Tag: theology

He is Risen – 2.2: Why name it Mark?

Feb 16th, 2025
…because the author’s name was Mark

The earliest manuscripts of this Gospel are titled ‘According to Mark’ – which summarizes the uniform Church tradition that Mark, a disciple of Simon Peter, wrote the second Gospel. Mark was not an eyewitness of Christ’s public ministry he was a channel of apostolic tradition through Peter.

In the New Testament, Peter refers to his companionship with Mark in an amicable manner ‘my son Mark’ in 1 Peter 5:13. Further, interpreters have noted that the general outline of Mark’s gospel is similar to Peter’s presentation of the gospel in Acts 10:36-43. Outside the New Testament, multiple Church Fathers insist that Peter’s authority lies behind this Gospel. Papias (A.D. 130) describes Mark as the “interpreter” of Peter, while Irenaeus (A.D. 180), Clement of Alexandria (A.D. 200) and Tertullian (A.D. 200) echo this tradition.

Few details exist about the life and character of Mark. He is known by his Roman name “Mark” (Marcus in latin), but is sometimes called by his Jewish name “John” (Acts 12:25; 15:37). He is the cousin of the missionary Barnabas according to Colossians 4:10, and he was also an associate of the Apostle Paul (Acts 12:25) and a welcome companion on Paul’s first missionary journey (Acts 13:5). According to Paul’s estimation “he [Mark] is very useful in serving me” (2 Timothy 4:11), and Tradition states that after the martyrdom of Peter and Paul, Mark was the first to establish churches in Alexandria and northern Egypt.

These factors held together, especially with the unanimity of voices attributing this gospel make it difficult to contend that some ‘mysterious author’ penned this Gospel.

He was probably the first one to start writing too

Two main factors suggest that Mark completed his Gospel before A.D. 70 – within one generation of the events he records.
1. First, the Gospel itself points us in this direction. In Mark 13, Jesus prophesies the imminent destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. This was fulfilled in A.D. 70, when the Romans violently destroyed the Holy City. Mark, however, makes no mention of this as a past event, nor does he give detailed information about the catastrophe that would indicate he was writing after the fact.
2. Second, prominent traditions in the early Church date Mark’s gospel in the 60s or even earlier. Both a second-century document, called the Anti-Marcionite Prologue, and Irenaeus (A.D. 180) state that Mark wrote soon after Peter’s martyrdom (~A.D. 67) – a tradition that still allows for a date in the late 60s. Clement of Alexandria (A.D. 200) on the other hand, maintains that Mark wrote his Gospel before Peter’s death. Still another witness, Eusebius (A.D. 340), fixes a date for Mark during the reign of Emperor Claudius, between A.D. 41 and 54. Although these varying traditions make it impossible for use to assign an exact date for the Gospel, they together suggest that Mark published his work sometime before A.D. 70. Many modern scholars likewise place the composition of Mark just before A.D. 70, though some put it just after this critical date.
Halfway there now.

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Sources are linked throughout. It should be made clear that the arguments in this post are not at all my own and are, as I have said, taken from the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible (New Testament) by Scott Hahn and Curtis Mitch.

On the Origin of Man – 7: Noah’s Ark

Dec 8th, 2024

I thought it might be fitting to wrap up this series with a short post on Noah’s Ark. I think I’ve provided a faithful understanding of the Genesis story, and how well it coheres with what we know from the natural sciences, but it might be best to briefly give a less extravagant (yet still orthodox) understanding of Noah’s Ark – leaning heavily on work by John Walton and Andrew Loke. I’ll try to keep this post on the shorter side, since I’ve already dumped about 26000 words throughout the rest of this series.

There are two things to show here:

Thesis 1: A fair interpretation shows Ancient Near Eastern Hyperbole, but this does not contradict the Biblical Narrative

Thesis 2: There is some form of historical evidence for a local flood

Thesis 1: A fair interpretation shows Ancient Near Eastern Hyperbole, but this does not contradict the Biblical Narrative

I think that the title of this section more or less says it all but, essentially, hyperbolic language was very common in Ancient Near Eastern writing. We find similar exaggerations elsewhere in the Bible. Similarly:

The Annals of Sennacherib (who was an Assyrian King), often exaggerated his military victories – claiming to have destroyed 89 cities and 820 villages in Judah (which was likely overstated)
The Behistun Inscription is a monumental inscription by Darius the Great of Persia, and it details his conquests and suppression of revolts (also exaggerating the number of enemies defeated)
The Mesha Stele was a Moabite stone inscription by King Mesha of Moab, and it describes his rebellion against Israel – again, exaggerating the number of enemies defeated

Scholars know that the aforementioned are exaggerations through comparative analysis, archaeological evidence, corroborating sources, internal consistency and historical context, but the point to be made is that hyperbolic language is not foreign to Ancient Near Eastern literature. Of course the above are militaristic in nature but, plausibly, one could also see the Ark as a ‘war waged on the corruption of the Earth’.

Therefore, when reading Biblical language, we should ask ourselves what motivations (if any) might the author of Genesis have had for illustrating the flood as such. I, John Walton and other Old Testament Scholars (I am not one, to be clear), think rhetoric.

Quite clearly, the author of Genesis 6:5 intends to get across to the reader that (at the very least) the imago-Dei anatomical humans which (genetically), could have been all of remaining humanity by this point as I have argued in part 2. The point is to show that the world had been overwhelmed by Evil.

The sort of thinking that the Ancient Near East is the entire world likely does carry on into the New Testament.
For example, Acts 2:5 could be supposing that Jews come from ‘every nation under heaven’, and Paul claims in Colossians 1:23 that he is proclaiming the gospel that has been proclaimed to ‘every creature under heaven’. With similar language being used in Genesis 7:19 – “all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered”, I think we have sufficient reason to believe that the author of the flood narrative is using hyperbolic language to convey a true event.

Now, interpretatively speaking, we must note that such a position can still be maintained as an orthodox Christian. I am simply suggesting that the author intended more to convey a theological message rather than a historically-accurate one, and that such was the cultural norm of the day. Considering the author is writing in the period where hyperbolic language is normal for historical texts, along with numerology littered throughout, I don’t think this is an irrational position.

Thesis 2: There is some form of historical evidence for a local flood

It might come as a surprise to some, but multiple Ancient Near Eastern accounts detail flood stories of their own sort. One such example would be the Epic of Gilgamesh. John Currid, a scholar who has compared the two in his work ‘Against the Gods: The Polemical Theology of the Old Testament’, notes these similarities between the accounts:

Epic of Gilgamesh	Genesis
Divine Warning of doom (lines 20-26)	Divine warning of doom (6:12-13)
Command to build ship (lines 24-31)	Command to build ark (6:14-16)
Hero constructs ship (lines 54-76)	Noah builds ark (6:22)
Utnapishtim loads ark, including his relations and animals (lines 80-85)	Noah loads ark, including his family and animals (7:1-5)
The gods send torrential rains (lines 90-128)	Yahweh sends torrential rains (6:17; 7:1-12)
The floods destroy humanity (line 133)	The floods destroy humanity (7:21-22)
The flood subsides (lines 129-132)	The flood abates (8:1-3)
The ship lands on Mount Nisir (lines 140-144)	The ark settles on Mount Ararat (8:4)
Utnapishtim sends forth birds (lines 146-154)	Noah sends forth birds (8:6-12)
Sacrifice to the gods (lines 155-161)	Sacrifice to Yahweh (8:20-22)
Deities bless hero (line 194)	Yahweh blesses Noah (9:1)

It’s quite clear that with how well the details parallel, along with the structure and flow, that such overwhelming similitude cannot be explained as a result of mere chance or simultaneous invention.

One might suggest any of:

The two sources copied one another
The two used the same original source
They are separate accounts of the same event

(2) and (3) are quite plausible, and are not mutually exclusive. The Eridu Genesis is a Sumerian flood account that existed before either the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Genesis account. Since this is the case, this might provide evidence against (1).

Furthermore, it should be noted that the story of the Biblical flood is still markedly different in some respects from some of its contemporary counterparts. For example, the other sources tend to be more polytheistic (which is the case in Eridu Genesis), and the flood story of the Epic of Atrahasis gives the justification for the flood being something as silly as disturbing the sleep of the gods. This is a drastically different picture to the much more strictly monotheistic Genesis story, which quite directly points the blame at man’s corruption.

In terms of candidates, considering that my model is quite relaxed when it comes to affirming (temporally) exactly when the Patriarchs of Genesis emerge, I don’t really think it’s necessary to propose an exact date, but there are some potential candidates that some archaeologists have discovered, such as the:

Flood at Ur: Archaeological excavations at the ancient city of Ur, led by Sir Leonard Woolley in the 1920s, uncovered a significant flood layer. This flood is believed to have occurred around 2900 BCE.
Flood at Shuruppak: Excavations at Shuruppak, another ancient Mesopotamian city, revealed evidence of a major flood around the same period. Shuruppak is particularly interesting because it is associated with the Sumerian flood hero Ziusudra, who parallels Noah in many ways.
Flood at Kish: Similar flood deposits were found at Kish, dating to around 2900 BCE. These findings suggest that a large flood affected multiple cities in the region.

