Naturalistic assumptions- new paradigms

mindlight · Sep 18, 2012

A great mass of conclusions are determined by their assumptions. This is as true in science as elsewhere. Some of these assumptions are not testable. The problems of modern science are thus in main to do with the philosophical grid within which it is conducted.

The biggest assumptions of modern science are:

1) NATURALISM- That only what can be seen and measured is valid criteria for scientific enquiry. That non natural causes cannot properly be considered and therefore should not be.
2) UNIFORMITARIANISM- that the trends we can observe today have broadly happened at this rate over time.

These assumptions directly attack the view that:
1) That creation itself has transcendent supernatural causes which cannot be measured or predicted
2) That when things happen they tend to happen rapidly (CATASTROPHISM).

Thus modern science overreaches itself when it talks about
1) REMOTE COSMOLOGY - we know too little and have never left our star to investigate. What we see is only a fraction of what is out there and it is possible that even what we can potentially investigate is only a fraction of what is out there.
2) HUMAN NATURE - despite repeated attempts to measure the soul, bottle love, and even build economic models that predict human behaviour- these attempts have failed and human nature in essence remains something that transcends mere scientific enquiry.
3) ORIGINS- Many scientists have based a whole lot of speculative theories on bits of bone and tendon that we did out of certain rocks. But these bits are not enough evidence to build a reliable view of the past and the evidence trail is lost.

There are a number of important problems with this way of doing science:

1) LOSS of the SIMPLE OVERVIEW - the size of the task is magnified by the supposed age ranges of 13 billion years, by the increasing jargonisation and fragmentation of science into specialist disciplines. Each of these accept the basic assumptions of the scientific methodology without being able to fully prove these assumptions from within their own discipline.
2) SECULARISATION - This is world view that is closed the miraculous and unexpected cause neither are repeatable or predictable events.
3) REDUCTION- People and nature are demystified to the point where certain authentic realities are lost.
4) ERROR - Massive time scales are required for this science to work. The bible account is reexplained in terms of a literary framework opening up the possibility of error in other areas also.

What can be done:

We need a new humility and flexibility to modern science. Creationists can accept much of the good work that scientists do without accepting the theoretical grids and timescales that they use to interpret their findings. We need to recover our sense of awe at what God has created and a new assurance about the biblical record of that. We need to rediscover the power and truthfulness of poetry and song about the universe that are sometimes more insightful than the best attempts of scientists to understand it. We need to rediscover our own transcendence of natural processes and this should give us the strength to master these processes as God intended in the creation mandate.

Calminian · Sep 18, 2012

mindlight said:
...We need a new humility and flexibility to modern science. ....

Or if not, at least the admission that science is a limited epistemological system. There's no shame in saying that, or in pointing out that science is reliant on certain unproven presuppositions.

We've elevated science to a synonym for reality. It's become a religion and scientists its priests.

But there's nothing anti-science in merely pointing out its weaknesses and limitations.

mindlight · Sep 19, 2012

Calminian said:
Or if not, at least the admission that science is a limited epistemological system. There's no shame in saying that, or in pointing out that science is reliant on certain unproven presuppositions.

We've elevated science to a synonym for reality. It's become a religion and scientists its priests.

But there's nothing anti-science in merely pointing out its weaknesses and limitations.

Yes well put and I am not anti-science. As you say it is a matter of scope and the limits of the methodology.

I like the phrase "synonym for reality". You are right reality is something deeper and richer and the scientists abstract is a reduction of sorts (albeit often a helpful one)

Many scientists are often deeply antireligious but you are right they seek the same respect and speak with the same authority as those who claim a religious right to do so. Often , as in the examples I shared, it is a matter of faith whether or not we accept their conclusions.

Calminian · Sep 19, 2012

mindlight said:
Yes well put and I am not anti-science. As you say it is a matter of scope and the limits of the methodology.

I like the phrase "synonym for reality". You are right reality is something deeper and richer and the scientists abstract is a reduction of sorts (albeit often a helpful one)

Many scientists are often deeply antireligious but you are right they seek the same respect and speak with the same authority as those who claim a religious right to do so. Often , as in the examples I shared, it is a matter of faith whether or not we accept their conclusions.

One other thing I see done a lot is the conflation of science and logic. These are very distinct and should be kept distinct. Science is inductive—attempting to infer patterns through observation. Logic is deductive. A cannot be non A at the same time in the same way. It's a deductive truth that cannot be denied (without affirming it at the some time). Mathematics is deductive as well. But some, even some scientists who should know better, have conflated the two and concluded if something is not scientific it is not logical. It's simply not true. Science must be logical, but logic need not be scientific.

For instance, miracles are perfectly logical. There is no deductive contradiction with their existence. But miracles cannot ever be scientific as they are not uniform repeating testable events. Thus the resurrection of Christ, while obviously not scientific, has no logical contradictions whatsoever.

Free will is another one. Libertarian agency is not compatible with scientific presuppositions. It is a non-uniform, non-predictable event. This has tempted many scientists to do away with the concept. Science is about predictable patterns, be it movements of heavenly bodies in space or chemical reactions in the brain. Everything is determined by mechanical physical patterns. And, as is the pattern of the church, they've latched onto this in many circles, embracing determinism.

But christians should be better informed.

shernren · Sep 20, 2012

Uh-oh.

mindlight said:
The biggest assumptions of modern science are:

1) NATURALISM- That only what can be seen and measured is valid criteria for scientific enquiry. That non natural causes cannot properly be considered and therefore should not be.

First, a technical point of logic. The contrapositive of "only what can be seen and measured is valid for scientific enquiry" is "even some things that cannot be seen and measured are valid for scientific enquiry". (If I believe the opposite of "only dogs can be white", then I must believe that there are also non-dog things that are white.)

Secondly, this is not so much an assumption of modern science as a definition of modern science. Modern science cannot quantify supernatural causes. But that is not because Dawkins or Dennett or some evil bearded atheist has decided "right, scientists, you're not allowed to believe in God any more". It's simply because science deals with the repeatable (as Calminian says) and anything supernatural necessarily involves supernatural agency which is not mechanically repeatable.

