Dr. Craig Responds to Ken Ham in an Interview with Joshua Swamidass

[Music] welcome to peaceful science we're going to be talking yes about what bill craig has to say to ken ham there's been an interesting exchange online recently and a lot of people are wondering what is bill's response we've gone back and forth a couple times i've heard some really surprising things from bill about this and i'm looking forward to continuing the exchange and sharing it with you but before we do that you may or may not know who bill is you may or not may not know who i am i'm with peaceful science and we're trying to we're trying to really find a better way to engage with mainstream science in a way that that's really trustworthy that really makes space for deeply held beliefs that a lot of us have and we are really trying to treat each other well with humility patience and tolerance and um bill has become a good friend of mine through this we started talking about stuff about related to adam and eve and at first i was a little bit nervous meeting him a few years ago and i really came to have a great deal of respect for him in particular because he hasn't really gone with the flow in a lot of things and when it comes to origins he's really taken a nuanced position the way i'd explain it is that he is a christian that affirms evolutionary science or case that's how i call myself to so i'm case also but basically what i would say is he's a christian that's his identity but he sees legitimacy out there in evolutionary science maybe it doesn't swoll everything whole um when we talk about evolutionary science we don't mean to uh reject god's involvement or providence and common descent we also don't mean to exclude god's direct work in these things and what and that the story might be a little more complex than what science says what i can tell you for sure is that science is not the whole story and um and with that he's been really working out his view of origins his book on adam and eve is coming out really soon just ended up in an inbox i'm gonna be endorsing it really excited about that but how would you fill in some of the details on what i just said bill about our history and how we got here and also uh also what your position is well i remember it was initially at the creation project conferences at trinity evangelical divinity school which were devoted to the subject of human origins and uh it was striking to see you in these meetings standing up and arguing with the the speakers concerning certain positions they had taken and it was very clear that you were a force to be reckoned with and as well i don't think it offended anyone i just think that uh i really want to make sure science is represented correctly in the church it doesn't do us well to deal with strongman versions of it right right you were polite uh but intimidating um and uh so i was struck by this fellow uh there's this tall indian i'm so glad this is on tape everyone heard it bill craig is intimidated by me yeah and uh but but i found you to be uh as you say very congenial and very helpful to me personally josh i've been so grateful for the way you have helped to guide me through the science uh on human origins well i have to say that i i was also a little bit timid about you i mean i've heard about you a lot and have a great deal of respect for you i'm an indian we care about our elders you're a little bit my elder here bill oh and uh and i was also nervous you know because i've experienced a lot of rejection in the church because of what i believe about evolution and i didn't know what to expect from someone who set connections to you know positions that i haven't always treated me well and i got to say you treated me with great kindness we've not always agreed on things but what i did see is that you were coming to the table with real honest good faith questions you saw some legitimate science but you had some questions and it wasn't making sense and it turns out actually when it comes to the population genetics and adam and eve where you were just pressing on it you know you were vindicated a lot of your work well yeah you know i couldn't have done it alone i mean i think there's this point where uh a lot of the work i did early on was just ignored by people who didn't want to acknowledge that they made mistakes and uh you seeing what was there seeing how connected to what was going on while you were doing and it isn't even necessarily my perverted position of out of me i'm just trying to get the science straight right yeah and um i think it was honestly providential and i think it's easy to throw that term around um but i do think that you came into my story just the right moment and it seems like i came into your story just the right moment too very much so yes and we uh i think we we were able to do something that i think is really beautiful it's one of these moments where i think questions from theology i think have legitimately altered how many scientists understand and interpret the scientific evidence i wouldn't go so far to say that all scientists were wrong or something like that i mean i do have questions about how some have represented it but it was a detail that hasn't been really well looked at by science and um and i think the theological questions that you brought to the table and we tried to take seriously i think of a legitimately advanced scientific knowledge and that is not something that can be said of very many philosophers or theologians wouldn't you say well yeah i do think that c.p snow was right in his famous essay to cultures that those in the humanities and those in the sciences live in two different worlds and neither understand each other nor communicate with each other and so this kind of interdisciplinary dialogue is difficult uh but so fruitful for those who engage in it oh deeply rewarding and i think in part because it's so rare i think the relationships that have formed through this i mean frankly you've become a dear friend to me and i think it's mutual i don't know oh yes of course are you still intimidated by me i don't think so no no i think that uh it was that just that initial impression the way you stood up in that meeting and rebuked john bloom who was supported yeah i mean well let's move past that and you know you might want to follow the story maura there's a couple things i can point you to if you look at the comments i mean or the the description of this particular um uh this particular video you'll see links to uh uh a preview chapter from uh beau craig's book also a little bit more um some of his comments from ets a couple years back on near theistic evolution and we'll kind of explain more of the nuances of physician i think one of the common grounds that bill and i have found is that we're kind of between the trenches i mean there's certain people we've had better connections with and and others like we've you know bill is probably a lot more uh connected to people in the intelligent design movement through his connections to biologos and others then i am i'm a bit more seen as a friendly and sometimes not so friendly critic depending on how they see me that day um and uh we've also become