. Skeptics are being inconsistent with themselves? That's ridiculous. The Bible could teach a false cosmology in addition to giving an account of a world-wide geological event which never occurred. How many modern Christians are going to sit around listening to a criticism of the Flood logistics based on false cosmology without first challenging the false cosmology? Hays doesn't seem to be able to appreciate the flow chart where he can lose the debate in every iteration. Somehow he turns that into in a win for his side without having to address any of the issues. Nice.
Point 6: Hays says:Babinski says,"…verses throughout the Bible agree that the earth is immovable, moving only in the case of earthquakes…" (128).But, of course, that has nothing to do with relative motion or locomotion. It's not talking about the earth in relation to other celestial bodies. Rather, that's a reference to seismic activity.
Hays could have at least offered agnosticism between the two positions (although apparently he's against "not knowing things" in principle?) since he doesn't seem to be able to prove the Bible authors weren't making absolutist statements. Somehow Hays knows better? I consider it more probable than not the ancient Jews took for granted geocentrism based on the suggestive Biblical rhetoric, the likelihood the ancients started with that idea rather than a more sophisticated one, and that there is nothing that tells us anything different in the texts. Why give them the conceptual benefit of the doubt? Why not just read what they say?
In a post called, "Thoughtless free-thinkers," when this issue comes up again, Hays says:
[Babinski hasn't] shown that God holds the “flat” earth firmly. Rather, the absence of seismic activity is picture-language for the stability of life on earth–while the presence of seismic activity is picture-language for divine judgment. Likewise, earthly “immobility” isn’t immobile in reference to other celestial bodies. The contrast is not between the mobility of the sun and the immobility of the earth, but between stable ground and earthquakes.Again, Hays merely reasserts his unproven conclusion and ignores the possibility of ambiguity and the overall trend of primitive cosmological implications in the many verses Babinski cites.
Oh wait! Don't go yet. I think I found a statement, in a post called, "Rock and roll," where Hays at least allows for either interpretation:
The language of seismic activity or inactivity is equally suited to a spherical earth and a heliocentric perspective. [emphasis mine]Ah ha! Hays slipped up and was slightly more intellectually honest than usual (albeit in a crazy post where he basically argues it's impossible to shake a table that doesn't then fall over). Busted.
Bizarrely Hays says:
Moreover, if you place a marble in the center of a table, and shake the table (sideways or up and down), the marble will roll off the table.What if it's a really big rugged table and some really really small non-marbles? What happens then, Steve? My poor little atheist brain can't handle it.
In the post, "Newton's bucket," it seems Hays still believes that skeptics don't understand the concept of relative motion:
There’s nothing wrong with attributing relative motion to divine agency. And one frame of reference is mathematically equivalent to another.Yet Hays himself tells us in that same post:
You continue to retroject Ptolemaic astronomy back onto texts that are innocent of any such theoretical concerns. [...] Ed Babinski is projecting his wooden interpretation onto the text. It doesn’t begin to show that this is what the text mean to the ancients. One of your chronic problems is how you act as though you can construe a literary description in isolation to the outside world which the author and reader daily observe beyond the words on the page. But the ancients were quite able to compare a literary description with their real world experience.Let's do some mad libbing:
You continue to retroject [the concept of relative motion as applied to celestial bodies] back onto texts that are innocent of any such theoretical concerns. [...] [Steve Hays] is projecting his [...] interpretation onto the text. It doesn’t begin to show that this is what the text mean to the ancients. One of your chronic problems is how you act as though you can construe a literary description in isolation to the outside world which the author and reader daily observe beyond the words on the page. But the ancients were quite able to compare a literary description with their real world experience [which amounted to the knowledge that the ancients were always on an apparently stationary earth with other things moving around it]. Point 7: Hays says:
Babinski cites Josh 10:12 to prove Biblical geocentrism. But the description is explicitly from the local viewpoint of an earthbound observer. To blow this up into a global description is anachronistic.On page 129 of TCD (just before discussing Joshua 10:12 in the same paragraph) Babinski points out that God directs his command at the sun rather than the earth (in Job 9:7) suggesting the earth does not move. Perhaps Hays' point might work on just the Joshua verse (which just confirms the Job verse), but Hays avoids the more suggestive verse. Hays does not address Babinski's point and just assumes his interpretation is correct or more important than even revealing Babinski's actual argument.
One really has to read Babinski's chapter and all the verses in context of each other to see that the "earth doesn't move, but other things do" interpretation fits much better with the suggestive verses overall.
Point 8: Hays says:
Babinksi cites Mt 4:8 to prove a flat earth. But aside from the fact that this is probably a vision, didn't ancient travelers ever notice that the world extends beyond what you can see from any particular hilltop or mountaintop?People say stupid stuff and the author of Matthew (whomever that was) is not exempt. Sorry. Didn't the Triabloggers ever notice how many fallacies they use to defend the inerrancy of scripture? Therefore they are atheists who don't mean anything they say. It's all metaphorical Christian apologetics.
Engwer's point 11:
Steve Hays has already discussed some of the problems with Babinski's interpretation of the Bible. I want to expand upon one of those passages, Matthew 4:8. Matthew could easily have known that there was no mountain from which a person could physically see every kingdom of the earth, including whatever details of those kingdoms would be involved in showing their "glory". The parallel passage in Luke 4:5 refers to how Satan showed Jesus the kingdoms "in a moment of time". Jesus is shown the kingdoms. He doesn't move around to look at them. And it happens in an instant. Apparently, Satan is supernaturally bringing images before Jesus. The mountain backdrop isn't meant to convey the concept that there was some mountain high enough to allow people to see everything on a flat earth. Rather, the mountain backdrop is being used to convey the concept of elevation, without regard to whether that elevation allows a person to physically see the entire earth. This incident has nothing to do with normal eyesight or a flat earth. Babinski repeatedly overlooks such details in his attempt to put together a Biblical cosmology that's inconsistent and nonsensical.Well, I'm certainly not continually overlooking anything since I already dealt with this. Luke is much more reasonable sounding with many stories than Matthew. That doesn't mean that both of them didn't still believe in a flat earth and the clear implication from Matthew (remember these are different authors, right?) is that the going up on the mountain was the proper vantage point. If Luke keeps the dramatics and corrects one element based on thinking things slightly more through, that doesn't hurt Babinski's case at all. We can't just assume Matthew and Luke had the same thing in mind. I've seen lots of examples argued by scholars (like Bart Ehrman and Richard Carrier) where one gospel author apparently corrects the errors of another (by their own standards at least) and this can simply be added to that pile. Anyone who wants to contest that can let that be a debate for another day.
Point 9: Hays says:
Babinksi mentions "flat-earth themes" like the Ascension (132). i) However, Jesus doesn't fly up to heaven. Rather, he briefly levitates, at which point he is then enveloped by the Shekinah.Huh? Elaborate please, because that doesn't seem to make sense of the ascension verses at all. Is the cloud that envelopes him a couple feet off the ground?
Ah, here we go. In the comments of a post called, "Ascent of Mount Carmel," Hays says:
And even liberal commentators like Howard Kee understand that the cloud was the Shekinah. Jesus didn't go straight up to heaven. Rather, the Shekinah took him to heaven. He levitated to a point within eyeshot of the observers, then he was enveloped by the Shekinah.Weird.
