Francis Bacon vs. Ken Ham

Transcript down below.

It’s August in Minnesota, and you know what that means: it’s county fair time. The fair is a big deal out here in the rural US, so yesterday I walked down to the fairgrounds and spent a couple of hours strolling about, admiring the pigs and cows and horses, seeing the 4H exhibits, signing up for the drawing for a free pickup truck (I hope I don’t win), and admiring the needlepoint and quilting displays. It was pleasant.

Then I was recognized! This fellow I didn’t know called me out, said hello, said I was “famous”, asked how things were going at the university, the usual pleasantries. He introduced me to his kids. It was the standard country neighborliness and all that.

Then he got down to business. He was a creationist. He said that evolution was just an opinion, that creation had just as much evidence, how could I ignore all the obvious proof of creation all around us, true science accepts the Bible as evidence, that Christians invented science or the scientific method so if we really believed in science we should be Christian, etc., etc., etc. I could tell he was steeped in the dogma of Answers in Genesis.

I opened my mouth and raised a finger, ready to lesson him…

And here’s what I said. I could argue with you for hours and hours, but we’re at the fair, your kids want to have fun, how about if I don’t? We parted congenially and I went off to see the true biological sheep.

I admit, I was frustrated about letting such ignorance walk away, but there’s a time and a place for argument, and I don’t think standing in a path where hundreds of people are milling about to get cotton candy or ride the roller coaster is the appropriate place.

So I simmered over this question. If I’d wanted to ruin my evening at the fair I could have torn into him and demolished those very familiar claims. I had two arguments ready to deploy.

It turns out it was a good thing I didn’t jump on him right away and had to go home and review what Answers in Genesis had to say about science, because if my interlocutor had really studied that website, he’d be prepared with an absurd rebuttal, and we would have gone swirling down into chaos, because AiG is shoveling the kind of material that would have been totally fitting with the stuff being hurled behind the livestock barns.

The first of my two obvious, easy responses would be that no, Christianity did not invent science, or more specifically the scientific method. The Chinese were doing science long before Jesus; same with the Greeks, the Babylonians, every pre-Abrahamic culture. I’d go so far as to say that every people that asked questions about the nature of their existence and the universe around them, and that tried to answer it with observations and tests, were doing at least a primitive form of science. Alas, Jason Lisle of AiG already had an explanation.

“The Bible provides the only possible presupposition for all thought and science.” Only a biblical worldview can logically account for those things necessary for scientific inquiry, such as uniformity in nature (as shown in Evolution: The Anti-Science) and laws of logic (as shown in Atheism: An Irrational Worldview). Without these things, science could not proceed. And yet, these things are contingent upon the biblical God.

Uh-oh. Their answer is to simply ASSERT that you can only do science with a biblical worldview. All logic and science is derived from the Bible, they say. OK. But what about those Greeks doing science before Christianity, while completely ignorant of the Hebrew holy book? How could they do that? Lisle has an answer.

Did the ancient Greeks believe in laws of logic? Yes. Did they believe in uniformity in nature? Yes. So, the Greeks were borrowing from the biblical worldview (without acknowledging this, of course). Although they denied the biblical God with their lips, they were relying upon the biblical God with their actions. This is a behavioral inconsistency quite common in our modern world, too. Just like the Greeks, many scientists today rely upon the truth of the Bible while simultaneously verbally denying the truth of the Bible.

See? Atheists and pagans are stealing from the Bible without acknowledgement, those sneaky plagiarists. They were even parroting the future words of the prophets, and then hiding their thievery. Even if Aristotle had never heard of the Bible, and lived a few hundred years before Jesus, he was using the biblical worldview when he wrote about physics and embryology.

I don’t even know how to reply to that, except by laughing. OK, guy, all science is the product of Christian trans-temporal magic brain waves. I can’t argue with you because that’s on a plane of stupidity I cannot imagine.

My second response was going to be a bit more subtle. If Christians like Ken Ham are invested in doing science, why are they not practicing it? They should be modifying their hypotheses about the history and nature of the world by observing and doing experiments and collecting data, and building new models on the basis of those observations. That’s what scientists do. That’s where creationists, even those who say they love science, fail — they ignore the evidence that doesn’t support their presuppositions, so how can they claim to be practicing the True Science? And they do! Loudly!

For those who haven’t already made up their minds before hearing us out—or reading what we’ve written many times on this website—are we truly against science? Not at all! Like other creationist groups Answers in Genesis affirms and supports the teaching and use of scientific methodology, and we believe this supports the biblical account of origins.

I would disagree. If you are going to support the teaching and use of scientific methodology, you should look to Francis Bacon, a 16th century Christian, who made that explicit. He promoted inductive reasoning, and said we should start with the observations, and draw our conclusions from those.

