Concerns About BioLogos

Just Genesis ^ | December 22, 2014 | Alice C. Linsley

[Jandy on Genesis]

eborah Haarsma, the Director of BioLogos, is professor of Astronomy, and her husband, Loren Haarsma, teaches Physics at Calvin College in Michigan. The biology department of Calvin College issued this statement on May 7, 2010: "We teach evolutionary theory as the best scientific explanation for the dynamic diversity of life on Earth. . . . We teach biology from an evolutionary paradigm."

Neither Deborah nor Loren are biologists, though biologists serve on the BioLogos team. Neither are anthropologists, and as far as I can discover, no anthropologists serve on the BioLogos team. That is unfortunate since anthropology has much to contribute to the conversation about human origins.

I have some concerns about BioLogos, especially after talking with the Haarsmas two summers ago at the annual conference of the American Scientific Affiliation.

[BroJoeK]

Boogieman: "Yet we know that is false, or there would not be such wildly different reconstructions of the same species, or even the same specimen."

Pick any example you wish, then put the reconstructions in sequence by date, and you will see that they changed over time not due to "artistic license", but rather to improved understandings:

Boogieman: "We simply don’t have that capability with extinct organisms, so there is an automatic deficiency to the technique when applied for this purpose, that can only be compensated for by increasing the amount of license that goes into the reconstruction."

So, your basic problem is that you've mis-defined and are misusing the term "artistic license":

"Artistic license (also known as dramatic license, historical license, poetic license, narrative license, licentia poetica, or simply license) is a colloquial term, sometimes euphemism, used to denote the distortion of fact, alteration of the conventions of grammar or language, or rewording of pre-existing text made by an artist in the name of art."

The fact is: nothing remotely resembling such "artistic license" has ever gone into these reconstructions, even the ones which later proved to be greatly mistaken.

[Jandy on Genesis]

These artist conceptions do not align with physical evidence of archaic humans who walked upright, controlled fire, hunted, used butchering tools, had human dentition, etc.