Naturalistic assumptions- new paradigms

[lucaspa]

Actually no it is an assumption that goes back to the Aristotelian view that knowledge can be derived from observation.

Aristotle is right. Knowledge is derived from personal experience: what we observe thru our senses. BUT, you need to follow that train of thought and look at how science does experiments. You need to see exactly what science is able to observe.

Let's say you want to find ALL causes/entities necessary for plant growth. So you go out and get a number of plants. You put them in the following conditions:
1. Sunlight, water, soil, air
2. Sunlight, water, soil, but in a clear box where the air has been pumped out.
3. Sunlight, water, no soil, air.
4. Sunlight, no water, soil, air
5. A darkened box with no sunlight, but with water, soil, air.

This scientific protocol will tell you if these 4 entities/causes are necessary for plant growth. You can add others if you wish but you will follow the same scientific protocol. You always have a control where you know the entity is absent and compare it to an experimental where you know the entity is present. These observations lead us to the knowlege of the causes for plant growth.

BUT. How about the supernatural or deity? Where is my control for that? Which plant can I point to and say "this one has no supernatural in it?" or "God is not in this plant?" I can't. I don't have an observation of God acting because I don't have an observation of God not acting. Therefore I am limited to looking at only natural (material) causes that I can set up "controls" for.

This makes the limitation of natural a conclusion, not an assumption.

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.

Strictly speaking, yes. But more broadly speaking, no. Here the "test tube" is the present universe. As I said, information about remote cosmology is carried to us by electomagnetic radiation and gravity. What we observe in that radiation is the test tube. We can test hypotheses about the cause of the radiation by comparing it to the radiation we see. Same for origins. The present is the way it is because the past was the way it was. Even creationists don't deny cause and effect. Supernatural causes have physical effects. Jesus' supernatural resurrection left burial cloths and an empty tomb, didn't they? Jesus supernatural multiplication of food at the Sermon on the Mount left the effect of waste bread and fish far in excess of the starting loaves and fishes. That's how we know there was that miracle, right?

So, how things originated leaves effects that we can find today. Let me give you an example:

Scorpionflies (Mecoptera) and true flies (Diptera) have enough similarities that entomologists consider them to be closely related. Scorpionflies have four wings of about the same size, and true flies have a large front pair of wings but the back pair is replaced by small club-shaped structures. If Diptera evolved from Mecoptera, as comparative anatomy suggests, scientists predicted that a fossil fly with four wings might be found—and in 1976 this is exactly what was discovered. Furthermore, geneticists have found that the number of wings in flies can be changed through mutations in a single gene. These observations tell us the origin of Diptera.

Of course, what you are concerned about is whether God created Diptera. Science can't answer that. We, as scientsts, can't tell whether evolution happens on its own or requires God to work. We have never seen evolution where we know God is absent. So science is silent on that issue.

You and I believe God created Diptera. The question is whether God created Diptera by a miracle and manufactured them in their present form or whether God created Diptera by evolution. Science tells us the first belief is wrong. Therefore we believe God created Diptera and used evolution to do so.

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.

Sorry, but in the cases I am talking about your "reasons" don't come into play. The original condiations are preserved in the strata and fossils. What we dug out of the earth obviously have not been subject to erosion because, if it were, it would not be present to be dug up. So yes, within the tentativeness that is present in all science, the transitional individuals -- combined with other evidence on living humans and other animals -- makes the conclusion that humans evolved VERY solid. As solid as the theory that the earth moves around the sun. So solid that it is perverse to withold provisional agreement.

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.[/qutoe]
The layers can't be. This is what geologists established in the period 1780-1831. The geological layers at Siccar Point cannot possibly have been laid down by a single catastrophe. The layers of fossilized forests at Yellowstone cannot possibly have been the result of a single catastrophe. The Green River varves cannot be te result of a flood.

As I said, local catastrophes, even world-wide ones. are part of geology. Yes, the magnetic poles have shifted, but there have been no geological catastrophes associated with them. However, the KT meteor impact was a world-wide catastrophe, depositing iridium all over the earth. However, there are multiple catastrophes over a very long history. The geological layers are NOT the result of a "unique catastrophe" (as in only 1) in a young earth.

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.

You think science is competent to uncontroversially draw the conclusion that all geological layers are the result of a single catastrophe -- the Flood. So why can't science be competent to uncontroversially draw the conclusion that the Flood never happened and that the different geological layers have different causes? Sauce for the goose. Do you see the double standard and hypocrisy your position involves?

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.