I have already affirmed in the previous section that the authors need not be talking about all anatomical humans, and considering the hyperbolic language used, possibly not even all imago-Dei humans). Therefore, I think I can hold to this being a historical event, simply on the reasons already given.

This has been a monumental project, that I’ve really enjoyed working on over three-or-four months. I think it’s been really helpful to give a (hopefully) strong and coherent understanding of the start of the Genesis story and show that it doesn’t conflict with modern findings. There was one topic that I thought about including in this section (the Nephilim) but I don’t think there’s much need, considering that my interpretations doesn’t lead to any theological issues ensuing from that topic. Further, its such an obviously unsettled issue that it didn’t make much sense to say much about a topic that would take months to research.

I hope this has been useful for anyone – whether you’re curious about the faith, wanting to learn about it, or just genuinely stumbled here by accident – let me know what you think below!

Thanks,
Rookie

P.S: I think the next series is going to be even longer but i’ll be taking a short break, so expect the next post in about 6 weeks! 😊

Sources:

The Lost World of the Flood – John Walton
Evidence that Demands a Verdict – Josh and Sean McDowell

On the Origin of Man – 5: …but why add Theism?

Oct 27th, 2024
If you’ve been paying good attention to my writings throughout this series, you may have noticed me consistently affirming that ‘there are things I do not think naturalism can explain’ – along with bits and pieces of reasons throughout. Of course, I have purely philosophical reasons, in addition to historical arguments for the resurrection and a testimony of personal experience to rationally justify my Christian belief. Aside from my last point, this specific post is largely aimed at providing mostly scientific (though largely philosophical at the end) reasons for which I do not hold to a Strong Naturalistic view of Evolution, but rather a model of Evolutionary Creation.

My reasons can be summarised as follows:
1. Cellular Functional Information and Abiogenesis
2. The Emergence of Sexual Reproduction
3. The Mind
4. Dominance
To be fair, point 1 could support a Deistic model, but when adding 2, 3, and 4 I think that, overall, my reasons are more expected from a more strictly judeo-Christian God.

#1: Cellular Functional Information and Abiogenesis

Quite uncontroversially, information can be defined as ‘a sequence of characters that produces some specific effect’. According to information theory, information and probability are inversely correlated. Although the longer a sequence of characters is, the more information-carrying capacity it has, it would also mean that it is less likely to convey meaningful content because it is more likely that it would contain useless characters.

For example, the sequence ‘mp’ doesn’t contain any useful information (at least, in the context of the formal English language), but all you need to do is switch the ‘p’ for an ‘e’ and all of a sudden the sequence not only carries information but meaning.

There are 26² two-letter, alphabetical sequences, and only a small fraction of these are actual formal English words. If you lengthen the word to something like ‘messy’, you do get something longer. However, presuming random selection, you also reduce the probability of landing on a formal English word (as there are now 26⁵possible combinations), showing the inverse proportionality.

Why is this relevant? I’m glad you asked.

It is quite well known that DNA is the information storage centre of the cell, but not many have stopped to think what exactly it means to be ‘information’. Abiogenesis, simply put, is the idea that life arose from non-life about 3.5 billion years ago on Earth. It tries to propose a natural explanation for the origin of such information, and Strong Naturalistic Evolutionists would essentially have to prove that the following stages are reproducible under prebiotic conditions:

The stages are explained as follows:
1. Inorganic Molecules: The starting point involves simple inorganic compounds like water (H₂O), carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄), and ammonia (NH₃).
2. Simple Organic Molecules: These inorganic compounds combine under the right conditions (e.g., lightning, UV radiation) to form basic organic molecules like amino acids and nucleotides.
3. Polymerization: These organic molecules must link together to form more complex structures like RNA strands and proteins. This stage involves creating long chains from simpler building blocks.
4. Self-Replicating Systems: The emergence of molecules capable of self-replication (like RNA) marks a critical step. The “RNA World Hypothesis” suggests that RNA could store information and catalyze its own replication.
5. Protocells: Self-replicating molecules must become encapsulated within membrane-like structures, forming protocells that maintain an internal environment distinct from the outside.
6. Primitive Metabolism: These protocells need basic metabolic pathways to harness energy and sustain themselves, possibly involving simple redox reactions.
7. True Cells: Finally, these primitive systems evolve into the first simple cells, resembling prokaryotes, capable of growth, division, and evolution.
Proteins (stage 3) are large, complex molecules that are made up of amino acids that are joined up in a specific sequence, and this sequence determines the protein’s structure and function. These amino acids that constitute them are smaller organic molecules, and they are determined by a corresponding sequence of things called ‘codons’ in something else called messenger-RNA (mRNA) – more simply, you get a specific amino acid because of a specific sequence of mRNA, and this mRNA is formed by a transcription of DNA. DNA, specifically, depends on certain sequences of nucleotide bases – these are adenine [A], thymine [T], cytosine [C], and guanine [G]. The picture should be starting to clear up a little now, but essentially, our genome can be seen as one very long ‘word’ that specifies extremely complex behaviour within our bodies.

But wait, that’s not all.

Proteins aren’t two-dimensional. Their three-dimensional shapes exhibit complex shapes, irregular arrangements, and most importantly, specificity. This is to say, some features must either be exactly what they are or within very fine boundaries for the overall protein to function. But, remember, these things are all determined by a sequence of nucleotide base pairs in a given DNA sequence.

Hypothesis 1: Chance

Now, take all this dizzying complexity, and plug it into a ‘chance theory’ of abiogenesis, which is one of the two (or maybe three) real options open to the Strong Naturalistic evolutionist, we start to see some glaring problems.

Firstly, specificity requires the correct letter-by-letter creation of a protein, however, this seems very improbable presuming you are going with some form of primordial soup starting point – i.e., the idea that these organic molecules had somehow formed and ‘knocked into each other until something happened’.

Secondly, such formation also requires solely peptide bonds, which roughly halves the probability because non-peptide bonds also form. Another thing to note is that the subset of proteins that are functional among all the combinations of amino acids is extremely low.

Thirdly, well, let’s actually run the numbers:
- Most functional proteins are made of hundreds of amino acids, with an average size of about 300 amino acids² – but presuming amino acids in a prebiotic soup may be simpler – let’s take a number on the smaller side – 150.
- As stated, peptide bonds between amino acids form with a probability of about ½, so the probability of an amino acid forming by chance is about 1 x (½)¹⁵⁰= 1 chance in 10⁴⁵.
- Next, in nature every amino acid found in proteins (with one exception) has a distinct mirror-image of itself. There is one left-handed version (L-form) and one right-handed version (D-form), called optical isomers. Functional proteins only tolerate left-handed amino acids, so we need to square the previous probability – to get 1 chance in 10⁹⁰
- Maxwell Professor of Molecular Biology at Biola University, Douglas Axe shared in 2007 his calculation of the ratio of (a) the number of 150 amino acid sequences that produce any functional proteins whatsoever to (b) the number of possible amino acid sequences of 150 amino acids to be 1 chance in 10⁷⁴.
All we have to do is multiply these independent probabilities together – 10^{90 + 74 = 164}. This is the probability of getting even one functional protein of modest length, from prebiotic soup.

With all of these charges, one could raise the point – “Surely given all the possibilities and chances in the universe, such things could happen?” It’s a fair question, so let’s look at what probabilistic ‘resources’ the universe has to offer.

We can do this by calculating the number of possible events that could have happened since the beginning of the universe. By doing this, we can establish an upper boundary for how many ‘event resources’ the observable universe could possibly work with:
- There are about 10⁸⁰elementary particles in the observable universe, and because there is an upper limit on the speed of light, only those parts of the universe that are observable (i.e., could have affected events on Earth) are relevant to this calculation – as otherwise would be presuming that some events can break lightspeed.
- There are also about 10¹⁷ seconds that have passed since the Big Bang.
- Due to the properties of gravity, matter, and electromagnetic radiation, physicists have determined that there is a limit on the number of physical transitions that can occur from one state to another within a given unit of time. According to physicists, a physical transition from one state to another cannot take place faster than light can traverse the smallest significant unit of distance – the Planck length (10^-33cm), which takes light 10^-43seconds to travel.
This would put an upper bound of 10^{80 + 17 + 43 = 140}possible atomic events/collisions in the observable universe since the origin of the universe. Other calculations have been made, and this is a higher bound, but it won’t help the naturalists’ case.

Using these generous numbers that we have found, we notice that, by chance, the universe does not have enough opportunities (10¹⁴⁰) to even compensate for functional proteins forming by chance alone (1 chance in 10¹⁶⁴). This does not mean that this would be impossible, but it would mean that if it did happen, doing some simple statistical hypothesis testing would show that almost certainly there would have been some other cause ‘helping it out’.