Elsewhere on his blog, Hays says:
In Scripture, the Spirit of God is associated with the Shekinah. And this reflects the representational principle. For the Shekinah was a visible, theophanic manifestation of the invisible God. The manifest presence of God.Still elsewhere on his blog, Hays says:
...the Shekinah sometimes functions like a divine vehicle of transportation. Indeed, functions like a portable throne room. God brings a bit of heaven along with him when he appears to men. The Shekinah also functions as a sort of corona, to conceal the passengers. We have poetic depictions in Scripture (Ps 18:9-14). Very colorful. However, this is also a genuine phenomenon. We have an eyewitness report in Ezkekiel’s theophanic vision (Ezk 1). That is how Yahweh actually appeared to the prophet. How Yahweh “came” to earth. And he was also accompanied by angels (the cherubim or seraphim). From a distance this phenomenon has the appearance of a storm cloud, internally illuminated by lightning–like sheet lightning or ball lightning. If the initial phase of the Parousia takes place at night–and some descriptions of the Parousia accentuate the nocturnal aspect–then the effect will be quite spectacular (e.g. Catatumbo Lightning). In all likelihood, this represents the actual mode of the Parousia. That’s how Jesus will return to earth.So I suppose question is (for us ignorant folk), how do we know this particular cloud that covered Jesus was the Shekinah? Is it a special word in the language or context? And why didn't the God cloud swoop down to scoop him up if that's his ride? Was there a certain "no fly too low" zone as far as heavenly entities are concerned? Regardless of Hays' quibbling, there are a lot of verses that imply the firmament isn't very far away, so it doesn't really matter. Searching around, it seems I basically agree with James McGrath's assessment in his encounter with Hays on this issue. Hays responds, but doesn't seem to really make a case. If the cloud that obscured Jesus as he flew up into heaven was just a cloud that obscured Jesus, I don't see what would be different about the passage. There may be something there, but Hays is doing an incredibly poor job of communicating the point. As such, I would say that Hays' interpretation is possible, but the more straight forward approach has a bigger lead. There's just nothing that suggests in context that the cloud was anything but an incidental cloud (as though every cloud has to be the Shekinah).
Hays footnotes two books called "Acts" and "Acts of the Apostles," but doesn't explain himself. Annoying.Hays says:
If the firmament were truly a dome, then heaven would surround all sides of the hemispheric firmament, from the zenith to the horizon. In that case, heaven wouldn't just be up. Heaven would be all around us. Sideways. Ahead and behind.You're so smart, Steve! Here's a cookie! And when you can explain the relevancy of that, you can have a second cookie.
Point 10: Hays says:
Babinksi mentions the netherworld (132). But biblical depictions of the netherworld are simply modeled on ANE mortuary customs.We'll call this a concept-negation-by-alternate-association fallacy as though its status in terms of mortuary customs magically negates actual belief in the ontology.
As Babinski aptly puts it:
[The authors of the Bible] weren't living in a purely metaphorical daze in which they held no conceptions at all concerning the cosmos' geography and structure...Indeed.
It should be noted, in a post called, "The Jesse Tree," Hays tells Babinski:
I never denied that ancient people may have held ideas concerning cosmic geography.So Hays' position then is that Babinski can't absolutely prove it? Is that a responsible defense, Steve?
In that same post, Hays does set some kind of standard of evidence:
It wouldn’t matter if you could furnish ancient schematics or architectural diagrams, since that, of itself, fails to tell us the cultural function of those depictions.I would wager that the "cultural function" of constantly referencing primitive cosmological ideas throughout the Bible was to stand in for what they actually believed about cosmology. They certainly weren't very tentative about it.
In the post, "Brains-optional infidelity," Hays continues to deny the "metaphorical daze" theory:
I never said anything of the kind. I simply make allowance for what they were in a position to know.How big of an allowance should this be, Steve? How many humans throughout human history (excluding say the last few hundred years) have had access to this same "natural evidence?" Basically all of them, right, unless they were trapped in a cave? Alright, and now what do you suppose is the percentage of folks who got the basic shape of the earth correct? Whether or not the sky was a hard dome? How far away are the stars? Etc. There's no way to know for sure, obviously, but should we estimate half and half? Most got it right? Only a few got it right? Now, cross reference that estimate with how many consistently used primitive imagery to describe cosmology without discernibly breaking character. I just don't think any reasonable person is going to conclude figures in favor of Biblical inerrancy despite the possibilities and various iterations and levels of uncertainty.
In a footnote on point 10 of TID, Hays points to some book called "Hell Under Fire" but doesn't bother to give us any details of substance.
Point 11: Hays says:
Babinski cites Dan 4:10-11 as a prooftext for a flat earth. But this description is quite compatible with a spherical earth. Let's take a comparison:Hays then quotes someone about Olympus Mons on Mars as though it can be seen from the entire Martian surface... Can you see Olympus Mons in the Martian antipodes? Um...no. Compare what the website says:
...a person standing on the surface of Mars would be unable to view the upper profile of the volcano even from a distance as the curvature of the planet and the volcano itself would obscure it. The only way to view the mountain properly is from orbit. [emphasis mine]To Daniel:
I looked, and there before me stood a tree in the middle of the land. Its height was enormous. The tree grew large and strong and its top touched the sky; it was visible to the ends of the earth. [emphasis mine]Notice any differences? But this is what Hays really wants to say:
Just as Olympus Mons can seem to fill the horizon, to a ground-based observer, so can Daniel's world-tree. [emphasis mine]So now it just seems like it's visible to the ends of the earth rather than actually being visible to the ends of the earth. But, um, if Daniel believed the world was a sphere...wouldn't he have known better despite appearances?
Point 12: Hays says:
Babinski compares Gen 1 to the Enuma Elish, where the "sea-goddess" Tiamat is the sky. But aside from the fact that Babinski disregards scholarly arguments against the literary dependence of Gen 1 on the Enuma Elish...I can't speak to books in Hays' footnotes here that I've not read (that reference the supposed disregarded scholarly arguments). I do own Kitchen's book, "On the Reliability of the Old Testament," but I don't own the other, "The Bible Among the Myths." Kitchen doesn't have a whole lot to say and references still other literature ("Documents From Old Testament Times" and four other books). Perhaps Babinski has interacted with those arguments somewhere (or at least has reasons in mind for not addressing them). I'll have to poke around and/or email him.
Hays says:
[Babinski] also ignores the practical question. If Tiamat is the firmament, or if she supplies the raw materials for the firmament, then of what is a sea-goddess made up? Is a sea-goddess solid, like a bronze statue? Is she composed of stuff that can dam the upper waters?I'm sure kids loved asking their parents that question in the Bronze Age (or whenever it was most popular). It's a good thing we know that everyone of every age has every such question about their worldview worked out perfectly and to every iteration of investigation. Otherwise, Steve might not have an argument.
*crickets chirp*
Point 13: Hays says:
Suppose the verse does, indeed, conjure up the image of a flat earth? So what? Language is full of dead metaphors. We ourselves use flat-earth metaphors whenever we speak of sunrise/sunup or sunset/sundown.If the vast majority of Biblical indications point one way, including character dialog, and any indications that can be read otherwise are still consistent with the general trend, supposed "dead" metaphors seem quite alive in context.
Hays says:
For that matter, the imagery could just as well be hyperbolic. To suggest this isn't special pleading. It's easy to document hyperbole in Scripture. What is more, hyperbolic depictions are characteristic of eschatological imagery.No one is saying there isn't any hyperbole in the Bible, but we are saying that it is unlikely every indication of a primitive cosmology in the 66 books of the Protestant Bible just so happens to be exaggeration with no ontological implications (see Engwer's comments above).
Hays says:
Moreover, "sight" is frequently an abstract metaphor for knowledge. And it's just as easy to document that fact from Scriptural usage. On that construal, the verse is simply saying, in a vivid way, that when Christ comes back, everybody will both know and acknowledge, willingly or unwillingly, who Jesus really is.I suppose the term "vivid" is supposed to paper over yet another indication of a primitive cosmology at play.
