The Wind in His Fists

Paradigms and Genesis

January 31, 2008 at 7:11 am (faith, religion, science) (faith, religion, science)

I used to be very sympathetic to progressive creationism and even theistic evolution, but as time goes on, I see more and more problems with these two views, problems which have begun to outweigh the problems that they solve.  Neither represents the face-value reading of the scriptures, and both introduce confusing theological issues, namely those concerning sin and death.  I have recently added another, and that is the explanation for why God is silent and/or invisible.  Finally, in employing these arguments, we seem to run the risk of our faith dying “the death of a thousand qualifications (A. Flew)”.

For these reasons, I am being persuaded that the best option from the theological standpoint is young earth creationsim.  Of course, this introduces a whole range of new problems, but these are scientific rather than theological.  In fact, the scientific problems introduced are so radical that a scientific understanding of Genesis may require a Kuhnian paradigm shift. 

Of course, efforts are underway to bring the two in line through the current paradigm, and perhaps they will succeed, but as I think about the sheer magnitude of the particular issues:  radiometric dating, flood geology, evolution, I can’t help but think that a paradigm shift is required.  A scientific understanding of the evidence from the Genesis perspective would seem to require a very different way of looking at the evidence.

This is the essence of the paradigm shift–a change in worldview.  Dramatic shifts have occurred in the past, in fact Kuhn argued powerfully that they are coincident with major scientific revolutions.  Such a shift could bring Genesis in line with the scriptures.

I suppose we could say that the current disagreement of Genesis with the Scriptures may be a artifact of the current scientific paradigm.  But of course this requires that the history of science is Kuhnian, rather than truly progressive:  that science is not progressing toward a clearer and clearer picture of “reality”, but is rather shifting between different ways of looking at the world, each of which is good for solving the types of problems upon which it chooses to focus.

That this may be true is evident from reading Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and it is interesting to note the problems that our current paradigm does not address or cannot solve.