Hypothesis 2: Necessity

A second hypothesis put forward is the ‘necessity’ hypothesis – i.e., that there are some biochemical laws that exert themselves upon matter to make it such that the first cell was physically ‘predestined’. It also claims that chemical processes are deterministic (i.e., always produce the same outputs given the same inputs), and it must prove a couple of things:
1. Reproducibility in Laboratory Conditions
2. That there are multiple pathways to life
  - One may ask – isn’t it sufficient to show just one pathway?
    In a sense, yes, however, this single pathway may just easily be dismissed as a fluke, rather than an inevitable result. If there are multiple pathways – even with different starting points or slightly different conditions – it supports the idea that life will emerge as long as basic biochemical/environmental criteria are met.
3. Predictive models: The hypothesis should produce models that predict the environmental conditions under which life is likely to arise
4. Universality of principles: The hypothesis would need to show that the principles leading to life are universal, applying not just to Earth, but any environment with similar conditions
Multiple models have been put forward to try to propose some form of necessity. Dean Kenyon and Gary Steinman co-authored Biochemical Predestination in 1969, proposing a deterministic model and theorizing that the specific properties of amino acids and other biomolecules drive them to self-organize into complex structures, but Kenyon later retracted his support for this idea, moving toward intelligent design.

Michael Polanyi, a philosopher and scientist, critiqued purely materialistic and deterministic models of life’s origin, arguing that life and biological information cannot be reduced solely to chemistry and physics – for example, the bonding properties of each nucleotide are specified below – the image is taken from Stephen Meyer’s book – Signature in the Cell:

Just as the properties of building blocks do not determine a building, the bases do not determine DNA, and indeterminacy is actually necessary for complexity, because determinism leads to repetitiveness, not specificity.

Another model proposed is by Stuart Kaufmann, who has proposed models based on the idea of self-organization, but Meyer says that Kaufmann’s model doesn’t properly answer the specificity of sequencing itself, but rather presupposes specificity (which is begging the question).

Therefore, necessitarian models do not sufficiently explain the data we have at hand, so the most popular approach nowadays is to merge hypotheses 1 and 2.

Hypothesis 3: Chance and Necessity

The most popular hypothesis today is what is known as the RNA world hypothesis. This hypothesis states that RNA molecules were the first to both store genetic information and catalyse chemical reactions.

Without getting too much into the weeds of things, the RNA world hypothesis needs to show five things:
1. The plausible prebiotic formation of nucleotides and their assembly into RNA.
2. The emergence of functional, self-replicating RNA molecules.
3. The stability and persistence of RNA in prebiotic environments.
4. The formation of protocells that could contain and protect RNA.
5. The transition from RNA-based life to the DNA-protein world.
However, the hypothesis faces significant challenges:
- RNA molecules are hard to synthesize and easy to destroy, especially in aqueous environments, where it can easily degrade through hydrolysis – which means that it is very difficult to replicate such processes as would be expected in prebiotic scenarios.
- RNA-based replication systems are also ridiculously hard and maybe even impossible to create. While some ribozymes have been shown to catalyze RNA replication in lab settings, fully self-sustaining RNA replication with high fidelity is far from being realized.
- The hypothesis also doesn’t explain the origin of biological information. Remember that RNA already has functional information contained inside of it in its nucleotides. So, such models basically presuppose a mix of a random and necessitarian formation of such nucleotides and sequences.
In essence, even the RNA world hypothesis begs the question. If RNA itself needs functional information to form, then this model is almost certainly inherently incapable of explaining the origin of functional information without deferring to random natural processes – which, although necessary for complexity as we have seen, is incredibly improbable on its own.

Ultimately, whether “Chance and Necessity” is able to explain the emergence of life on Earth isn’t really a problem for my model at all. Since I am taking a more abductive approach, all I need to really show in this section is that even if it does, or somehow will in the future – the sheer improbability of these circumstances coming to be on their own is almost certainly enough to rationally justify, or lend credence to a conscious external source of information – especially since information almost always comes from such source.
However low a probability someone would like to assign to such source is up to them – and whether they think this source is a super-intelligent alien is not really my concern, but I don’t think it can be reasonably driven as low as probabilities required by some form of chance hypothesis necessitated by naturalism’s view that the universe operates solely according to natural laws and forces. I think this is sufficient evidence to justify a belief in, at least, one supernatural initial miracle to get evolution started (if it even did) for my model.

#2: The Emergence of Sexual Reproduction

This point is something I’ve thought about and haven’t got a real source for, and not much will really be said here. The problem is as follows:

Naturalistic hypotheses almost always propose the formation of initial organisms that will reproduce via asexual means because sexual reproduction necessitates the existence of multiple organisms that ‘know’ about each other (to reproduce) – therefore needing them to account for at least two reproductively compatible species or organisms. Even if this is not the case, such processes must account for species that, at some point in the past, had some common ancestor that just ‘decided’ (in some way, either through chemical randomness or necessity) to start reproducing via sexual means.

One could propose that two separate ancestor species started copulating with each other and that the organisms on Earth that reproduce this way are descended from this species, but one also needs to account for the probability of such an occurrence given naturalism, given Earth’s conditions, given reproductive compatibility, given probability of ‘meeting’ (i.e., being in the same place at the same time) and other concerns such as survivability of offspring. At the very least, it seems like such an occurrence is much more probable under Theism (“it is not good for the man to be alone”).

There do exist proposed solutions to this problem, but it is certainly not yet solved. For example, the ‘gradual transition’ hypothesis and the belief that early eukaryotes are believed to have first reproduced sexually still suffer from questions relating to the origin of DNA, and specifically the DNA for such a process, which I have proposed above. Although the ‘Red Queen Hypothesis’ suggests that sexual reproduction likely helps species ‘keep up’ in the evolutionary arms race against rapidly evolving parasites and pathogens, the question being asked here is not whether this process is beneficial, but rather how it, presupposing only natural forces and laws, came to be at all. Gradual processes involving incremental steps toward full sexual reproduction such as gene transfer might provide some sort of explanation, but surely anyone can see that this seems to get dangerously close to the teleology and purposiveness of such biological processes which, again, seems vastly more probable under Theism.

#3: The Mind

Firstly, it should be noted that not all naturalists are ‘physicalists’. When it comes to predominantly Atheist viewpoints, there are ‘hierarchies’ of permissiveness when it comes to how ‘material’ people are about reality.

I’ll lean on a very smart Atheist philosopher, Graham Oppy, to define Naturalism for me:

“…there are two bits to naturalism…all of the causal entities that there are natural entities, and all the causal properties that there are natural properties…and the natural entities are just—the properties and entities that are amenable to study by the sciences, very broadly construed, right? So by “sciences,” I don’t just mean the formal sciences and the physical sciences, I mean the social sciences as well.”

For the sake of this post, we can limit the type of naturalism we are investigating to physicalists – those who believe that all that exists is the physical world. The distinction between physicalism and naturalism is this:
- Physicalism states that reality is entirely physical, and therefore entails that reality can be explained by some ‘proper understanding’ of physics.
  - Reductive physicalists believe that everything can be ultimately reduced to physics and physical reality is all that exists.
  - Non-reductive physicalists believe that not everything cannot be ultimately reduced to physics, such as mental states or social phenomena – these phenomena are said to ‘emerge’ from physical processes.
- Naturalism states that the only explanations are explanations afforded by the natural sciences, which could be biology, chemistry, or any other social sciences – not just limiting explanations to physics.
Now, it’s not for me to defend either of these positions, but the reason it is relevant this post is that there are a couple of things that naturalism needs to account for:
1. Intentionality: this would be the ‘directness’ or the ‘aboutness’ of thought toward some object/objective
2. Qualia: this would be the raw, qualitative, phenomenal ‘feel’ associated with experiences and other conscious mental states
3. Privacy: this is first person, privileged, subjective access to one’s own conscious states
4. Rationality: the ability to intellectually grasp abstract and universal concepts and propositions, and apply formal rules of inference
Now, we have already seen that, quite plausibly, the laws of biology cannot be reduced to pure physical phenomena (due to functional information), so it seems that mental properties, which are at least at that level, cannot be reduced to purely physical phenomena also. Therefore, I don’t really have much more to say directly to reductive physicalists.

Moving on to non-reductive physicalists, again, it seems like we don’t really have very good empirical evidence to verify at what point the mental phenomena above really begin to ‘emerge’ – what the dividing line is such that functional information simply ‘emerges’ from a structure or becomes irreducible (at least, presupposing a purely physical reality).

Furthermore, briefly, a physicalist view also seems to struggle empirically with distinguishing what parts of a causal process are actually relevant to an entire causal series.
For example, presume that the mind is purely physical and every thought you have either (1) emerges from some neurons firing or (2) is directly caused by it. To what extent can we really say that these neurons were the sole relevant cause of the thought? Can we not say that the wind that blew, causing your eyes to look somewhere else caused a chain reaction that eventually led to the neurons firing is also equally relevant? In that case, to what extent can we really say that that which is ‘you’ is really just a biological substance – is it wrong to add the wind too? Why?

This seems to conflict with the reality of intentionality and qualia – the truly subjective feel of one’s experience and the directedness that we all experience. Worst of all, it seems to directly challenge the persistence of identity through time. In this case, how exactly would we be able to directly point at something essential that remains with you and makes you “you”, at any point in your life?

