No Sean it is written in the Scriptures. According Genesis

Comment on Believing the Disproven – An Adventure in Science by Sean Pitman.

No Sean it is written in the Scriptures. According Genesis 6 account the flood was all about the spiritual beings or Angels (bənê hāʼĕlōhîm) mating with human women and generating men of renown that manifest some of the supernatural; the risk of course being that they would perhaps eventually become immortal maybe by a process of back-crossing which would remove all traces of mortality.

Oh please. The “sons of God” statement here is a reference to those who still worshiped God – not to angels mating with humans. This passage in Genesis 6:1-5 twice describes the Nephilim as being “men”, using two different Hebrew words. It does not use the Hebrew words used to describe angels. Beyond this, Adam was called a “son of God” after all – as are Christians who follow after Christ (Luke 20:36; Romans 8:14; Galatians 3:26, Psalms 82:6). Jesus also explained that angels are neither male nor female and therefore could not have mated with humans even if they wanted to (Luke 20:34-36 and Matthew 22:30). Also, Mrs. White clearly explains this passage as follows:

For some time the two classes remained separate. The race of Cain, spreading from the place of their first settlement, dispersed over the plains and valleys where the children of Seth had dwelt; and the latter, in order to escape from their contaminating influence, withdrew to the mountains, and there made their home. So long as this separation continued, they maintained the worship of God in its purity. But in the lapse of time they ventured, little by little, to mingle with the inhabitants of the valleys. This association was productive of the worst results. “The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair.” The children of Seth, attracted by the beauty of the daughters of Cain’s descendants, displeased the Lord by intermarrying with them. Many of the worshipers of God were beguiled into sin by the allurements that were now constantly before them, and they lost their peculiar, holy character. Mingling with the depraved, they became like them in spirit and in deeds; the restrictions of the seventh commandment were disregarded, “and they took them wives of all which they chose.” – Ellen White, Patriarchs and Prophets, p.81

This is obviously the most reasonable meaning of the text and consistent with the overall claims of the Bible – to include the comments of Jesus about the reasons for the Flood and how the evils that resulted in the Flood will be seen again in this world just before the Second Coming.

And you wonder why I suggest you do not parse me correctly. How can you imagine I have no concern about empirical evidence when I have said repeatedly that I work as a scientist and have applied that method to understand the world using a process of hypothesis testing experimentation and publication which are the core activities of science.

As you very well know, I’m talking about empirical evidence as an integral part of religious faith. You clearly reject such a concept and define religious faith as equivalent to post-modern wishful thinking. I think you’ve made yourself abundantly clear in this regard.

You either have to have a very lay superficial knowledge of everything or your genius must be astounding to have read the primary literature in all relevant fields of knowledge.

I have in fact read a great deal of literature on a number of topics. I’ve especially studied the potential and limits of the evolutionary mechanism in great detail over 20 years. I dare say I know something about it. And, I don’t really care if you or anyone else agrees with me. If you don’t have a counterargument that makes sense to me, I’m not going to say that your position makes sense when it doesn’t – given what I’ve learned about the topic.

Beyond that you are being a little duplicitous to suggest that post-modernisms of subjective nonsense when you are yourself are using post-modern arguments in your criticism of any aspect of the enterprise of science with which you disagree. In you enthusiastic attack on “conventional” science you claim that there are biases and a world view involved in the practice of science. Indeed there are as has been recognized both by Kuhn and by a post-modern writers such as Lyotard.

There’s a difference between recognizing biases and arguing that biases cannot be overcome or that in reality no absolute truth exists nor can anyone learn about or approach these external truths that exist outside of the mind in any kind of objective manner. That’s the difference between my position and the self-contradictory claims of postmodernism.

You imagine that a post-modernist who discounts the value of dominant meta-narratives must per se discount the value of the scientific enterprise with its search for models of reality based on naturalism and empirical evidence and discard it as simply subjectivism. This shows your lack of appreciation of what science is as a human enterprise or the eclecticism of post-modernism.

If by “eclecticism” you’re arguing that many postmodernist aren’t consistent, I agree. You seem to function just fine outside of the strictly postmodernist mindset in your lab, but not so when you’re talking about religion and suddenly start using wishful thinking once again without an appeal to anything in the empirical world. For you, postmodernism is like a light-switch that you can flip on or off at will.

As you will see from reading the text there is not really much distance between Kuhn who you seem to enthusiastically accept and Lyotard.

Many of the things Kuhn said did indeed seem to be supportive of the postmodernist viewpoint. Kuhn did describe science at large as a subjective enterprise where nothing happens until there is a sudden and dramatic “paradigm shift” within the scientific community. For example, Kuhn himself argued that ideas that have been rejected by contemporary science (that heat, for example, is caused by phlogiston or that mental health is regulated by humors in the body) have been rejected not because they were wrong but because they no longer served the needs of scientists. In other words, the truth is up for grabs. There is, according to Kuhn, “no standard higher than the assent of the relevant community.” Kuhn compared paradigm shifts within the scientific community to the switches in perception put forward by “Gestalt psychology” (like the popular example of a picture that is seen as a duck suddenly being seen as a rabbit – identical to the picture of the young woman and the hag that you previously presented as an illustration of your “gestalt” ideas of truth).

I would argue, of course, that this is an irrational view that attacks the whole rationality of the sciences or the basic usefulness of scientific methodologies at large – and opens the way for extreme subjectivity. However, I would agree with Kuhn where he argues that a popular “paradigm” is often upheld within the scientific community in an authoritarian manner. In this sense, Kuhn compares scientific groups to the ruling classes of Orwell’s “1984” where anyone who disagrees with the dominant scientific paradigm is “read out of the profession.” I believe that this is what is happening with the paradigm of neo-Darwinism and even philosophical naturalism within the scientific community today.