It's like complaining that one fundamental assumption of bicycle-makers is that only things with two wheels can be considered bicycles. If you want to make a car, go ahead and make one, just don't call it a bicycle - and if you want to properly study the supernatural agency of God be prepared to part ways with science fairly quickly.

mindlight said:
2) UNIFORMITARIANISM- that the trends we can observe today have broadly happened at this rate over time.

Now that's just rubbish. Most scientists accept Moore's Law (roughly, that computing power doubles roughly every 18 months), but few of them would apply it to the Stone Age. Even creationists mean a different thing by "uniformitarianism" than what you say here, and it would be good for you to learn their own definition before attacking a strawman.

mindlight · Sep 20, 2012

Shernen,

Thankyou for your comments and for forcing me to clarify some basic definitions.

shernren said:
Uh-oh.

First, a technical point of logic. The contrapositive of "only what can be seen and measured is valid for scientific enquiry" is "even some things that cannot be seen and measured are valid for scientific enquiry". (If I believe the opposite of "only dogs can be white", then I must believe that there are also non-dog things that are white.)

Some things are not within the scientific scope of enquiry(as it has been defined) is what I meant because of its assumption of NATURALISM. This necessarily limits the authority with which science can speak. The contrapositive of "only what can be seen and measured is valid for scientific enquiry" is "another mode of enquiry may be able to investigate things that cannot be seen or measured by the currently accepted means" e.g. Revealed knowledge /Theology. Or a way of doing science that is open and flexible enough to accept revealed knowledge when the scientific method cannot establish the truth of the matter.

Secondly, this is not so much an assumption of modern science as a definition of modern science. Modern science cannot quantify supernatural causes. But that is not because Dawkins or Dennett or some evil bearded atheist has decided "right, scientists, you're not allowed to believe in God any more". It's simply because science deals with the repeatable (as Calminian says) and anything supernatural necessarily involves supernatural agency which is not mechanically repeatable.

It's like complaining that one fundamental assumption of bicycle-makers is that only things with two wheels can be considered bicycles. If you want to make a car, go ahead and make one, just don't call it a bicycle - and if you want to properly study the supernatural agency of God be prepared to part ways with science fairly quickly.

Again because of the limits imposed by the assumptions (regardless of whether or not these limits are warranted or not) science cannot speak with too much certainty about its conclusions because certain types of evidence are not quantifiable in scientific terms. Because the assumptions limit the field of enquiry the conclusions only have a limited authority also.

Now that's just rubbish. Most scientists accept Moore's Law (roughly, that computing power doubles roughly every 18 months), but few of them would apply it to the Stone Age. Even creationists mean a different thing by "uniformitarianism" than what you say here, and it would be good for you to learn their own definition before attacking a strawman.

wikipedia on Uniformitarianism said:
Uniformitarianism is the assumption that the same natural laws and processes that operate in the universe now, have always operated in the universe in the past and apply everywhere in the universe. It has included the gradualist concept that "the present is the key to the past" and is functioning at the same rates. Uniformitarianism has been a key principle of geology and virtually all fields of science, but naturalism's modern geologists, while accepting that geology has occurred across deep time, no longer hold to a strict gradualism.

I am using a popularly acceptable definition of UNIFORMITARIANISM that basically boils down to the gradualist conception of "the present is the key to the past" accepted by most modern geologists and by Theistic Evolutionists and many Old Earth Creationists alike. Moores law is a good example of why such assumptions are preposterous, not a support for your argument.

mindlight · Sep 20, 2012

Calminian said:
One other thing I see done a lot is the conflation of science and logic. These are very distinct and should be kept distinct. Science is inductiveattempting to infer patterns through observation. Logic is deductive. A cannot be non A at the same time in the same way. It's a deductive truth that cannot be denied (without affirming it at the some time). Mathematics is deductive as well. But some, even some scientists who should know better, have conflated the two and concluded if something is not scientific it is not logical. It's simply not true. Science must be logical, but logic need not be scientific.

Yes absolutely and the logic of science is a limited abstract of reality because of the limits imposed by its assumptions. In the same way mathematics is also an abstract of reality. Some of its deductions can be tested when married to science e.g. the space craft enters the precalculated orbit of a distant planet at the time and place specified and others cannot yet be tested e.g. the distance to the nearest star to our sun.

For instance, miracles are perfectly logical. There is no deductive contradiction with their existence. But miracles cannot ever be scientific as they are not uniform repeating testable events. Thus the resurrection of Christ, while obviously not scientific, has no logical contradictions whatsoever.

There is a danger in this line of thinking to making too absolute the separation between miracles and science. Investigations of Lourdes miracles for instance verify that people were healed and they have a heap of doctors reports to support that. But these healings were nonetheless miracles. Having 500 eyewitnesses to the resurrection makes a credible case for the event having occurred even if science cannot duplicate it. Most TEs will accept that the resurrection occurred as a physical fact although it could not be demonstrated by those who insist on evidence available here and now from which conclusions can be drawn backwards about these events.

Free will is another one. Libertarian agency is not compatible with scientific presuppositions. It is a non-uniform, non-predictable event. This has tempted many scientists to do away with the concept. Science is about predictable patterns, be it movements of heavenly bodies in space or chemical reactions in the brain. Everything is determined by mechanical physical patterns. And, as is the pattern of the church, they've latched onto this in many circles, embracing determinism.

But christians should be better informed.

Freewill demonstrates the kind of transcendence of scientific assumptions that I am talking about and as such it is a proof of the limits of science which would prefer to explain things in terms of genetics and environment. The reality of human nature demonstrates genetic and environmental factors but also something extra - CHOICE!

Keachian · Sep 20, 2012

Might I propose theistic definitions of natural and uniformitarianism?

Natural: The providential acts of God, in ways in which we can understand how things seemingly interact, good examples include gravity, weather, reproduction, etc.