There are also difficulties in verifying the relationship between brain activity and mental activity, in that brain scans seem to necessarily struggle with accounting for mental processes. At most, brain scans might be just said to be able to explain the correlation between some phenomenological property and some given brain activity – but it is a large leap to claim that this is a causal relationship. For if it were, the Neuroscience community would likely be screaming ‘victory’ by now.

The points raised are similar to the ‘philosophical zombie’ argument that is popular in the field of the philosophy of Mind, which entertains the metaphysical possibility of beings that are physically identical to humans, yet do not experience consciousness. i.e.,

Premise 1: If it is conceivable that zombies could exist, then it is metaphysically possible that they exist.

Premise 2: If it is metaphysically possible for zombies to exist, then consciousness is not identical to or reducible to physical properties.

Conclusion: Therefore, physicalism is false because it cannot account for consciousness.

Now, one may doubt that conceivability entails metaphysical possibility – and I would actually agree with this person. I think imagination (which is like forming a material mental representation based on sensory information) entails metaphysical possibility, but not conception (which is just forming a notion or idea of something). However, simply the fact that my brain is not numerically identical (i.e., exactly the same as) to my mother’s, yet we both (arguably) experience mental phenomena shows that there is something common between human brains that likely allows for mental phenomena that likely can’t be reduced to physics, or purely emerges from physics. I suppose that the physicalist would need to show (at some point in the far future maybe) what such commonality is that entails such experiences. Now, whether the Zombie argument works isn’t really my point here – rather, I simply want to show the sheer difficulty the natural sciences have when it comes to explaining mental properties through physics or natural sciences alone – Theism seems to have much fewer problems.

As for Naturalism as a whole, well, I think the whole of point 1 can be devoted to providing an evidential argument against it. As I said in that section, if you wish to credit the beginning of humanity’s existence to a hyper-intelligent alien, that is up to you. However, I think later blog posts will help us to zero in on what kind of cause best explains other data.

The Naturalist could always object that ‘we don’t know enough yet’. Of course, but what we do know is that information does arise from conscious agents. Therefore, it seems to make sense that an agent that can impart information in another seems to be a better explanation for the origin of information than some non-conscious agent – especially since information generally degrades over time in a purely natural system – as stated by the idea of entropy in information theory:

As entropy increases, the system becomes less organized and more random, leading to the degradation of information content.

Lastly, a Naturalist also needs to explain our ability to grasp non-physical phenomena such as numbers, propositions, moral values, meaningful symbols and probably most interestingly, beauty – such as artistic beauty or music.

#4: Dominance

This part will be short, and I’ll largely quote from some points I made in my “God doesn’t exist.” post from last year.

It seems quite evident that the pure probability of our dominance over other much-stronger and faster species presuming Strong Naturalistic Evolution and natural selection is very unlikely. When considering dangers, alongside natural disasters – it seems quite interesting that such a resilient, yet feeble species would eventually possess such a strong command over the natural world. Although intelligence is a very powerful trait, I suppose it is dubitable that intelligence alone (1) could have emerged naturally and (2) could have coupled itself so nicely with our other biological qualities to have us reign so supremely.

Ultimately, I think I have given good reason to support why a theistic model of evolutionary creation is preferable to a naturalist version. My argument has not been deductive, but rather abductive. I am not saying that naturalists will never be able to explain these things, but rather, that Theism will likely always provide a much better explanation for things such as the origin of DNA, the origin of sexual reproduction, mental phenomena, and our intellectual dominance.

If you’ve got any thoughts or objections, go ahead and leave them below!

Thanks,

Rookie

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Sources:
1. Point 1 relies heavily on material taken from Signature in the Cell by Stephen C. Meyer
2. The 300 Amino Acid average is taken from Alberts, B., et al. “Molecular Biology of the Cell.” 6th edition. Garland Science, 2014
3. Other sources are linked throughout
On the Origin of Man – 4: Why not Young- or Old-Earth?

Oct 6th, 2024
I wasn’t certain whether this fourth post was even necessary, given that I think I have provided adequate justification for my position in parts one and two. Still, I suppose that there’s nothing wrong with me providing reasons for my not falling into either of these camps.
Hopefully, this post won’t be nearly as long as either of the first two, and most of my justification will be aimed against Young-Earth Creationism (as I have already stated that I am not dogmatically averse to Old Earth models).

Broadly, my reasons are as follows:
1. Unreasonable presuppositions
2. Novelty
3. Empirical evidence
4. Arbitrary stopping points
Unreasonable Presuppositions

The first, and most important reason that I do not fall into either camp is the presuppositions that they impose on scripture and exegesis, especially through their literalism.
Young Earth Creationism specifically holds to both a chronological and literal viewing of Genesis 1. The Bible is very much more a book detailing the story between God and mankind, than it is a book of science.
Now, although I do not believe that it is metaphysically impossible for God to create the world as is literally described in Genesis 1, we also need to be wary of presuming that the Spirit’s inspiration intended to convey that Genesis 1 was literal. This is something I caution against in my first post, explaining the reasoning for my methodology.

Novelty

The following will be a summary of points raised in another excellent video by Inspiring Philosophy and will be directed specifically at Young Earth Creationists. I encourage you to watch his video yourself because the following is a summary.

Secondly, and surprisingly to most, a non-literal interpretative method is not at all foreign to Christianity. Multiple Christians throughout the ages have interpreted Genesis allegorically or figuratively, such as St. Irenaeus of Lyons in the 2^nd Century AD (Against Heresies 5.23.2, 5.28.3), St. Clement of Alexandria (Stromata (Miscellanies) 6.16), St. Augustine (The Literal Meaning of Genesis 4.27).

Of course, the views of the aforementioned Church Fathers do vary, one holding to instantaneous creation (St. Clement), one holding to ‘thousand-year’ days (St. Irenaeus), and one holding to ‘God divided days’ (St. Augustine). Multiple other influential figures in the Church held to allegorical, or figurative interpretations, but the point to be made here is simply that non-literal interpretations of creation are not new within the Church.

There have existed other individuals, such as Isaac Newton, Bishop Ussher, and Johannes Kepler who have agreed that the date of creation was around 4000 BC, however, at the time, the scientific research was very limited regarding the age of the Earth. Thus, these individuals held to this belief because the contemporary evidence supported it, and that was because there had not been research against it.

Around the late Middle Ages, many Christians promoted something similar to what is called the ‘gap interpretation’ of Genesis 1:2. The text says that the Earth was ‘without form and void’ (or, ‘without shape and empty’ in the NET), such interpretation says that this could have been during an unspecified amount of time, during which there was only chaos that was later ‘reworked’ into creation. Some people even thought that this could have been millions of years.

In 1865, Reverend Richard Main wrote:

“Some school-books still teach to the ignorant that the Earth is 6000 years old.… No well-educated person of the present day shares that delusion”

As a matter of fact, in a publication of the Geological Society called ‘Myth and Geology’, Historian Michael B. Roberts writes on pages 47-48:

“Christian thinkers were open to a slightly longer time-scale long before geological evidence was apparent, as may be evidenced by Grotius, Mersenne, Burnett, Bishop Patrick and myriad others in the seventeenth century, who accepted a long duration of chaos and thus ‘deepish’ time, before there was any geological evidence for a great duration of time. And that is without going further back to the broader interpretations of Genesis of the Church Fathers such as Augustine…. Despite the date of 4004 BC being found in many English bibles a strict six-day creation was never the dominant view and was the official position of no church in Europe or America (until the late twentieth century)”

Regarding evolution specifically, multiple Christians, even around the time of Darwin, were supportive and/or saw no conflict between the theory of evolution and Genesis. Examples of such are Botanist Asa Grey, Philosopher James McCosh and Geologist and Mineralogist James Dwight Dana. Palaeontologist Richard Owen and Zoologist St. George Jackson Mivart both promoted their own models of theistic evolution. Historian Ronald Numbers writes in his book ‘The Creationists, Expanded Edition’, writes:

“Even in the conservative south, dominated culturally by Bible-believing Baptists, a number of Church-related colleges had been teaching the theory of evolution for decades.”

This is not to say that there was no Christian resistance to the Theory of Evolution, but it is certainly overinflated by people who are uneducated on the history of this topic. The Christians who left writings behind were largely accommodating to the research that was available at the time.

The ‘Young Earth’ movement, on the other hand, is quite modern.

Within the period of 1900-1950, there was one group that was mostly comprised of Young-Earth creationists – the heretical Seventh Day Adventist movement, who elevated the visions of their ‘prophet’, Ellen G. White, to be on par with scripture. Ellen had a vision that God took her back to the time of creation and revealed to her that everything was created in six, literal, twenty-four-hour days.

Among these Seventh-Day Adventists, was someone called George McCready Price – an ‘armchair’ geologist (as some have referred to him). He wrote several papers and books, arguing that the geological record had been formed as a result of Noah’s flood (which was what God had allegedly showed Ellen after the six days of creation), and he referred to this as ‘flood geology’, and taught that the Earth, and life on it, was 6000 years old, and was created in only six days. As a result, many arguments that Young-Earth Creationists use today date back to Price – not actual geological specialists.

