Anonymous' latest reminded me of an article Phillip Adams wrote in The Advertiser (17/12/82) titled "Confessions of a columnist",  accompanied by an unforgettable Bogo graphic showing a night vista across a vast desert, populated by unbroken rows of camels/palm trees/humans, back-lit by the glow of the Milky Way, and out of which a large word balloon emerges, saying "I BELIEVE".  It was this paragraph which, among others, really got my attention:

Given my perception and a presumption that Mr A doesn't read/give any credence to the work of Robert Crotty, Barbara Thiering, Crossan et al, it's hardly surprising that we're opposed. Whatever his method, I find it absurd that an intelligent and well-educated person could believe that Bible statements have confirmed scientific discovery: I assert that none have and none will. Any apparent 'confirmations' are obviously coincidental and are couched in language which, given the problems of more than two millennia of translation and interpretation, have no predictive value.

The 'evidence' exhaustively provided by Mr A is, at best, highly circumstantial.

What has the Bible to tell us about DNA's double helix, plate tectonics, supernovae, viruses, antibiotics, the laws of thermodynamics, gravity and quantum mechanics? Nothing, but if one looks hard enough, a verse here and there will 'answer the call', rather like a horoscope addict will find solace in vague musings that are intended to be applicable to a twelfth of humanity!  Eventually there will be so many 'hits' that the seeker will come to believe and will want to support and defend his/her delusion.  Then it's farewell to balance, rationality and objectivity.  If one is determined to persistently ask silly questions, then the 'answers' will be a testimony to monomanic delusion.

One current unpleasant example is the unfortunately named Adelaide Institute, whose director, Frederick Toben, has recently spent seven months in a German jail for challenging the severity of the Holocaust.

On the Institute website is this quote:

The history of science provides good examples of beliefs (hypotheses) which were 'known' to be correct,  such as the heliocentric solar system propounded by Copernicus and Galileo, but which was were at odds with the Bible, and  remained unaccepted' until the work of an English genius born on the day, in 1642, that Galileo died.  Contrary to the legend, it took Isaac Newton 20 years of hard yakka from the 'fall of the apple story' in 1666 before geocentrism was finally given the flick by Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy [Principia] in 1687.

Unlike Galileo, Newton was a devout Anglican who taught himself Hebrew to get a better sense of the Scriptures and, despite his genius, was eager for his work on gravity to be used as an argument for God, on the grounds that, if it existed, then Someone must have put it there, requiring a cosmic designer and maintainer.

Rather like Mr A he believed that God would "step in from time to time" and set things back in their proper place (he thought that, due to constant tugs of gravity, the system would be destabilised, so a "providential celestial watchmaker" was needed. His idea of a God-made absolute space was accepted for over two centuries until Einstein (with a little help from Edwin Hubble) overturned it. (Source: Pythagoras' Trousers By Margaret Wertheim, Fourth Estate)

Naturally, the skeptic must address the possibility that he or she is wrong, check the evidence and examine his/her bias, welcoming rather than fearing incontrovertible evidence of being errant. As someone recently wrote to The Advertiser, Australian Skeptics perform a useful service but the only things they're not skeptical about are their own beliefs.  A bit below the belt, I thought, but a bite worth keeping in mind, since I'm a new member of Australian Skeptics and have had enormous enjoyment from reading back-copies of that excellent journal of fact and opinion, The Skeptic.

So here's my skeptical response to Mr A's 'counterblasts'.

It's an enormous task to unravel his voluminous 'explanations' and there's no need for him to repeatedly remind me to re-read his articles, because I do! I try to select the more absurd statements and apply a common-sense, 'bleedin' obvious' critique, in the forlorn hope that Mr A will say 'fair enough', or someone else will relieve him of the burden of dodging skeptical arrows. Let's look at p 24, Investigator 69, in which he responds to Mark Newbrook's criticism:

This, in my opinion, is bunk as are many of his opinions which are based on "according to the Bible" which, as Mr A well knows,  is the subject of critical debate and therefore ought not to be used in debating the existence of a supernatural being who wants fellowship or whatever with Homo sapiens. Isn't it abundantly obvious that, if there were such a being, it wouldn't be bothered handing out information enabling Jews and Christians to avoid cyclones and earthquakes? Given human history, and our understanding of Planet Earth, isn't it an insult to the reader's intellect to assert that "humanity" collectively "chose to go it alone" without an entity they ought to have embraced, thereby 'causing' "millions of casualties"?