There are and can be only two ways of searching into and discovering truth. The one flies from the senses and particulars to the most general axioms, and from these principles, the truth of which it takes for settled and immovable, proceeds to judgment and to the discovery of middle axioms. And this way is now in fashion. The other derives axioms from the senses and particulars, rising by a gradual and unbroken ascent, so that it arrives at the most general axioms at last. This is the true way, but as yet untried.

It’s the difference between top-down and bottom-up analysis. Do you start with the conclusion you want, and fill in the supporting inferences, like a creationist, or do you start with the observations and measurable facts and derive the best interpretation to fit them, like a scientist? Oh yeah, checkmate, Christians. I play the Francis Bacon card, I win. It’s all about evidence. You can’t claim to be following the scientific method if you defy empiricism. Bacon was an important thinker who spelled this distinction out around 1600. You don’t get to dismiss him as an atheist, either, because he was a devout Anglican who said “Knowledge is the rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man’s estate”…Christians could also play the Francis Bacon card, if they knew how.

But then I looked deeper into the way Ken Ham thinks, and discovered to my deep surprise that Answers in Genesis rejects Francis Bacon! Or rather, what they believe is Baconian philosophy.

The influence of “Baconian” philosophy has progressively caused the church to disconnect the Bible from the real world—it is relegated to a book of stories, albeit with wonderful teachings about salvation and morality.

I was going to say that Baconian philosophy is how we generally think of science: making data collection central to the endeavor, a hard focus on empiricism, the emphasis on inductive reasoning (OK, maybe Bacon focused more on that than modern scientists do), so maybe Answers in Genesis shouldn’t be claiming to be a pro-science organization if they’re not going to follow those principles. But surprise! They flat out consider Bacon to be a direct cause of the modern rejection of Biblical literalism and want nothing to do with those ideas!

As this thinking permeated generations of students (including those who became pastors, seminary professors, mission leaders, etc.), a “door” was pushed open further with each generation. This “door” was the one Francis Bacon had unlocked—that the Bible really has nothing to do with science. Each generation, though, became more and more consistent—if the Bible’s history is not true, how can the rest of it be true? If the earthly teachings can’t be trusted—how can the spiritual teachings be believed?

The result today is that increasing numbers of people no longer see the Bible as relevant, and so they reject its morality and salvation. The church is telling people, “Trust in Jesus”, “abortion is wrong”, “homosexual behaviour is wrong”, etc. but, more and more, people don’t listen, because the message of Jesus and morality that the church is preaching comes from a book that, in their minds, is not trustworthy!

I guess there would be no point in telling a creationist that they fail to apply the methodology of science to their beliefs, because they’ve already declared that empiricism and the gathering of evidence are anathema. I’m always shocked at how contrary creationists are to the most basic principles of science, while simultaneously claiming to follow True Science.

So I guess it’s no rebuttal of creationism to say that an implication of science is that you have an obligation to explore the evidence and modify your premises accordingly, because they’ve already discarded that whole principle, and have rejected Baconian science. It is pointless to argue with people who claim that all knowledge and logic is a psychic emanation of the Bible, and who also despise the application of knowledge and logic to our understanding of the natural world. It’s just as well I didn’t waste time arguing with that fellow at the fair.

I should have known and been unsurprised. After all, Bacon wrote this, and explicitly dismissed the foolishness of biblical literalism:

Some moderns have indulged this folly, with such consummate inconsiderateness, that they have endeavored to build a system of natural Philosophy on the first chapter of Genesis, the book of Job, and other parts of Scripture; seeking thus the dead amongst the living. And this folly is the more to be prevented and restrained, because not only fantastical Philosophy but heretical Religion spring from the absurd mixing of matters-Divine and Human. It is therefore most wise soberly to render unto faith the things that are faith’s.

From the depths of the Elizabethan era, Francis Bacon’s trans-temporal brain waves destroy the nonsense of Ken Ham more than three centuries before he was born! No wonder modern creationists reject the Baconian scientific method.

I’m going to have to call this match in favor of Francis Bacon, the philosopher who shaped over three centuries of science, the Christian who endorsed a rational vision of religion, over Ken Ham, because Ken Ham is just silly and stupid and doesn’t even qualify as a contender.

And with that, I think I’ll stroll down to the Stevens County Fair. It’s the last day. Maybe I’ll take a look at some porkers who are far more sensible than Ken Ham.

While I’m doing that, you can click on the like button! Or subscribe! Or head over to patreon dot com slash pzmyers and sign up, like all these people whose names are scrolling by!

One last thing I want to mention is that while I respect and appreciate Francis Bacon’s work, that does not translate into hero-worship. Bacon married a 13 year old girl when he was 45, and died guilty of corruption, losing most of his estate. Think like Philosopher Bacon, don’t be like Aristocrat Bacon.