Academic Paper Gets Shredded! Part One

KEVIN HARRIS: Dr. Josh Swamidass is back on Reasonable Faith with Dr. William Lang Craig. Glad you're here. This is Kevin Harris. We've been doing a series of interviews with Josh, so we decided to take advantage of having him on with us to pursue some more topics. So stay close. And as we go to the studio, it occurs to me that so many of you who follow Dr. Craig's work have listened to these podcasts, and you've listened to the podcast of his Defenders class, and you've read his books and articles, but you still want more. You just can't get enough of that WLC stuff. Well, that's why we're offering Equip. Equip is our free on-demand training center for Christian apologetics. Now, whether you're new to the conversation or ready to tackle some of the deeper stuff, Equip gives you the tools to defend your faith with confidence. We have courses on everything from Apologetics 101 to Molinism to the attributes of God. Just visit KnowWhyYouBelieve.org to create your free account and get started learning today. Now, let's go to the studio with Dr. Craig.

It's good to have Josh Swamidass back with us for another round of podcasts, and we're going to be talking about a paper that has been published which critiques your work – both of you – on the historical Adam and Eve. It's published by Grygiel and Lizak from the Department of Philosophy at the Pontifical University of John Paul II in Poland.^[1] And Josh, they're addressing your book, The Genealogical Adam and Eve. Bill, of course, they're addressing your work, In Quest of the Historical Adam. Liberal theologians are addressing your work on the historical Adam. Maybe that's a good sign. Josh, let's start with you on that.

DR. SWAMIDASS: Oh, I think it's a sign of real success. These guys actually don't like our books and where we're going with this. They don't want to engage with it, and this is years after our books are published, yet they're going through all the work of doing a peer-reviewed article, and they've read it. That means that we've actually made a mark in the conversation. People who don't even want it to be there are feeling they need to actually address it. That's a good sign. I think it was a joint effort in a lot of ways. I think they have to deal with it because I'm a scientist and Bill Craig is Bill Craig.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. Here we've got a pair of Catholic philosophers who are obviously very unsympathetic to our defense of the historical Adam and Eve. And it's important, I think, for our listeners to understand that they are coming from a very different perspective than we are. In their article, they say, and I quote, “[We] must recognize that science and theology operate within distinct but complementary domains.” In other words, theology and science are like two circles that never overlap. They never intersect with each other. So, of course, they're unsympathetic with any integrative approach to science and theology such as Josh and I advocate.

DR. SWAMIDASS: I would say that what we're doing may not even be integrative. I think dialogue is a better way to put it. But that being said, they're taking what Ian Barber would call an isolation approach. But even then, they're violating that in important ways as they go through this because they start using science to make some strong theological claims.

DR. CRAIG: That’s right!

DR. SWAMIDASS: So, it's more like, “You're not allowed to use science in a way that helps you, but we're going to use it in a way that helps us theologically.” So, it's not even consistent.

KEVIN HARRIS: These authors say in this paper that both of you are not sticking to strictly scientific methodology in your work on Adam. Josh, you've had some things to say about that.

DR. SWAMIDASS: Yeah. And it's important to understand that they're saying that as a criticism – that we should be sticking to purely science, and of course that's true. We aren't sticking to science. I'm studying Scripture and looking at it from an exegetical point. I'm looking at philosophy, and I'm doing theology. These are not scientific things. And when I'm doing theology, I'm going to use theological methods, not scientific methods. So it's a kind of a weird sort of criticism. The fact that I'm using non-scientific methods in non-scientific fields. I think what's going on here is a type of scientism. They really think the scientific approach is what should really govern everything. And it's almost a dictation model where we find out key things from science and this kind of dictated in a one-way sort of exchange with theology that we kind of receive that truth and then we kind of think about things theologically based on that. And it's not really a back and forth dialogue. It's kind of a monologue. It is very prone to misunderstandings where theologians or people who are trying to think theologically just completely misunderstand what's being said in the science in major category areas. But that's the model really that they're working from where . . . actually, I think, Bill you say integrative but I think the way we're integrative I think is more of a type of dialogue. We're wanting to take questions seriously back and forth. And when we do science, we want it to be good science using scientific methods. And when we do theology, well, we want that to be good theology using theological methods. When we do exegesis, we want that to be good exegesis using exegetical methods. We're keeping the discipline separate, but we're allowing them to communicate with each other.