Comparisons are odious, I was told in Lower Fourth History, but Mr A wields them unmercifully, clubbing the reader into stupefied disbelief. Is he really comparing the cost of earthquakes with the cost of shoes? Enough on this one please! Also, could he please explain how the devastated Turks and Taiwanese "might even pray for more earthquakes", especially those many of them who are dead, severely injured, bereaved and unemployed?  I think that Mr A is extremely idealistic and imagines our 200 plus nations "cooperating and sharing", as taught in the Bible. But the lion has never laid down with the lamb, nor has there ever been a time without war. There are many OT stories of the Jews smiting the Philistines and other rival groups, but that was all right because that lot were 'ungodly' and they, the victors who wrote the 'history', had great spin-meisters who convinced them that they were God's chosen!

David Suzuki (Chronicles of The Future, Weekend Australian 18/1/299) informs us that half of humanity gets by on $3 a day, that the ratio of per capita income of the richest and poorest 20% of the world has gone from 30:1 to 59:1 between 1960 and 1990! Each year there's an eco-holocaust and 50,000 species disappear.  Even world-class spin is stymied by the less than palatable reality: most humans/nations will not behave altruistically unless they're forced into it, Pearl Harbour-fashion.  Some might ascribe that to the much-maligned 'human nature'.  Our planet is undergoing unprecedented change, according to Suzuki, and we only have a decade or two to find solutions, since it's clear that there's no likelihood of  "limited intervention when things get too horrible" (Mr A' Investigator 65).

If deaths from natural disasters ("1 billion since 2000 BC") are a result of "large-scale rejections of God's standards", why is it that the frequency of climate-related disasters has increased three times as rapidly as other natural disasters in the last 20 years?  It's down to large numbers of people, growth, technology, which is hardly synonymous with "human rejection of God"!

My interest is in what really happened, as opposed to that which we have been led to believe via mythical stories and miraculous tales.

For example, I've been reading Jesus the Man, Jesus and the Apocalypse and The Book That Jesus Wrote, all by Dr Barbara Thiering, which give a fascinating insight into the culture and politics of the Holy Land. Her main thesis, using the Pesher technique to reveal the hidden meaning of the Scriptures, is that Jesus was crucified in Qumran, not Jerusalem.  He was taken down and survived, explaining why he was frequently seen after his 'death';  he travelled to Rome where he, Paul, Peter and others strove to deal with the complex and dangerous business of faction-ridden Judea and the vicissitudes of Rome under Caligula, Claudius and Nero.

In Thiering's version Jesus marries and has several children, which I find a lot more plausible than the virgin birth, the resurrection and the holy trinity. He was conceived and born in the usual way (birthday on c. March 1), named Yesua, was not of David's line, and was probably a bastard who became an outcast who did not get on with his family. His younger brother, James, was very much the favoured one. As soon as he could Jesus left home to live with other social outcasts.  More on this in a later article.

John H Williams AGAIN misunderstands when he says:

I find it absurd that an intelligent, well-educated person could believe that Bible statements have confirmed scientific discovery.

Inductive logic is the logic by which we generalize from particular items to general conclusions: If a person is regularly reliable we'll trust him next time. If all observed pigeons were white we expect unobserved pigeons also to be white.

Mr Williams mistakenly calls the following "bunk":

According to the Bible, God originally wanted fellowship with humanity.  Such fellowship would have included information about "natural evils" enabling humans to be prepared.  However, this benefit was among the benefits forfeited when humanity chose to go it alone without God…

…of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you may not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.

