The Birkett-Payne fallacy

Many years ago a colleague had a discussion with a Kirsty Birkett and Tony Payne at Matthias Media, as he recalls.

He was propounding a view of Genesis 1's timing that was in line with the historic Christian position, as do I.

Birkett and Payne considered that they rebutted this view in their contrary propounding of the Framework Hypothesis. As we know, the Framework Hypothesis is a bit of theological confection designed to suppress the real-world connection of God's creation with...well...God.

Their view was that, finally, my colleague didn't know the meaning of Genesis 1 and they didn't know, therefore, he was wrong.

The Birkett-Payne fallacy is this: because I don't know something, you don't know it either.

You will often find this fallacy played out by your charges if you are a pre-school teacher.

Upon hearing of this fallacy, my thoughts in this context turned immediately to 2 Timothy 3:16, and I reflected on Colossians 2:2, in hand with John 1:1-3, and Colossians 1:16-17, thence on to Colossians 2:2-10.

There!

Mike the robot

In Heinlein's book The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Mike the robot is asked "What do you know?" Being a logical robot he starts with the beginning of what he knows, saying:

"In the beginning was the heaven (sic) and the earth. And the earth was without form and void: and darkness was on the face of the deep"...

On the other side of the world, and at another time, Kirsty Birkett teaches in her book The Essence of Darwinism, that it wouldn't really matter how God actually created, but that at least we know that he did create.

Idealist tosh from a Christian academic (with a PhD in history of science, mind you).

The only information that we have that tells us God created is that by which he steps us through his actions in creation, in definitive terms; in effect, showing us his creative process and not just 'telling'.

Set this aside as having concrete meaning in the one and only real world (I think of Putnam), and we know nothing in fact about God and his creative relation to the same real world. Set aside the ' method' and one sets aside the proposition and the rug is pulled from under the epistemological and ontological foundation God gives us as the formative basis of our being-in-relationship with him!

Heinlein demonstrates this exact thing. In his book the quote from Genesis 1 is an ontological dead end. It is irrelvant in the philosophical materialism, and the existential loneliness of his book. Its basic proposition, that God who is love extended his love in creation as he set it out (and if we set aside the significance of the word of God, we turn our back on his love) has no part of Heinlein's world. It is void of God in practical terms.

So, it would seem, in Birkett's.