How could the Flood rework evidence on the moon? The moondust thing has been refuted a long time ago. Even Answers in Genesis says it is an argument you should not use. This is what happened with the moon dust:
In 1959 Hans Pettersson described the infall of meteoric dust in a Scientific American. Pettersson made his measurements from a high mountain in Hawaii. Unfortunately, he also counted some volcanic ash. So the problem was not in theory, but in observation. Petersson simply made some bad observations and got a higher rate of deposition of meteoric dust than was happening. After that, NASA scientists checked Petersson's work by looking at the impact with dust on satellites. NASA has made many measurements from many satellites using different types of instruments. They all point to an accumulation of 10~-16 to 10~-17 grams of dust per square centimeter per second. Now to calculate how much dust we would expect on a 5 billion year old moon. 5 billion years == 10~17 seconds. maximum dust accumulation over 5 billion years = 10~-16 grams/square cm-sec x 10~17 sec = 10 grams/square cm. How much dust is on the moon?. The density of dust varies but let's err on the conservative side and take a density of 1gm/cm cubed (the density of water and higher than the density of dust). We would expect the layer of 10 grams/squar cm to make a layer 10 cm high. The surface of the moon is covered by a debris blanket (regolith) that varies from 5 to 10 meters thick. The regolith is formed by meterorites that pulverize the lunar surface and meteoric dust. The amount of the regolith that is meteroric dust can be determined from its elemental composition. The amount of dust is about 1.5%. 1.5% of 10 meters is 15 cm. That corresponds to the 10 cm we calculated.

Within the limits imposed by its methodology - yes

For what I was stating, science doesn't have a limitation in finding out how God created. If God had created using miracle, science would find that out, too. Why? Because "miracle" is a "material" method leaving material effects. Like I said, science would have no problem determining Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes by miracle by looking 1) at the starting amount of food, 2) noting the number of people eating and how much they ate, and 3) looking at how much waste food was left over.

So, IF geology were due to a single catastrophe, i.e. the Flood, science would have no problem determining that. And that would tell us how God created geology. If God had zapped each species into existence, we could tell that, too. So science has no limitation on telling us how God created. The limitation is telling us whether God created. We get "God created" from outside science.

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.

But it does have gravitational effects on things that do emit radiation! So we can get measurements on what that matter cannot be, and some of the qualities of what it is, by looking at the things that do emit radiation. For instance, we know the matter is not ordinary dust, because that occludes light from stars behind it (like the Horsehead nebula) and we don't have enough occlusions.

 

[lucaspa]

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.

What do we "know" from scripture? Scripture is contradictory on this matter. In the OT there are no "souls" separate from the body. Nor is there a "heaven" as most of us conceive of it. So please, list how much we "know" from scripture, making sure that what we "know" isn't contradicted by something else in 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.

those statements are much too inclusive without enough evidence. Many economic models do work "in practice". We are looking at the models of supply and demand working just as predicted in the amount of money being charged for ads by television and radio stations in the political campaign, for instance.

If the scientific method can be properly applied to human nature then it would be predictable. It isn't so it cannot.

You just put yourself on shaky theological grounds here. Remember, God is supposed to be able to predict and know what we are going to do. That makes human nature "predictable", doesn't it? One way that creationists harm Christianity (among many) is that they make arguments that are very specific and don't think of the broad consequences of the argument. So they often end up contradicting some basic principles and knowledge of Christianity.

I submit that much of human nature is predictable. My daughter is a social worker and she predicts the human nature of her clients all the time. Occasionally she is surprised, but then we do get free will, don't we?

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.

I think our disagreements are much more profound than that. You get a bit to the wider differences when you say "degree to which ... scripture give definite historical guidelines"

The reason old earth and evolution are fairly recent is because until fairly recently we didn't have the knowledge or wisdom to read and understand God's second book. Remember, in 35 AD the predominant view was Judaism and there were firm views of what the Messiah was. Where would we be today if early Christians had not changed their views based on new evidence from God? Should we all go back to Judaism because that has been the "predominant view" during most of the history of revelation?

Calvin was a YEC.

I said "Christians rejected a literal Genesis 1-3 long before science showed an old earth. See St. Augustine and John Calvin, for instance." I can see how you got confused that I was saying that Calvin was not a YEC, and I apologize. However, what I meant was that Calvin rejected a literal Genesis. In his Commentaries on Genesis, he noted that modern (to him) astronomy had shown that Sirius and some other stars were far larger and brighter than our sun. Thus our sun was not one of the two "greatest" luminaries in the sky. He modified that part of Geneisis 1 in light of evidence from God's second book. So Calvin rejected a literal Genesis 1 based on the science of his day. Since we are talking the 1500s, geology had not yet shown an old earth.

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.