People didn’t really support Price initially. Some years later, Bernard Ramm, in 1954, exaggerated Price’s influence and criticised Price’s ‘flood Geology’ in his book ‘The Christian View of Science and Scripture’. However, this book instead inspired a young theologian – John Whitcomb JR., to write his doctoral dissertation defending Price and his Young Earth views. He tried to get his work published as a book with some backing from Geologists, but they were quite clear that the geological record could not be used to support his interpretation.

Whitcomb decided to contact Henry Morris, who was not a Geologist, but rather, had a PhD in hydraulic engineering. Morris agreed to co-author the book, but since Price’s arguments had been rejected for decades by now, they had to add a ‘spin’ to his work. So, while recycling some of his arguments, they argued that in addition to the Earth being young, that the Universe was young also (Price only argued that the Earth, and life on it, was young, but had nothing to say on the age of the Universe). No Geologist endorsed the book, but in 1961, they had the book published – “The Genesis Flood: The Biblical Record and its Scientific Implications”.

Although scientists themselves saw the obvious rehashing of previous arguments and rejected it as such, the populace wasn’t so well informed, and within about 25 years, the book had sold 200,000 copies. The writers became celebrities, and before long – the word ‘creationist’ quite quickly became synonymous with ‘young-earth creationist’.

Quite simply, Christianity had never dogmatically affirmed Young Earth Creationism, and had been largely welcoming to the contemporary empirical research. Therefore, with this theory drawing much of its influence from a heretical ‘prophetess’, I think I have sufficient reason to reject it.

Empirical Evidence

I have already provided the results of empirical methods in part two to support my belief in the presence of macroevolution in creation, but multiple other lines of evidence can be used to rebut a 10000-year limit on the age of creation. Such are:
1. Cosmic Background Radiation:
  1. This is light that is the oldest and most distant light in the universe. The blackbody spectrum that we can measure with it, with a peak temperature of about 2.7K, is exactly what you would expect from radiation that had been ‘stretched’ or red-shifted over billions of years.
2. Carbon Dating methods:
  1. These methods are used to measure the ratio of Carbon-14 (which decays over time) to Carbon-12 in once-living materials. It is most reliable for samples up to 50,000 years old, but this is sufficient to press charges on a Young-Earth view.
3. The Geological record:
  1. As stated earlier, the geological record does not support a young-earth view. For example:
    
    Radiometric dating: Similarly to carbon dating, this technique measures isotope decay, but it measures it in rocks. The oldest rocks on Earth, found in western Greenland, have been dated to be 3.7-3.8 billion years old. Some zircon minerals in Australia have been dated to being around 4.4 billion years old.
    
    Geological processes such as Erosion, Sedimentation and Plate Tectonics: These processes are slow. The formation of mountains, canyons and sedimentary rock layers through gradual processes like erosion and deposition takes millions to hundreds of millions of years – as evidenced through direct measurement (of erosion and sedimentation rates) and radiometric dating of geological layers.
    
    Stratigraphy and the Fossil Record: The geological principle of superposition states that in undisturbed layers of rock, older layers lie beneath younger ones (which makes sense, right?). By studying these layers, the fossil record has shown a clear progression from simpler life forms in older strata to more complex organisms in recent layers, spanning billions of years.
Many more lines of evidence can be given, and of course, these evidence do not each individually refute Young Earth creationism as a whole, however, they each singularly cast doubt on the premises of the Young Earth movement. From casting doubt on the age of the Earth to the creation of microorganisms and more. Fossil records may even cast doubt on some presentations of Old Earth models.

Arbitrary Stopping Points

Lastly, this specific section will give some extra reasons as to why I currently favour Evolutionary Creation models over de-novo Old Earth models, in addition to the ‘presuppositions’.

I suppose that, simply put, I’m not really convinced with Old Earth models’ answers to the creation of Adam and Eve. For example, if you are going to take Genesis 1 literally, which I think is not loyal to the cultural context of the time, then, to me, it doesn’t make much more sense to not go the whole way and affirm a Young-Earth model, but as we have already seen, there is not strong evidence for it at all, and also, it gained much force from a heretic.

Secondly, many models struggle to answer common-descent and genetic similarities between chimps and humans. Some have responded with ‘common design’, which I think is fair, but again, this just seems to be an arbitrary stopping point. Why use a common design if you are going to affirm a largely de-novo model?
Of course, one could say that I also have a similar arbitrary point with adding God in, but I gave what I think was adequate justification for that, referring to the anthropological ‘Great Leap Forward’ and the sudden increase in human capacities. Further, I also think that there are things that natural processes cannot compensate for, but that is not for this post.

To be honest, there’s not much more in the way of me accepting Old Earth Creationism, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t much in total. The barriers of empirical evidence are quite high, and although the evidence for evolutionary creation is not perfect (for example, the fossil record does have some gaps and uncertainties), I think it is the strongest candidate, and I think I have given sufficient evidence to warrant that conclusion.

Thanks,
Rookie

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~~Sources:~~ Again, are linked throughout the post 🙂
On the Origin of Man – 3: Objections

Sep 15th, 2024
There tend to be some standard objections to models of evolutionary creation. This post will be targeted at responding to them. They would be:
1. Evil, death, predation, suffering and …veganism?
2. Divine Inefficiency
3. “It’s unimpressive.”
4. 6000 years
5. “It’s ad-hoc.”
Are there other objections? Yes.
Is it my intention to respond to every conceivable objection? No.
Not sure what else to say, so let’s get into it!

Objection 1: Evil, Death, Predation, Suffering and …veganism?

1.1. Evil and Death

Prima facie, the first clear bumps in the road are moral evil and death. I mean, it’s common knowledge that Adam and Eve were immortal before they ate from the Tree of Knowledge, right? If death is a consequence of the fall, it seems pretty weird for it to retroactively apply to ‘people’, or any of creation, before the fall, no? The second problem is, how exactly does sin work pre-fall? Does this mean that there was sin before the first sin?

Actually, when looking at the text, the above reading doesn’t cohere very well at all. Let’s take each problem in turn.

1.1.1. Death

The first thing to note is that the text does not support the idea that Adam and Eve were immortal before the fall. There were two important trees in the garden. See Genesis 3:22:

‘ And the Lord God said, “Now that the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil, he must not be allowed to stretch out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” ‘

So, it seems that a better reading of the curse of death seems to be that Adam and Eve lost the opportunity to become immortal with the sin they committed. It seems God would have allowed them to eat of the Tree of Life eventually, but the curse of death was bestowed upon humans, taking from these humans the opportunity to be immortal. Notice that this also implies that the animals (and this would include the non-imago-Dei contemporary humans also) were not given such a grace, or opportunity of immortal life. So, it seems that the Bible instead supports the fact of death before the fall.

One may have trouble that death could have existed before Eden, but it should be remembered, as Genesis 1 stresses, that the world was initially created ‘very good’, but not ‘perfect’. Therefore, pre-fall animal death is not an impossibility.

1.1.2. Evil (Moral)

This is a standard objection to models of evolutionary creation. However, I think those who have read the first two parts of this series, along with my other posts will realise that this doesn’t pose much of a threat to my model. It is also true that when objectors talk about the point of evil concerning these models, they are generally referring to natural evil – that is, disorder not caused by man, but I think it would be good to spell out my thoughts on the presence or existence of moral evil at Adam and Eve’s time, here.

Quite simply, a strong case can be made against the existence of moral evil by appeals to scripture, and understanding what moral evil is. For a longer treatment, one should like to read my response to objection #2 about Hell. Essentially, I think John 9:41 puts it best:

“Jesus replied, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin, but now because you claim that you can see, your guilt remains.””

Jesus makes the point that your ability to evaluate your actions significantly affects one’s culpability concerning sin. Of course, I also quote Luke 12:48 in that post, which says that one who does wrong without knowing fully will ‘receive a light beating’, however, it should be remembered that my model does not even necessarily implicate non-imago-Dei humans with such light beating, since I claim that the imago-Dei itself is what allows one to be morally responsible in the first place. Have a look at part 2 to see what I said. Therefore, non-imago-Dei humans and other animals would not be guilty of sin, and as such, moral evil did not exist.

1.2. Predation and Suffering

About a year and a half ago, I wrote a short piece responding to Cosmic Skeptic/Alex O’Connor’s video – Christianity’s Biggest Problem, which put forward an argument on the incoherence of Christianity and animal suffering. I still think my responses there were good, but I’d like to give a more substantive response here in addition to my previous points.

Quite clearly, the most obvious objection to evolutionary views of creation is the issue of predation and suffering. How could an all-loving, all-knowing God draft up the laws of nature such that animals need to feed on each other to survive? And not just that, how could he have made it such that the manner by which this survival needed to take place would be so gruesome? With animals tearing each other limb from limb, living in constant fear of predators – how could God allow, or even worse, create such an existence?

Now, it seems like the dilemma can be split into two main horns. First is the scale of such horrific suffering, and second is the specific kind of brutal suffering that these animals undergo.

1.2.1 – The Problem of Increased Scale

The first thing to note is that if God has a sufficient reason for allowing a certain animal to go through a certain type of suffering, it seems that ‘doubling’ or ‘tripling’ the problem doesn’t overrule that justification, because that same justification can be repeated for each suffering individual in a similar circumstance (in this case, predation – or predator anxiety).