very good friends with reasons to believe but in the end when i look at where we are we've really found ourselves in the no man's land between the trenches i don't really think that there's any um i mean we kind of break some of the molds don't we yeah i do think that's true and i'm very eager to see what the reaction of non-christian scientists would be to the proposal that i put forward in my forthcoming book i i don't know that they will read such a book but i dearly hope that some of them would and i would be so interested to hear their reactions to it well i think that that would be something really valuable let's see when the book comes out um you know we should explore and see if some people would really want to support maybe doing a small little um you know online workshop with someone like ian tattersall and maybe yeah and um augustine fuentes that could be a really really good conversation so you know if you want to do that you know get involved and let us know and maybe it'll happen i would be really curious honestly but as you've gone public on this i mean for most of your career you really focus on mere christianity no christian is going to argue with you about your arguments for the resurrection i mean they might on an academic level but no one's going to come out and um and and you know call you out as a as a false prophet for that right no um likewise on you know the your work on the cosmological argument you do talk about the big bang and old earth but i think even young earth creationists realize that that's has like common goal with things that they really care about right yes and you've had some nervousness and some caution i think rightly so to enter into uh the conversation on adam and eve right and i think it's because of the fear of maybe something like this happening with ken ham calling you on we're gonna get to that right now some people are like okay what did ken say and what did bill say that's what people are saying in the comments we're gonna get to that right now but go ahead what what that's been some of your uncertainty right not really josh i'm pretty immune to what people think and say about me that is almost immaterial to me rather my concern was that i don't want to stray in the theological error and my concern in that sense is the same concern as ken hams i don't want to do anything that would undermine theological orthodoxy or the truth of god's word and so in exploring this very difficult subject i had to be very circumspect to um to see how this this inquiry would turn out yeah and you know as a person who watched you go through this i have to say from my point of view it's not that we agreed all the time i'm not saying this contingent agreement i'm talking about your process i saw a lot of integrity in it and that that was why i decided to work even more closely with you devote time and energy to it and why i'm very proud to endorse this book i think that type of integrity is important but anyways let's get to the main event here i think it's really interesting exchange that we can have about this so back in december says december 16th um ken ham posted this first comment now he posts another comment early january because he got a bit of heat for this but let's step through this and i'm going to read it out loud to you and give you a chance to respond to it and tell us what you think about it so we online craig is held up by many as a great apologist for christianity but the fact is he represents one of the major problems with much of the church and most christian institutions do you want to start there or do you want me to give you this no no let's get into the specifics watch his short video and see a pseudo intellectual arrogance that mocks god and his word and instead exalts the word a fallible and sinful man above god's holy infallible word his he is destructive to the church and will have to give an account to god for his blatant compromise of god's word and for leading many astray yeah now here ken ham launches an attack not on my view but on me personally he questions my personal character he accuses me of being a pseudo intellectual uh and of being arrogant and with respect to the first i think that is just easy to refute uh i publish with the finest academic presses in the world and in peer-reviewed professional journals there's nothing pseudo-intellectual about the scholarship that i'm engaged in and ask for arrogance this is a very very serious personal uh charge to make against another christian because that's a terrible sin and character fault the bible says that god resists the proud but gives grace to the humble and if i thought for a moment that i were arrogant and that god was opposing me i would step down from christian ministry josh i would step back and get out of the public arena and try to put my spiritual house in order before ever daring to be a public representative of christ again so i take this charge of arrogance with extreme seriousness uh and and just pray that this is not the case uh but that with humility i can conduct an honest inquiry and i think if you read my work you'll find that in no way is this mockery the idea that i would mock god and his word is just an astonishing uh personal attack uh i want to exalt god and to submit to the truth of scripture and my struggles with the historical adam are precisely an attempt to do that so i think that this sort of personal character assassination is quite uncalled for yeah i think charges of arrogance are very hard to uh to address because they are ad hominems there's no way to make direct proof either way about your personal intentions and heart either but you know he did say that you mocked god that is something that he can that you should be able to produce comments in which you mock make fun of god i don't actually see any of those comments he made comments that you made fun of that you mocked god's word so that's just blatant falsehood too right i think so so that's i think i think that that you that you're right on that so let's take this little bit farther because it does get sensitive and more substantive here and i think this is something you also want to explain a little bit more to people craig claims and this is i think what he is trying to say is mocking god and his word which i think is just you think there's just no way to claim that what this is what you what you're doing here if this is even accurate representation is mocking god in his word craig claims that a genre analysis indicates genesis chapters 1 through 11 are not literal and historical that is totally his opinion based on nothing in the bible if he had never heard of evolution he would never think such a thing about the genesis text his main thrust is to compromise the pagan religion of evolution in millions of years with god's word he's helping atheists undermine the word of god and capture the minds of generations of children now this is a more substantive paragraph unlike the first paragraph which was a personal attack this one is a criticism of my view and is therefore welcome and what i want to say to our viewers today is that my analysis of genesis 1 to 11 is not just totally my opinion based