What Genesis really means in the modern era

Wired.com

The biblical book of Genesis is often at the forefront of discussion about the origin and nature of humankind. But Genesis is poorly understood, even among those educated within the Judeo-Christian civilisation, even among churches, especially those outside the mainstream. 

Scholarly scrutiny of the the language and culture of the biblical world is a relatively new field of study. The mainstream churches have largely kept pace with this, but those who follow Martin Luther and his contemporary rebels in upholding a literal reading of the text have been left floundering.  Those churches that have maintained adherence to the principled traditions of historical Christianity have been open to the light shed on scripture by literary scholarship and so have been able to learn how God's message to humankind is conveyed in the Bible by means of the language and culture of each writer. God inspires the writer to capture theological truths, not  necessarily scientific truths.

A valuable account of how Genesis should be read has been given by the Catholic Archbishop of Singapore, William Goh. In expressing the Catholic viewpoint, his main point is this:

The account of creation is certainly not historical or scientific in today’s terms.  The book of Genesis presents to us two different accounts of the creation story.  It is not concerned with the question of how creation came about.  The author is not interested in physics or the question of evolution.  These are not the questions of the author.  So if we read the creation story to discover some scientific truths with regard to how creation came about, we would be disappointed or worse still, impose on the authors our understanding of how creation came to be.  

Rather, the purpose of the creation story is to reveal to us the theological truths of creation.  They reveal to us who we are, our identity and place in creation, our relationship with God and with the rest of creation.  Most of all, they reveal to us the divine plan of God for humanity, which is to share in His life and love.  But [Genesis] involves taking us into the mystery of God’s creation, evoking wonder; and contemplating His majesty, evoking adoration.

[Therefore], the author does not seek to explain creation.  He is certainly aware that it is contradictory to speak of creation of the sun and moon (Gn 1:14-16) when light was already created on the first day.  (Gen 1:3) Furthermore, how could we speak of the first and subsequent day when sun and moon were only created on the fourth day, a day implying sunrise and sunset?

 The author wants us to know that light is not even dependent on the sun and the moon.  Indeed, if God is the creator of the world, when was darkness created? It seems to pre-exist before creation and so too the water!  “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.”  (Gen 1:1f) Clearly, the author is not dealing with the questions of science, the “how” of creation but the “why” of creation.  Science deals with the “how”, theology deals with the “why.” The creation story is meant to lead us to God, the mystery of all mysteries.  

Yet even in the mystery of creation, there is a certain order and contingence. God placed some kind of order in creation itself.  Hence, the author speaks of creation in stages.  There are natural laws in place to protect creation.  The author describes creation as systematically structured around the theme of six days, concluding with the seventh.  Indeed, God is seen to bring order and form into creation gradually, moving from preparation on the first three days to completion in next three where He then created the sun and moon, followed by the birds and fish; and then vegetation and living creatures.  The climax was reached with the creation of human beings, male and female in His image.  (Gn 1:27) Creation therefore has its own natural laws.  Indeed, there can be no science if there is no rationality in the created world.

The question is, where does this order in creation come from?  There must be a Mind controlling and ordering creation.   It cannot be nature itself.  Someone must have put order into creation.  Even for us human beings, where does our reason come from, if not the fact that we are created in the image and likeness of God?  In other words, the author wants us to arrive at this truth, that the entire creation is dependent on God.  God is the Reason in creation.  This is why, in the creation account, the world is created by the Word of God. 