Uniformitarianism: The belief that God will continue his providential acts as he has from the beginning and that we can reliably understand the universe because of this, especially since God is the same yesterday, today and forever.

mindlight · Sep 20, 2012

progmonk said:
Natural: The providential acts of God, in ways in which we can understand how things seemingly interact, good examples include gravity, weather, reproduction, etc.

I think it probably is fair to say that the naturalistic assumption of modern science basically focuses on what can be understood and demonstrated as real knowledge (using observable and repeatable experiments for example) although the method has been misused to apply to things where the evidence is not sufficient for this, degraded or may have been tampered with by unknown processes. But does your definition allow for levels of understanding and probability of truthfulness conditional on the evidence and possibility of testing for instance? With these provisos and so long as it is accepted that this may not be the whole story I am happy with this understanding.

Uniformitarianism: The belief that God will continue his providential acts as he has from the beginning and that we can reliably understand the universe because of this, especially since God is the same yesterday, today and forever.

The God I read of in the Bible rarely does things the same way twice even if it is the same God that is revealed in each book of the Bible. Each revelation of Him and great work of His has a unique and unanalogous quality about it. The creation event itself is without analogy and has not been repeated since. The flood was a unique event and of supernatural origin and there is no analogy to a global catastrophe of this scale and power. Whole dimensions of this vast universe, of which we are dimly aware, remain and in greatest probability will always remain unexperienced by us. We only assume an analogy to our experience here and now to what is actually out there. This assumption may well be completely unwarranted.

shernren · Sep 20, 2012

mindlight said:
Some things are not within the scientific scope of enquiry(as it has been defined) is what I meant because of its assumption of NATURALISM. This necessarily limits the authority with which science can speak. The contrapositive of "only what can be seen and measured is valid for scientific enquiry" is "another mode of enquiry may be able to investigate things that cannot be seen or measured by the currently accepted means" e.g. Revealed knowledge /Theology. Or a way of doing science that is open and flexible enough to accept revealed knowledge when the scientific method cannot establish the truth of the matter.

Again because of the limits imposed by the assumptions (regardless of whether or not these limits are warranted or not) science cannot speak with too much certainty about its conclusions because certain types of evidence are not quantifiable in scientific terms. Because the assumptions limit the field of enquiry the conclusions only have a limited authority also.

Now you say that (by your own words) another mode of inquiry may be able to investigate things that cannot be seen or measured by the currently accepted means. Fair enough. But that raises two questions.

1. What guarantee do you have that another mode of inquiry will be able to investigate these things? After all, just because science fails, that doesn't guarantee that your own method will work. Just because alchemy can't transmute lead to gold doesn't mean that painting it yellow will do the trick.

Suppose a Scientologist says to you: "I agree with you that science can't reliably tell us the age of the universe - but I don't think your Bible can, either, and I think my methods give a better date, closer to about a hundred thousand years." How would you show him wrong? How would you show him wrong if he inscrutably appeals to his own personal authority to declare neither science nor your own limited thoughts valid?

2. Wouldn't it be presumptuous to extend your principle to things which can be seen or measured by (your own words) currently accepted means? Take the distance to the nearest star for example. The currently accepted means to measure the distance to the Alpha-Beta-Proxima Centauri system is by means of stellar parallax, using the mind-numbingly complicated, Nobel-prize-winning, utterly inscrutable physical principle that ... since things look different from different positions, we shouldn't be surprised that the positions of these stars in the sky are different at different times of the year, and when we measure those differences we will find out how far away the Sun is.

Lest you protest "assumptions! assumptions!" (without being able to point out exactly which assumptions are wrong and why, as usual), this is the chief method which gave the first (accurate) estimations of distance within the Solar System.

mindlight said:
I am using a popularly acceptable definition of UNIFORMITARIANISM that basically boils down to the gradualist conception of "the present is the key to the past" accepted by most modern geologists and by Theistic Evolutionists and many Old Earth Creationists alike. Moores law is a good example of why such assumptions are preposterous, not a support for your argument.

Your own quote says:

Uniformitarianism is the assumption that the same natural laws and processes that operate in the universe now, have always operated in the universe in the past and apply everywhere in the universe. It has included the gradualist concept that "the present is the key to the past" and is functioning at the same rates. Uniformitarianism has been a key principle of geology and virtually all fields of science, but naturalism's modern geologists, while accepting that geology has occurred across deep time, no longer hold to a strict gradualism.

In other words, while they accept uniformitarianism, they do not accept the gradualist concept of constant rates.

mindlight · Sep 21, 2012

shernren said:
1. What guarantee do you have that another mode of inquiry will be able to investigate these things? After all, just because science fails, that doesn't guarantee that your own method will work. Just because alchemy can't transmute lead to gold doesn't mean that painting it yellow will do the trick.

You forget the Bible was here before modern science. revealed knowledge carries Gods authority properly interpreted. I and most Christians have traditionally believed it describes a young universe.

Suppose a Scientologist says to you: "I agree with you that science can't reliably tell us the age of the universe - but I don't think your Bible can, either, and I think my methods give a better date, closer to about a hundred thousand years." How would you show him wrong? How would you show him wrong if he inscrutably appeals to his own personal authority to declare neither science nor your own limited thoughts valid?

says who? The source of authority he claims is the crucial thing and whether or not it is credible. Theologically certain things are beyond dispute in all 4 major branches of Christianity - Pentecostals, Protestants, Catholics and Orthodox.

2. Wouldn't it be presumptuous to extend your principle to things which can be seen or measured by (your own words) currently accepted means? Take the distance to the nearest star for example. The currently accepted means to measure the distance to the Alpha-Beta-Proxima Centauri system is by means of stellar parallax, using the mind-numbingly complicated, Nobel-prize-winning, utterly inscrutable physical principle that ... since things look different from different positions, we shouldn't be surprised that the positions of these stars in the sky are different at different times of the year, and when we measure those differences we will find out how far away the Sun is.

As I said in my first example we trace these trigonometric lines in the sky and calculate their length. The ones we drew in the Solar system have proven accurate as we sent spaceships down them with the figurative tapemeasure. But the stars are much further away and the length of those lines remain unproven.