Hays says:
But suppose, for the sake of argument, that we take this literally. How would that depiction presume a flat earth? For instance, suppose we said, "Every eye shall see the moon." Would such a phenomenon only be possible on a flat earth? Hardly!Again, I have to remind Hays that the author may well have meant it anyway.
Hays says:
You see, Babinski has smuggled a suppressed premise into his conclusion. He tacitly rephrases the verse to say, "Every eye shall see him all at once." So he's assuming the event must be instantaneous. Of course, the verse doesn't say that.Simply insidious! Bad Babinski! Bad! [btw, pay no attention to any of Hays' "smuggled in" "suppressed" "tacit" premises]
Hays says:
For that matter, the verse doesn't even say anything about Jesus "descending." You might be able to get that from other passages, but not from Rev 1:7. If the "atmospheric effects" of the Parousia were sufficiently large and distant, and if they hovered in one place for 24 hours, then, of course, everyone around the world would be able to see it. So even if you construe the verse with crass literality, it's quite possible for earthlings on a rotating planet to see the same atmospheric phenomenon. It would be a worldwide spectacle.We can speculate all we want, but the point is that this is just yet another verse in a tapestry of similar verses that suggests a flat earth much more than it does any other contrived geometric scenario. If we are just going to make stuff up, then why not say that when Jesus comes back, he takes the spherical earth, flattens it out supernaturally, and then shrinks its landmass down with all its inhabitants to be shoulder to shoulder for the show? God can do anything can't he? But is that likely what the author had in mind? Probably not.
Point 14: Hays says:
Babinski takes the cubical shape of the New Jerusalem literally (142-43). i) But the shape of the New Jerusalem is numerological, not literal. It is dictated by John's duodenary numerology, which spatializes the 12 tribes of Israel (Rev 21:12). A concrete emblem of the 12 tribes. And the cubical shape is just a geometrical extension of the duodenary motif. Multiples of 12. ii) In addition, the cubical shape may well be intended to trigger yet another numerological association, where the configuration of the New Jerusalem presents a counterpoint to the mark of the Beast: 666 versus 12x12x12. iii) There may also be literary allusion to the inner sanctum (in Solomon's temple). This is all patently symbolic.This is the same kind of concept-negation-by-alternate-association fallacy from point 10.
On his post called, "Mythmakers or photorealists?" Hays says:
...Babinski makes his case against the Bible on the assumption that Bible writers earnestly meant their depictions to be taken with utmost literality, Babinski’s cocontributors to TCD make their case against the Bible on the assumption that Bible writers were calculated mythmakers who camouflaged religious symbols under the guise of refictionalized “history.”Hays overstates Babinski's claims and ignores the actual arguments of both Babinski, Babinski's scholarly sources, Richard Carrier, and Robert Price in order to make this comparison work. Each case stands or falls on its own probabilistic merits which are not present in Hays' comparison. Since it is possible that historical events might be merely dressed up in mythical constructs, more careful cases have to be made to outweigh it. Just being possibly all myth isn't enough. It can't just be strongly suggested for the win as Hays would like to do on this issue.
Point 15: Hays says:
[Babinski] brings up the lifecycle of stars, as if that runs counter to the creation account. Yet what the creation account describes is not simply the creation of natural kinds, but the inauguration of a self-perpetuating cycle. It's not static by any means. Once God creates a natural kind, it can (and does) reproduce itself.I don't know what page this is on to check to see exactly what Babinski's argument was. I'll have to track this down later. I don't have a problem with God creating things that then have birth and death cycles, but I think the issue for young earth creationists is that there are things like stars with really long life cycles (like longer than YECs think the earth has been around) that are on their death bed or are already dead (like supernova, which might even take longer than 6,000 years to explode to their current dimensions, meaning they were awkwardly created mid-explosion. I'll have to double check on that.). Although then you have to get into appearance of age issues and whether it really matters with stars. Surely God would create full grown trees in Eden and such. But then there's that whole light time traveling issue and young earth creationist, Russell Humphries' white hole cosmology which tries to allow for an ancient universe abroad, but a young earth. Then he also has to make his interpretation square with Genesis and the rest of the Bible which is a bit of a challenge.
Point 16: Hays says:
Babinski also devotes some time to the meaning of raqia. However, his analysis is defective in two important respects: i) Whether or not raqia denotes a solid vault is disputed in the scholarly literature.One wonders what this span of scholarly literature entails. Are these half and half inerrantists? Someone in the know could be more helpful than Hays.
Hays says:
For a number of standard commentaries and monographs define the term more broadly, classify this as a poetic figure of speech, or consider it a phenomenal description. ii) More to the point, even if the term did, in fact, denote a solid vault, this doesn't mean that Gen 1 intended to teach its audience that the sky was a solid vault. It doesn't even mean that Gen 1 took that for granted, as an unquestioned cultural assumption. For there is still the question of whether that imagery is literal or figurative.I've responded to Christian apologist, Gleason Archer's arguments on this here. Archer has some really crazy things to say in response to Paul Seely.
Hays says:
For if Gen 1 is depicting the world as a cosmic temple, then we'd expect the presence of architectural metaphors to cue the reader.I've responded to this here. Yet another concept-negation-by-alternate-association fallacy.
In a post called, "Rock and roll" Hays says:
[The Bible] also compares eschatological meteors to fig-trees “shaken” by the wind (Rev 6:13). Does this mean Bible writers also subscribe to a fruitarian cosmography? Did they think the cosmos was a giant fig-tree?Notice the word "as" in Revelation 6:13. I think we all know what that means.
Point 17: Hays says:
Babinski says [after quoting Josh 10:12),"That God would direct his command at the sun rather than the earth implies a belief in a stationary earth (129).One of the ironies of this claim is that it runs counter to the interpretation of Joshua's Long Day offered by two scholars (i.e. Stephen Meyers; John Walton) whom Babinski plugs in his essay (133,35).25
Apparently Hays expects Babinski to agree with everything every scholar he references believes. Is there anyone like that? If we are going to play this game, we're going to do it right. What do most scholars think about the issue in general? If we don't know then everyone can put their egos on the back burner. And if we do know the underdog position has to deal with it.
In a post called, "Rock and roll," Hays says:
You cited [Walton] as a pressure tactic against Christians who affirm inerrancy. But now he turns out to be a fickle ally, who does your argument as much harm as good. Too bad.I think Babinski cited a lot of scholars as a pressure tactic against intellectual Christians who affirm inerrancy, thank-you-very-much. I'm sure Christian apologists never defer to scholarly majorities when it suits them...
Point 18: Hays says:
Babinski also mishandles the mythopoetic passages in Scripture. But aside from his search-and-destroy mission, this mistake is also due to his failure to make allowance for different literary genres. Yet the Biblical use of mythopoetic language in poetic and polemical settings is nothing new or damaging to the inerrancy of Scripture.Hays points to a website and a book called, "Ancient Egypt and the Old Testament" to explain himself.
I don't have access to the book, but the website begins by saying:
In appreciating the mythopoetic language of the OT one need not view the authors as so culturally primitive that they appropriated mythical categories because that was the only way they knew how to articulate their understanding of divine reality. To show this one must distinguish between myth and mythology. The contexts prove the authors were not committed to myth but were keenly aware of contemporaneous mythology from which they drew colorful figures to enrich their theological expression. [emphasis mine]I'm sorry, there's a lot of spin there. How does this not just dance around the fact they probably believed things that were bogus just like their contemporaries? I'll have to read more through that article to find their evidence that separates Yahwehism from Paganism.
Point 19: Hays says:
Babinski leans heavily on the claims of Paul Seely. However, Babinski ignores the counterevidence. See Appendix III in this review.In Appendix III Hays says:
Externally written material from Palestine that will illumine things such as cosmological beliefs is nonexistent.Then I guess we'll just have to use the Bible, then won't we?