on nothing in the bible in fact quite the contrary it is based upon a detailed painstaking analysis of the text of genesis 1 to 11 while bracketing modern science so that science does not dictate uh your analysis of the type of literature that genesis 1 to 11 is and to claim that chapters 1 and 11 are not literal and historical is comparable to what virtually everyone says for example about the book of revelation the book of revelation is not literal and historical when it talks about a beast or a dragon sweeping the stars from the sky these this is jewish apocalyptic literature which is filled with symbolic and figurative language and so i'm simply suggesting that these chapters are also not of a type of literature that is meant to be read in this sort of literalistic way and that is not based on opinion it is based upon a careful examination of the text now as for the charge that if i want to hit 1.2 okay i said that you're that you're saying that genesis 1 through 11 are not historical as i recall you think it is historical well that's a good point josh i was focusing on the word literal but you're right i do affirm the historicity of adam and eve and the other persons that are involved in the primeval history i call it a primeval history but i simply say that the the story is told in figurative language so thank you for that correction and i think also something that seriously undermines this point he's saying the only reason why you're not taking it literal and historical obviously you are taking it historical but you're not taking it literally is because you need to not take it literally to to be consistent with evolution in millions of years but as we know you can take genesis literally and be consistent with evolutionism that can't be a logical motivation to do this because a literal reading is consistent with genesis so what's going on there not only that but when he says if you'd never heard of evolution you would never think of such a thing about the genesis text that's demonstrably wrong because the church fathers oregon and augustine had never heard of biological evolution or darwin and yet they advocated a figurative reading of the text uh much as i do so what he's claiming alongside a historical region right you're not saying exclusively no i'm i'm saying that certain aspects of the narrative are in figurative language yeah even though it's about real people that actually lived and that's what oregon and augustine thought as well well that's i mean that makes sense to me oh one last question point here he kind of ends by saying i think this is a pretty strong statement i want to get your response to it he says woe to the shepherds i think meaning you who destroy and scatter to the sheep of my pastor declares the lord jeremiah 23 1 are you a shepherd who destroys and scatters the sheep of god's pasture well i i i don't think so josh i have met so many people who on the contrary have been put off from christian belief and have even become atheistic because they couldn't bring themselves to believe that the world was created in six consecutive 24-hour days somewhere around 10 000 years ago so those kinds of people i am providing help to to enable them to embrace christian faith without committing what they would think to be intellectual suicide and so i mean it really does come down to whether or not the way i would phrase it in my parlance is you know is jesus greater than origins i mean if he is then it shouldn't matter if we disagree about details of genesis you know the fact that people come to jesus and this actually we don't i mean honestly it seems that even if you're entirely wrong and i was a young creationist watching this i should be able to say you know what bill craig you've taken away some stumbling blocks from people because even if they're completely wrong about origins and evolution they should still follow jesus yes that's right and you have made a way for many people to do that so i thank you for your work even though you're totally wrong about the age of the earth i think you're confused about that but hey maybe that's even providential that god's blinded you to that so you could really help these people that seems like a far more christian position a thoroughly grounded position that understands that jesus is greater right yes i think that's right we need to be united on the essentials and then have charity to one another with regard to the non-essentials so i think this is really critical so my critique to throw it in of ken ham is that i think he's forgotten what the cornerstone of the faith is he's forgotten what the foundation is um when he talks about jesus he talks about how everything falls apart if you don't get genocide even jesus and the resurrection will go away yeah years ago josh i saw a young earth creationist poster that was very telling it had a picture of two castles on two islands and the people in the castles were shooting cannons at each other fighting and the one castle was christianity and the other castle was labeled something like secularism or atheism and the foundation of the uh one was called evolution and the other one the foundation of christianity was where creation comic do you know where that image is from no ken ham says that that is the visual mission statement for answers in genesis i see this is actually the way how they it is it bears out the point you were making it is it is such a misunderstanding of theological priorities to think that christianity is based upon the doctrine of creation and that atheism is based upon the theory of evolution it it almost stands things on their head well my concern with it seems to be in direct contradiction with a literal reading of scripture that says that jesus is a cornerstone i know i know for goodness sake i mean i thought he was the cornerstone he was the first stone laid and he's a capstone too isn't he he's the last one and yeah the keystone the cornerstone that the builders rejected paul says no foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid which is jesus christ yeah i mean it's funny i've talked to atheists and you know peaceful science peaceful science includes a lot of atheist scientists and it's really interesting to see some of the responses to ken ham i mean um at our at our uh forum a lot of them have actually come to your defense and it's been interesting to see some of their theology they get it they know they know that christianity is grounded on jesus not not rejection of evolution not earth creationism right i gotta say um in different ways maybe um they might agree with me saying this or not i'm not talking about specific people right now it really does seem that jesus is still compelling i think that there's something that draws that that makes sense about him even when we can't figure everything else it really i see a great deal of wisdom about how everything scripture points to jesus if he's the foundation that's what he's going to make sense of the old testament he's the one who makes sense of the new testament and so much more and you know without him it just doesn't really make much sense and i think sometimes when i was dealing with creationists before