The Flawed Premise of the Biologos Forum

Biologos has managed to alienate a lot of people, including Christians who affirm mainstream science's views on evolution. These are people who should be in their camp, and some of them once were. Considering the massive investment that our entire media and government has undertaken to sell macro-evolution, you would think they would have had more success than they have in their mission to get Christians to accept that God used evolution to form living things. After all, they are just trying to get Christians to move with a massive tide, not fight the tide.

I am not going to contend here today over the particulars of the evolution-creation controversy. You may know that to some degree I think it is a false conflict, but not in the manner that Biologos does. Rather I want to share publicly what they would not hear from me privately about some flaws in their premises which hinder their efforts to accomplish their high-sounding goals. If it gets back to them and they want to listen, then they will improve and maybe real dialogue, instead of what goes on in their forum now, will be possible.

Their mission, according to their own website, is.....

We embrace the historical Christian faith, upholding the authority and inspiration of the Bible.
We affirm evolutionary creation, recognizing God as Creator of all life over billions of years.
We seek truth, ever learning as we study the natural world and the Bible.
We strive for humility and gracious dialogue with those who hold other views.

 Some would say that the first two sentences are mutually contradictory, but that's not even my complaint with them. After spending some time on their forum and seeing how it actually operates, I would direct their attention to the last two lines in their mission statement. They don't do those things, while constantly talking and posing like they do, and that's one real reason they are flailing away, despite their massive cultural and resource advantages.

I have found that the forum as a whole is not seeking truth, as they fully believe they already have it. They are there to talk, and you are there to listen. Not listen to the answers to any questions you might have, but listen to what they have decided that you need to hear from them. Obviously, this posture is inconsistent with a goal of "humility", as well as "dialogue", be it gracious or any other kind. They say they want a dialogue but what they really want is a monologue to browbeat anyone who questions the current scientific status quo into conforming to it, regardless of legitimate questions on matters of evidence. The atmosphere there is ultra-conformist to whatever way current scientific opinion leans, even though that is supposed to change as new evidence comes in. Ultra-conformity to what is in vogue with the sub-culture you identify with isn't conducive to the last two lines of their mission statement above. Let's start there.

The example that finally drove this home, and induced me to ask to have my account deleted, was their response to my posting some of the work of Cambridge Professor Dr. William Bradshaw Amos. Obviously his credentials are impeccable. But he takes issue with one of the more recent cultural additions to the box called "what everyone knows is true because...science".  He doesn't think that modern humans carry any appreciable (and maybe none at all) DNA due to introgression from Neanderthals. And he has some really sensible studies which strongly support his position. I posted one of them and asked people there to evaluate it.

Notice that this idea is no threat to the larger macro-evolutionary hypothesis. I am confident that Dr. Amos himself believes that humans evolved from a common ancestor with apes via natural means. IOW, he should be favorable to them overall in what they say their mission is. But even that rather inconsequential deviation from the party line was too much for them. Mostly they just didn't respond to it. One, more honest perhaps but not particularly conforming to the traits of their mission statement, informed me that since it was not peer-reviewed it wasn't worth commenting on.

This is a very common tactic that defenders of the status-quo use to avoid having to grapple with evidence. They hide behind "peer-review". And of course, ideas outside the mainstream tend not to get peer-reviewed, even when they come from well-qualified individuals like Dr. Amos. So it is a catch-22 and that's the way some people like it. I protested that the reason it wasn't peer-reviewed was because the viewers were biased against non-mainstream ideas, that his evidence was strong and deserved to be looked at, even without a stamp of approval from the gate-keepers. That sent him off on a tizzy about my questioning the motives of the scientific community, and how that was a violation of forum standards and he was going to run off and tell the moderators. No one there ever engaged on the evidence. They made it about other things, including my attitude. Which I will admit by this point was pretty testy.

Fortunately, it looks like Amos' paper is now close to being peer-reviewed, but he has been jerked around before where people have acted like they would publish and then didn't without explanation. I like to think that the noise some of us made had a little to do with his ideas getting a fair look after four years of trying.

But my main point here is that their forum rule which says 'motives can never be questioned' is contradictory to their mission statement. It doesn't fit with what scripture says about humans. That no one's motives can ever be questioned when this pattern occurs consistently indicates a very different view of humanity than the one I have. Scripture says that our righteousness is as filthy rags. Even our purest motives are tainted by sin. That the question of motives can never be raised therefore takes a position that this view of man is irrelevant to any discussion. It makes a mockery of our constant need for introspection, repentance, and improvement. It would be a waste of my time to participate in any group operating from such flawed premises.

Of course this can be taken to the other extreme. I have a policy against starting an analysis of a different idea by scrutinizing the motives of the person presenting it. Based on my own sorry nature I always assume that even the best motives of others are mixed. So instead of attempting to scrutinize their motives, I just try and evaluate their arguments. I figure if I want to scrutinize the motivational purity of anyone deeply enough I can always find an excuse to not hear what they are trying to say- but that would be me sealing myself off from ideas I don’t want to consider. IOW my own motive in doing that may be worse than whatever flaw in their motives I am using to shield myself from having to consider their ideas. Maybe that’s just me, but I doubt it.

So then we have a tension between two opposing ideas. The assumption that one's motives should never be questioned verses the impulse to evaluate the other party's motives rather than their evidence. Both extremes hinder progress. The truth is in the middle ground as it so often is. Again, I don't want to make it about their motives, I'd rather discuss the evidence, it is only when they will not engage on it that the reasonable thing to do is try and figure out why. And since that seems to be a no-no in their neck of the woods, it left me no further recourse on that forum.

The bottom line is that they do not come close to living up to the lofty ideals that the profess. They have rules on their forum which run counter to a scriptural view of humanity, never mind whether we evolved or not. They functionally don't agree with who scripture says we are now! They are incredibly uncompromising, which just makes their rhetoric about dialogue more irritating and hypocritical.

They may or may not improve. Certainly, they won't with if they take the view that only others need improvement! I am streamlining my life by getting out of as many internet echo-chambers as possible, even if by some chance they agree with me. If there is no dialogue, my time is much better spent elsewhere.

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