Astronomy and Politics Through the Lens of Epistemology
How do We Know What We Know?
What is Our Method of Evaluating Truth?
Christian Epistemology
My Ugly Divorce from the Theory of Evolution
Evangelicals will be surprised to read about my strict adherence to the Scientific Method as a means, with the Bible, to derive truth about creation. The reason it is so close to my walk of faith is that I firmly believe that it was mostly developed out of Jewish and Christian influence, but not exclusively. There were some agnostic and atheist scientists, but I do not believe they were predominant in that culture and time. Despite my objections to his other writings, the method’s religious origins are easier to understand if one reads Men of Science/Men of God by Henry M Morris. There, Morris reviews over 60 men before the age of Darwin and over 40 after Darwin’s Origin of Species. That reflects the rise of the impact of evolution on science. Yet it sill reflects the Jewish and Christian origins of the Scientific Method. That influence would also impact me in my studies in astronomy as a youngster.
However, despite my lifelong commitment to the Scientific Method and much of its Jewish and Christian origins largely in Medieval Europe, I had a very ugly divorce, so to speak, with Darwin’s Theory of evolution.
I first became a Christian as the result of coming to properly understand the Big Bang Theory and its proof of the universe’s beginning. For me, it confirmed the first verse in the Hebrew Bible, that, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (JPS-1917). That transformation in my world view resulted in my realization that God (Adonai) was very real in my life personally. Still, in my faith beginnings, I was nevertheless quite an advocate of for the theory of evolution. It was not so much that I had studied Darwin nearly as much as I had astronomy. It was that the Big Bang Theory was so much of a personal revolution in my thoughts and world view in a Southern Baptist family, it then predisposed me to a natural inclination for a life of faith. The problem was that Christian apologists were standing in the way, insisting on a 6,000 year universe (age/distance) which appeared to me as either deceit or ignorance, then instilling in me much hostility and doubt about the truthfulness of the faith I was raised in. I was simply too intimately familiar as a youth as to how astronomical distances and time were measured over astronomically over short time/distances that I knew far-far exceeded 6 thousand years.
Then a New Roommate would alter my future.
So, the early seeds of my transformation on evolution began years later when I moved in to a house over on 2nd street near the university and joining me was Glenn Spangenburg who was a geologist graduate student and one of the most committed members of the young-earth crowd I have ever met. Yet, I was a person brought to faith by the evidence of the Big Bang who placed to far too great an authority on science as an arbiter of truth including my then belief in what is called Theistic Evolution.
My support for Theistic Evolution was not because of personal study, but because I was so persuaded of faith by the Big Bang, the theory of evolution went along for the ride with little critical thinking on my part and was something I assumed. So, it did not take long until there were arguments between Glenn and I with sparks flying all over the house and probably smoke and steam gushing from our windows! But one thing that experience did for us was that it forced us to listen to each other at length and very often to work out our differences on a regular yet a long term basis. I became quite positively captured by those discussions and nearly every day whenever we had the chance, we knew it was time to go at it again!!
I forget whether we were together for one or two years, but by the time we separated because of Glenn’s marriage we had grown extremely close. If anyone had attacked Glenn on these issues in science, I would have defended him with answers from my perspective and he would have done the same for me.
Certainly, I learned from him a whole list of issues which Young Earth advocates have with earth sciences like the failure of secular geologists to incorporate into their hypotheses, the possibility of a wide spread, if not, world wide flood regarding sedimentary layers. Also, I learned other problems Young Earth advocates have with radio-carbon dating and a host of similar Young-Earth concerns on earth sciences including many geologic discussions with Glenn related to the ASSUMED scientific doctrine of uniformitarianism.
https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/uniformitarianism/
I can’t say either one of us convinced the other completely except for my blind acceptance regarding Evolution. That sea change in my life would come some years later in the in the early to mid-1980s as is described below. I was painfully aware of how most Christians viscerally approached cosmology. It was rather how Glenn approached geology that impacted how I thought about many other areas in science including Biology and Evolution.