Also, Kuhn did seem to modify his postmodernist views of science over time. Kuhn did actually believe in absolute truths and a reality that exists outside of the mind. Kuhn actually objected to purely relativistic arguments and insisted in “The Road Since Structure” that the world had an objective existence. Kuhn even argued that scientific exploration is bound by the nature of that world. I would argue that same – that there are indeed subjective biases that should be recognized and efforts should be made to overcome these biases, but that it is actually possible for the honest seeker for truth to discover and learn, even on an individual basis, more about the world that exists outside of the mind regardless of the personal or collective biases that may also exist.

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Believing the Disproven – An Adventure in Science

God given gifts are not what we receive from Adam after his sin. The work of the Holy Spirit comes by way of the atonement and if there was no atonement, there would be no “God given gifts.”

The promise of atonement was in existence from the foundation of our world and “from eternity past”. That is why Jesus could tell Adam and Eve that He would immediately step in and provide the necessary “enmity” between us and evil that would enable them and all of their offspring to resist evil and cling to God. Jesus’ sacrifice on the crossed reached into the future as well as the past and took in the entire human race…

No parent would agree with this statement. Children have no feelings of guilt until and unless they are taught right and wrong. And this process begins immeadiately at birth as mother’s begin the process of instruction.

I am the father of two small boys (5 and 3) and I can tell you by my own experience that you’re wrong. Very young children do inherently know right from wrong on a very basic level without having to be taught about what to think or believe and do experience guilt without having to be taught about it. Beyond this, you are ignoring the scientific studies in this regard. It’s been established experimentally as I’ve already pointed out to you. You also ignore what Paul said in Romans about the heathen having the law written on their hearts so that it is “natural” to them even without having ever read or ever hearing the written law. According to Paul they instinctively know right from wrong…

Believing the Disproven – An Adventure in Science
Again, the basic ability to recognize love and exhibit love does not “have to be taught” by parents. A child will also naturally feel guilty for doing harm to another – without the need to be taught about feeling guilty for doing wrong. On the other hand, if you were correct, those who did not have good parents, or had no parents at all, would have an perfect excuse before God for why they didn’t choose to act lovingly toward their neighbors. They would feel no guilt or remorse for anything wrong that they did. After all, according to your argument, no one is born with a conscience – or an inherent knowledge of any kind of moral right or wrong to any degree. You claim that the conscience does not exist at all before one is taught, by one’s parents. You claim that there is no way to know right from wrong unless one is taught by some outside source of information. However, in reality, no one has such an excuse because all are in fact born with an internally-derived conscience regardless of the goodness or training, or lack thereof, of one’s parents.

It is a studied fact that a very young child naturally knows what is right regarding the Royal Law of Love on at least a very basic level… and is naturally attracted to it. This knowledge is hardwired – by God. That is why, yet again, Paul described this ability among the heathen as “natural” – not something that they had to learn from their parents, but understood by having the Law written on their hearts by God (Romans 2:13-15). This Biblical claim is actually backed up by modern research that shows that very young babies do in fact have an innate sense of right and wrong (Link).

And, Ellen White also speaks of children having a God-given conscience that must be considered in their training. They are not like animals that are born without a conscience:

The training of children must be conducted on a different principle from that which governs the training of irrational animals. The brute has only to be accustomed to submit to its master; but the child must be taught to control himself. The will must be trained to obey the dictates of reason and conscience. – Ellen White, January 10, 1882

So, here we have a child being born with inherent God-given gifts of both reason and conscience. Such gifts are created as internally-derived gifts by God. Call it “hocus pocus” of you want, but God is in fact a Divine creator who is well able to create such gifts with no less ability than He is able to create the universe or the complexities of the living human body. Therefore, it is not the parents who create the original ability for “enmity” against evil within their children. Parents do not get the credit for this basic ability to judge right from wrong. After all, it is God who said that He is the one who would create this enmity against sin within the human race (Genesis 3:15). He did not leave this up to us to create within our children. It is God and only God who creates the conscience in each one of us. Our responsibility toward our children is to train them on how to apply, maintain, grow, and guard their God-given gifts of reason and conscience. We nurture the plant that God has made, so to speak, but we did not create the original seed from which the plant was made able to grow.

Believing the Disproven – An Adventure in Science
You’re confusing different concepts. I’ve already pointed out that it is a miraculous act on the part of God that we are able to recognize the beauty of holiness and be truly free moral agents – despite being born with fallen sinful natures. Your problem is that you believe that this information, the knowledge of the goodness of love, is taught and must be learned over time. This just isn’t true. It is given by God as internally-derived information that is indeed “written on the hearts” of all mankind – from birth.

It is only because of this that Paul argues that the heathen “naturally know” right from wrong (Romans 2:13-15). Paul specifically claims here that God has made this knowledge part of everyone’s inherent nature – an internally derived truth that is completely natural or internally derived and need not be learned over time. And, this “natural” gift of God isn’t “hocus pocus” any more than any other miraculous act of God. Your argument that the heathen are taught various truths that have been handed down over time (such as the truth of marriage for example) doesn’t hold water. For example, there are many non-Biblical forms of marriage observed by various heathen cultures. What the heathen do naturally recognize, however, is the goodness of the Golden Rule to do unto others as you would have them do unto you… the Royal Law of selfless love for one’s fellow man.

Consider, in summary, that it would be impossible to even recognize “objective truth” without a pre-existing internal moral compass by which to determine truth from error. How do you know “the truth” when you see it? How do you know how to judge right from wrong? You only know because you’re given a conscience from birth that guides you toward the moral truth when you see it. It is this compass, this enmity against Satan, that has been supernaturally implanted by God, from birth, in every single human being.