Although, on the issue of the hard sky, Paul Seely does say:
Jews speculated as to what material the firmament was made of: clay or copper or iron (3 Apoc. Bar. 3.7). They differentiated between the firmament and the empty space or air between it and the earth (Gen. Rab. 4.3.a; 2 Apoc. Bar. 21.4). They tried to figure out how thick it was by employing biblical interpretation (Gen. Rab. 4.5.2). Most tellingly they even tried to calculate scientifically the thickness of the firmament (Pesab. 49a).Perhaps we are referring to different time periods? Not sure.
Hays says:
One crucial assumption is that biblical revelation cannot hold a different position on the issue in question from the surrounding world…How does one construct an argument to prove that the Bible may not depart from universal practice?Psst...it's called probability. The "crucial assumption" apologists like Hays have to have in order to miss the point, is that it is not reasonable to start from an entrenched Christian inerrancy position and then demand to be absolutely proven wrong. That's what the part 1 of TCD was about, basically: establishing a fair starting position that folks like Hays are simply unwilling to grant. Skeptics can present mutually converging lines of probabilistic evidence that show the authors of the Bible probably embraced some false views on cosmology. Is it remotely possible that might not be the case? I suppose, but that's not a very intellectually responsible position to take especially if we aren't going to grant the same latitude to any contrary position. Apologists can't be expected to be taken seriously if they present just an irrational defensive view, with standards that could be used to defend many contrary claims just as easily. Holding attempts to make the same point as Hays, but this can just as easily backfire on the apologetic case.
Hays says:
The Bible frequently tells Israel not to be like the nations.And yet we have God making some of the most potent flat earth sounding statements in rebuke of the ignorance of human characters right along with everyone else in the Bible. One cannot negate the practical with the theoretical.
Hays says:
Since an unstated premise of the apologetic that sees cosmological and historical statements as a concession to their time is that we may distinguish religious statements in Scripture from other statements…Is Hays merely going to assert the viewpoint or defend its merits? If we can't trust the Bible about history and cosmology or any other earthly thing we can verify, why would we give it credit on the religious things we can't verify? Christians can set their standards wherever they please (and at whatever expense to their intellectual integrity), but God has missed some serious opportunities to establish credibility.
Hays says:
...there is a theoretical possibility that the Bible, for whatever reason, deviates from surrounding cultures even on 'non-religious' issues…The argument to negate this possibility has to establish a universal, or near universal, external situation and then argue that what the Bible describes is identical to or at least close to that universal situation. Of course, it can be attempted, but it is well to be aware of the pitfalls.I'm pretty sure Babinski has done just that and that I've fairly rigorously shown how the case in his chapter is unaffected by the many "pitfalls" Christian critics of different stripes have presented.
Hays says:
If there is a common or near universal modern mind and it is clear that premodern practice deviates from that, then the tendency can be to combine together all premodern expressions as being the universal converse of the modern, when actually there are considerable differences among premodern beliefs and practices. It follows that the whole argument must collapse if there are actually varying beliefs and practices in the premodern period, especially in cultures contemporary with the Bible.So...either 95% of the premodern people had the exact same cosmology beliefs or it is impossible to show that the Bible authors probably had bogus cosmological beliefs based on what they actually said? Not sure I'm following that logic. It also seems that Hays is unfairly withholding credit to the case in Babinski's chapter by using trivial differences.
Hays says:
When we identify a certain element of Scripture as coming from the scientifically naïve assumptions of the time, and therefore distinguishable from the theological content of the biblical message, are we interpreting Scripture in its historical context?Wait, why are we assuming that there can't be naive theological assumptions again?
Hays says:
Is a distinction between the cosmological and theological demonstrably part of the common conception of the world in which Scripture originated? The answer is an unambiguous negative! That distinction is a modern one and thus is part of what we bring to the past.Yeah, but this seems to serve the case in Babinski's chapter. Obviously cosmology and theology are related in the Biblical mind because the authors thought God created the world and weren't attempting to retrofit their theology into a vastly antithetical scientific understanding of world (like modern theologians are encultured to do). Their theological understanding of the world virtually was their cosmological understanding. So yeah, different mindsets, but not one that helps Hays.
Hays says:
It is common to postulate that the Bible shared the common view of primitive societies that the land was surrounded by sea upon which it floated and was surmounted by solid heavens…One does not need to prove what the ancient Japanese, for example, believed in order to weaken his argument. The force of Seely's argument depends upon there being a uniform premodern belief. All that is needed to undermine the argument is an example of a different belief, preferably from a culture close to ancient Israel.It would be a feasible way to argue from a local proof of concept (that is more clearly of the type the Triabloggers are suggesting for the Bible). And yet an example he offers (after merely pointing out some uncertainty about another culture's cosmological views in an insignificant way) is just a different flavor of the same kind of primitive cosmology:
A Neo-Assyrian text gives three levels to the earth: the earth's surface; the region of the god Ea, which is generally seen as the watery Apsu; and the underworld. Yet, there is not a consistent belief that below the solid surface was a watery Apsu. Building texts describe the foundations of a building being placed on the underworld or the surface of the underworld. The roots of mountains also go down to the underworld. Further complicating the picture is a text where the gods dig a ditch for the sea with a plough so that the sea would actually rest on the earth's surface.So yeah, not everyone knows a sailor, and not everyone has the exact same kind of mythological cosmology in mind. Why would they? It obviously wasn't an exact science and the case in Babinski's chapter never depended on it being that way.
It is strange that Hays seems to argue as though he has not read what Babinski had said (page 115):
Horowitz continues, "...all of the available evidence [among ancient Mesopotamian literature] agrees that the earth's surface ends at the horizon, the place where heaven and earth meet. Yet there is widespread disagreement about the topography of the ends of the earth's surface. Some texts suggest that the ends of the earth's surface are marked by cosmic mountains, while other suggest that the cosmic ocean extends to the ends of the earth. Still others are ambiguous." Such ambiguity demonstrates the ancients' lack of knowledge of the geography of the earth beyond a certain distance. Certainly they knew of mountain ranges at their borders as well as the waters of the Mediterranean Sea, Red, Sea, Black Sea, Arabian Sea, and Persian Gulf. But they blended such knowledge into a mythically enhanced geography of the world, which featured far-off cosmic mountains and/or an encircling cosmic ocean. [emphasis mine]If Hays wanted to show an ancient culture near ancient Israel which clearly had some realistic conceptions of cosmology (based on the possibly lines of evidence they could have followed that Hays has pointed out), and yet in addition to that universally chose to forgo almost all mentionings of that knowledge only to entertain "dead" metaphors and symbolic associations galore...fine. Perhaps just one ancient document might turn up confirming what seems to be a vastly unlikely cultural mindset. That could be compelling. Then again we might find Moses' secret decoder ring that tells us when to replace "thou shall keep the Sabbath day Holy" with "eat, drink, and be merry." But just more of the same primitive nonsense? Really? That's evidence to Hays there's hope for the Bible?
Hays says:
These varying pictures should warn us that there is not a simple, uniform physical picture being presented.I have no idea (aside from pejorative speculation) why Hays expected it to be otherwise if the case in Babinski's chapter was legitimate.
Hays' discussion of Apsu and Tiamut are not clear enough for me to follow or comment on in terms of their relevancy. I suspect it is just another "They would have thought things through" fallacy. Hays does not directly address the claims Babinski is lifting from Wayne Horowitz or from L. W. King on the topic, but instead focuses on Paul Seely. Hays quotes no one explicitly and we just have to take for granted that his spin on the issues properly represents things. Given how Hays tends to twist everything else beyond recognition and leave actual arguments out, I doubt this is a reasonable discussion of the issues or that his observations are anything other than more half-baked, defensive incredulity.