i even knew who ken ham was i kind of fell to the same trap of thinking other things needed to fill that place that if that didn't wasn't there if my understanding of genesis wasn't there then everything would fall apart and i think i was just wrong yeah anyways let's get back to the second comment now so what happened is um let's see here what happened this is on january 5th he got a bit of heat and it's a much longer comment um it's interesting on several levels he talks about spurgeon and turns out you weren't the only one he called out bill he also called out that details yeah and it'll be fun if phil i invited phil to join us sometime to give a response to ken ham it'll be really interesting if he does there's a really brilliant video that phil did uh on some of this and i think it's worth looking at but setting that aside he he jumps into this a bit more and when i forwarded this to you to talk about what struck me about it actually is that you immediately said oh i actually agree with ken and a lot of stuff on this one oh this is great so tell us on this one what do you agree with here you probably want me to read this section here right um i don't have that on the screen in front of me uh josh i wanted to point to the uh comment that he makes that many of the comments we received were very encouraging but some were very negative yeah so now many of the comments we received were very encouraging but some were very negative attacking me for calling out dr craig and fisher on their compromise claiming it's unloving to publicly dispute their teaching and claims after all these yeah wait wait if we if i might interrupt i think this is very telling because um he did not so much publicly dispute my teaching and claims as attack my personal character and that's what the people were disagreeing with him about it is not true that they said it's uh that they said it's unloving to publicly dispute a person's teaching and claims for example luke nix was one of the posters who said i agree with can ham that genesis 1 to 11 is history and not mytho history however it does nothing for the body of christ to attack the character and or motives of a fellow brother in christ who disagrees with us we need to address his evidence his reasoning and his conclusions in a respectful and loving manner so i'll push back on you on that because i've looked and seen some of your exchanges i'm not going to name the scholars at times you actually have called out people for dishonesty uh have i yeah there was a if you recall i emailed you about this once there was a secular physicist who had exchanges with a cosmologist he didn't represent those emails well you actually publish them on your website and explain why you thought oh yes i mean that that was a uh that was not merely talking about your disagreements you were you were talking about his character no i don't think i was i don't think i was attacking his character though that may have been implied what i was saying was that he deliberately doctored this quotation it was it was lawrence krauss who doctored a quotation from alex phil lincoln and showed it publicly on the screen and what i did was i simply showed the original quotation after you put back in the parts that krause had deleted and it showed a very very different uh viewpoint from professor balenkin uh so in that case it i i i was again i was disputing what he said i i wasn't just attacking him making a character attack you were i think presenting evidence that made very clear a problem of character well it yeah yeah i i agree it did make that problem clear so i mean that was that was a non-christian i was an atheist yeah should christians do that with other christians or is that something we should which is never certainly no no i mean if if one were guilty of deliberately misquoting someone deleting portions of his words to give the wrong impression we should definitely be called out on that and i want to agree with can ham that we should publicly dispute the teaching and claims of people that we think are wrong but i don't think that ken is able to distinguish very well between attacking a person's views and attacking a person's character even in the way he characterizes these responses from people like luke nix he says that they attacked me for calling out dr craig that that's not what luke did he didn't attack ken ham personally what he said is that we need to address a person's evidence reasoning and conclusions in a loving and respectful way and not attack his character and motives and i think that's absolutely correct you know see this is why i think this matters i mean the reality is is that there is dishonesty out there at times you have to call it out but we need to be better even when there is dishonest people talking with us we have to be better when there's real significant disagreements on things that matter in a way especially because our society is so divided we have to be better we can find a better way to do this than just uh than just posturing publicly and saying stuff like this right yeah yeah i mean i got it on as an aside you know i mean i'm i'm 41. uh you're a little older than me is it worse now than it used to be like what's going on oh well certainly civil discourse has become very very divisive for example it's very common today to accuse people of lying not just being mistaken but deliberately lying it didn't used to be that way back in the 70s and the 80s but i guess it was probably under the clinton years that political discourse uh just became really really ugly and so now it's common to hurl around these accusations of being a liar rather than simply saying you're mistaken or you're wrong so i do think that the political discourse especially has gotten really uncivil in our day yeah this is going to be this is going to be a challenge for us i mean far beyond origins i mean the church is really going to i think i think honestly the greatness of jesus is often very clear when christians that disagree find a community that doesn't depend on agreement yeah where we can actually we can actually find our common ground in that cornerstone even though we disagree on significant things and if we give up on that i think we're giving up on far too much yes that's so true isn't it i mean as the church of christ we are to exhibit the sort of unity of a brotherhood of love that doesn't attack each other personally so it's what i'm hearing though is something else that i want to make clear it sounds like you're saying you're welcoming them to come and give you a thoughtful informed valid critique of your work right that's exactly right and in this second blog that he posted he asked the question he said should we not speak out when we see professing believers teaching doctrine that is opposed to scripture and his answer is no doctrine matters and i want to say a healthy amen to that i completely agree with ken ham that when we see doctor elaborations we need to identify them refute them and correct them as best we can so this gets to i think a key way how christian community is supposed to work it's very hard to root out our own mistakes by ourselves right that's true because we all