Each day of creation is prefaced by the words, “God said …”  The Word is the Logos, the divine reason for creation.  St John speaks of creation as coming from God through Christ.  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.”  (Jn 1:1-3) St Paul in his letter to the Colossians, wrote of Christ, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers – all things have been created through him and for him.  He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”  (Col 1:15-17) 

The questions that arise about the nature of humans, questions spurred these days especially by the findings of astrophysics and neuroscience, are only the latest that have been intriguing thinkers for millennia. Over the centuries, Christians battled whatever offended reason but have taken on board may have been useful insights into the human predicament and our relationship with God:

Since the beginning, the Christian faith has been challenged by responses to the question of origins that differ from its own. Ancient religions and cultures produced many myths concerning origins. Some philosophers have said that everything is God, that the world is God, or that the development of the world is the development of God (Pantheism). Others have said that the world is a necessary emanation arising from God and returning to him. Still others have affirmed the existence of two eternal principles, Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, locked, in permanent conflict (Dualism, Manichaeism). According to some of these conceptions, the world (at least the physical world) is evil, the product of a fall, and is thus to be rejected or left behind (Gnosticism). Some admit that the world was made by God, but as by a watch-maker who, once he has made a watch, abandons it to itself (Deism). Finally, others reject any transcendent origin for the world, but see it as merely the interplay of matter that has always existed (Materialism). All these attempts bear witness to the permanence and universality of the question of origins. This inquiry is distinctively human. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, #285) 

As to the scientific studies of the modern era:

The great interest accorded to these studies is strongly stimulated by a question of another order, which goes beyond the proper domain of the natural sciences. It is not only a question of knowing when and how the universe arose physically, or when man appeared, but rather of discovering the meaning of such an origin: is the universe governed by chance, blind fate, anonymous necessity, or by a transcendent, intelligent and good Being called "God"? And if the world does come from God's wisdom and goodness, why is there evil? Where does it come from? Who is responsible for it? Is there any liberation from it? (284)

Such matters are not to be passed over lightly, because they give rise to the basic questions that people throughout history have asked themselves: 

"Where do we come from?" "Where are we going?" "What is our origin?" "What is our end?" "Where does everything that exists come from and where is it going?" The two questions, the first about the origin and the second about the end, are inseparable. They are decisive for the meaning and orientation of our life and actions. (282)

NOTE: Archbishop Goh's reflections are not archived. His latest are at this website: https://www.catholic.sg/archbishop/scripture-reflection/ 

Salvador Dali and the beauty of science Part II

Salvador Dali produced breathtakingly original works of art. What makes him all the more interesting is how he combined his religious belief with care over scientific principles that he incorporated in his work.

See this blog’s examination of this fascinating aspect of Dali’s intention to reflect the wonder of the world through the mathematical design of a piece or the imagery deployed. For example, the complexity of juxtaposed images and the perspective shown is clear from this work, The Ascension:

Are we witnessing the splitting of an atom or activity of a human cell? One answer:

What we do know is that directly behind the ascending Christ figure are the florets of a sunflower – a natural design by which Dali was intrigued, because its continuous circular pattern follows the laws of a logarithmic spiral – a naturally occurring phenomenon he also found in the horn of a rhinoceros and the morphology of a cauliflower.

That comment refers, of course, to Phi, the golden matrix, that figures in so much of the natural world. For more on that topic, refer to this book The Golden Ratio – The Divine Beauty of Mathematics, which is by Gary Meisner, creator of the Phi website .

Drawing for Crucifixion

However, the “divine beauty” of Dali’s works, based on his use of mathematics, receives attention in the United Kingdom’s Guardian website here. The article points out that:

"The study for Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus) shows how he explored a depiction of the cross as a tesseract, a hypercube with eight cubical cells, which is thought to have been inspired by the work of the 16th-century Spanish mathematician and architect Juan de Herrera."

A conclusion to be drawn from Dali’s practice is that art and science are embellished by religious belief, not diminished – and vice versa.

The human cost of technological 'progress'

Facebook and Google have been centres of attention over the past week, not because of accomplishments but because of the insights provided as to how top-echelon enterprises fail in the moral or social spheres.

Under the headline “Facebook’s news blockade in Australia shows how tech giants are swallowing the web”, Jennifer Grygiel, Assistant Professor of Communications (Social Media) & Magazine, News and Digital Journalism, at Syracuse University, writes, “Just because advanced technology exists doesn’t mean it’s helpful in all situations or good.”