Hays says:
In his treatment of 'the waters above the firmament,' Seely concedes the point that, contrary to his other attempts to argue universal prescientific notions, primitive peoples do not generally think of water above the sky.I'd like to see the Seely quote on that, please. Hays seems to be ripping off some implication that probably isn't Seely's intent. I can't find it.
Hays says:
I strongly suspect that the aim of Enuma Elish is not to build a physical cosmology, but to provide a background for Esagila, the temple of Marduk at Babylon…If that is the case, is it legitimate to take parts out of context and to try to form a physical cosmology?It may not be the primary aim, but probably indicates at least some primitive cosmological concepts are at work (even if they don't correspond fully with the Bible's spin on things). I don't see how Hays can hope to fully separate the two.
Hays says:
Take for example Ps 24:2. Seely makes a point of the fact that the relationship of the land to the waters in this passage and in Ps 136:6 is explained by the preposition 'al which has 'upon' as its primary meaning. The problem is that there are also passages where this preposition has a primary sense of 'above.'The difference in this context?
Hays says:
Judgment by water is a recurrent theme in the biblical text. We find it first in the flood, with its clear connections to the creation account. It appears again in the crossing of the Red Sea and the Jordan. It is frequently invoked as a metaphor of threat and judgment…I am suggesting that it is in that context that we interpret passages that describe the relationship of land and water.Yeah...it makes sense for God to have a stockpile of his favorite weapons to annihilate the peons on earth...just like Zeus probably has a nice bin of lightning bolts sitting around somewhere. So why does that utility suddenly mean they didn't actually believe it? Is this just more concept-negation-by-alternate-association fallacious reasoning on Hays' part?
Hays says:
It may be objected that we may still discern the underlying physical cosmology in such passages. Perhaps!Ah, so Hays is aware of the possibility of making a concept-negation-by-alternate-association fallacy. That's a relief. I guess. It's too bad his means of making his point (from the Apsu and Tiamut salt water/fresh water issue) is unclear (and I imagine as contrived as all his other points).
Hays says:
Seely argues that there is a common premodern conception of the sky as a solid dome…Seely's view has been contested…Birds fly in heaven (Deut 4:17) and God is enthroned in heaven (Ps 11:4), so it cannot be conceived as a solid structure. Seely attempted to deal with this in his original article by saying that heaven is wider than raqia. However, the prooftexts that he cites for that proposition are all texts which show that heaven is not solid. Thus, they prove that heaven is wider than the raqia only if we accept the point at issue that the raqia must be solid; therefore, a non-solid heaven cannot be completely synonymous with raqia. This is a clear example of assuming the point at issue.Aren't there different levels of heaven? Above and below the firmament? I don't see how that negates the solidity of the firmament any more than the air on the first and second floors of a house negates the solidity of the ceiling and floor in between them. This is what Seely actually said (which Hays fails to quote):
Does any statement or phrase appear in the OT which clearly states or implies that the raqia is not solid? Does anything in Genesis 1 state or imply the raqia was not (or was) solid? The fact that it was named "heaven(s)" in Gen 1:8 and birds fly in the heaven(s) (Deut 4: 17) seems to imply the raqia was not solid. But the word samayim (heaven[s]) is broader in meaning than raqia. It encompasses not only the raqia (v. 8; Ps 19:6; 148:4) but the space above the raqia (Ps 2:4; 11:4; 139:8) as well as the space below (Ps 8:8; 79:2). Hence birds fly in the heavens, but never in the raqia. Rather, birds fly upon the face or in front of the raqia (Gen 1:20). This phrase upon the face (surface) or in front of the raqia is important in that it implies the raqia was neither space nor atmosphere. For birds do not fly upon the surface or in front of space or air, but rather in space or air. This distinction is illustrated in the case of fish, which no one would say swim upon the surface or in front of the water (Gen 7: 18) but rather in the water (cr. Exod 7: 18, 21).Hays just seems to arbitrarily reject what Seely says in favor of his own view. Not very helpful or convincing.
Point 20: Hays says:
Why does Babinski classify Enns and Lamoureux as "Evangelicals" rather than liberals? Both men clearly deny the inerrancy of Scripture. If Babinski is defining "Evangelical" so broadly that it's consistent with a repudiation of inerrancy, then what's the difference between evangelical and liberal? As for their reviews, see Appendix IV.Relevancy? Perhaps they both identify as evangelicals? Perhaps Babinski could have said "liberal Evangelicals" and Hays would be his best friend after all?
In Appendix IV, Hays says:
...the specific question [is] what Bible writers intended when they creatively appropriated that imagery. A secondary source isn't bound by the original intent of the primary source. And it's not uncommon for a secondary source to apply the primary source in ways that might be at variance with the intentions and/or conceptual scheme of the primary source.Is this how Hays gives the Bible a free pass to never mean what it says about cosmology no matter how congruent the rhetoric is with the primitive views of the surrounding cultures? The Jews were smoking, but not inhaling...
Hays says:
I'd like to draw attention to Babinski's double standards. On the one hand, Babinski tried to discredit the article by Noel Weeks (without bothering to actually interact with his article) by saying,"Do you honestly believe that one Young Earth creationist ancient historian Noel Weeks who writes for 'Answers in Genesis' is on par with the scholars I mentioned in my blog reply (and in my chapter) whose specialties are ANE cosmologies?"And this despite the fact that Noel Weeks has a doctorate in Mediterranean Studies from Brandeis. But Ed then turns around and cites Lamoureux's review of Beale. Yet Lamoureux's primary field of specialization is dentistry! Likewise, Ed also plugs the work of Paul Seely. But does Seely have a doctorate in the field of ANE studies?
I'm not sure about anyone's credentials here and nor do I care about the politics of this. I will say that associating someone with young earth creationism as a demerit to their credibility to a young earth creationist audience doesn't make a lot of sense. Not sure what Babinski was thinking there.
Babinski emailed Lamoureux on this and he responded:
Ed,You can start off by asking this guy if he can count to 3, as in three earned doctorates. I haven't practiced dentistry full time since 1984. PhD theology & PhD biology AFTER dentistry. Regarding Seely, he is published in some of the best journals, and is cited by scholars with PhDs in theology: me, Walton, etc Started reading the nonsense below, seems written by someone who never went to university. Won't waste my time.
I suppose that takes care of the "primary" part, but is some aspect of ANE studies included in the theology degree?
Here's some more of Hays' accusations (so I can ate least keep track of them):
It's disingenuous of Babinski to cite Lamoureux's review of Beale when Walton does the very same thing, and Babinski plugs no fewer than five of Walton's books and articles! [...] As such, it's disingenuous for Babinski to cite Lamoureux's review of Beale when Walton makes the same case at length, and Babinski points the reader to that very monograph! Does Babinski actually read the books he cites? If so, does he even understand what he's reading?Are you being inconsistent Ed? Or is Hays doing his usual routine of blowing things out of proportion because he disagrees with you about something else?