I'm sorry, but the gaps aren't there. As I said, we have individuals that are between one phenotype and another. We have individuals that are mosaics of both phenotypes. Your statement is born of ignorance, not what the data actually is.

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.

You don't need a complete "evidence trail". All you need is evidence persisting to the present. We can test hypotheses about original conditions. Remember, those original conditions also leave evidence that persists to the present.

Gould is not a good example to me as he was a Leftist agnostic and ignorant of the things of God.

I said Gould kept up with the overall picture of science. Your claim was that no one did that. So your objections to Gould are irrelevant. Are you objecting to Gould's political views? Gould was raised Jewish, so he was NOT "ignorant of the things of God". He knew about them and Gould respected religion. He fought Dawkins' attempt to turn science into atheism. Gould knew science. Inside and out. So you might want to remember this quote by him the next time you run into an atheist claiming science shows God does not exist:

"To say it for all my colleageues and for the umpteenth millionth time (from college bull sessions to learned treatises): science simply cannot (by its legitimate methods) adjudicate the issue of God's possible superintendence of nature. We neither affirm nor deny it; we simply can't comment on it as scientists." SJ Gould, Impeaching a self-appointed judge. Scientific American, 267:79-80, July 1992.

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

Remember, you are talking about the overall state of science. Now, if you particularly want the overall views of science and religion, then you want
Finding Darwin's God

You will also find these books enlightening, all done by Christians:
Is God a Creationist? edited by Roland Frye
The Fire in the Equations by Kitty Feguson
Religion and Science by Ian Barbour
The Fourth Day by Howard Van Till
Science Held Hostage by Meninga, Van Till, Young

 

[lucaspa]

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.

I also disagree that Higher Criticism is wrong. Oh yes, there may be some erroneous conclusions of the secondary hypotheses, like whether Ezra was the guy who put the Pentateuch together, but all in all it is a solid approach. It solves many more problems with the Bible than it creates.

Basically, the conclusion is rooted in the belief that God dictated the Bible. hague cannot come out specifically and say that, because it sounds ridiculous, but that is basically the belief of Fundamentalism. Nor can Hague say that his whole belief is based on scripture being dictated by God and that he has no personal relationship with the living Christ. That too, shows how lacking his faith is. However, that too is true. Fundamentalists cling to a literal scripture as the "Word of God" like drowning men cling to a life preserver. And for the same reason: they have nothing else. If scripture is in any way "wrong", according to these people, then God does not exist.

On one level it is so very, very sad. But on another level it is so very very dangerous to God.

This essay will give you some more insights into why creationists reject science:
http://theologytoday.ptsem.edu/oct1982/v39-3-article1.htm

I found it VERY useful.

 

[super animator]

I also disagree that Higher Criticism is wrong. Oh yes, there may be some erroneous conclusions of the secondary hypotheses, like whether Ezra was the guy who put the Pentateuch together, but all in all it is a solid approach. It solves many more problems with the Bible than it creates.

Basically, the conclusion is rooted in the belief that God dictated the Bible. hague cannot come out specifically and say that, because it sounds ridiculous, but that is basically the belief of Fundamentalism. Nor can Hague say that his whole belief is based on scripture being dictated by God and that he has no personal relationship with the living Christ. That too, shows how lacking his faith is. However, that too is true. Fundamentalists cling to a literal scripture as the "Word of God" like drowning men cling to a life preserver. And for the same reason: they have nothing else. If scripture is in any way "wrong", according to these people, then God does not exist.

On one level it is so very, very sad. But on another level it is so very very dangerous to God.

This essay will give you some more insights into why creationists reject science:
http://theologytoday.ptsem.edu/oct1982/v39-3-article1.htm

I found it VERY useful.

Links broken.

 

[Keachian]

Links broken.

Wayback machine mirror:
Theology Today - Vol 39, No. 2 - July 1982 - ARTICLE - The Beginning

 

[shernren]

Wayback machine mirror:
Theology Today - Vol 39, No. 2 - July 1982 - ARTICLE - The Beginning

OHHHH. The link's been broken for years.

 

[lucaspa]

Links broken.

Darn! The author -- Richard Berry -- has died and they took down his web pages.
The Beginning gives you the abstract, but you have to buy the article.