A more immediate example to explain this would be through vaccinations in humans. If a hospital is justified in vaccinating one individual (i.e., having them go through some temporary pain with regards to the injection and subsequent stiff shoulder), then they are justified in vaccinating a whole population – the increased scale doesn’t do anything to hurt said justification. Now, I know that the specific kind of suffering may be disanalogous to some, but remember, I am currently addressing the scale, not the kind.

Therefore, it seems that if scale really is a problem, then it’s not only a problem for evolutionary creationists, but for all sorts of creationists. If God has no justifying reason for allowing suffering in only one instance of horrific suffering, then all theistic frameworks that assert an omnibenevolent God seem to take a hit. Therefore, I think we can say that the true issue does not lie with the scale of suffering but rather the kind of suffering – since swapping animals out doesn’t change much, as I think the real problem lies with the ‘pain’ we associate with predation and with the anxiety we presume animals go through in the animal lifecycle.

I should also point out that simply looking at one side of the issue is, quite simply, cherry-picking – which is unhealthy for anyone who wants to avoid any sort of confirmation bias. More sufficient reasons will also be proposed in the next section, but in the meantime, I will provide some reasons why scale can also be a good thing. By increasing the scale of creation, God would also increase certain goods in creation – for example:
1. The good of existence itself.
2. The beauty of existence (don’t we say that nature is beautiful sometimes, even with the existence of predation?)
3. The diversity of creation can also be said to be a good thing, as it leads to the diversity of goods that proceed from these created instances.
4. The collaboration (which can be considered a good) it fosters between species – some species are even symbiotic, for example, sharks and pilot fish.
5. This also applies to interaction in general – for example, the more friends you take with you on a trip abroad (at least up to a point), the more fun you can have.
Objection: A person may object that even if God may have sufficient reason for predation and the terror caused by predator anxiety, something like the evil of extinction doesn’t seem to be justifiable at all.

Response: It’s not clear to me at all that extinction is, in fact, intrinsically evil. Although existence is a good, extinction clears the way for new species – it allows more diversity and is a means by which this is achieved. Furthermore, extinction seems to be a subjective problem – as it’s not the case that the animals are suffering themselves when they are gone, but we, who miss these animals. Lastly, well, it was Passenger who said ‘Only know you love her when you let her go’ – extinction also does teach us to truly value things.

1.2.2 – The Inherent Cruelty of Natural Selection

The thrust of this objection seems obvious. I already spelt out the essence of the problem in the introduction, so here I will give a list of, what I think are, plausible and non-mutually-exclusive reasons for why God may have allowed the world to be set up like this – but before that, it might be more helpful to give a more accurate description of what we are dealing with in the first place.
1. A more accurate description of the ecology of evolution
The first thing to note is that evolutionary models don’t require what might be considered a disproportionate amount of violent competition and predation. Of course, I know the term ‘disproportionate’ might be taken as subjective here, but I think we can agree that at the very least for a given population, if more than fifty per cent were predators, then we could have a problem.

The reasoning for this is obvious – not many animals survive solely by eating other animals because if there were too many predators then there would be no animals in the first place – as such, there are vastly more herbivores than carnivores in existence.

This ratio between herbivores and predators is supported by empirical evidence. Predators typically make up a smaller proportion of the ecosystem due to the inefficiency of energy transfer between trophic levels (food web/chain levels), which is about 10%. This low efficiency limits the number of predators that can be sustained by a given amount of prey. For example, a page on Nature.com reads “As predator populations increase, they put greater strain on the prey populations and act as a top-down control, pushing them toward a state of decline. Thus, both availability of resources and predation pressure affect the size of prey populations.”

To respond to the point specifically about predation anxiety – well, I think the proportion of animals that experience this is reasonably low – seeing that ‘constant danger’ incentivises unity (for example, wolves move in packs to protect themselves). This close-knittedness (which could be seen as a ‘good’) would mean that animals would feel more secure living together, as it gives reasons for predators to stay away. Also, one ought to wonder whether it is the case that animals generically experience ‘fear’ constantly. I am not saying that none do, but rather, I am highlighting the distinction to be made concerning a constant state of ‘fear’ as opposed to being constantly ‘alert’. I would argue that the majority of the time, wild animals are more often ‘alert’ – which is not necessarily a bad thing – reasons for which are given in my ‘Robust Creation’ section in section 1.2.2.3.
1. Edenic Justifications
Some reasons can be given concerning stewardship. I already illustrated some reasons in my rebuttal to Alex O’Connor, but I’d like to add some substance to that.

The Prescription to ‘Be fruitful and multiply’

We all know what Genesis 1:26-8 says by now. With phrases like ‘fill the Earth and subdue it’ and ‘rule over…every creature that moves on the ground’ (which appears in both v.26 and v.28), it seems like Eden was the beginning point of a prescription to ‘expand’ the goodness of the garden all over the globe – after all, who ‘subdues’ something that is already perfect?
Reasonably, Eden represented a template or a starting place that humans would expand with God’s blessing as they grew across the surface of the Earth. This coheres well with my interpretation of day 5 in part 1. They were supposed to ‘rule over’ and ‘align’ such disorder, but with the fall, they lost that control they once maintained over nature – which nicely brings me to my second point.

A Didactic Justification

It seems that the disorder we see regarding the evolutionary system also serves as a constant reminder that we are now living in ‘the rest of the world’, as opposed to the beauty of Eden. It seems our souls remember how creation ‘ought’ to be, but we are faced with the consequences of being closed out of the garden, and not having dominion over nature as we were supposed to.
1. General Theistic Justifications
Robust Creation

I watched a conversation between Emerson Green and Perspective Philosophy on this topic, and although I disagree with some of the points Perspective Philosophy brought up, I did find one point quite interesting. Perspective said, ‘God wants to create a ‘robust’, [or ‘mature’] creation’, which in essence, he said, can see disaster, and ‘bounce back’. Now, it seems to me that this is a flavour of the soul-building theodicy, but applied at a macro level, and I like it.
This does seem to apply as a general layer of justification. Although one can point to some instances of alleged cruelty brought about by this system, one can equally view the benefits of the adaptability of the evolutionary system. Animals can adapt to their surroundings and survive disasters – gaining fortitude and diversifying as a result which, as I have proposed earlier, provides its own goods.

Specific Instances of Cruelty

Later in the conversation, Emerson brings up the point that it seems that some instances of suffering have no sufficient reason. For example, a koala bear that burns to death in a forest fire in Australia. I think I can respond to this, but there is one thing I want to clarify first.

God does not owe us anything in virtue of our existence – we do not possess rights in relation to him. Now, this is not me assassinating the predictive power of theism, but just specifying where the nature of God’s actions is grounded. Note that I said ‘in virtue of our existence’ – God’s own existence grounds his actions, and in virtue of his nature, he makes promises and/or obligates himself to do things – not us.

Now, returning to the problem, well, on further inspection, I am not very certain that it is a strong objection, and here’s why.
It seems that although this specific instance likely causes horrible pain for a couple of minutes (and that is not even taking into account ‘shock’) for the dying koala (and similar reasoning can be given regarding animals that are eaten), if we are using a simple utilitarian metric to quantify suffering against pleasure, then what do we say when we take into account the rest of the koala’s life? What about the things the koala has enjoyed (food eaten, things seen)? Are we certain that the few minutes of pain for the koala necessarily outweighs the good that the koala has experienced?
One may object – raising the problem concerning baby animals that haven’t lived very long, but aside from the dubitability of the animal’s ability to properly feel pain (depending on how young they are, of course), the amount of subjective suffering that animal undergoes as they die also reduces – given that the more youthful they are, the faster they die. Further, it can also be that even if there are specific instances such that pleasure is outweighed by pain, at a macro scale, animals experience more total pleasure than evil.

Here, I am trying to alert people to be sceptical of attempts to reduce the pain animals undergo to utilitarian metrics because it seems, as shown, that they can just as quickly count against objectors too.

I also think that my ‘didactic justification’ point could also work here. For those of us who know about such instances currently, or in the past, we are saddened by them – which may be a way of teaching us the effects of original sin, and with the possibility of an animal afterlife – the specific animal might be compensated also.

1.3. An additional retroactive justification?

Some people (I am not one of them) propose a justification that goes along these lines:

“God knew Adam and Eve would sin, so he created the world in that way knowing that it was inevitable”

Now, I do hold that God’s knowledge isn’t causal, so I could use this, but this doesn’t seem to be how God works. At least, biblically, when God dishes out punishment – it is always for things that happened temporally before the punishment. So evidentially, it seems that this solution is not very strong.

Another, and I think, much stronger solution, is to use Alvin Plantinga’s, or CS Lewis ‘angelic fall’ theodicy. Dr. Erkki Vesa Rope Kojonen articulates this position briefly in a video on Capturing Christianity, quoting J.R Tolkien’s story in ‘The Silmarillion’:

“When God creates the world through singing with the angels, some of the angels want to take control of the song. They introduce a note of discord, which brings suffering into the world. However, in the end, God’s greatness is revealed by His ability to weave the angels’ rebellion into His creation song, ultimately making the resulting project even better. Thus, God can create something good out of the evil that the angels intended.”