After the Christchurch, New Zealand, massacre of 51 Muslim worshippers in 2019, Grygiel was also able to identify where technology breakthroughs can have a devastating impact on society. The point of her article at that time is summed up in the headline, “Livestreamed massacre means it’s time to shut down Facebook Live”.

As to Google, it has been hauled over the coals since late last year for being more concerned over profit than the welfare of its staff and the true good of the public. The strife has been articulated by a Guardian journalist in this way:

“Google has recruited top scientists with promises of research freedom, but the limits are tested as researchers increasingly write about the negative effects of technology and offer unflattering perspectives on their employer’s products.”

Therefore, as a particular technology begins to hold sway in society it certainly is a fruitful exercise for the principal players to stand back and offer a transparent view for all to see and understand what kind of difficulties are arising. Those difficulties have to be taken seriously.

In a simple form, “multiple studies have found a strong link between heavy social media and an increased risk for depression, anxiety, loneliness, self-harm, and even suicidal thoughts. Social media may promote negative experiences such as: Inadequacy about your life or appearance.” This last point seems to be especially true for girls.

From a wider perspective, there is growing interest in the “’rules, norms and governance’ that should be applied to social media and technology companies”.

In the same way, the personnel working at developing technology, whether in the medical field or agriculture to name but two areas of concern, must have focused attention individually on the ethics of the direction they are taking. They must decide where the common good lies.

Taking such steps follows in the path of the 70 Manhattan Project scientists who signed nuclear pioneer Leo Szilard’s petition imploring President Truman not to use on Japan the atomic weapons they had developed. Unfortunately, Truman never got to see the petition before he made his decision to reject realistic alternatives and to kill in the order of 200,000 civilians.

With technology these days having an impact so widely and quickly, there's a clear case that all the smarts and beauty of technology do not negate the need to be alert as to the consequences of what can be done. There's conflict in working out where the boundaries of technological and scientific activity lie, but it is imperative that we accept that not everything that can be done should be done. 

After the populations if Hiroshima and Ngasaki were annihilated, Robert Oppenheimer, leader of the Manhattan Project, told Truman, "I have blood on my hands". 

Reductionist scientists called out in public arena

Those we might call public intellectuals often seem alert to the over-reach of science. They point out cases where conclusions are extrapolated from data that cannot bear the weight. For example, James Wilson, a British writer and researcher, has this to say:

James Wilson

"Compared with the last crop of scientists who dominated the airwaves, [that is] the New Atheists – who kept picking philosophical fights they couldn’t win, and scolding the rest of us for being so stupid – the giants of Silicon Valley are not only awe-inspiringly brilliant, but appear refreshingly positive and optimistic." 

However, in speaking about Silicon Valley’s engineers, Wilson admits that “the vision of the future to which they are leading us terrifies me” (Read more here). He means the futurists are making the familiar mistake of viewing the person in terms of mechanical reflexes. 

On that point, Adam Gopnik, writing in the New Yorker, speaks out about how scientific reductionism cannot scale the heights of a person’s hopes or desires, for example. With a mocking tone, he writes:

The language of behaviourism and instinct can be applied to anything, after all: we’re not really falling in love; we’re just anticipating sexual pleasure leading to a prudent genetic mix.

The reductive mindset cheats the person of due recognition as being in possession of a range of capabilities that transcend the material.  That mindset is a disabling factor when it comes to recognizing reality, as examined in a previous post.  A final word:

We need to see the secular materialist epistemology [the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion] not as the ground of truth, but rather a “take” on truth. It is a powerful epistemology, one that can do great things, especially in science. But it is not and cannot be a complete way of knowing. We need to be careful not to let the cultural hegemony that secular materialism enjoys in our post-Christian culture gain the upper hand. Respect it for what it can tell us, but don’t give it more credit than it deserves. (Read more here)

                                     – Rod Dreher: journalist and author 

Dawkins, Pinker can't avoid critical peer review

 This blog has previously examined the ideas of both Steven Pinker and Richard Dawkins because they have been among those with high status in the world of ideas in the last couple of decades. However, their thoughts are wide in reach but limited in value because both are in the thrall of a reductionist view of reality, blinkered by a science that stunts rather than expands our understanding of the world that people experience in fact.