Your own quote says:
Uniformitarianism is the assumption that the same natural laws and processes that operate in the universe now, have always operated in the universe in the past and apply everywhere in the universe. It has included the gradualist concept that "the present is the key to the past" and is functioning at the same rates. Uniformitarianism has been a key principle of geology and virtually all fields of science, but naturalism's modern geologists, while accepting that geology has occurred across deep time, no longer hold to a strict gradualism.
In other words, while they accept uniformitarianism, they do not accept the gradualist concept of constant rates.

I left that part in deliberately as I am aware of the nuances in the position. But the length of the timespan they require for their geological ages requires the overall position of gradualism and the alternative explanation and one more commonly held by creationists would be a dominate catastrophism with spans of time characterised by gradualism in between.

Keachian · Sep 21, 2012

mindlight said:
I think it probably is fair to say that the naturalistic assumption of modern science basically focuses on what can be understood and demonstrated as real knowledge (using observable and repeatable experiments for example) although the method has been misused to apply to things where the evidence is not sufficient for this, degraded or may have been tampered with by unknown processes. But does your definition allow for levels of understanding and probability of truthfulness conditional on the evidence and possibility of testing for instance? With these provisos and so long as it is accepted that this may not be the whole story I am happy with this understanding.

For the most part the naturalistic assumption was established in a theistic context, it's only now that it is firmly established that people are dropping the theism. I believe that even being able to understand the universe in a coherent manner has such a theistic underpinning.

The God I read of in the Bible rarely does things the same way twice even if it is the same God that is revealed in each book of the Bible. Each revelation of Him and great work of His has a unique and unanalogous quality about it. The creation event itself is without analogy and has not been repeated since. The flood was a unique event and of supernatural origin and there is no analogy to a global catastrophe of this scale and power. Whole dimensions of this vast universe, of which we are dimly aware, remain and in greatest probability will always remain unexperienced by us. We only assume an analogy to our experience here and now to what is actually out there. This assumption may well be completely unwarranted.

The definition is linked to the definition of natural, as such is limited in scope. We are not talking about God's judgemental acts(what you describe), nor his acts of grace (how he dealt with the same problem again) we are talking purely of his acts which in essence keep the universe spinning, his providential acts, his sending the rain on the just and the unjust, his knitting together of new life in the wombs of all creation, his making the electrons rush around in your computer, his colliding of universes, all that the universe has to offer is created and maintained by God! When I look at the stars the works of His hands! Who am I? Who am I? The redeemed son, redeemed by him not just being off in some bubble, but rending the heavens and coming to earth in the form of a suckling babe. Just as the heavens declare the glory and majesty of God, this mindblowing act shows his love, grace and oh so great involvement in his creation.

lucaspa · Sep 22, 2012

mindlight said:
A great mass of conclusions are determined by their assumptions. This is as true in science as elsewhere. Some of these assumptions are not testable. The problems of modern science are thus in main to do with the philosophical grid within which it is conducted.

The biggest assumptions of modern science are:

1) NATURALISM- That only what can be seen and measured is valid criteria for scientific enquiry. That non natural causes cannot properly be considered and therefore should not be.

That's not an assumption of science. Rather, science is methodologically naturalistic. Science is limited to studying naturalistic, or better, materialistic causes. This limit is imposed by the "scientific method" and holding things constant. We can't hold God "constant". IOW, we can't point to a test tube and say "God is in that test tube" and point to the test tube next to it and say "God is not in that test tube." Therefore science studies material causes and cannot comment on supernatural causes.

2) UNIFORMITARIANISM- that the trends we can observe today have broadly happened at this rate over time.

That is not an assumption, but rather a conclusion. And it is continually tested by seeing if trends we observe today, occurring over time, can account for what we see today. For instance, observed erosion rates have been used to determine whether that erosion can account for the present height of the Appalachian mountains compared to the height they were when first formed.

These assumptions directly attack the view that:
1) That creation itself has transcendent supernatural causes which cannot be measured or predicted
2) That when things happen they tend to happen rapidly (CATASTROPHISM).

Some things do happen by catastrophism. For instance, Meteor Crator was caused by a catastrophe: the impact of a meteor. A catastrophe is hypothesized for the KT extinction at the end of the Cretaceous. However, catastrophes leave consequences we can study today. The meteor at the KT event left 1) iridium layers in the rock laid at the time and 2) an impact crator at Chixulub Mexico.

Creationism postulates a world-wide flood as a catastrophe. That was THE accepted scientific theory from 1500 - 1831. The problem is that, instead of finding the expected consequences of such a catastrophe, we find consequences that are impossible if that catastrophe happened. That is why the scientists of the time -- ALL of whom were Christian and most of whom were ministers -- found that Noah's flood was false.

Supernatural creation also has consequences we would be able to observe today. "Creation" says that God made some things de novo in their present form. That is a material method that can be tested and has consequences. It has been tested and falsified. God simply did not create that way.

For Christians, what science does is read God's other book -- His Creation -- and finds out HOW God created.

Thus modern science overreaches itself when it talks about
1) REMOTE COSMOLOGY - we know too little and have never left our star to investigate. What we see is only a fraction of what is out there and it is possible that even what we can potentially investigate is only a fraction of what is out there.

We do get information of what is out there by the radiation that reaches us. Quite a bit of information, as a matter of fact. The motion of matter we can see (that emits radiation) told us there had to be matter out there we do not see (dark matter).

2) HUMAN NATURE - despite repeated attempts to measure the soul, bottle love, and even build economic models that predict human behaviour- these attempts have failed and human nature in essence remains something that transcends mere scientific enquiry.

You need to be more specific. We have learned, and are learning much more, about human nature. I agree that science is unable to measure the soul, but investigations of near death experiences have given information about the possibility of consciousness not bound by the body.

3) ORIGINS- Many scientists have based a whole lot of speculative theories on bits of bone and tendon that we did out of certain rocks. But these bits are not enough evidence to build a reliable view of the past and the evidence trail is lost.