think we're right look i have like i have a major flaw in my writing it's called typos i make typos all the time and you're in the middle of going through like the final pre-free of the book right now of your book right now i don't know are you good at catching your own typos pretty good although i've got some help as well i i have two other people who have eagle eyes and so after i've proof read the manuscript i send it to these fellows and see what they can catch and and it is amazing how they find things that i overlook well i don't find it amazing because i'm pretty i'm pretty bad i got to tell you when it came to writing my book the hardest part about it was going through and catching the typos and and i think we failed like about four pages in our errata just full of typos you know people who don't publish uh would be shocked at how bad a job the editors do of proof reading your book uh i got to say it's far easier for me to catch typos on something else than when something else is written yeah or someone to catch it to mine right yeah but these editors very typically don't see it so anyways i think that's a good analogy to help us i think here's a question i have for you like if ken ham and some of the people in his inner circle were willing to actually dialogue with you more substantively about this to really explore what scripture really teaches and this basic is would you be willing to do that oh yeah very much so in fact you know josh as you know one of the follow-up projects i'm engaged in is proposing a four views book on the historical atom that would include not only your proposal and my proposal but would include some young earth creationist author defending uh that view so i am eager for dialogue with uh folks who hold to the more uh traditional view yeah i hope that the dialogue really grows i think um you know i have many friends that are young earth creationists have many family members that are there i think a lot of people give up on them and think that they're really beyond reach and they're hopeless but i i actually have found really great connection and friendship with them i think that there's an opportunity for a really meaningful exchange um my concern when i look at young earth creationism is setting aside the scientific disagreements i mean everyone knows what those are um and you know probably the biggest issue is honestly this theological issue when at times sung earth christians but jesus is the center i mean i'm actually they don't put jesus at the center they put creationism at the center but beyond that sometimes young creationism can be very insular they don't um really engage with people who think differently have you seen oh oh i have in the effort to find a participant in my four views book that would defend the young earth creationist position uh i had i approached two prominent exponents of that view and they both would not participate in the book unless certain conditions were fulfilled that were i think quite unreasonable and so there is a kind of insularity and suspiciousness that characterizes this community so let me give you a second to just pause i'll get out of the way i'll put you on the center screen here can you um give uh aig and ken ham and his community like just a clear invitation that you really hope that they'll take to dialogue with you about this in a way that makes sense for them sure i want to say that what i put forward is merely a proposal i am not dogmatic and i would welcome any dialogue uh concerning um this proposal that i put forward on the historical atom i want to hear from those who disagree well that's great and i want to say that you know ken ham when you get around to watching this and everyone from your community just you know we're not the enemy i don't think you're the enemy i'd really love to have you in a conversation with us about this let's talk about it let's resolve it you know show us where where we've gone wrong and we'll listen to you and here come talk to us we want to engage wouldn't that be fun you think it'll come i don't know we'll see so let's go through this a little more what other things though did you see here i think his very last paragraph was worth uh focusing on because it's another point of agreement he says should we judge what other christian leaders believe yes we should always judge what we and others believe against scripture and notice my emphasis on the word what we should judge their views their positions their arguments he says and yes we can and should judge in summary he says we love the creator his word and his church our fellow brothers and sisters in christ too much to allow believers to unknowingly or knowingly compromise god's word so we will follow the admonitions in scripture to call out false teaching even when it is taught by someone who appears to be a genuine believer it is loving and it is the right thing to do and i would applaud that and second that we must never allow doctrinal error or theological compromise to go unchallenged because of our affection or respect for the person who is an error we need to identify to refute and to correct as best we can those errors uh that are committed regardless of who commits them so it sounds like you're not objecting to the fact that he called you out you're objecting to the fact that it was personal and it wasn't substantive and you want to engage on the substance of them exactly i thought his second post was so much better than the first one the first first one was very nasty frankly he was attacking my personal character rather than my views but after being challenged by this luke knicks um he really changed his tune and i thought made some really good points in this second post well that's great so there you have it you know you have some common ground with ken ham i think a lot of people weren't expecting that so you know when i think about this um you know i mean it's really great first of all thank you for coming on and giving your response to this i do think that there's like an underlying question or tension that's been hard for the church that's bigger than just this exchange between you and ken i think we've really been struggling and wondering how it is that the church is supposed to relate with mainstream science now of course no one will say even the earth creationists will say that they have no problem with science rightly told and they would tell you science rarely told us young earth creationism right so science per se isn't the problem it's rather mainstream science things like the age of the earth and potentially the common descent and evolution of the animal kingdom and particularly the possibility of evolution and common descent among humans that's that's where you know a lot of christians have really struggled some have really thought that we need to take an oppositional approach some have have taken an approach where sometimes it just feels like it's just agreeing with everything that science says and some people have called that compromise or capitulation and some people trying to kind of mark out some sort of middle way what do you think the right way is for christians to engage with mainstream science well