KEVIN HARRIS: We need to define the main topic of the paper. It's “Monogenism” or monogenesis. The name of the paper is “Monogenism Revisited: New Perspectives on a Classical Controversy” if anybody wants to look up the paper. But, gentlemen, if you would please, define monogenism.

DR. CRAIG: My understanding of monogenesis is that it simply means that the human race has not evolved independently around the globe but is from a single human lineage going back into the past. And so the term as such is not committed to the existence of Adam and Eve as these two philosophers seem to think. I think they're misusing the term. Later in the paper they actually acknowledge that fact. They will say that monogenesis is often understood to simply mean that there have not been independent, multiple evolutions of human beings on this planet, but that we all descend from a common lineage. And that then leaves the question open: well, was there a founding pair or not? And Josh and I believe that there was a founding pair in one sense or another.

DR. SWAMIDASS: Yeah. So this gets to where when scientists talk about the term monogenesis in almost every case I found they're borrowing theological language without theological precision. There's a history here because there was this historical debate with the discovery of people living on the other side of the globe with the Antipodeans and people in the Americas which caused something called the pre-Adamite controversy which is a debate between monogenesis versus polygenesis which is this idea are there different types of people across the globe. These things are all conflated. So it's very common that monogenesis gets conflated with the idea of monophylogeny or the idea that humans are all the same type, and monogenesis is conflated even though they are separable ideas. And polygenesis is often conflated with the idea that there's multiple different types of people across the globe. That's an idea that's rejected by science. I would just say that the use of this term is just very sloppy, and the really critical thing to do is to define your terms when you're having these conversations to get out what you're really meaning and think carefully about what is actually really critical about that definition for theological reasons. You can't just posit a particular normative definition that's going to apply in all cases here. This is a classic case of multivalence which comes up quite a bit in these conversations. To follow my own advice, let me just give you what my definition is of a type of mere monogenesis and how Bill extends that a bit like many other theologians do, and that's kind of where some of the debate is, too. I think what monogenesis means theologically and historically – I feel it is important to preserve, too — is this notion that we all descend from Adam and Eve in the current theological era, meaning since the theological era that Jesus inaugurates. Everyone alive during that period across the entire globe descends from Adam and Eve. Now, Bill Craig and some other theologians would want to extend that back to saying that everyone in the past that's fully human or is a biological human, if they were fully human biological in the past on Earth then they would also be a descendant of Adam and Eve. I don't think that that's necessary, but that would be an extension or a broader definition of monogenesis than I would use, but that's what we're meaning by the term in this context of this conversation.

KEVIN HARRIS: The first line of the paper says that your work, both of you, is part of an attempt to reconcile evolution with original sin. Is that accurate? And Bill, you may want to have a crack at that first.

DR. SWAMIDASS: That was an eye roller for me. I don't know how you felt about it.

DR. CRAIG: Well, this was honestly one of the first indications I had that these gentlemen had not really read In Quest of the Historical Adam, which is one of the targets of their criticism. In the very first chapter, I explained in some detail why I do not think that the doctrine of original sin provides any motivation for the study of the historical Adam. And so I was just amazed to see them attributing this view to me since I had repudiated it.

DR. SWAMIDASS: Yeah, I would say this comes off a bit like an ad hominem. They're trying to say that we have a motivation – our reasoning is motivated so it can't be trusted. That comes up several times except for the motivations they attribute to us are just not accurate. I mean, Bill, you reject original sin, and it seems like a pretty important point to note if that's what they're going to say you're trying to do is maintain it. As for me, I'm very clear about my motivations. It's really honesty and rigor and explaining how science interacts with these religious beliefs. And even when I was engaging with you on your work, Bill, I told you very early on in no uncertain terms that if I found evidence against your position, I was going to be truthful about that publicly. And if that was difficult, I'm sorry, but I have this obligation to be truthful about this. And for me, it wasn't about what I personally believed. I think they can recognize themselves that there are people out there that they think are wrong, but they exist that think that universal descent from Adam and Eve is important and think that original sin is important. And I just think that those people deserve – whatever my personal views are – I think they deserve an honest, rigorous, fair account of what science actually says that might or might not impinge on their account. That doesn't make me motivated. It means that I might actually be really clear and actually I have been clear in certain views involving original sin that I don't think are consistent with science. So it's not that I'm trying to preserve it. I'm just trying to be truthful and rigorous in my scientific work and how it interacts with this theological question.

