OnePeterFive versus Augustine

Richard Dawkins has a book out: Outgrowing God: A Beginner’s Guide. The theists are approaching this work with all the decorum and sobriety as one can expect. I'll take as text for my sermon tonight, David Mitchell at the ultraCatholic site, OnePeterFive [my bold]:

It is divided into two parts, the first being, after a fashion, theological, and the second claiming to be biological and scientific. In the theological section, the author presents his philosophical, theological, and moral arguments against the existence, justice, and goodness of God; in the second, he attempts to demonstrate that evolutionary theory — which he, without demonstration, labels “a fact” — has disproved God, or, which he seems to think is the same thing, has rendered the hypothesis of the existence of God unnecessary.

Since Mitchell professes to dislike bad logic and sloppy thinking, he should welcome a rebuttal to the same when it comes from his own pen.

No biologist debates about evolutionary theory as such. Debates remain about Darwin's (primitive and impressionistic) understanding of said theory, mainly as an historic curiosity. Although this nineteenth-century heir to Aristotle is coming off better than you'd think.

It is not up to Dawkins to demonstrate the proof of a scientific consensus. This misrepresents where lies the Burden Of Proof. To ask an interlocutor to shoulder such a burden as are not his to bear, is to waste his time - and ours. This is why we dislike sealions. It is up to critics like Mitchell to challenge this consensus, if they can. (Spoiler: Mitchell is not a biologist, so can't.)

But wait! there's more!

On page 30, Dawkins tells us that the Hebrew word almah need not mean “virgin,” but that parthenos does always mean that. (He is wrong about that; parthenos can mean young woman, but not in this context.) These are the words used in the Hebrew and Greek texts of the Old Testament, respectively, in Isaiah 7:14, which says “a virgin shall conceive.” Almah can mean “young woman”; so, for that matter, can the Latin word virgo, which can also mean “virgin” and which St. Jerome uses in his Latin translation, the Vulgate, in this place. Dawkins tells us that rendering almah into Greek as parthenos was a “translation error,” which “spawned the entire worldwide myth of the Blessed Virgin Mary[.]” In fact, all three words bear both meanings. (So where is the “translation error”?) But the authority of the Catholic Church is sufficient to tell us which one is the correct one: the correct translation of almah, parthenos, and virgo, in Isaiah 7:14, is “virgin.” So much for Dawkins’s comparative linguistics.

Am I the only one here who sees the circularity of this argument?

The text says X, in an ancient language not easily comprehended. Researchers into that text's time and place (Isaiah's Jerusalem, 700ish BC) have agreed it means A in translation. The present Jews, also, say A - but we can ignore them. Dawkins - having no dog in the Christian / Jewish debate - with the Jews, sides with the researchers saying A. But here are some gospels by heretics from Judaism, adopted by schismatics, which say it means B. The Church affirms B. Well fine then - let Catholics affirm it as B.

But you, Mr Mitchell, are approaching Dawkins as an historian. You need to prove that Dawkins is wrong about what Isaiah was saying to his own people in his own time. That means you need to wade not just into Biblical Hebrew but into Judaean history: to prove that despite that X looks much like situational oracle A, Isaiah meant to deliver the messianic prophecy B.

Which you didn't. So much for you.

The whole Mitchell essay is of a piece with this. Straining for gnats like the precise meaning of almah / parthenos; swallowing camels like the authority of the Catholic Church. Wait 'til he gets into how the sun stood still over Fátima.

On topic of Aristotelians I have recently been alerted to Catholic teachings going back to Aurelius Augustinus, late of the city Hippo in Africa. I cannot find that quote mooted around by Expanse fans, scil. that God gave us two texts, creation and scripture - which is a pity, because I quite like this quote. I did find summaries to that effect (with reference to the Book Of Nature: pdf). Pertinent here, which Augustine did say:

If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?

Mitchell, OnePeterFive, and Christians generally would do well to heed these words of one of our more illustrious saints.