There is quite a bit of evidence in living organisms that tell us about the past. Remember, the present is the way it is because the past is the way it was. Unless, of course, you want to deny cause and effect. And, if you deny cause and effect, you also deny supernatural cause and effect! For instance, ERV's tell us quite a bit about primate evolution and show that God did not directly create H. sapiens:
www.christianforums.com/t96639
29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: Part 4

I think you are unaware of the entire fossil record of human ancestry. There are transitional individuals linking us (H. sapiens) back thru 2 intermediate species to A. afarensis -- a species so different it is in another genus. Considering the rarity of transitional series of individuals, this is like God shouting to us "I did it by evolution!"

There are a number of important problems with this way of doing science:

1) LOSS of the SIMPLE OVERVIEW

That is not totally lost. There are people who do keep up with the overall picture: Kenneth Miller is one. Stephen Jay Gould was another.

2) SECULARISATION - This is world view that is closed the miraculous and unexpected cause neither are repeatable or predictable events.

Actually, science got this view from Christianity. A true Biblical view of creation requires that there be no "gaps" between regularly appearing members of the universe. God did not make an incomplete creation. Science got the idea of refusing to accept "gaps" from Christianity!

3) REDUCTION- People and nature are demystified to the point where certain authentic realities are lost.

You need to be more specific on what "authentic realities are lost"

4) ERROR - Massive time scales are required for this science to work. The bible account is reexplained in terms of a literary framework opening up the possibility of error in other areas also.

Science worked when the predominant theory was young earth. Christians rejected a literal Genesis 1-3 long before science showed an old earth. See St. Augustine and John Calvin, for instance.

Creationists can accept much of the good work that scientists do without accepting the theoretical grids and timescales that they use to interpret their findings.

So what you want us to do is reject God as Creator and instead insist on a failed, human interpretation of Genesis instead of what God tells us. Sorry, I won't reject God that way.

We need to recover our sense of awe at what God has created and a new assurance about the biblical record of that.

What we need is to recognize that the Bible tells us the Who and why of creation, but that Creation itself (what science studies) tells us the how. You want assurance of the Bible. Instead, you should want to listen to God. Creationists need to remember that Christianity has ALWAYS held that God has 2 books. Creationists need to stop worshipping their interpretation of the Bible and worship God.

Science tells us how God created.

lucaspa · Sep 22, 2012

mindlight said:
You forget the Bible was here before modern science. revealed knowledge carries Gods authority properly interpreted. I and most Christians have traditionally believed it describes a young universe.

And God's Creation was here before the Bible! That Creation also carries God's authority, doesn't it? What God's Creation tells us is that the traditionally believe young universe is wrong. See the first quote in my signature. That was the Christian response to 1) showing that a world-wide flood never happened and 2) that the earth is very old.

As I said in my first example we trace these trigonometric lines in the sky and calculate their length. The ones we drew in the Solar system have proven accurate as we sent spaceships down them with the figurative tapemeasure. But the stars are much further away and the length of those lines remain unproven.

So the math suddenly stops working when we get out of the solar system? What we do is use diameter of the earth's orbit as the base of the triangle. As you yourself said, that is "proven". We then have the angles to the nearer stars from each side of the base. Trigonometry then gives us the size of the equilateral triangle to the star and the length of the line from the star bisecting the base.

That gets us the distance to the nearer stars. Fortunately for us, that includes some Cepheid variables. I can go into the calculations using the Cepheid variables and the inverse square law for the intensity of light.

But the length of the timespan they require for their geological ages requires the overall position of gradualism and the alternative explanation and one more commonly held by creationists would be a dominate catastrophism with spans of time characterised by gradualism in between.

As I said, that was the accepted scientific theory from 1500-1831. The problem is that that too many layers in the earth's crust simply CANNOT have been caused by a catastrophic flood. See "unconformities" and Siccar Point. The age of the earth is not "require for their geological ages", but instead is a CONCLUSION from the data by men who originally thought the earth was young. The evidence God left us in His Creation convinced them that they were wrong about a young earth and world-wide flood. Instead, the earth is very old and there never was "a dominant catastrophism". I suggest the book The Biblical Flood: A Case History of the Church's Response to Extrabiblical Evidence by Davis A Young. Young is both an evangelical Christian and a geologist. For decades he was a professor of geology at Calvin College. He documents how Christians falsified a world-wide flood as an explanation for geology and how they came to realize the earth is very old, all before the discovery of radioactive dating.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/ce/2/part12.html</A> 
Many evangelical Christians today suppose that Bible believers have always been in favor of a "young-universe" and "creationism." However, as any student of the history of geology (and religion) knows, by the 1850s all competent evangelical Christian geologists agreed that the earth must be extremely old, and that geological investigations did not support that the Flood "in the days of Noah" literally "covered the whole earth." Rev. William Buckland (head of geology at Oxford), Rev. Adam Sedgwick (head of geology at Cambridge), Rev. Edward Hitchcock (who taught natural theology and geology at Amherst College, Massachusetts), John Pye Smith (head of Homerton Divinity College), Hugh Miller (self taught geologist, and editor of the Free Church of Scotland's newspaper), and Sir John William Dawson (geologist and paleontologist, a Presbyterian brought up in a fundamentalist atmosphere, who also became the only person ever to serve as president of three of the most prestigious geological organizations of Britain and America), all rejected the "Genesis Flood" as an explanation of the geologic record (or any part of that record), and argued that it must have taken a very long time to form the various geologic layers. Neither were their conclusions based on a subconscious desire to support "evolution," since none of the above evangelical Christians were evolutionists, and the earliest works of each of them were composed before Darwin's Origin of Species was published. The plain facts of geology led them to acknowledge the vast antiquity of the earth. And this was before the advent of radiometric dating."

mindlight · Sep 23, 2012

progmonk said:
For the most part the naturalistic assumption was established in a theistic context, it's only now that it is firmly established that people are dropping the theism. I believe that even being able to understand the universe in a coherent manner has such a theistic underpinning.