In Appendix V, titled "Babinski's Tall Tales," Hays tells us that he emailed Gregory Beale and John Oswalt to see if they agree with Babinski's portrayal of their views on inerrancy. Both men are apparently "shocked" to see how Babinski "misrepresented" them and yet Hays quotes Oswalt as saying:
I do not believe those accounts impinge on a belief in inerrancy at all. I suppose they might cause problems for some dictation theory of inspiration, but that would be all. I suspect I did say that they cause problems for a strictly literal interpretation of Gen 1-2, but that would be as far as I would go.Is it not possible that Babinski's "lie" (Hays attempts to ironically quote another contributor to TCD, Richard Carrier, to call it a lie) is a difference of definition on what type of inerrancy we are speaking of? The question for Hays would be if he agrees with Beale and Oswalt's definition of inerrancy. I doubt it. I rip on Carrier often enough for being too quick to jump on the accusation of lying when dealing with ideologically hostile opponents because over sustained contentious time we get too conditioned against being sufficiently able to empathize with where they are coming from. If you've ever been called a liar in a contentious context, or seen someone on your side called one and you know for certain they are not lying, it seems prudent (not to mention fair and honest) to back down on those charges going the other direction much more often than not. You're probably wrong. It seems pretty obvious Babinski is off the hook here in terms of lying, even if Hays and Carrier are not off the hook for making inappropriate accusations.
After quoting part of Lamoureux's critique of Beale that Babinski references in his footnotes and three other scholars (in regards to whether the ancients typically envisioned three tiers to the cosmos), Hays says:
...ANE cosmography was pretty fluid on the number of cosmic "tiers."Granted. Lamoureux may have been speaking generally, and certainly Babinski and Seely agree with that conclusion. Babinski says:
Steve, I'm also well aware of the multi-tier heavenly view. But the view that there is a heaven above, an earth below and something beneath the earth is the general schema in both Egypt and Mesopotamia no matter how many times you simply multiply the number of floors in heaven above. According to Wayne Horowitz, author of Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography, “Ancient Mesopotamian understandings [of the general shape of the cosmos] remained remarkably constant over the 2,500 years or so from the earliest evidence for cosmography in literary materials through the end of the cuneiform writing . . . . Heaven is the upper of the two halves of the universe. In ancient Mesopotamia, as in Judeo-Christian tradition, the heavens include both the visible areas [clouds, sun, moon, stars] . . . and higher regions above the sky, where gods of heaven dwell.”Hays is still trying to make a big deal about the differences though everyone else considers them trivial variations on a very similar primitive theme.
Hays says:
[Lamoureux's] objection seems to be that there is no "room" for the "netherworld" if the world is a cosmic temple. But that misses the point of symbolic cosmography. Metaphors don't need to be literally consistent with each other.It is clear the actual temple does not really match up explicitly to anything and Hays is basically correct. I imagine a similar silly debate would go on about trying to match up the human body as a temple (1 Corinthians 6:19) when nothing about it really corresponds to Solomon's temple or the snowglobe cosmos the Hebrews believed in. The more fundamental issue dividing us is whether or not this metaphorical application of the temple to the cosmos somehow negates all the primitive implications of the rhetoric. I think I'm going to stop here on these issues since the rest of these points are more of the same.
Hays says:
Is it true that "what the biblical writers saw with their eyes, they believed to be true?" Did Bible writers think mountains were really smaller at a distance, just because they appeared to be smaller at a distance? Did Bible writers think mountains actually get taller as you approach them, and shorter as you move away?According to Randal Rauser, some people apparently would have that problem (though that doesn't really concern us here). Hays merely takes Lamoureux's view to the extreme rather than allowing for a degree of appearance based beliefs which didn't have to be universal to be sufficiently recognizable for what they probably were. This is a little perplexing since obviously Hays is all up in Lamoureux's business when he takes the temple imagery/cosmos comparison to the extreme degree in order to prove his point. *sigh*
When I confronted Hays about his similarly convenient misrepresentation of Seely this was his response:
That's a face-saving way of admitting that his overarching principle can't survive elementary scrutiny.Yeah... Moving on. Though Hays says some particularly crazy bigoted things by the end of that thread.
Oh and we have to keep coming back to this since Hays keeps blowing claims out of proportion and then claiming victory when he's called out on it. In a post called, "Newton's bucket" Hays says:
If you now admit we should avoid construing this type of imagery in “fundamentalist fashion,” but instead make allowance for figures of speech, then that sinks your entire argument.Not if we live a world where grownups know that most arguments aren't all or nothing.
Lamoureux had said:
Beale's interpretation is another example of the failure of concordism. First, Scripture clearly states that the firmament (expanse) was under the waters above, not in them or part of them. Second, if the writer of Genesis 1 had intended the waters above to mean clouds, vapor, or mist "from which rain comes," then there were three well-known Hebrew words ('anan, 'ed, nasî'; Gen. 9:13, Jer. 10:13, Gen. 2:6, respectively) that he could have used. But the inspired author never did. Instead, he employed the common term for water (mayim) five times in Gen. 1:6–8.Hays responds:
If, as [Lamoureux]'d have it, the Hebrews judged by appearances, then they could see for themselves that rain came from rain clouds. That's an observable phenomenon. And, indeed, we have scriptural examples (e.g. Judg 5:4; Ps 77:17; Eccl 11:3; Isa 5:6).It is interesting in Judges 5:4 (one of the verses Hays references above) that "the heavens poured" and "the clouds poured down water" are apparently separate. I don't know enough about anything to comment with authority, but it seems as though the Hebrews simply believed in both sources of water. Who knows? Perhaps there was a very ancient idea of how water got up into the sky by being locked up in the vault above the firmament. And then even when the hydrological cycle was noticed (if the following verses actually refer to that: Psalm 135:7, Jeremiah 10:13, Job 36:27-29, Ecclesiastes 1:7, Isaiah 55:10), the old views were still kept in the mix because they didn't technically negate each other. Not sure.
Babinski pointed me in the direction of some interesting articles on the topic: The clouds as water-carriers in Hebrew thought. He says:
Keep in mind that the rabbinical interpretations in the article aren't dated. Might be 3rd century, post-NT. But also keep in mind that the Jews studied their own Bible pretty thoroughly.He also references "The firmament and the clouds," which you'd have to pay for apparently.
Hays says:
On the other hand, a cosmic ocean above a solid vault would be invisible to the naked eye. No human observer could detect its existence.Babinski and company have never claimed that absolutely everything they believed was 100% appearance based. Some of it appears to be natural deductions from other ideas on top of the primary appearance based beliefs. "The sky looks like a hard dome." "Yeah, sure does." "I wonder how water gets up in the sky." "Well, maybe there's water stored up above the hard dome?" "Sounds good to me. It is blue up there after all." Again, who knows exactly how that basic cultural logic went. Does it matter?
Hays says:
And if you suggest the dome was transparent, then there would be no need for the luminaries to be under the dome rather than above the dome.So the luminaries are in the water? Maybe they'd be a little brighter and more illuminating like if not in water and passing through a thick transparent dome?
But to this kind of logic, Hays says:
Now you're being duplicitous. You want to cite anything you can twist into disproving Scripture, but once we apply some common sense logic to Enns, Seely, Babinski et al., you kick up a dust cloud to salvage their thesis.That's an interesting accusation, because it can be much more appropriately applied to Hays:
Now you're being duplicitous. You want to cite anything you can twist into saving the inerrancy of Scripture, but once we apply some common sense logic to Holding, Engwer, Manata, et al., you kick up a dust cloud to salvage your responses to the case in Babinski's chapter.Or rather they were kicking up that dust cloud all along as their primary and pervasive strategy. I know the Triabloggers like this gimmick of mere word replacement to show hypocrisy and/or lack of content, so it's all in good fun and refutation.
Point 21: Hays says:
Finally, let's take a classic example "triple-decker" cosmography in Scripture: "The likeness of any winged bird that flies in the air, the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water under the earth" (Deut 4:17b-18). It's easy to see the basis for this depiction, and there's nothing mythical about it. The sky is higher than dry land, while dry land is higher than sea-level. The three "tiers" represent the relative position of the three primary ecological zones. And that depiction is literally true.It's literally true when convenient for inerrancy, apparently. Does that cover the other verses that talk about people being under the earth?