i think we have to treat mainstream science with tremendous respect when scientific evidence supports a view powerfully then i think we have to take that very seriously and if we really believe that scriptural teaching is in contradiction to what is firmly established by science then it seems to me that we're going to need to have to have radical revisions in our doctrine of inspiration in some way so that for example the theological truths of scripture would be inspired but the um scientific husks would not for example take the let's let's make this clear for people do you feel what you've encountered science has required you to go down that path yet no so to be clear you're talking about this hypothetical if we ever encountered conflict that could not be resolved for example suppose as something suppose we came to believe that genesis actually teaches that there is a solid firmament over the earth like an inverted bowl and the stars are engraved on this solid surface if we really came to think genesis taught that it seems to me we would have to revise our doctrine of inspiration it would be futile to reject modern science and say well there really is such a solid surface up there and science is all wrong and somehow the astronauts going to the moon got through it and uh it but it's really there we would have to say no what genesis is doing is that it's expressing theological truths in obsolete uh ancient scientific terms that don't need to be uh taken as part of the the doctrinal content of scripture but as you as you just and of course some scholars have gone that way but i think both of us would argue that they didn't had they didn't have there's nothing in science that actually pushed them there and there's really nothing in scripture that pushed them there they went there but they didn't have to would you say that's correct yeah that that is correct and that's the position i take in the book that one can be fully in accord with what modern science has to teach about human origins and believe in a historical adam and eve who are the progenitors of all mankind so that's the position that i'm defending but i'm just thinking hypothetically here about the relationship between science and and and scripture that if we did come to the point where we thought that something taught by scripture i mean how would you know though if the science how would you know if the science was really solid and it was correct well this is important because you really had some strong feelings about the idea of you know adam and eve and for a long time people were telling you that the evidence just totally rolled it out now they were totally wrong there wasn't really any scientists out there that really queued you into the fact that yeah you actually had a point so so you know but you kind of wear a holdout there so what's going on with that well i mean there are some scientific um views that are so incontrovertibly established by multiple lines of evidence that it's indisputable for example that we that the earth is not flat suppose somebody came to believe that the bible teaches a flat earth i don't see how anyone could fly in the face of modern science and say the earth really is flat rather than roughly spherical or again the firmament i don't see how anyone could maintain his intellectual honesty and say that the stars are engraved on a solid surface somewhere above the earth so there there there comes a point at which one would have to say that certain facts are so firmly established scientifically that if the bible did contradict that you would have to change your view of biblical inspiration such that these uh portions of scripture don't belong to the inspired content of scripture but are simply part of the obsolete husks of if that happens if that hasn't happened for you no if that happened would there still be good enough reason to follow jesus oh of course i mean i know what's at risk exactly what excuse me then what exactly is the risk then i mean it doesn't i didn't say that actually the fear factor that we should be having on this compared to a lot i didn't say there was a risk i mean a person who holds this view for example would be the great british christian philosopher richard swinburn swinburne distinguishes between the doctrines of scripture and the presuppositions of scripture and he says very often the scriptures will presuppose an ancient obsolete worldview of science but this isn't part of the doctrinal teaching of scripture it's just part of the um cultural presuppositions that they had at that time and i think that that's a perfectly credible um and i think we would all agree with it with respect to certain things for example when jesus says the mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds i don't think any of us would say that's an error on jesus part because he's not trying to teach botany or when jesus says the moon well the way how it stated in the chicago statements on inerrancy a statement of literalism to be clear so this is not um this is not even going to figure at a point of view they would address that and say well scripture doesn't speak with scientific precision it speaks in a more colloquial way and jesus doesn't entirely correct that yeah and that's why josh again to come to my hypothetical i said if we came to the point that we believe that scripture taught something that contradicts scientific fact then we'd have to make some kind of revision such as swinburne does because that's what he he thinks that there are things that are in scripture that are unscientific um like the firmament um and so forth um but i don't think that we're at all to that point i would agree with the chicago statement that jesus isn't trying to teach botany or that when jesus said the moon will not give its light jesus probably thought the moon was luminous uh that's what you would think phenomenally but i think that's just phenomenal language it's not meant to be a scientific statement about phenomenologically just means speaking from the point of view of human perception yeah it looks like it's it's giving off light that doesn't mean that scripture is teaching that it's producing its own light and it's not reflecting it gotcha that's not what it's that's that's not what it's doing it's completely true that the moon gives off light even though that's not the mechanism scientifically yeah right one criticism i think that you're going to get i want to hear how you respond to it because i know you're going to get this from ken ham in fact you did you know one deficiency in your model so it will be said is that it makes space for evolution we know a good approach would challenge evolution it would challenge the mainstream mccloud account should that be how we think about this are we trying to find things that that challenge directly and show that uh that large parts of science are wrong and if we don't then it's a problem i would say only if scripture compels you to do so and i think the difference between me and ken is that i don't think scripture compels you to close the door on evolutionary theory um i think that's a scientific question not a scriptural or theological question so um i i just