KEVIN HARRIS: I find it surprising that they accuse both of you – your work – as being nothing more than creation science in disguise. That you're attempting to smuggle in your religious views. I find it surprising because that's kind of an Internet atheist meme – that you're just trying to sneak in your views and dress it up in scientific terms and things like that. And that doesn't belong in a scholarly paper like that. It's kind of ad hominem. In the introduction of the whole paper they write that,

to provide biological arguments in favor of the historicity of Adam and Eve, which may qualify as a rebirth of classical creation science . . . Genesis 1–11 is sapiential rather than historical . . . Theological attempts to preserve a literal Adam and Eve rest on an outdated view of revelation as mere information transfer.

OK, a lot of terms there.

DR. CRAIG: This is one of the glaring weaknesses of their article. Roughly half of In Quest of the Historical Adam is devoted to a study of the literary genre of Genesis 1-11. And these gentlemen classify those chapters as sapiential literature; in other words, wisdom literature like the book of Proverbs or the book of Ecclesiastes. I can confidently tell you that no Old Testament scholar in the world thinks that these chapters are wisdom literature. So these two fellows simply pass over in silence my lengthy genre analysis. Again, I don't think they really read the book.

DR. SWAMIDASS: I think that there's two issues to address here. One is the scientific claims that they're saying, and the other one is what they're saying about our theology. First of all, they're saying that we're smuggling our religious beliefs into this. That's just not true. We've been very upfront and clear about what we're doing. And they say that we're trying to offer scientific arguments for Adam and Eve. That's just not true. I didn't offer a single scientific argument for historical Adam and Eve. I just explained how it's possible. It's not support that shows that they were real people, just that it's possible. There's no evidence against it. And the same I would say is true for you, Bill. We don't have positive evidence that shows that Adam and Eve are real. We weren't even trying to do that. We were told that the scientific evidence is against it. And so we wanted to see if that was true.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. I think this recurs to the point that Kevin was making earlier where they think that because we do not provide positive evidence for the existence of Adam and Eve that we are not pursuing a purely scientific methodology, and that project I think is simply misconceived. You could never prove scientifically the existence of this founding couple. What you can do is look at the scientific evidence and see if it rules out or inclines against the existence of such a couple. And it's your claim and mine, as well, that the existence of a historical Adam and Eve is entirely consistent with the best evidence of contemporary science.

DR. SWAMIDASS: As is a no-Adam view, too. That's also consistent with the scientific evidence. So we're not offering arguments for historical Adam, and this is a very strong contrast with creation science. Creation science is usually trying to provide strong arguments why the non-creation view is false. They have evidence against it. We're not purporting to do that. It comes down to a fundamental misunderstanding of what our task is here.

DR. CRAIG: Yes.

DR. SWAMIDASS: So that's the scientific issue. On the theological or scriptural issue, I agree with you. They don't want to read Adam and Eve as real people. In that sense, they're kind of speaking out of that modernist tradition that we've been talking about with the Scopes trial and other things. And that's really what's motivating them. They really want to have as part of that tradition is this scientific claim against Adam and Eve. And they want science to have a role in their theology that way, but they don't want it to be legitimate to question the scientific legitimacy of that challenge.

KEVIN HARRIS: OK. Let's pause right there. We want to thank you for your prayers and financial support. If you've been blessed by these podcasts and you believe in the importance of Dr. Craig's work, please partner with us. Give online at ReasonableFaith.org. We’ll continue this conversation with Dr. Craig and Dr. Josh Swamidass on the next Reasonable Faith with Dr. William Lane Craig.^[2]