The context in previous Investigator magazines was the philosophical contention that the following three statements accepted by Christians are incompatible:  

1 God is good;
2 God is omnipotent/almighty;
3 Evil exists.

My simplified answer to this is:

According to the Bible evil is a consequence of human rebellion against God. Humans are trying out their own ethics, governments, religions, social structures and laws without direct consultation with God. It's an experiment to test whether humanity can achieve the good good-life or "paradise" without God.

For the experiment to give valid results God needs to be inconspicuous.  Consider an analogy from psychology:  Psychologists investigating human behaviour often use "double blind" techniques so that their subjects do not know what's being investigated because if they knew they'd alter their behaviour and the experiment would give false results.

Similarly if God were overwhelmingly present, the experiment of testing whether humans can go it alone without God would give false results. Therefore, God's very existence has to be deniable and any involvement with humans has to be explainable in other ways.

My answer does not imply that God, or Adam or Eve existed. Those are different questions and require searching the relevant scientific literature.

To clarify this, consider Romeo and Juliet. A literature teacher might set his students the question, "Why Did Romeo and Juliet Commit Suicide?" The students will answer from Shakespeare's play – "According to the play Romeo and Juliet". If a student has in mind that the play is fiction and Romeo and Juliet didn't exist and calls it  "bunk" – he'd fail. Whether Romeo and Juliet existed in real life is irrelevant to the essay question.  Even children understand this.  But Mr Williams didn't.

Isn't it an insult to the reader's intellect to assert that "humanity" collectively "chose to go it alone" without an entity they ought to have embraced, thereby causing "millions of casualties"?  (Williams)

Under INVESTIGATION NOT ABSURD  I explained a trend whereby Bible critics repeatedly prove false and the Bible correct.

Theologians are no exception to this trend and also regularly turn out wrong:

This theory, known as the Tubingen theory, soon receded in influence… Joseph Barber Lightfoot (1828-89) of Cambridge demolished the Tubingen theory by showing the 1st century origin of most of the New Testament texts… (Protestantism, History of)

Baptist theologian H Wheeler Robinson (1872-1945) noticed the Old Testament emphasis on community. He invented a theory of  "Corporate Personality". He claimed ancient Israelites were primitive and pre-logical and did not distinguish the individual from the group. This failure to distinguish supposedly accounted for transitions between singular and plural such as Psalm 44:4 which uses both "I" and "we".

Scholars like S. A. Cook and C. C. Torrey have denied the truth of the Biblical tradition of this carrying off into exile… Excavations indicate the exact opposite. Since 1926 a considerable number of towns and fortresses in Judah have been either wholly or partly excavated and carefully examined with a view to establishing the date of their destruction. "The results," says Professor Albright, "are uniform and convincing: many towns were destroyed at the beginning of the 6th century and were never again re-settled.

Examples could be multiplied.

Mr Williams cites the theologian Barbara Thiering. Refuting the latest critics is a specialized job often needing detailed knowledge of ancient languages, culture, literary customs, laws, etc. I don't do that. I'm a "generalist" who compares Bible statements with discoveries in many scientific disciplines. I seek the conclusions after the verbal fireworks die down. However, a simple critical start on Thiering might be Gwynne-Seary (1996) who argues:  "Thiering's claims are a bad joke."

Baigent, M & Leigh, R 1991 The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception, Jonathon Cape, Britain. pp. 45-56
 
Gwynne-Seary, R 1996 Scroll With It;  Fortean Times No. 93 December pp. 28-33

Hendrichs, H  Zoologisches Zentralblatt November-December 1965 pp. 681-754

Joyce, P 1983 The Individual and the Community. In: Beginning Old Testament Study, J Rogerson (editor), SPCK, Great Britain. Chapter 5

W Keller 1974 The Bible As History,  Hodder & Stoughton, Britain. p. 285

Myers, J M 1965 The Anchor Bible, 1 Chronicles, pp. LXXXVII ff., Doubleday, USA.

Robinson, H W 1926 The Christian Doctrine of Man,  T & T Clark, Edinburgh.