don't confront that that dilemma you know it's funny i remember we talked early on about your book and we because we're talking another book adam in the genome the subtitle of that book is reading scripture after science and both of us were kind of like wait a minute that doesn't sound right and the way how that book is structured is that the first half of the book is science right and then the last half of the book is scripture yeah and uh you know this isn't meant to be a bigger view of that book and that's not the point but there's just something in terms of that structuring that just didn't sit right with us you want to explain that right i i think that that approach would be guilty of what ken ham charges me with namely using modern science to impose it upon the text of genesis and interpret these ancient texts and light of modern science and that is why to the contrary i bracketed anything that modern science says about human origins to look directly at the text itself and to see what is the text saying how did these ancient authors understand these texts and how did their audience at that time understand them and that's where i argued that there are lots of clues in the text that this was not meant to be taken as a kind of literalistic uh historical account so you started with just looking at scripture and then you moved to science to be in dialogue with it yeah exactly exactly and that's why he's so mistaken when he says that craig's view is based on nothing in the bible it's all about imposing uh evolutionary theory on the bible that the thing about it i think this is where ken maybe is misidentifying because i think maybe many ways how christians have approached evolution have done exactly what he accused you of that's possible right yeah actually i make that point in the introduction to the book i'm pretty hard on some of my christian colleagues i say there are all sorts of fanciful interpretations of genesis that have been motivated by the attempt to make it compatible with modern science the idea that the young earth creationist might be right in his interpretation is so unthinkable that these exegetes do backflips to come up with interpretations of the text that would be compatible with science and i think that's quite illegitimate you've got to bracket that scientific question how would you describe the right approach is that that we're supposed to read are we supposed to engage with science after reading or read scripture alongside science or what i think the first thing you do is to treat these texts as ancient pieces of literature and try to exegete them using historical grammatical method analysis of the literary type that it belongs to is it poetry is it history is it genealogy what is the literary type and then to compare it or and then to read it in context and then to read it in the cultural context of the ancient near east and that will help us to understand how and then do what with science engage with it dialogue with it yeah and then engage with it yeah that's right i take take what scripture teaches and then say all right is this view is this teaching of scripture is this defensible in light of what modern science has to tell us i think that's right i think that's a great way to put it you know instead of reading uh scripture after science we want to read scripture and understand what science has to say and try to make sense of everything together i think that's what that's how i understand it but i want to come back to a very early analogy abroad and then and bring you a question based on that you talked about how interdisciplinary dialogue is hard you're right brought out the question of the blind man and elephant you know i'm an indian again here you know that that's an indian analogy right and it's about it's it's about um but that isn't all the characters right the story is that there's like in this court that are watching the uh the the blind men and one of them holds like the ear and thinks that it's like uh you know cloth other one holds the tail thinks it's like a broom the other one grabs it the the um grabs the uh you know the leg and thinks it's a trunk and you kind of go down the list one of them grabs a trunk and thinks it's uh uh well the trunk of a tree i meant before they dries the trunk and then and and they're arguing each other right and they're stuck and this is all from the point of view of the king's uh court now one wrong illegitimate way to look at this is not to say well there is no real truth but the fact of the matter is that there is an elephant yeah and in the original story the king is standing on the balcony watching this he has the objective perspective on what's going on that each of the blind men lacks so i think that's a very apt analogy for many things i think it's a beautiful analogy for how it is when it comes to one person interpreting scripture another person looking at science yeah another person looking at a particular theological tradition you go down the list where um that certainly there's going to be people who are not honest like they or they're just deeply confused they touch them and they're grabbing like a peach tree and they're talking about what that is rather than the elephant okay that can happen um and there can be people who are there as confederates trying to make a problem but quite a bit of very intense passion disagreement i think yeah and just grabbing onto different pieces of the elephant right it's it's different parts of the elephant that we're grabbing onto and as you can tell our viewers josh specialization in science has become so intense that i have found that say paleo neurologists are clueless when it comes to say ontology or to paleogenetics these areas are so specialized that often even the scientists aren't talking to one another and are ignorant of what's going on in the other field so it's not as though there's a theologian with one hand on the elephant's leg and there's a scientist over here rather it's there's a biblical scholar there's uh a systematic there's a paleoanthropologist there's a paleogeneticist there's a lot of people going on in this dialogue you gotta have this very rowdy community of people that i think what's so hard about it is that it's not that they're ignorant they've actually taken a hold of something that has some legitimacy to it but they might be ignorant of what the other person's to hold up exactly we have to be able to realize that there's limits to what we know and maybe there's a way it all fits together so here's the question i have and then there's one more really good question that came up in the in the in the comments that it's a hard one i'm kind of curious to answer it and then we'll be done and first of all i want to really thank the audience for coming along with us this long it's been fun um but here's the question i have i think it's been important for those of us who've come this far as we kind of think about these really challenging debates and frankly it's not just about adam and eve it's not just about origins it's also about politics it's also about race it's about a lot of things in society right now right you know the blind men are there fighting