Yet, Glenn had always wanted me to read or listen to a young-earth author/speaker named Duane Gish of the then Institute of Creation Research.
https://www.icr.org/article/remembering-dr-duane-t-gish-creations/
So there was a debate held at the U of A between Gish and a popular evolutionist Phd. There were more than one of these debates, but I do not remember the date, .... but roughly the early to mid-1980’s. Nevertheless, I knew I had to go to that debate with Gish! Eventually, I did go but was very impressed with the evolutionist, at first, who cited a transitional fossil form (Archaeopteryx) in the bird family which developed a type of claw to hold its prey tight while consuming it. I was really impressed and went down and talked with the evolutionist personally after the debate. I thanked him for his example of a transitional form in the fossil record since Gish had said there were no transitional forms in the fossil record. So, I followed up by asking him if he had any other transitional forms in the fossil record that I could cite? He told me outright, the answer was NO without qualification! I responded, “you mean to tell me that for the last century or so, all the evidence you have to support evolution was one single bird”?? With a great deal of hemming and hawing, he finally conceded that there was only that one transitional form in the fossil record that was certifiable. Gish was right only to err by one!! Unbelievable! I spent years defending evolution and felt like I had been stabbed in the back! I continued for some years to review the support for evolution in archeological record and did find a type of whale that had developed feet-like appendages to help it with bottom feeding, but that was an absurd example since nothing the size of a whale is going to crawl up on land with those stubby appendages!
What really made me furious, going back to the debate, was when I found out that Darwin himself had suggested the Archaeopteryx as a possible transitional form! So, for nearly a century of time NO (even simi-complete) transitional forms of evolutionary evidence had been found in the fossil record?? Even more offensive to my view of the scientific method was the ART of taking some small bone and extrapolating an entire skeleton out of it and claiming that was evidence of evolution! That in my view was, and still is scientific guess-work at best, but certainly not evidence! Give me a scientific break!! That is an extrapolation entirely based on an pre-determined conclusion which is – ANYTHING BUT SCIENCE!!
When I look back on it, what that experience did for me was a baptism into uncertainties. A baptism into uncertainties into geological sediment layers, radio carbon decay and other similar forms of geologic uncertainties Glenn had cited. A modern example is at the link below.
Yet Glenn and I would start seeing each other for lunch again 10-12 years after his marriage and several children, when he worked as a geologist at the water department. Boy was that a good reunion for some months even though he was struggling with Pancreatic cancer. Eventually, I cannot remember exactly when, we did address the Big Bang but it was, by that time the subject was essentially a “nothing burger” that we discussed with a great deal of mutual respect. Then one day near lunch time, I called up and asked for Glenn again at the water department. Silence was the response for I can’t remember how long. Finally the receptionists confirmed that Glenn had died! I was way too late to even attend the funeral! That left a wound I cannot say I ever recovered from with the normal exception of time. That sudden removal of Glenn as an earthly friend really bored into my soul the importance of listening and civil discussion on controversial Biblical issues in science and Biblical doctrine as well. Yet since then, I have never again been able to have a civil discussion about the Big Bang in Christian circles like he and I had. The result when I have, without exception, has been the immediate rise of the “heretic hunters” of systematic theology launching into a Devcon-5 style first strike to Biblically destroy their fellow believers as bearers of false doctrine! That despite the fact that I am a committed systematic theology proponent myself and will be making a case for that coupled with the Big Bang in subsequent blog #4 on Biblical interpretation!
A Block Buster Secular Publication Rejecting Evolution
Now, in case the reader is in the opposite camp of science, I do realize how bizarre and inconceivable it must sound to say I am so acutely opposed to Darwin's Origin of Species while supporting the scientific method, and I can relate. But that critical position of mine on evolution was greatly re-enforced by the 1986 publication of "Evolution, A Theory in Crisis" by British microbiologist Michael Denton. This is a comprehensively detailed 368 page book itemizing a massive array of serious problems with Darwin's theory. Now if that wasn't enough, Thirty years later Denton, in 2016 published a follow-up 354 page book, "Evolution: STILL A Theory in Crisis", with a huge host of additional documentation, just to drive the point home that little had changed regarding problems with Darwin's original theory!! Also, in various other texts, Denton describes himself as an agnostic who, nevertheless acknowledges many elements in nature of Intelligent Design. Therefore, Denton is on a quest for a new theory which incorporates and recognizes a designer in nature as is testified to by the following 46 minute video.
https://evolutionnews.org/2020/10/michael-denton-identifies-two-intelligent-designs-in-the-universe/
That may cause discomfort for the theologian who insists on creation as exclusively the result of God's verbal word, but on the other hand it represents a dramatic closing of the gap between science and scripture!