In a post called, "Ascent of Mount Carmel" Hays says:
...stories of ascents and descents [do not] necessarily refer to physical locomotion. [...Ezk 40:2 and Rev 21:10, for example, are] conceived in visionary or out-of-body terms, and not a literal ascent to heaven.Babinski replies:
There is no inherent incompatibility between being taken somewhere in the spirit (leaving one's body behind) and being taken literally upwards to heaven, multiple heavens if Paul is right. *smile* The ancients certainly saw no incompatibility when it came to imagining spirits descending downward beneath the earth (again, leaving their bodies behind, at death). In fact if you want to also have the "city of Jerusalem" descending purely spiritually to earth, that's fine too. What would mean the Bible begins with a myth about a Temple Cosmos in chapter 1, and ends with another myth, about a descending city of God. Which isn't to say there aren't additional myths, legends, hyperbole and tall tales, sandwiched somewhere in between those two.Makes sense to me. Modern belief in a spherical earth shows up in all sorts of connotations and is used in an infinite variety of ways, associated with many different concepts and ideas. The Biblical evidence taken together merely does the same with a flat earth.
Hays says:
That’s part of the same picturesque metaphor, Ed. Sometimes Scripture portrays God nearby, but at other times far away. Read the Psalms.Hays should provide some specific references. I've addressed Holding's version of this objection here. Basically Holding tries to portray some of the verses as though a reference to something "really big" must be our version of "really big" and not the ancients' probable version of "really big." A really big flat earth (or high firmament) from east to west (or top to bottom) is still "really big" even if in modern terms, we might refer to a 28 billion light year across visible cosmos instead.
In a post called, "NASA's flat-earth cosmography" Hays tries to make fun of Babinski for emphasizing the idea of "up" (to attempt to cut through the crap) regardless of what kind of metaphorical/visionary/literal context we're talking about. Hays references a quote from NASA that uses the term up as though that matters. Babinski responds:
Steve, Plenty of Bible verses assume the existence of a divine heavenly abode lying above the earth and relatively nearby, not light-years away. I cite a list of relevant verses in my article, "The Cosmology of the Bible," as well as point out ancient Near Eastern parallels to such a view. With angels, people, objects moving upward to such an abode or downward back to the earth. And with beings "under the earth" as well if you read Paul's letters and Revelation. That's a three-tier cosmos. Other verses assume that God holds the earth stationary, that God moves what's above the earth (and sometimes shakes the earth, exerting his power to hold it steady and also to shake the earth), and still other verses assume the flatness of such a cosmos. That was THE assumption in the ANE, and most of the OT was composed during that time period, i.e., pre-600 BCE.So yeah, we know what NASA means when it speaks of "upwards," but when it comes to the Bible, Babinski is pointing us to the landscape of their concepts and ideas that make the most sense in a three tier cosmos. A primitive conceptual residue remains fairly constant regardless of what particular Biblical concept we are dealing with. Hays doesn't seem to understand that.
Similarly Hays says:
You might as well cite Neverwhere’s “London Above” and “London Below” to prove that Neil Gaiman believes in a two-tier cosmography. But the fact that Neverwhere has a two-tier cosmography doesn’t mean that Gaiman believes a two-tier cosmography. That’s a fictitious depiction.If the case in Babinski's chapter only used one data point, Hays could get away with this. However that's just not the case. The reason the Neverwhere bit strikes a chord is because we live in a modern society where fantasy references in and of themselves are hardly going to prove anything.
Lastly (and leastly), in a post called, "Rock and roll" Hays tells Babinski:
Ben and I already interacted. Did you forget that, too?Hmmm...interesting. I wonder how that went. Let's review! Previously, I've commented on six posts at Triablogue related to Babinski's chapter in TCD:
In the first post, "Flat earth or flat-head?" I pointed out that Babinski did not get the title of a certain book incorrect in his actual published chapter. Hays didn't notice or care about that or admit that maybe a minor slip up online didn't particularly reflect on Babinski's research skills.
In the next post, "The firmament," I tried to point out the fallacious reasoning of assuming that the ancients always thought everything through. Hays takes the opportunity to attempt to blow off connections with cultural context. I pointed to the preponderance of evidence in Babinski's case despite the ambiguities. Hays goes with his "everyone knows a sailor" talking point, seems to deny that we have any information on the most common beliefs, appeals to mixed metaphors and symbolism, claims that mostly the smart people survived in the ancient world, and claims the primitive cosmology in Enoch is all about politics. He then appeals to the expertise of ancient sailors again and mountain climbers. I point out that Seely and the case in Babinski's chapter were never so rigid in terms of the appeal to cultural context. Hays responds with a general case that accurate cosmological knowledge would be common. I conclude by saying that if this was common knowledge then why didn't it make it into the Bible?
In the post, "Enochian cosmography," I tried to show that regardless of the author's intentions or political motivations, it is still proof of concept that the ancients could easily conceive of a "literal" instantiation of their rhetoric. Even if it was only that person's audience who took it seriously, the skeptic's point still applies. SOMEONE could conceive of it. Hays would have none of that logic talk and accused me of moving the goal post rather than blaming his own ultra rigid erroneous expectations. I don't know why he thinks he can get away with an appeal to the explicit history of the conversation (which would be some kind of genetic fallacy) rather than recognizing the logical leeway of a given position. I attempt to argue the virtue of merely being accurate with your opponent's actual case and the conversation degenerated into Hays calling me a thankless God hater for some reason or another. I concluded by telling Hays I hope he meets a nice atheist some day.
In the post, "The waters above," Hays has to overstate Paul Seely's case in order to have a point and then declares victory when he is corrected on the misrepresentation. I point this out and attempt to move beyond the politics. Hays says I didn't quote Seely to show his misrepresentation, but then I point out Hays didn't show that Seely advocates the argument that he says he does. Hays then goes on to question my anti-Bible biases as though that is relevant. I point out that my impartiality in pointing out issues as I see them has even alienated Loftus and I attempt to move the conversation beyond the politics and back to the issue of misrepresentation of Seely's case. Hays apparently thinks being intellectually honest is just a gimmick and then makes excuses for why he doesn't have to show what Seely's argument is. I attempt to agree with Hays that the debates between atheists and believers are not symmetrical and that they have a much heavier burden to carry in terms of proving their case (and also that it's not the fault of the skeptics this is the case) and I also attempt to ask what the hostility on Hays' part is all about and how I can get along at Triablogue. Hays responds with some really bizarre accusations like being intellectually fair and friendly online is all an act rather than a lifestyle choice. I attempt to firmly point out the ridiculousness of this and Hays responds with some of the most bigoted things I've ever seen coming from a Christian apologist. Maybe I don't get out much.In the post, "The Argonautica," I got something wrong about Ecclesiastes 1:5, but was easily corrected. Hays attempted to make something of that as though an error of mine somehow had implications about whether ancient people got everything right or not. While blasting my supposed lack of intelligence, he then provided a point against his own perspective since his reference seems to show that the author of Ecclesiastes is implying that the sun is trying to climb up the earth's gravity well. I also pointed out how Hays "ping pong earth and moon theory" (if we aren't going to grant prima facie precedents to what actually happens) wouldn't make the most sense, since God could just turn them on and off like a light switch. Hays doesn't respond to any of it, and instead continues to assert his misrepresentation of the case against him and defers to other issues that are supposed to show we should give the Bible overly abundant slack on the cosmology issue. I try to point out the misrepresentation again, and Hays responds with a lot of non-response based incredulity. I press the issue of his straw man misrepresentation again, and rather than admit to his own errors, he starts blaming me for repeating myself. I remind him that I'm only repeating myself to the extent that he's not listening to some trivially obvious points of correction.