tooth and nail how do they sit down and talk to one another and come to understand that there's an elephant how do they move to the king's perspective what do they do yeah well let me tell you what i try to do i try to talk with and read the work of those who specialize in other fields i spent a lot of time digesting scientific literature in some of the most recognized fields of human origin studies that one could imagine and then try to clear it you were having a real blast in it you're having a lot of fun oh i'm just i feel like a kid in a candy shop i i'm learning so much i mean what would i know about ancient dentition and the importance of tooth enamel growth for human origins and yet it's critical uh so things like this are it's a wonderful dialogue if you can read the work of people in these other fields and then ask them questions i regularly email physicists and biologists and geneticists and so forth like yourself with my layman's questions and say can you explain this to me i don't see sitting on these and i got to tell you over and over again i've seen secular scientists we don't know what the religion is but most of them are probably atheists respond to you with such kindness and clarity um as did you josh i mean i hounded you for a while with emails about the genetics because i just it wasn't something i was familiar with well i mean that was a place like i said where there was some genuine things that people had missed and you know and that was fun so that's what you should do i think what you're saying to phrase to reframe it or to restate it is that that we need to listen to each other we need to read each other across it and say okay so i have this and i understand this but can i see what you're holding too can i touch it and look at it maybe tell me about it and let's just think about it together and and i and i think you also raise a question of question raise the issue of questions and i would say that a really key thing that we need to be very good about uh whatever expertise is is actually taking good faith questions seriously and engaging them i would courage honesty and uh you know rigor so the final question the one that i thought was really good this is the last one it's a fun one and then we're going to end and once again i really want to thank you for joining and you know i hope you'll uh i hope you'll uh join the channel uh subscribe to our mailing list at peacefulscience and pretty soon we'll also have the transcript out for this exchange as well oh okay but the question was it was from uh it was from a guy who asked like if you were to guess i said this is a guess okay there's no theology hanging on this okay and in some sort of so we're asking you to confess your personal beliefs this is just a wild guess and it's a playful question if you were to get a time machine and be able to travel back to jesus in jerusalem and ask him is evolution true or not what do you think he would say oh i feel quite certain he would say what do you mean explain it to me i've never heard of it and then you would have to lay out for him the theory we must not think of the incarnation as superman disguised as clark can't so this gets back to like some andrew locks stuff and then and the hidden and the cryptic incarnation that jesus actually laid aside some things he laid aside some things when he became uh you know you know a human amongst us yes that's right and there's no reason to think that jesus would have been able to answer questions let's take the thought experiment further you explain it to him what do you think he would say then oh well um i hope he would say well i guess i don't see any conflict between that and what moses teaches in genesis yeah okay so here's another question then let's say we get to heaven we see him now we're not going back in time we're going forward in time oh you're working here before me bill um and you'll probably know before many of us watching so you can kind of give us like what your bet is on this and we find out together you ask jesus you know is evolution true like did you make things to process a providentially governed common descent what do you think he'll say i'm not sure he would be committed to common descent past the cambrian explosion um but i i think that he would say that a great great deal of the biological uh life forms that we observe today are related by common descent what about human common sense do we share common ancestors with the great apes what do you think he would say of course this is all highly speculative right we don't know see when you say what would jesus say what you're really asking is what does the evidence indicate because that's what we're trying to surmise see i think he would do something different i think he would answer kind of like with when people asked him about taxes i think that we would come to him with one answer and he would know the answer we'd be like hey that wasn't the most important thing to me oh well now you're being clever uh josh i mean well jesus was clever i'm trying to say he would give a clever answer okay yeah and and yeah he could be clever like that and evasive but i i think what the questioner wants to know is what really is the truth about these matters um and and and i suspect the truth is some place close to what i suggest in this book about human origin well there you have it um i think what a great conversation bill it's always a pleasure i think that we're gonna find out soon um if there's a way for you to communicate past you know you know when you go see the lord you know find a way all right don't write me off so quickly josh i hope you'll be right hey tell us did you take the copa vaccine i gotta fit no i gotta finish this systematic philosophical theology first you're gonna take the covet vaccine right um i don't know um i have uh an allergy to bee stings and insect stings and i've been told that people with allergies maybe shouldn't be vaccinated well we'll talk about that um okay if you can shed any light on that i would be very welcome yeah we gotta make sure you stay alive as long as possible okay i would say i i hope that you outlive me but i'm too young to say that bill i mean that would be really sad at this point life is uncertain josh yeah um well i mean maybe it wouldn't be so sad um i think my wife would be sad though i think my kids would be sad oh yeah it's it's the tragedy is for them for you it'd be great to go home to glory so with that once again thank you all for joining us it's been fun and i hope you enjoy the conversation with us again soon don't you leave bill we're going to talk a little bit talk to you later guys

Channel: ReasonableFaithOrg

Views: 26,640

Rating: 4.8146067 out of 5

Keywords: William Lane Craig, Bible, God, Jesus, Jesus Christ, Apologetics, Christianity, Theology, Philosophy, Existence of God, Genesis, Adam and Eve, Evolution, Creation, Man, Humanity, Mankind, History, Atheism, Universe, Existence, Anthropology, Biology, Joshua Swamidass, Peaceful Science, Ken Ham, Adam, Eve, Church, Religion, Science, Genetics, Archaeology

Id: eu74IfXUsQw

Length: 65min 36sec (3936 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 17 2021