This is a fascinating comment and really insightful. What we have today effectively emerged out of a theological environment of the Christian monasteries and universities of the twelfth century. The separation of scriptural studies and those of the Book of nature being the crucial distinction. Aristotelian insights about knowledge being derived from observations were revived and Christianised and out of this modern science would eventually emerge. I wonder if the discussed conflicts that then gathered pace with increasing force over the next 900 years between scripture and science are rooted in an earlier theological error. That after having rejected the study of the natural as having little value for so long the church was poorly equipped to incorporate the study of the natural into its systematic world view. So instead it separated the studies and allowed them to develop on entirely distinct parallel lines. The studies of the book of nature absorbed the digestion of Greek thought , developed from this base and the overly extreme separation made between natural and supernatural thinking guaranteed that the conclusions reached from the one would ultimately conflict with the conclusions reached from the other.

Book of Nature - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Add into this understandings of natural law and natural theology which have parallels to this discussion and the greatest theologian of the twentieth century Karl Barth for instance confirms the absolute separation of the realms by suggesting that natural theology has nothing of value to say about God.

This appears to contradict the Romans 1 passage:

Romans 1 v 18 - 23 said:
18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world Gods invisible qualitieshis eternal power and divine naturehave been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.

The definition is linked to the definition of natural, as such is limited in scope. We are not talking about God's judgemental acts(what you describe), nor his acts of grace (how he dealt with the same problem again) we are talking purely of his acts which in essence keep the universe spinning, his providential acts, his sending the rain on the just and the unjust, his knitting together of new life in the wombs of all creation, his making the electrons rush around in your computer, his colliding of universes, all that the universe has to offer is created and maintained by God! When I look at the stars the works of His hands! Who am I? Who am I? The redeemed son, redeemed by him not just being off in some bubble, but rending the heavens and coming to earth in the form of a suckling babe. Just as the heavens declare the glory and majesty of God, this mindblowing act shows his love, grace and oh so great involvement in his creation.

Essentially you are arguing that it is legitimate for Christians to see a degree of consistency in the creation which reveals something of Gods providence. And yes the patterns that we read give us reason to declare the majesty and glory of God, to understand something of his power and intelligence and artistry revealed in the works of his hand. But to what extent can this understanding be precisely bottled and labelled in the manner of many in modern science.

John 3 v 8 said:
The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.

I think science needs to accept with a new humility a certain randomness, unpredictability and indeed from their perspective chaos in creation that they will not be able to conquer with a master theory. The insights and benefits of science need to be balanced with an awareness of its limits.

mindlight · Sep 23, 2012

lucaspa said:
That's not an assumption of science. Rather, science is methodologically naturalistic. Science is limited to studying naturalistic, or better, materialistic causes. This limit is imposed by the "scientific method" and holding things constant. We can't hold God "constant". IOW, we can't point to a test tube and say "God is in that test tube" and point to the test tube next to it and say "God is not in that test tube." Therefore science studies material causes and cannot comment on supernatural causes.

Actually no it is an assumption that goes back to the Aristotelian view that knowledge can be derived from observation. There is of course a good deal of legitimacy to this assumption and it is now entrenched in the methodology of modern science as if it were an obvious fact and way of doing things. There are a great many things upon which science comments which cannot be put into a testtube e.g. origins, human nature and remote cosmology. Yet the scientific mentality still graciously seeks to bless us with its observations and theories on these matters. Where science follows the strict methodology you outline we may well agree on the legitimacy of its conclusions. It is where it does not follow this ability to consistently place the anlaysed phenemonen in a testtube where we are going to differ.

That is not an assumption, but rather a conclusion. And it is continually tested by seeing if trends we observe today, occurring over time, can account for what we see today. For instance, observed erosion rates have been used to determine whether that erosion can account for the present height of the Appalachian mountains compared to the height they were when first formed.

You attribute certainty to a provisional conclusion and the fact is you simply do not know whoever you are. and whatever research you have done or read. The reason being you cannot know- the evidence is lost, or degraded or the evidence trail is not recorded and assumptions are made about what constituted the original conditions before erosion etc came into play. You speculate on the basis of what you see and affirm the assumptions you make with the conclusions you draw.

Some things do happen by catastrophism. For instance, Meteor Crator was caused by a catastrophe: the impact of a meteor. A catastrophe is hypothesized for the KT extinction at the end of the Cretaceous. However, catastrophes leave consequences we can study today. The meteor at the KT event left 1) iridium layers in the rock laid at the time and 2) an impact crator at Chixulub Mexico.

The geological layers are a result of a unique catastrophe e.g. the flood. Catastrophism is also evident in for example shifts in the magnetic poles etc.

Creationism postulates a world-wide flood as a catastrophe. That was THE accepted scientific theory from 1500 - 1831. The problem is that, instead of finding the expected consequences of such a catastrophe, we find consequences that are impossible if that catastrophe happened. That is why the scientists of the time -- ALL of whom were Christian and most of whom were ministers -- found that Noah's flood was false.

I accept that a lot of Christians dispute and have disputed this view on scientific grounds. My disagreement with them has to do with whether science is competent to uncontroversially draw these conclusions in the first place.

Supernatural creation also has consequences we would be able to observe today. "Creation" says that God made some things de novo in their present form. That is a material method that can be tested and has consequences. It has been tested and falsified. God simply did not create that way.

Given the floods almost total reworking of the original earthbased evidence and evidences elsewhere that indicate a younger universe e.g. the depth of moondust on the moons surface this is either a conclusion that the scientists you might quote are not competent to make or one they have theorised poorly.

For Christians, what science does is read God's other book -- His Creation -- and finds out HOW God created.

Within the limits imposed by its methodology - yes

We do get information of what is out there by the radiation that reaches us. Quite a bit of information, as a matter of fact. The motion of matter we can see (that emits radiation) told us there had to be matter out there we do not see (dark matter).

By your own calculations 96% of what is out there does not emit an electromagnetic signature and so the validity of your observations as matter even of internal consistency must beheld with some humility as merely provisional.

You need to be more specific. We have learned, and are learning much more, about human nature. I agree that science is unable to measure the soul, but investigations of near death experiences have given information about the possibility of consciousness not bound by the body.