But here I’m not going to deride their atheism, but to point out that in the world of ideas their views generally can be met with a great deal of skepticism. In fact, critics of equally high status can be scathing. One such instance is contained in the book Homo Deus (2018) by Yuval Noah Harari. He ridicules “Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker and the other champions of the new scientific world views” for holding that each person has free will, and that “individual free choices provide life with meaning”. They are “delusional” in playing a “double-game” pitting the findings of the life sciences - we are merely "an assembly of biochemical algorithims" - against modern liberalism where an individual’s freedom to choose is the central concept. Harari continues:

After dedicating hundreds of erudite pages to deconstructing the self and the freedom of the will, they perform breathtaking intellectual somersaults [my emphasis] that miraculously land them back in the eighteenth century, as if all the amazing discoveries of evolutionary biology and brain science have absolutely no bearing on the ethical and political ideas of Locke, Rousseau and Jefferson.  [The writings of these three gave rise to the liberal tradition.] (p307)

Of course, Dawkins and Pinker are no strangers to criticism in the public arena.  Their speeches and writings always attract attention. However, Dawkins is unlikely to have been happy with the 2015 headline “Is Richard Dawkins destroying his reputation?”, in The Guardian to boot.

The point is that these “champions” are just as likely to be challenged over perceived gaps in logic as any other polemicist. Likewise, British academic John Gray was very direct in finding fault with Pinker’s handiwork: “Steven Pinker is wrong about violence and war”, once again from The Guardian, which highlighted this:

A new orthodoxy, led by Pinker, holds that war and violence in the developed world are declining. The stats are misleading, argues Gray – and the idea of moral progress is wishful thinking and plain wrong

Harari’s own work will be examined in a later post. His own views on whether there is any source of “meaning” for each individual is so flawed that it is worth delving into.

Consciousness and the search for scientific humility

I like the humility of one cognitive scientist and philosopher about the state of knowledge as to how consciousness arises. His admission that despite all the attention the subject is getting there is much still to understand is at stark contrast with the declarations made by the likes of Steven Pinker or Sam Harris.

Professor David Chalmers

I’m referring to David Chalmers, University Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science and co-director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness at New York University. He is also Honorary Professor of Philosophy at the Australian National University. He has had a long interest in the philosophy of mind (especially consciousness) and the foundations of cognitive science, as well the philosophy of language, metaphysics and epistemology.

In a 2017 broadcast Chalmers said: “I see consciousness as one of the fundamental data of our existence, it's just a manifest fact where consciousness is possibly the most familiar thing in the world to most of us. At the same time, it's one of the things that is really the hardest to explain…" He went on:

This is for me what makes it such a fascinating problem I think for any scientist, for any philosopher, for anyone who is contemplating the human mind or the world, and I think we're at a very interesting point right now in 2017 where the field is becoming mature and there is a developed science and philosophy of consciousness, but still that moment you just step back and say, wow, this is really puzzling and something we are just beginning to come to grips with.

This willingness to be tentative in response to the complexity of that field of study can be compared to the pontificating seen in much that comes from the likes of Steven Pinker, Sam Harris or John R Searle, who in 1990 published The Mystery of Consciousness, but in 1997 berated Chalmers for his view that there was not enough evidence to decide that consciousness was completely a product of the brain. However, on this point Searle did offer a bifocal view of the issue. First he states, “Consciousness is above all a biological phenomenon, like digestion or photosynthesis. This is just a fact of nature that has to be respected by any philosophical account.” Then he takes a step back and qualifies the degree of certainty by concluding that work still needed to be done “in the project of understanding how the brain causes consciousness.”

