Category Archives: Artistic Concordism

07/1/25

Looking at Hugh Ross’s Book (2023) “Rescuing Inerrancy” (Part 25 of 25)

0211 This examination adds value to Ross’s project in five ways.

First, it introduces a history that encompasses the modern conundrum presented in this text.

Hugh Ross and the Reasons To Believe Team are actors in a theodrama that is at least 800 years old.

Plus, that theodrama is about to undergo a pivot that is captured in the following figure.

0212 Yes, the redemption2c offered by the party that exalts grace3c over nature3c and the protocols2c offered by the party that exalts nature3c over grace3c, are now entangled because, on the content level, the Creation Story is a sign of the evolutionary record and the Primeval History is an insider’s view of the start of our current Lebenswelt.

0212 Second, this examination offers a semiotic way to view what Ross is trying to articulate.  Theologians should be interested in sign-relations.  Scientists take sign-relations for granted.  Ross’s book is titled as if a scientific defense will rescue Biblical inerrancy.  This makes no sense unless its taken from a semiotic point of view.  Inerrancy draws the Bible, especially Genesis 1-11, into hitherto unimagined triadic relations with scientific inquiry.  The empirio-schematics of artistic concordism and the first singularity are variations of what ought to be for the Positivist’s judgment.

When, you think about it, signs tend to share certain characteristics with the term, “inerrancy”.  Every sign-vehicle stands for its sign-object in regards to its sign-interpretant.  Even if the interpretant is camouflage, the sign-relation purports to be flawless and honest in its own way.  Indeed, all signs are “inerrant” in the eyes of God.

0213 Third, this examination offers a way of appreciating how Ross’s efforts aesthetically derive from the Positivist’s and the empirio-schematic judgments.  Indeed, Ross’s project towers head and shoulder above other projects in the Venn diagram of science and religion because his aesthetics are one step away from the ways that scientists operate.

0214 Fourth, this examination offers a slightly different version of concordism than Ross.  Mah’s artistic version may assist Ross’s moderate version in future research.  In particular, I pray for a science book on the Earth’s evolutionary history to accompany Exercises in Artistic Concordism.  Wouldn’t that be fantastic?

Fifth, this examination offers a wonderful endpoint, in the form of a label for the single actuality implied by the intersection of redemption2c and protocols2c.  The early scholastics knew this label well.   And now, perhaps, the following dyad will be born again.

0215 My thanks to Hugh Ross and this team at Reasons To Believe for publishing a book worthy of examination.

08/8/24

Artistic Concordism.  Harmony between Genesis and Evolution?

0001 On August 14, 2024, Razie Mah, the blogger and author of The Human Niche, An Archaeology of the Fall and How To Define the Word “Religion, releases an e-book, titled “Exercises in Artistic Concordism“.

Concordism is harmony between religion and science, particulary, the biblical origin stories and evolutionary history.  Concordism attempts to build a bridge.  But there is always a problem.

0002 According to current interpretations of these matters, either religion or science has to give.

Enter semiotics. Semiotics is the study of sign-relations. Sign-relations are triadic relations.  Triadic relations?  Thirdness (the triadic realm of normal contexts) brings secondness (the dyadic realm of actuality) into relation with firstness (the monadic realm of possibility).

0003 What if Genesis One is a sign of the evolutionary record?  

If one reads the Creation Story through the lens of Charles Peirce’s typology of natural signs, then each day of creation offers icons, indexes and symbols of a corresponding epoch. The days, like pearls, string perfectly onto the evolutionary record. The aesthetic correspondence is beautiful to behold.

0004 What has to give?

The interpretation that the Creation Story is itself the revelation? Perhaps, Genesis One records a revelation. That means there is a visionary, which brings up the question. How do we (as the ones who will hear the words of the vision) evolve to be who we are created to be? We are created to recognize the signs of God. What does this mean?

And, what if the stance that the Creation Story is a vision gives us ways to answer these questions?

0005 What else has to give?

Our theoretical formulation of human evolution?  Yes, there is more to our evolution than fossils and genetics. What if, as the Genesis text indicates, our current Lebenswelt is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in?  What if there is a cultural twist in recent prehistory?

0006 If one reads the awkward textual transition between the Creation Story and the stories of Adam and Eve as discontinuity, then one may wonder why all the written origins stories of the ancient Near East portray the origin of humans as a recent event. Humans are created, de novo, by differentiated gods. 

Why can’t any of the civilizations of the ancient Near East see past a time horizon that an anthropologist may place, say, at the start of the Ubaid archaeological period of southern Mesopotamia?

Why can’t these ancient civilizations see the Lebenswelt that we evolved in?

These queries lead to a much more inflammatory question. Why is our current Lebenswelt not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in?

Imagine the answer to that one!

0007 Today, civilized folk are abuzz about the coming singularity. What if it is not the first?

Uh oh, the first singularity is a scientific hypothesis that harmonizes a cultural twist in human evolution with the stories of Adam and Eve.

0008 Both religious appreciations of the text and scientific blind-spots must transform if there is to be concord.

Plus, that concord will be neither religious nor scientific.

It will be artistic.