*note that this is an edited quote – Dr. Rope’s English was slightly broken so I tried to clean it up a bit.

I think this is quite beautiful, and such a theory does have some scriptural support. For example, In Daniel 10:12-14, the angel tells Daniel that his prayers were heard from the first day he began to humble himself before God. The angel was sent in response but was delayed for 21 days by the “prince of the Persian kingdom” until Michael, one of the chief princes, helped him. So, it seems that all of creation is connected, and happenings in the Angelic realm can affect our world and vice versa. It seems that Eden represented an opportunity to turn that tide, yet the opportunity was wasted.

Objection: Now, an objector may raise a point – “Why let it affect us, or worse, the animals?”

Response: One could say that the fact that we are all Creation binds us in one sort of body. Although this infection of Satan led to evil, the good of collaboration can also be seen. For example, in the apostolic Churches (Catholic and Orthodox), there is a practice of ‘invocation’ – which is where the Church Militant (Christians on Earth) are believed to be able to ‘invoke’ or to petition the Church Triumphant (Christians in Heaven) to pray (or ‘intercede’) for them. These Christians also believe that Angels can be ‘invoked’ – and this collaboration does seem to reflect what the Catholics see to be a transcendental good – unity.

1.4. So… should Christians be vegans?

Those who paid attention to my response to Alex O’Connor will see that I claimed that “It seems that God’s final intention was that those in Eden were never supposed to eat animals, and they were never supposed to eat themselves.” But, the interesting question is, does this force Christians into a dilemma?

i.e., If we say humans are allowed to eat animals, does that mean we are introducing the disorder that doesn’t seem to be allowed in Genesis 1? But if we say Christians are not, then how come so many Christians are doing it?

There are a couple of things that can be said. Firstly, it should be remembered that my model does not preclude the possibility that anatomical non-imago-Dei individuals before Adam ate animals.
I would still affirm that specifically in Eden, Adam and Eve were not supposed to eat animals, because it seems that a stronger case can be made for it. For example, humans are permitted in Genesis 9:3-4 to eat animals (in a more kosher way):

‘ You may eat any moving thing that lives. As I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything. But you must not eat meat with its life (that is, its blood) in it. ‘

If humans were allowed to eat animals in Eden, then it doesn’t seem like there’s any point in suddenly declaring something that people were already allowed to do. So, it seems at least in Eden and a little after, people were not directly mandated to eat animals. However, to what extent these rules were followed is unknown.

Quasi-objection: Joshua van Ee, who wrote a dissertation in 2013 called ‘Death in the Garden’, where he examines ‘Original Immortality, Vegetarianism, and Animal Peace in the Hebrew Bible and Mesopotamia’ notes that he thinks humans were originally allowed to eat meat in Genesis 1. He explains that the Hebrew word in Genesis 1:28 for ‘have dominion’ is harsh and includes using animals for food. He also notes that the covenant in Genesis 9 lacks temporal indicators and restates the rights and privileges humans had in Genesis 1, suggesting humans were probably allowed to eat meat before the fall.

Response: To an extent, I can agree with this (i.e., concerning the non-imago-Dei humans), but I’m not sure the ‘temporal indicators’ bit holds that much sway. Though he is sort of right with the temporal indicators (since a word-by-word translation of the Hebrew reads ‘every moving thing that it lives for you shall be for food just as the green herbs have I given you all things’), I’m not so sure how well that coheres with the text. To me, there is quite clearly an implication.

So, it seems we have good reason to think that only in Eden were humans not allowed to eat other animals – but we haven’t answered the question, why are Christians still allowed to eat meat? Is that not still partaking in, and ‘promulgating’ a disordered world?

A couple of reasons (that are not mutually exclusive) could be given:
1. Interbreeding with the non-imago-Dei would likely have introduced more animalistic tendencies among Adam’s offspring. It could be that this is another consequence of the fall. Instead of Eden ‘spreading out’, the outside world ‘overtook’ Eden and Adam’s offspring.
2. Further, it may be that this is a result that follows the ‘loss of vitality’ and God’s presence. This ‘numerical’ loss of vitality is something I will explore later in the section regarding the lineages of Genesis.
3. We can also note Genesis 3:17:
‘ But to Adam he said, “Because you obeyed your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ cursed is the ground thanks to you; in painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.‘

It seems also, that even the ground is cursed, and it’s not a stretch to say that its fertility was likely reduced also. Being allowed to eat animals could have been a mercy to Noah’s descendants that wasn’t available before him.
1. Lastly, it seems that there is always a didactic factor to these happenings. Such a change between Eden and ‘not Eden’ could have been so that Adam and Eve could see the difference between ‘with’ God, and ‘without’. One could also make the point that Adam had some knowledge of the world outside Eden by looking at Genesis 2. Notice God ‘created’ Adam and then he planted him in Eden – maybe, Adam already knew what the outside of the Garden was like before he entered the garden.
Why I’m not a vegan

I’ll be real. I like meat. As of now, I haven’t really done much research regarding veganism, but it’s not exactly clear that vegan diets are as healthy for the human body as a non-vegan diet (which may be an intrinsic consequence of this disordered world we gave ourselves up to). For example, depending on how one goes about this diet you might also have potential nutrient deficiencies, such as vitamin B12, iron, calcium, and omega-3 fatty acids. I guess this is something I’d need to think about more.

Objection 2: Divine Inefficiency?

The next popular objection is another objection of ‘scale’. The objection normally goes as follows:

‘Why would God spend 13.8 Billion Years* creating a ginormous universe only for such a tiny portion (us) to exist? How can we expect ourselves to have any sort of intrinsic value when we are so spatially and temporally insignificant – we’ve existed for not even a blink in the universe’s timespan!’

* debatable depending on who you ask

When I first came across this objection, I thought it was quite potent, but after reflecting on it for a good while, I don’t see the force, and in fact, I think it counts for models of evolutionary creation rather than against it.

The first point is that size also does not unilaterally determine value, so the point about our existence being ‘a blink’ entailing that it has less meaning is just a non-sequitur. For example, if you had watched a two-hour, quite boring movie, but were told that a select five seconds were going to be the most beautiful thing you had ever seen in your life, I think a lot of people would consider watching it.
Of course, one can argue that the analogy isn’t completely accurate, considering proportions and all of that, but that would be missing the point. All I intend to show is that the size of something does not unilaterally decide its significance. If anything, the ‘boredom’ may help to contrast and bring out the beauty. The size of the universe undoubtedly inspires curiosity (if NASA has anything to say about it), it inspires ambition, it inspires humility, it adds to its beauty – I could keep going…

The second point to make is that, cosmologically speaking, the necessary parameters for humans to exist are mind-boggling. There are multiple lines of evidence I could give for this, which I will likely do in part 5, but simply put, the position of the sun concerning the earth, the position we are in the Milky Way, the gravitational constants… you get where I am going. All these factors together do not necessitate life, however, they are necessary for life to even emerge. The point is, that the size of the universe makes our existence much more probable (and this number is still low), but the higher it is, and the bigger the universe is, the more likely we are to come to be.

Thirdly, how God sees time could be debated, for example, 2 Peter 3:8 reads:

“’ Now, dear friends, do not let this one thing escape your notice, that a single day is like a thousand years with the Lord and a thousand years are like a single day. ‘”

So really, the issue about time being significant isn’t even a problem for us, but it’s a problem for God, and that’s if it even is one! If God sees things as one temporal cluster, then size doesn’t seem to have any bearing.

Some classes of objectors, and responses to them:
1. The Young Earth Creationist: I could simply ask you the same thing. Why did God choose seven days, as opposed to one? Why not one second?
2. Those that claim that God ought to be ‘efficient’: One may claim that it is more ‘efficient’ and therefore God would be ‘better’ if he created faster, but to this objector, I simply answer – “What makes efficiency a ‘great-making property’?” Efficiency is only significant for creatures with limited resources, but who needs to satisfy constraints when there are none to be satisfied?
3. The Divine Hiddenness proponent: Another objection may be raised about the size of the universe making it more lonely – and therefore harder to find God. Aside from using the story of Adam and Eve and Didactic justifications to respond to this, I intend to respond more fully to Schellenberg’s argument in due course, but for the intentions of this series, I think it suffices to say that God, now, maintains a delicate balance between people being able to ignore him, and people being able to know him if they search.
Objection 3: “It’s unimpressive.”

This, I think, is a lower-tier objection than the previous one. The proponent generally has some presupposition that God ought not to use ‘natural’ processes to create due to the idea that humans cannot come from other species, or due to some different conception of the imago-Dei, or some other fundamentalist interpretation of the creation story, or some idea that natural processes remove the mystic glow of creation.