Chalmers in 2017 was still looking for ways to bridge the gap between the brain’s processes and consciousness. He put the issue this way:

For me, there's any number of questions you can raise about consciousness but for me the big one has always been how can you explain it? Why does it exist and how can we give some kind of scientific theory of it. Absolutely it's got something to do with the brain. At least in humans you need a brain to be conscious, and activity in the brain is going to lead to consciousness. Change the activity in the brain and you will typically change the state of consciousness.

There's any number of correlations between the brain and consciousness, but nothing about that yet yields an explanation. So for me the hard problem of consciousness is how is it that all this physical processing in the brain should somehow give rise to conscious experience. Why doesn't it all go on in the dark without any consciousness? Why aren't we just giant robots or what philosophers sometimes call zombies, doing all this processing, behaving, walking, talking, but with the lights off inside, with nothing going on.

For me there is actually conscious experience here and I suspect very strongly that for all of you, you are undergoing something like the same thing. But how can we explain that fact, how can we give an account of that in terms of the physical processes of the brain?

Associate Professor Olivia Carter

In that broadcast Chalmers’ view of the uncertainty in the field was corroborated a fellow researcher into consciousness. Olivia Carter is Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and was executive director of the International Association of the Scientific Study of Consciousness. In explaining the state of play of the neuroscience of consciousness she said:

"So within the biology, if we say it's something about a brain, what is it about the human brain that allows consciousness? It's not inherent in the biological structure, it's something about the way this brain is working."

She described how certain types of neurons might be a factor. However, “… It's still unclear, absolutely unclear.” She goes on in a likewise tentative manner: “One big theory of consciousness is that basically… magically consciousness happens when…” Another telling aspect of where the science of consciousness is at comes with this statement:

It seems to be that the sorts of things, like visual perception and emotional processing, that these types of loops do exist and they seem to be important in working memory, whether or not you need working memory as a component of consciousness and such is not clear either.

Having discussed three areas of study, mainly to do with neurons and their behaviour, Carter says: “There's a lot of complex stuff happening in the brain. It seems to be coordinated, [and] one component of those things may or may not be the critical step to consciousness, or maybe it's the three things all together.”

Whether one is talking about consciousness, or the mind or the spiritual beliefs of most of humanity – Pinker had this to say in 2004: “the universal propensity toward religious belief is a genuine scientific puzzle” – what is needed is a little more accuracy on what the state of the scientific knowledge is and a little less of a readiness to marginalize those who see the facts about brain processes pointing to a compelling conclusion of a countercultural kind - that humans have capabilities that transcend the nature and nurture elements of their existence. 

Scientists' prejudices dismay Harvard astrophysicist

Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb expresses dismay at the unwillingness of many fellow scientists to even look at his evidence for the existence of aliens in space. He told the UK newspaper The Observer that when he published papers presenting the reasons for his theory the science community showed little curiosity and in many cases mocked him at once for a stance that was considered outside the boundary of serious science. 

In Professor Loeb’s just published book Extraterrestrial, as The Observer’s account relates, he found that his theory...

“put me at odds with most of the scientific establishment”, even though, as a tenured Harvard professor on various academic boards, he worked at the core of it. […] Colleagues turned their noses up. Some thought it was ridiculous, others damaging to the community. Whenever he shared his theory, “Ninety-nine per cent of the time, I’d get this silence,” he says. On Twitter, one scientist described the hypothesis as insulting. Another said: “Next time there’s another unusual object, let’s not tell Avi!” – a petty swipe, Loeb’s theory reduced to a punchline. 

“That made me upset,” he says. “It’s like kindergarten. Let’s just talk about the science!” The reactions still bother him. “If someone comes to me and says, ‘For these scientific reasons, I have a scenario that makes much more sense than yours,’ then I’d rip that paper up and accept it,” he says. “But most of the people who attacked, they hadn’t even looked at my paper, or read the issues, or referred to the items we discussed.” 

Professor Loeb’s experience is of importance to everyone, inside and outside the field of direct scientific investigation. The consequences for us all as to any neglect of vigorous investigation into reality and truth could be severe, both materially and in understanding our human situation.