An Evolutionary Slam-Dunk!
At this point, one may ask, "just how much more evidence do I need to reject the Theory of Evolution"? A further follow-on question is, isn't what I have presented so far a question of OVERKILL? The answer is NO! But because as a Christian, I have such confidence in the scientific method, I went back to Glenn's admonition and returned to a writing of Duane Gish called "Letter to a Theistic Evolutionist". There Gish writes:
“To substantiate my claim that evolution is not a scientific theory, I quote evolutionary biologists Paul Ehrlich and L.C. Birch,”
Our theory of evolution has become one which cannot be refuted by any possible observations. Every conceivable observation can be fitted into it. It is thus 'outside empirical science' but not necessarily false. No one can think of ways to test it. Ideas, either without basis or based on a few laboratory experiments carried out in extremely simplified systems have attained currency far beyond their validity. They have become part of an evolutionary dogma accepted by most of us as part of our training" (Nature 214:352, 1967).
Responding to this quote, Guish writes,
"Obviously, any theory outside of empirical science which has no way to be tested is not a scientific theory."
Furthermore, Guish goes on for 100 more pages documenting countless supposed discoveries in Evolution to establish that they all fail on the question of testing, the most critical part of the Scientific Method. Now if Gish is only partly true on his analysis, that amounts to scientific apostacy! So, permit me to submit my own hypothesis here which is based on two very human factors.
1.) Society in general was overly impressed with industrialization and technology, as I was at one point in my life. 2.) Both man and woman kind, have a built in desire not to be responsible or under the authority of ANYONE! We humans naturally want to be autonomous and free of anyone who would be in authority. Therefore, upon those two natural human inclinations, my theory is that society in general, bought the whole Evolution lie, hook, line, and sinker without ever being truly evaluated by the Scientific Method!! If one insists on a mantra in that regard, "No Testing, No Truth”! I believe that holds true for both Jews and Christians, even in regard to their respective faiths!
The trick in faith is that God (Adonai) insists that faith must come first. see Jewish TANAKH {2}Chronicles 7:14 "-- if My people, upon whom My name is called, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek My face, and turn from their evil ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land (JPS version 1917).
Also in the Christian New Testament, Romans 1:18-20-TLV). For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. In unrighteousness they suppress the truth, because what can be known about God is plain to them—for God has shown it to them. His invisible attributes—His eternal power and His divine nature—have been clearly seen ever since the creation of the world, being understood through the things that have been made. So people are without excuse—
After all these years since going home to meet the Lord, Glenn came through, yet again, TODAY!!
NOTE: I will be amplifying on these Biblical passages and connecting the dots to the Scientific Method and the Big Bang. Again, I believe many Christians who insist on an Young Universe model are fighting against their own best friend in science, which I believe is The Big Bang Theory. In comparison, Evolution made God completely unnecessary regarding the origin of man. In contrast, incontrovertible evidence of The Big Bang and the beginning of the universe, has made God an inescapable necessity! Comprehending that was a reality was what brought me to faith after a prolonged period of doubt.
https://www.christianepistemology.com/tocastronomy
Warning: A false impression one might get from this blog is that I am now a Young Earth Creationists like my friend Glenn. That is false. I would describe myself as a Old Earth Creationist greatly impacted by selected Young Earth arguments. I have to say that because if the universe is proveably old, there is then room for more debate on the age of the earth which I will be discussing in my Biblical analysis later. My major take away from this experience is that since Christians do not believe that the creation events were a product of random chance, the actual age of the earth is probably far less than scientists predict. By in large, they seem to addicted to creation by accident which then artificially increases their age estimates greatly.