In the post, "The flood and the flat-earth," I tried to point out that skeptics can in fact criticize the Bible from more than one perspective. This was possibly the stupidest thing I'd ever seen an apologist say on such a non-contentious issue. Yet would Steve ever show any weakness or admit to a blunder? Nope.Hays says:
You need to find a new playmate. I have other things to do with my time. Get a hobby.But what would I do without the abuse!?
So what exactly did Hays accomplish? I seemed to have accomplished making Hays' buddy Engwer admit the case in Babinski's chapter actually does its job. Hays just seems to have accomplished making himself look like a really bad person who can't maturely deal with shades of gray in debate. *shrug*
Paul Manata
Manata only has two basic points to offer in addition.
Manata says:
Babinski mocks the biblical writers for using terms like "stretching out the heavens," the "courses" of the stars, and "the sun rises and sets." For Babinski, this language is evidence that the biblical authors are unscientific boobs. Yet when it comes time for Babinski to explain our universe in modern, scientific, sophisticated terms, he writes: "our planet is a tiny life raft bobbing in space with far less fortunate life rafts bobbing over to our left and right" (132). The editor of The Christian Delusion ought to find all copies of this book and burn them before the scientifically enlightened people of the next century get to it. I can imagine a book in the future with this chapter: "The Cosmology of Edward Babinski."So...we can't possibly quote Babinski many other times making accurate claims about cosmology? Skeptics are against poetry apparently. *eyeroll* Well, Manata is against context. Even Babinski's poetry is more accurate than the least poetic cosmological thing the Bible authors said. And btw, I already used Babinski's raft quote as a talking point to help prove my point. Sorry Manata. Beat you to it by 4 days.
Manata says:
See, apparently, for Babinski, you can write like that if you live in the scientific age and so we know you don't mean it.*facepalm* Or, you can just read all the other things Babinski says rather than even appealing to cultural context. And in addition to that, you can appeal to our modern cultural context where it's hardly even an issue. Hence we have an awesome case to establish Babinski's poetry is poetry and doesn't infringe on what we know he obviously believes. On the other hand we have a really cruddy case to insist that the Bible authors didn't believe in ANYTHING they said.
Seriously, Manata pouts like he doesn't live in the same century as the rest of us.
Manata says:
If you don't live in the scientific age, then you can't be figurative like Babinski. You must mean it all literally. After all, we're starting with the assumption that these people were dumb and so that's why they said what they did.You don't have to assume the Bible writers didn't know much about cosmology. You can just read it! Now maybe Babinski really does really assume the stupidity of the ancients hardcore. I dunno. I doubt it. He's probably just waiting to give them credit when it would be legitimate to do so. I know fellow TCD contributor, Richard Carrier is all about digging up the ancient history of unexpected scientific progress. Does he assume all the ancients were stupid? Do either of these guys have to make such pejorative assumptions? Won't reading comprehension do? I think we have to call a spade a spade though when applicable even if that tarnishes our favorite holy literature.
Manata says:
Some of his comments have to do with the notion of "words" that speak the cosmos into existence (113) as well as "commands" for the sun to remain where it is and for other "law-like" regularities to operate as they do (128 - 130). Babinski mocks this as obviously unscientific and improper as an explanation for the existence of the world. However, I don't think so. In fact, I think the biblical authors as well as other ancient peoples hit upon an important truth when explaining the cosmos: the invoking of personal intentions as a full or complete explanation of the origin of the cosmos and the existence of "natural laws."Manata ignores the forest and focuses on one blind hit that he just happens to suit his philosophical fancy (with some interpretation of course). One wonders...do you suppose the ancient Jews were debating the problem of induction? Maybe. Can you prove that? Probably not. Or were they just assuming their magic god was responsible for making things happen the way they do? I'm sorry, that's just not impressive philosophically or otherwise. It's just a common theistic superstition that both Manata and the writers of the Bible have in common. So what?
Reading Manata's response makes Babinski sounds like such a rude guy doesn't it? Unless of course you ask someone else like Rauser:
To his credit (and in contrast to some of the other more persnickety contributors to Christian Delusion), Babinski writes with a disarming cordiality.Perhaps we shouldn't take Manata's word for it? Maybe Manata and Hays just have like zero tolerance for any and all "Christianity isn't true" talk?
Manata says:
[Babinski] looks at some ANE statements on the creation of the world and finds some similarities between them and concludes that this shows that the biblical writers just borrowed the unscientific understanding of the creation of the cosmos prevalent at that time.Some similarities? You put the commonalities together and you actually have an entire worldview structure in common. Read Babinski's chapter. Manata's dismissive rhetoric is too dismissive.
Engwer says:
The question is what's likely, not what "could" be true.Indeed. So in review, skeptics are such jerks for thinking that maybe some ancient Jews weren't necessarily on top of their cosmological game and that reading their words is probably a good indicator of what they actually believed on the topic. This is some stellar reasoning here (oh, there's a pun!). Or it really sucks. You decide. But if you ask me, this was the worst chapter yet in TID (and that's saying something). Seems clear in general that these folks are coming from some amazingly high prior probability that serves to steam roll all the evidence here. The whole practical point of inerrancy is that you have a magic document that is reliably informative about things. But when all is said and done, you've bent over backwards so many times to accommodate its failings, that you end up being more informative than it could ever hope to be. I don't see what the point of that is.
Ben
Comments (9)
Holy shit, I hope you're writing this for more than just your Xanga audience, because I get more comments than you do, and even my "fans" aren't worth this effort!
@GodlessLiberal - Oh definitely. Primarily for my own experience that will likely channel in to future projects. Secondly as leverage in the debate, as a resource, and a study of apologetic thinking patterns. Thirdly as an experiment to see what happens with apologists when you do a comprehensive rebuttal, pay close attention, and hammer all their points into the ground. Oh yeah, and then there's my poor xanga audience that probably doesn't know what in the world to do with it. I'm going to be much more kind to them with chapter 6 since that's about a few dozen random issues and can easily be broken up. Hopefully it is easy enough to skim through the contents section and get a good idea of what's going on, and then click on specific issues if one feels so inclined to dive in deeper. It should make the entire exchange (which covers a lot of territory) as accessible as it possibly could be.
Thanks for the recommend.
Ben
@WAR_ON_ERROR - I love your posts, although I admit at many times it isn't what I want from Xanga. Your posts do kick a tremendous amount of ass, and for that I am grateful. And in my experience, the more in-depth you get in trouncing apologists, the more they shy away. My most detailed posts tend to get the fewest responses from that crowd (or the most off-topic responses).
This is the longest blog ever on xanga. No way I would read all this. How long did it take you to type this up?
@GodlessLiberal - Yeah, I'm some where in limbo between blogging and wiki-ing. Not sure what I'm going to do about that, but I may start uploading content to my own wiki, and then perhaps do blog posts summarizing the results. We'll see.
@musterion99 - It looks like it took me about two and a half months to complete it. For the record, this post is only 50 pages long. My post responding to everything in response to chapter 4 is 100 pages long. :p
@WAR_ON_ERROR - Yikes!
@musterion99 - Yes, well apparently certain Christians out there really, really, really, really want the right to assert their conclusion in intellectual debate. Or Loftus' OTF just must be that flawed. The length of posts is reflective of the length of the actual dialog out there. I'm only partially responsible for that. But given that landscape, I've put the entire conversation in one place, and made it as accessible as it possibly could be. Granted, even my summaries are longer than most blog posts, but that's just the nature of the beast.
@musterion99 - Oh, and I have not forgotten your suggestion that I elaborate about Ethical Societies. It's in the pipeline.
@WAR_ON_ERROR - haha - I forgot about that but still interested in hearing more.