Professor Loeb

In some ways, Loeb sees the argument around ‘Oumuamua [an interstellar asteroid Loeb had been studying] as a proxy for a larger debate about the scientific process. Of his colleagues, he thinks: where are the progressive, exciting ideas? Where are the scientists making bold hypotheses without worrying they might damage their careers? He is convinced conservatism is ruining science, to the point where a hypothesis can now be dismissed outright just because it seems silly or outlandish or unfashionable, even when it is as theoretically plausible as any other theory available. Of ‘Oumuamua, he says: “The only reason I was courageous enough to come out was because people privately told me, ‘Yes, this object is something quite unusual.’ They say it privately because they’re afraid to make a public statement. But I’m not afraid. What should I be afraid of?”

Professor Loeb blames the antagonism on “conservatism”. But this is not a political or religious conservatism as in the American context, but the ingrained filter that affects a person over what is regarded in their society or community of what is “silly”, “outlandish” or “unfashionable”. “There is a taboo on the subject,” Professor Loeb says.

Once, Loeb went to a seminar on ‘Oumuamua at Harvard. As he left, he got chatting to an astronomer who’d spent his entire career studying objects in the solar system. “He tells me: ‘This object looks so weird, I wish it never existed,’” Loeb recalls, disapprovingly. To him the comment was scandalous. “As scientists we should accept, with pleasure, whatever nature gives us. Science is a dialogue with nature, it’s not a monologue. And what people don’t realise is, nature isn’t supposed to make us happy, or satisfied, or proud of ourselves. Nature is whatever it is.”

He goes on, “I find those instances when the data gives us some uneasiness, when the evidence doesn’t line up with what we expect, I feel these are the most exciting moments. Nature is telling you, ‘Your thinking on this is wrong.’ That’s what I’m here for, to learn something new. I’m not in it to feel good about myself, to get likes on Twitter, for the prizes. I’m in it to understand. So a colleague telling me, ‘I wish it never…’” He shakes his head. 

The filters or barriers to being open to what is socially acceptable, also slam into place because of the “cancel culture”, generated especially by society’s elite of academia, the media and corporate leaders, giving rise to real fear even in these same spheres. 

“You know, I’ve noticed a chilling effect on some people who have worked with me,” he says. “The moment there is backlash from the scientific community, they stop.” I ask why. “Because people at this stage – students and postdocs – they worry about their careers.” Loeb is convinced that, every now and then, a collaborator of his will be told that working with him could damage their hunt for a faculty position, as though it were an ugly blotch on an otherwise stellar CV. “I think that’s the part that is unhealthy here,” he says. “Science is supposed to be without prejudice, open to discussion. Not the bullying.”

All of this dogs Loeb. “My point is, how dare scientists shy away from this question, when they have the technology to address it, and when the public is extremely interested – while at the same time you have theoretical physicists talking about extra dimensions, string theory, about the multiverse? The multiverse is extremely popular in the mainstream. You ask yourself, how can that be part of the conservative mainstream” – but not the search for extraterrestrial life?

In his book, Loeb writes that throughout his career he has worked hard to approach problems with childlike wonder, often in defiance of conventional thinking. “If you speak to friends of mine, people from my childhood, they’ll tell you I haven’t changed much,” he says. “That’s on purpose. You might think of me as naive. But when people say, ‘As you get older, you need to abandon risk taking, become more rigid,’ I don’t accept that!”

Unfortunately, many, many people credit the world of science as being pure, untainted by prejudices, and fully devoted to discovering reality and the truth. From what we can see from Professor Loeb’s experience, scientists are bedevilled by the typical human weaknesses, as well as blindspots typical of their own profession. 

After centuries when the Western world’s top scientists were Christians,  it is sad that these days those who have experienced in their life the spiritual world in any of its many astounding forms are regarded as primitives left behind by the explosion of scientific findings in the last 100 years. But the mind view that is generated by scientism and an atheism that is so much more aggressive than healthy skepticism, is of that same type that gives rise to all that Professor Loeb has encountered. Science is not of benefit to us if it is not open to investigating all that is plausible.