We begin interpreting scripture before we even crack open the cover, through the assumptions and premises that we bring to scripture.
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Henry Eyring Sr. made the key observation that
You do not ever prove anything that makes a difference in science or religion…. Proof depends upon your premises…. Every proof in science depends on the postulates one accepts. The same is true of religion.
One of the really oddly interesting (and problematic!) things one finds in the modern history of science and religion is how ideological opponents who are absolutely at each others’ throats… share some fundamental premises. For example, Ken Ham1the Australian creationist behind Answers in Genesis, the Creation Museum, and the Ark Encounter and Richard Dawkins2prominent “New Atheist” and evolutionary biologist both believe that in order for Genesis to be divinely inspired, it must 1) be speaking in scientific terms (concordism), and 2) those scientific assertions must be factually correct and accurate (inerrancy). For Dawkins and others, this disproves the inspiration of the Bible.
In a brilliant little paper later expanded into a book, Biblical scholar Conrad Hyers observes
The problem is created, on the one side, by those of scientific orientation who, naturally, tend to look at biblical materials in terms of the narrative accounts of modern science and natural history…. There are also those who try to interpret the creation texts in relation to scientific statements, not in order to dismiss them as pre-scientific, but in order to defend them as scientifically true. Collisions between science and religion are, in large part, the result of religious people insisting that the biblical texts function as scientific and historical reports, and that to interpret them otherwise would be unfaithful to them. To compound the confusion, this supposed scientific and historical meaning is said to be the literal meaning of the texts….
Thus, quite ironically, those who would dismiss the Bible as pre-scientific3like Dawkins, and those who would defend it as the true science,4like Ken Ham and Joseph Fielding Smith find themselves in agreement that these biblical texts are to be interpreted ‘literally’–that is, as intending to offer literal statements of scientific and historical fact.”
Like Hyers, I reject the premise, as I’ve written at length. (Or see here for just one post.)
Hyers’ take is this.
It may surely be said that the Genesis accounts of creation are not in conflict with scientific and historical knowledge. Yet this is not because they can be shown to be in conformity with this knowledge, but precisely because they have little to do with it….
a ‘literal’ interpretation of the Genesis accounts is inappropriate, misleading and unworkable. It presupposes and insists upon a kind of literature and intention that is not there….
We cannot simply abstract scripture from its original context of meaning, as if the people to whom it was most immediately addressed were of no consequence. And, having created a vacuum of meaning, we cannot then arbitrarily substitute our own issues and literary assumptions.
It took me a long time to get to the point that I could analyze and recognize certain assumptions, premises, or postulates, and most of that process involved deep contextual study of the Old Testament and cognate literature. It’s made me wary of simply accepting or rejecting things where I have not identified the built-in assumptions, prior, and premises behind certain arguments and positions.
I wrote previously about British fundamentalist atheist Robert Blatchford, and how his premises were shared by George McCready Price.5the Seventh-day Adventist founder of modern young-earth creationism Like Ham and Dawkins, they were on opposite sides of the same coin. Joseph Fielding Smith then adopted some of Blatchford’s reasoning via Price.
As it turns out, Smith was not the only one to do so. In 1953, Harold B. Lee addressed Seminary and Institute employees, and recounted this.6August 21, 1953, “The Mission of the Church Schools.”
Robert Blatchford, public domain
Blatchford… wrote in the book God and My Neighbor, he said ‘Religions are not revealed, they are evolved. If a religion were revealed by God, that religion would be perfect in whole or in part, and would be as perfect in the first moment of its revelation, as after a thousand years of practice. There has never been a religion which fulfills those conditions.‘ It is a bold claim we make that this is the Church of Jesus Christ. That this is the Church and Kingdom of God on earth. A man, sailing on the same boat with President McKay… said ‘then Mr. McKay, if you claim to be the Church of Jesus Christ, yours must be a perfect organization. Your Church must be prepared to meet every need of the human soul.’ That is the claim, and the Church School system is but one of the arms by which that claim is realized.
As I read this, I was flabbergasted to see President Lee appearing to agree with and amplify Blatchford’s premise, that a revealed religion would be perfect; and further, implicitly claiming that as our religion is revealed, the organization must ergo be perfect!
I disagree with that in the strongest possible terms. I would observe that perhaps we should examine the the premises of absolutist atheist arguments before wholeheartedly embracing them from the other side of the coin.
Smith in 1910 after Apostolic ordination. LDS.org
On another occasion in the late 1950s, Joseph Fielding Smith wrote a long letter to an LDS scientist, giving some of his understandings of the nature of sun, moon, and stars, connected to his ideas about man not being permitted to leave the earth. His premise was that scripture provided a scientific a divinely omniscient account of the nature of the physical universe… and therefore, current scientific understandings had to be wrong about a lot of things.
After explaining his views at length, he closes with this question.
are not these conclusions reasonable?
And I thought again about how Eyring might have responded. “Well, yes, but only if one accepts your premises.”
Proof depends upon your premises…. Every proof in science depends on the postulates one accepts. The same is true of religion.
The most important question is not always “are these conclusions reasonable,” but “are these premises reasonable”?
And once you make those premises explicit, often times the answer turns out to be “well, no.” Eyring— and a host of others in the Church, including Apostles and prophets— did not share Smith’s premise, his postulates about the nature of scripture and interpretation. See here, here, and here for some historical discussion.
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