Yes there are things that science can investigate and i was impressed by the investigations of near death experiences and the documentation of consciousness of resucitation efforts by doctors of clinically dead patients by themselves and their their restoration to their bodies. But about this realm we know little from science and more from scripture. One of my formative experiences was when studying economics in university. I learnt and studied numerous econometric formulas which quite simply never worked in practice. These are the so called scientists of human nature but they almost never get it right. If the scientific method can be properly applied to human nature then it would be predictable. It isn't so it cannot.

There is quite a bit of evidence in living organisms that tell us about the past. Remember, the present is the way it is because the past is the way it was. Unless, of course, you want to deny cause and effect. And, if you deny cause and effect, you also deny supernatural cause and effect! For instance, ERV's tell us quite a bit about primate evolution and show that God did not directly create H. sapiens:
www.christianforums.com/t96639
29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: Part 4

I think you are unaware of the entire fossil record of human ancestry. There are transitional individuals linking us (H. sapiens) back thru 2 intermediate species to A. afarensis -- a species so different it is in another genus. Considering the rarity of transitional series of individuals, this is like God shouting to us "I did it by evolution!"

That is not totally lost. There are people who do keep up with the overall picture: Kenneth Miller is one. Stephen Jay Gould was another.

Actually, science got this view from Christianity. A true Biblical view of creation requires that there be no "gaps" between regularly appearing members of the universe. God did not make an incomplete creation. Science got the idea of refusing to accept "gaps" from Christianity!

You need to be more specific on what "authentic realities are lost"

Science worked when the predominant theory was young earth. Christians rejected a literal Genesis 1-3 long before science showed an old earth. See St. Augustine and John Calvin, for instance.

So what you want us to do is reject God as Creator and instead insist on a failed, human interpretation of Genesis instead of what God tells us. Sorry, I won't reject God that way.

What we need is to recognize that the Bible tells us the Who and why of creation, but that Creation itself (what science studies) tells us the how. You want assurance of the Bible. Instead, you should want to listen to God. Creationists need to remember that Christianity has ALWAYS held that God has 2 books. Creationists need to stop worshipping their interpretation of the Bible and worship God.

Science tells us how God created.

We share the conviction that God is Creator but the degree to which we believe the scripture give definite historical guidelines about timing is a source of disagreement. The predominant view as been YEC and evolution and Old Earth theories are fairly recent. Calvin was a YEC. There are too many gaps in the fossil record to support the view of human evolution and unexplained jumps between one phenotype and another are mainly unwarranted. Cause and effect is not assessable where the original conditions are hypothesised, where the evidence is lost or degraded and where there is no evidence trail showing what has happened to that evidence on the way to the present. Gould is not a good example to me as he was a Leftist agnostic and ignorant of the things of God.

Kenneth Miller sounds more interesting as he is a believer and I will read up on his views

jilfe · Sep 23, 2012

Bless you mindlight,
for posting this thread to help other Christians better understand that God did it all supernaturally.

We as Christians don't deny the science, natural laws that God created.

But as followers of Christ, we understand that natural process is NOT the origins of everything.

All things were created Supernaturally,
in there perfect imediate maturity, when God made the stars to shine there light on the earth, the laws of physics were not in process, there was no such thing as light speed, God set the stars billions of light years in distance, and created the light to imediately appear on the earth, because God did it all supernaturally.

That answers the question about how long the universe existed, according to the supernatural power of God, light distance has no bearing on the age of the universe, because light was not traveling through physical laws but imediately appeared by the WORD of God.

Now here is a great example in the Bible that debunks for all time about naturalism, and uniformitism:

There was no natural process for the first man and woman to be created, God created them according to how He chose to create them.
Those two human beings are the only people who were not born into this world according to how it is natrurally done today.

That's the key folks, the natural process for a human being to come into this world, is ONLY possible through a man and woman sexual relations.

But it was not that way in the origination of this natural process.
The origination of this natural process was done Supernaturally.

You have to have contributions from both male and female and this union has always been the natural process, AFTER God rested from His creation work, when HE put all natural processes to work.

So as Christians we need to declare that there was no laws of physics during God's creation work, He did it all supernaturally.

Now here is what is interesting, all of the money and elaborate instruments that man tries to devise, so as to find the origins of everything, all of this sophisticated equipment still cannot answer there quest, every evolutionist still does not know how the universe came to be, they have no idea when or where it all started, no matter how much study they do they still cannot tell us how everything came to be,
the only thing they have is speculation, they come up with theories, thats all they come up with is one theory after another.

There chasing there own tails, because they still to this day cannot answer the quest for origination of everything.

We as Christians have the answer, we can give the time in years, the method through wich every thing came to be, and the sequence of events that brought everything into existsnce.

And we have the written proof that anyone can read it for themselves, and the money spent to study and discover all this is what it cost to buy the Holy Bible.

Thats why the evolutionists sincere as they may be and intelegent as they are just cannot answer these questions
because there using scientific natural means to try to discover a Supernatural cause.
　
　
　
　
　
　

shernren · Sep 25, 2012

mindlight said:
You forget the Bible was here before modern science. revealed knowledge carries Gods authority properly interpreted. I and most Christians have traditionally believed it describes a young universe.

says who? The source of authority he claims is the crucial thing and whether or not it is credible. Theologically certain things are beyond dispute in all 4 major branches of Christianity - Pentecostals, Protestants, Catholics and Orthodox.

Well, to the Scientologist you're full of bunk, and to you the Scientologist is wacko, and to the Muslim both of you will burn in hell. And yet all three of you are willing to accept that the speed of light on Earth is 300 million meters per second - despite never having timed it even once in your life!

Just how does that work?

mindlight said:
As I said in my first example we trace these trigonometric lines in the sky and calculate their length. The ones we drew in the Solar system have proven accurate as we sent spaceships down them with the figurative tapemeasure. But the stars are much further away and the length of those lines remain unproven.

How, exactly, did spaceships measure distances in the Solar System?

What is the furthest direct distance measurement of any human spacecraft?