Rogerson, J W The Hebrew Conception of Corporate Personality,  Journal of Theological Studies 1970 No. 21 pp. 1-16

My father's attitude to religion was: "If they can't prove it they are wasting their time arguing about it."

Nevertheless, I attended church at 13 and 14 and then stopped.

In 1968 I began encountering criticisms of the Bible that were answered by subsequent discoveries.

He who is faithful in very little is faithful also in much; and he who is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. (Luke 16:10)

Here was a test to test the validity of the generalization "The Bible might be entirely accurate". If the generalization is valid, then future, clearer evidence than that supplied in the New York Times would one day force revision in the Britannica besides also disproving all the other references opposing the Bible.

No one could refute this approach to the Bible. All tried to point out statements that they felt surely must be false. But because there already was a trend of alleged false statements turning out true it was always rational to say: "Let's wait and see what turns up in future."

One topic in university philosophy was Inductive Logic – the logic in which we infer general conclusions from particular observations.  I incorporated the argument for the Bible into my main essay, scored 85% by the standards of the time, and afterwards asked the lecturer whether the argument is valid. He wouldn't commit himself except to say that it was subject to no clear disconfirming examples being found.

Recent New Scientist articles, for example, report on ancient brick baking in Mesopotamia (perhaps relevant to the Tower of Babel), genes transmitted by eating (perhaps relevant to eating from the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil"), humanity being derived from an original "mother" and from an original male (perhaps relevant to the Adam and Eve account), etc.

From the Bible I knew about the threat of asteroids and the threat of world-wide fire from asteroids fifteen years before the scientists knew this! (Investigator 62) Had governments and scientists taken the Bible seriously the systematic search for dangerous asteroids and for methods of defence against them could have started much earlier! Imagine a scenario in which an asteroid on a future collision course whizzed by in the 1980s but wasn't noticed because governments and scientists lacked vision to consider the Bible – and therefore its orbit was not calculated and humanity is left unprepared.

Mr Williams is not impressed and borders on verbal abuse – "twaddle", "adolescent", etc.  New Scientist says:

Discovering phenomena that challenge our view of the world can be a dangerous business.  Scientists may become emotional or worse…
It is important to avoid assigning probability P=0 (complete disbelief) or P=1 (complete certainty) to any proposition since, if you adopt either of these values, that value can never be changed no matter how much evidence you may subsequently receive.
(1988 December 24/31 pp. 49, 51)

Apropos Anonymous's writing in Investigator 71, I'm responding to his criticism of my criticism.

I've tried to have a rational debate with 'A' but it's clear that he is incapable of seeing how silly some of his ideas are, so I'm retiring from the futile business of critiquing his voluminous writings (22 pages out of 58 in No. 71!)

I leave it to Investigator readers to assess who of the two of us makes more sense: is there anyone who agrees with 'A'? Let's hear from you, please, then maybe we'll have a rest from his tedious and repetitive speculation, and nick-picky justifications, sans any substantiated evidence.  Am I the only reader who is heartily fed-up with sweeping generalisations like "Science establishes the reliability of The Bible" or "the number (of Bible points) proved correct (is) close to 1000"?

If I find a statement made by Mr 'A' is ineffably silly and has no basis in evidence I will say so: "twaddle" is not a bad word for it.

Naturally, one asks, 'who is this Gwynne-Seary, what's his belief system, what kind of axe is he grinding? I recommend her books to Investigator readers as an antidote to the gospel stories, which, to quote Mr 'A' (in another context!) are in a "state of contradiction".

As is now clear, I have had more than enough of Mr 'A'. I've expressed my ideas and opinions on his work and have complained that he receives far too much space: over 37% of one issue (No. 71) is surely well over the top? I am deeply bored by Mr A's long-winded prose: is there no other educated and articulate believer who will write for Investigator, or is it that Mr 'A' can be relied on to serve up large dollops of the usual defensive drivel?  More is often not better, but it is demonstrably true in this case, in my opinion.

(Investigator 73, 2000 July)