Atheists' Invalid Science-against-Religion Argument

Alice C. Linsley

Biblical Anthropology is a relatively new science and one which I have been pioneering for thirty years.  It is distinctive in its approach to the biblical text and non-traditional in its findings.  As with all scientific approaches it requires rigorous investigation and verification of hypothesis.

Biblical Anthropology puts the lie to the absurd opposition of science and religion. It exposes the bias of popular spokesmen like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Hawking who has said, “There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, [and] science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works.”[1] Hawking is correct in asserting this distinction until it comes to Biblical Anthropology, an empirical study of a textual authority.

All religions have textual authorities or, in the case of pre-literate societies, oral tradition. Science is used to verify laws, patterns and substances of the material world. However, it is invalid to argue that science is based on objective observation of the material world and religion is not. Anthropological research into the biblical material reveals that Abraham’s ancestors were acute observers of nature and kept records of their observations. In this sense the oldest religion and the newest science are not so different in their method. Both make assertions based on observation. They simply observe things differently. The scientist works with the material world and the Biblical Anthropologist works with the biblical text, an artifact of the material world.

Analysis of the marriage pattern of Abraham's ancestors as described in Genesis reveals that the ruler-priest lines intermarried and spread out across the ancient Afro-Asiatic Dominion. According to Lycotte's Y chromosome studies [2] migrated east and north from Africa. The Kushite migration explains the spread of R1*-M173, which is found mainly, but not exclusively in Africa. Haplogroup R1*-M173 is the pristine form of haplogroup R. We would expect such a genetic outcome based on the biblical data concerning the Kushite ruler-priests' marriage and ascendency, a pattern that drove Kushite expansion.

As a biblical anthropologist, I seek data on the pages of the biblical text that either confirm or disprove my hypothesis. When it comes to analysis of the marriage and ascendency pattern of Abraham's Horite caste the results are replicable and would be the same regardless of who, where and when the analysis was done. When something is both replicable and produces identical results, it is authoritative. That is true in biblical anthropology as much as in any experimental science.

The ancient Kushites layed the foundation for many branches of science. They made discoveries in animal husbandry, plant cultivation, the discovery of antibiotics, metal work, astronomy, geometry and algebra. Their binary worldview paved the way for binary math and computers. They were both scientists and deeply religious, observing patterns in the heavens and on earth. St Paul says that this is how God designed things. He wrote that God's eternal power and divine nature are clearly perceived by means of what God created. In other words, the order of creation reveals the invisible qualities of the Godhead (Romans 1:20). Hawking is a very bright man, but he doesn't hold a candle to the Apostle Paul when it comes to understanding the antecedents of the natural world and its metaphysical extension.

Another spokesman who pits science against religion is Jerry Coyne, who has written:

"I’ve always maintained that this piece of the Old Testament [Adam and Eve], which is easily falsified by modern genetics (modern humans descended from a group of no fewer than 10,000 individuals), shows more than anything else the incompatibility between science and faith. For if you reject the Adam and Eve tale as literal truth, you reject two central tenets of Christianity: the Fall of Man and human specialness." 

Coyne is out of his element in speaking about the origins of Man.  Modern genetics has not demonstarted what he claims.  If anything it validates the biblical picture of the oldest known people originating in Africa.  Further, Adam and Eve are meta-historical, that is, they represent the first people created by God and as such must have lived before 3.6 million years ago since we have human fossils at least that old.  They are above history.

Further, from the beginning humans were humans. There is no drawer in a museum or university archive with bones of something between human and ape.  Don't be fooled by the evolutionary theory for which there ultimately is no physical evidence.  The oldest fossils found in Africa are easily classified as either ape (simian) or homo (human) and with DNA testing there is little doubt as to which category the fossils belong.  The evidence indicates that human were created fully human and therefore quite special relative to other creatures.

     1. Hawking made this statement during a 2010 interview to Dianne Sawyer of ABC News. In the same interview he made the statement that human life is "insignificant in the universe.”

     2. Lycotte's Human Y chromosome haplogroup R-V88: a paternal genetic record of early mid Holocene trans-Saharan connections and the spread of Chadic languages due to Kushite migration.



Related Reading:  Getting the Facts About Human Origins; Peter Hitchens Makes Peace as a Christian with his Atheist Brother