I have a rough idea, but I'm asking you because you keep making these amazing estimates of where science works and where science doesn't, without ever telling me about the science itself. After all, it still takes a doctor to declare a disease incurable even if he can't cure it. But I suspect that (as with many creationists) deep time and space aren't the limits of the science you know; they're just the limits of the theology you subscribe to.

Which is perfectly fine. Just that to then call it science is wrongheaded at best and lying at worst.

mindlight said:
I left that part in deliberately as I am aware of the nuances in the position. But the length of the timespan they require for their geological ages requires the overall position of gradualism and the alternative explanation and one more commonly held by creationists would be a dominate catastrophism with spans of time characterised by gradualism in between.

What?

Steve Jobs died after eight years of struggling with islet pancreatic cancer. Since the median age of survival is six years, and Steve Jobs lived longer than that, the rate at which his cancer progressed must have been constant.

China is one of the oldest nations in the world, having two thousand years of continuous history. That's longer than most countries - so the rate at which the country progressed must have been constant.

Really?

How on earth (heh) does a long timespan correlate with gradualism?

lucaspa · Sep 25, 2012

mindlight said:
This is a fascinating comment and really insightful. What we have today effectively emerged out of a theological environment of the Christian monasteries and universities of the twelfth century. The separation of scriptural studies and those of the Book of nature being the crucial distinction. Aristotelian insights about knowledge being derived from observations were revived and Christianised and out of this modern science would eventually emerge. I wonder if the discussed conflicts that then gathered pace with increasing force over the next 900 years between scripture and science are rooted in an earlier theological error.

The conflicts are rooted in late 19th century theological error. The church had ALWAYS fostered the study of the natural world. You see, they didn't separate "natural" from God. That is an assumption you seem to be making: natural = without God.

Instead, "natural" was simply God's way of doing things:
"A Law of Nature then is the rule and Law, according to which God resolved that certain Motions should always, that is, in all Cases be performed. Every Law does immediately depend upon the Will of God." Gravesande, Mathematical Elements of Natural Philosophy, I, 2-3, 1726.

What happened in the 19th century was Higher Criticism. This looked at scripture and applied the scholarship that was applied to every other document. From that scholarship arose the conclusions (among others) that 1) Moses did not write the Pentateuch, but it was a compilation of at least 3 distinct sources and 2) the gospels of Matthew, Luke, and Mark all copied from a previous document of sayings of Jesus, called Q. Some Christians reacted badly to Higher Criticism and what they saw as an assault on the "authority" of scripture. The result is a series of pamphlets called The Fundamentals (you can find them online) that argued against Higher Criticism (2/3 of the pamphlets) and science (1/3). It was in the course of this revolt that the theological error of removing God from "natural" happened.

Christianity had always held that God has 2 books. It wasn't until The Fundamentals that fundamentalists pitted nature vs God and decided there was only a single book by God: scripture. Actually, it wasn't scripture so much as their literal interpretation of scripture. Fundamentalists elevated their interpretation of scripture to godhood and made that their god. The theological error came in the period 1880-1920 and persists today among creationists.

And yes the patterns that we read give us reason to declare the majesty and glory of God, to understand something of his power and intelligence and artistry revealed in the works of his hand. But to what extent can this understanding be precisely bottled and labelled in the manner of many in modern science.

It can't within science. Science is agnostic. Belief in God comes from outside science. Science won't give you God. The best science will do is allow God. The understanding of the power and artistry of God revealed in nature has to come from within Christianity. We are the ones who see that, because we see God.

I think science needs to accept with a new humility a certain randomness, unpredictability and indeed from their perspective chaos in creation that they will not be able to conquer with a master theory. The insights and benefits of science need to be balanced with an awareness of its limits.

Science as a whole knows the limits of science. We can discuss those.

What lay people need to do is recognize when individual scientists extrapolate beyond science to their personal beliefs. For instance, Richard Dawkins thinks science shows God does not exist. This is Dawkins' personal view and is not science itself. When Dawkins or Provine or PZ Meyers state that science shows God does not exist, they are NOT speaking as scientists or correctly stating what science shows. They are masquerading their own personal beliefs as science and are misusing and abusing science. You need to call them out for their personal mistakes instead of thinking they are accurately portraying science.

Keachian · Sep 25, 2012

lucaspa said:
The conflicts are rooted in late 19th century theological error. The church had ALWAYS fostered the study of the natural world. You see, they didn't separate "natural" from God. That is an assumption you seem to be making: natural = without God.

Instead, "natural" was simply God's way of doing things:
"A Law of Nature then is the rule and Law, according to which God resolved that certain Motions should always, that is, in all Cases be performed. Every Law does immediately depend upon the Will of God." Gravesande, Mathematical Elements of Natural Philosophy, I, 2-3, 1726.

What happened in the 19th century was Higher Criticism. This looked at scripture and applied the scholarship that was applied to every other document. From that scholarship arose the conclusions (among others) that 1) Moses did not write the Pentateuch, but it was a compilation of at least 3 distinct sources and 2) the gospels of Matthew, Luke, and Mark all copied from a previous document of sayings of Jesus, called Q. Some Christians reacted badly to Higher Criticism and what they saw as an assault on the "authority" of scripture. The result is a series of pamphlets called The Fundamentals (you can find them online) that argued against Higher Criticism (2/3 of the pamphlets) and science (1/3). It was in the course of this revolt that the theological error of removing God from "natural" happened.

Christianity had always held that God has 2 books. It wasn't until The Fundamentals that fundamentalists pitted nature vs God and decided there was only a single book by God: scripture. Actually, it wasn't scripture so much as their literal interpretation of scripture. Fundamentalists elevated their interpretation of scripture to godhood and made that their god. The theological error came in the period 1880-1920 and persists today among creationists.

On the Fundamentals, specifically History of the Higher Criticism, I agree with Hague's general premise that all study of scripture should be done prayerfully, however I disagree with his conclusion that higher criticism is wrong, it seems to come out of left field, without any build up of validity for the traditional authorship stance, but the background on what higher criticism is at the start is pretty good.

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