Quite simply, I disagree. I have already given a decent sketch of what I think the imago-Dei refers to in the previous part but, if anything, for a mind to so immaculately engineer the laws of nature and fundamental constants, as well as condescend to ‘breathe life’ into his creation seems to flow from the essence of Christianity. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:45-49:

‘ So also it is written, “ The first man, Adam, became a living person ”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. However, the spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man is from the earth, made of dust; the second man is from heaven. Like the one made of dust, so too are those made of dust, and like the one from heaven, so too those who are heavenly. And just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, let us also bear the image of the man of heaven.’

Something about the unity of love between something so holy, large, and powerful, and something so small and insignificant really speaks to me and is materialised in the typology between Adam and Christ explained so brilliantly here by Paul and the incarnation, but I suppose the position one takes here is going to depend on your perspective.

Objection 4: 6000 years

For those who are unaware of this ‘problem’, I will briefly explain it. Essentially, the reason that ‘6000’ years is a popular number for the age of the Earth is that an interesting method of calculating the age of the Earth by Young Earth Creationists, unsurprisingly, is, to sum up all the ages of the people in Genesis 5 and 11, along with the biblical timeline, and presume that that is exactly how many years have transpired since Adam. Ultimately, there are two questions for my method to answer here:
1. How do I understand this chapter, are the ages supposed to be accurate when we have no empirical evidence of humans ever living this long?
1. If the passage is literal, have 6000 years transpired since the beginning of creation? If so, is this not another issue?
Question 1:

Firstly, although the fact that having empirical evidence for these lineages would be helpful, having none wouldn’t unilaterally decide whether a historical event had happened or not – since this problem leans more to the side of historical scrutiny rather than empirical. Essentially, science is silent on whether these characters lived for this many years, so one should be wary about using ‘science alone’ to verify how long these characters truly lived. However, contemporary texts record humans living to about 70 or 80, so even on the historical level, the evidence that these characters really lived that long is not strong at all.

Therefore, I’ll lean very heavily on a video by Inspiring Philosophy to answer that question. I will summarize the points here, but keep in mind that the below is a summary. There is a lot more information in the video and you ought to watch it, as seeing the symbolism visually would be very helpful:

Ancient Near Eastern cultures often used numbers symbolically. Examples include Sargon II’s city wall measurement and symbolic numbers in Babylonian mathematics and astronomy. Similarly, numbers are also used symbolically in our culture, such as saying “My wife is a 10” or “I’ll be there in five minutes” – ‘10’ here is clearly understood to refer to your wife’s looks, and ‘five’ is quite obviously not meant to be the exact length of time within which you expect to arrive. Biblical authors, including those in Genesis, used numbers symbolically.
- One such example includes the heavy use of numerology in the Gospel of Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus from verses 1-16: Matthew splits the genealogy into 3 groups of 14 (1-6, 7-11, 12-16), with each group representing a specific period in Israel’s history – and even more, the letters of the Hebrew alphabet also serve as numbers, the authors sometimes repeat the ‘number’ of a word to draw attention to it. In the case of Matthew, the name ‘DVD’ – i.e., ‘David’ has a numerical value of 14 (‘D’ + ‘V’ + ‘D’ = 4 + 6 + 4 = 14). Matthew’s use of 3 groups of 14 would have quite clearly illustrated to the Israelite audience he was writing to that Jesus was greater than David – but now I’m getting carried away…
Some ages in the Bible, like those of Joseph and Joshua (both 110 years), reflect ideal ages in their respective cultures.
- ‘110’ was the ‘ideal’ age in Egyptian inscriptions, as shown on the Stele of Amenhotep III. Other ages, such as Sarah’s 127 years, combine ideal biblical numbers (120 + 7) and have correlations with other ancient works. The ages from Abraham to Jacob follow a mathematical formula, suggesting symbolic usage rather than literal historical records. For instance, Abraham’s age of 175 combines ideal numbers in the Bible, and his timeline shows mathematical symmetry – for a visible presentation of these mathematical parallels, see here. It would be much better to see the parallels visually.
Various clues indicate the ages of the patriarchs are not literal.
- For example, Abraham’s reaction in Genesis 17:17 to the prospect of having a child past 100 years old implies he did not consider his ancestors’ ages as literal. The sum of the patriarchs’ symbolic ages (using the base 60 counting system) from Adam to Moses totals 12,600 – derivatives of this appear in Revelation 11:3, and 12:6, alongside symbolic numbers of ‘666’ and ‘144,000’. Moses’ age of 120 years is another example of symbolic use, representing perfection in biblical terms.
The genealogies in Genesis 5 also vary between different texts (Masoretic, Septuagint, Samaritan Pentateuch), suggesting the ages are symbolic rather than literal, Ancient Sumerians and Babylonians used a base 60 counting system, influencing the symbolic ages in Genesis 5 and 11. Most ages in these genealogies are divisible by five, indicating a symbolic numerical system. Genesis 5 and 11 genealogies have parallels with Sumerian king lists, but significant differences suggest they were not directly copied.
- For example, Sumerian lists connect with royal succession, whereas Genesis focuses on moral and theological messaging. Ancient Near Eastern genealogies often move backwards in time, emphasizing royal status. In contrast, Genesis genealogies move forward, highlighting human failures and the need for redemption.
Genesis features ten generations from Adam to Noah and Noah to Abraham, suggesting deliberate structuring for theological purposes, much like Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus. Other Jewish authors, like Demetrius and Jubilees, manipulated chronologies to fit theological patterns, indicating a cultural trend. The genealogies trace the line from Adam, emphasizing the need for a new Adam (Messiah) to replace the fallen humanity and restore the covenant with God.

Question 2:

After the substantive response to question 1, I don’t think there’s much more that needs to be said here, but I will still answer the question. Ultimately, ‘son’ does not necessarily entail a direct parental relationship between each person listed. For example, Genesis 10:31 uses ‘sons’, but Shem was not the direct parent of all the people listed – ‘sons’ included grandchildren, so, ultimately, it would be a mistake to see a lineage and assume that the relation between the ‘father’ and a ‘son’ is necessarily parental. I have already illustrated in the previous question that it seems, for theological reasons, Matthew ‘cut out’ people from the lineages in his genealogy of Jesus, and further, with the genealogies varying between different theological texts as I said above, it is not unreasonable for us to think that the ages in Genesis 5 or 11 include everyone in the genealogy – especially with the then generations from Adam to Noah and Noah to Abraham, so the biblical text can be accommodated with my 40000-80000 year model.

Objection 5: “It’s ad-hoc.”

Lastly, I think an objector could even raise the point that I am ‘forcing’ evolution into the scriptures – and therefore, in a sense, committing an ‘ad-hoc’ fallacy. More formally, “An argument is ad hoc if it is only given in an attempt to avoid the proponent’s belief from being falsified.” They might say I am just running from the ‘obvious truth’ – however, this person would (1) be begging the question that my model and interpretation is wrong (and I think I have given sufficient evidence to render my model credible, especially in light of Ancient Near Eastern context) and (2) would be misunderstanding my overall intention concerning this project. I aim to show that an orthodox Christian faith can be reconciled with the findings of the natural sciences, whilst also maintaining its orthodoxy.

Ultimately, it’s not impossible that the theory of macroevolution could lose its evidential force within the next couple of years, as it is possible that we could have a stronger candidate for origins and speciation. Of course, this isn’t extremely probable, but scientists would be the first ones to tell you that scientific theories evolve rapidly and are very susceptible to change – that is fine. My intention is coherence, not a dogmatic claim that ‘evolutionary creation is obviously true’.

Another point to be made is that, like the pioneers of the scientific revolution (which I will discuss in part 6), I believe that there are two books to reality – the book of God’s words (the Bible) and the book of God’s works (creation around us). These cannot be divorced from each other, and ought to be used to understand each other. Whilst the natural sciences tell us things about relationships between natural phenomena, the Bible gives us an account of human character and distinctly human existence, and even some atheists, such as Richard Dawkins and Alex O’ Connor would agree that the biblical doctrine of original sin is at least ‘poetically true’. Their dialogue went as such:

Alex: “When you look at the New Testament, you bring up this concept of exegesis, this interpretation. You describe it as an evil text because it tells people that they’re born in sin. I suppose the implicit question in what you’re saying is, “How can you believe this?”

I’m playing Devil’s Advocate here, trying to explain why someone might believe this. Even an atheist might recognize that there’s a sense in which this idea is, at least poetically, true. We’re all born in a state where we are unable to fulfil the standard that we want to achieve, if you know what I mean.”

Richard: “Yes, poetically, I suppose you could see it at that level.”

Finally, I have other reasons for believing that a Strong Naturalist account of evolution is insufficient to explain human origins or functionality, but this is not the post for that.

In conclusion, I think this post serves as a decent defence of the ‘morality’, or intrinsic plausibility of a model of evolutionary creation, and I hope that those who made it through would agree. As always, if not, go ahead and leave a comment below explaining why, and I’ll try to get to it!

Thanks,

Rookie

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– For once, I’ve linked them throughout the post – so I don’t have to list them here 🙂

RookieApologises

Tag: theology

He is Risen – 2.2: Why name it Mark?

On the Origin of Man – 7: Noah’s Ark

On the Origin of Man – 5: …but why add Theism?

On the Origin of Man – 4: Why not Young- or Old-Earth?

On the Origin of Man – 3: Objections