OK, so I'm going to have to post that part of the article that I have.
Thank God for scanners and OCR:

"The objective of this article is to analyze the evolutionist and creationist positions and explain why the debate is so intense and the controversy so inflamed with passion. We will first examine what is meant by "stories of ultimate meaning" and what happens when they are told.
"We all have areas in our lives where factual data are absent or inadequate to allow us full understanding of what is true, real, and meaningful. When faced with such a circumstance, humans usually tell a story about what they believe to be true, real, and meaningful. The more vital an area of a person's life which is involved, the more important the story becomes until it develops into a story of ultimate meaning, a story which expresses the ultimate truth about life and death. The more people who share the same story, the more powerful it becomes.
"The absence or inadequacy of factual data leading to stories of ultimate meaning occurs in two different ways. In the first instance, the necessary or desired data are available but technological limitations prevent their acquisition. The flat earth story is an example. It was invented, had meaning, and was accepted as truth by those who needed to have a concept of the earth's shape but were unable to measure it accurately. The second reason for data being absent is that there simply are none in existence. Typical of this condition are stories which concern the presence, absence, and nature of God. No amount of technological advance will allow humanity to either prove or disprove stories about God. We are faced, therefore, with two varieties of stories of ultimate meaning. One variety is testable but for some reason has not yet been verified (or falsified). The second variety of story is inherently untestable and cannot be verified or falsified.
"Most people found it relatively easy to accept the demise of the flat earth story when data showed it to be false. Flat earth people certainly felt frightened and threatened as their story was destroyed, but most of them moved ahead with a new and better story about an earth with the shape of a ball. For some flat earth people, the transition was devastating because their story about the shape of the earth was all tangled up with their story about God. Let us examine why it may have been relatively easy for some to change from a flat earth story to a spherical earth story while for others it was not. To do this we must observe the differences in the ways the shape-of-the-earth stories and God stories interacted.
"Those who found it easier to shift to the spherical earth story might have said, "The earth is flat and God is in heaven." The statement really tells two independent stories. Destruction of the flat earth story does not threaten the God story. In contrast, those who found it difficult to accept a spherical earth story in the face of overwhelming evidence might have said, "The earth was created flat by God who is in heaven." This last statement resembles the first statement because it also consists of two totally different stories. Where it differs from the first statement is in the ultimate tangling of the two stories with each other. They are so closely interdependent that the destruction of the flat earth story, at the very least, called into serious question God's existence and place of residence. When faced with a threat to their concept of God, it is understandable why some flat earth people refused to reject the flat earth story. It is also understandable why it was easier for some to deny rational evidence, personal testimony, and overwhelming masses of data concerning a spherical earth than it was to deny God. Any time culture or a significant segment of society tells a story that is inherently not verifiable (a God story) and makes it dependent upon another story which is testable (verifiable), we risk intense and divisive conflict. ...
"Society can get itself into deep trouble when a large segment tells a story of ultimate meaning which is believed immutable but which is also potentially refutable. Why does society do such a disservice to itself? At least two reasons come to mind. The first reason is simple and straightforward. Many of the testable stories were believed to be inherently untestable when they were first told. The flat earth story was told by people who could not conceive of the earth beyond the horizon. Not only that but they couldn't conceive of traveling far enough to see what did indeed exist beyond the horizon. As far as they were concerned, the earth looked flat from their perspective and beyond that the story was untestable. The second reason why society will ascribe untestable qualities to a story which is indeed testable is slightly more complicated and indirect. We can start first with the God stories. Despite the fact that such stories of ultimate meaning are inherently untestable, we humans are tempted (even driven) to try to test the untestable. Many, perhaps all humans have some degree of yearning to prove or disprove the existence of God on a more concrete basis than faith. It is insidiously easy to tie a testable story of ultimate meaning to the God story for when the testable story is verified it also gives a sense of verification of the God story. All is well unless the testable story is refuted; then the God story is called into question at the same time. At this point the story-teller must either ignore the refutation or risk losing God.
"For either of the two reasons, society has placed many booby traps in its stories of ultimate meaning. One of the causes of society's uneasiness in these modern times is that science and technology are revealing mythic booby traps at a rate which we find difficult to accornmodate. As science and technology challenge stories of great or ultimate meaning, they also engender a growing sense of anti-science/anti-technology.
"Creationists are telling a story about our beginnings which is rooted solely in the first two chapters of the book of Genesis. When we look at the Genesis account, we see that there is both a God story ("In the beginning God created. . .") and a story about the order and timing of creation. The first story is inherently untestable, whereas the second story is quite testable. Creationists find the theory of evolution to be very threatening, as legislative tactics and court actions attest.
"Exactly why evolution is so threatening is not obvious. Evolutionists intend no threat to the God story. Christian evolutionists share the God story about who was responsible for creation. Atheist evolutionists find the God story irrelevant to their study of the process of development of life on earth. A study of the process of creation (evolution) is as little affected by Christian or atheistic beliefs as a study of combustion would be affected by who lit the fire. The God story concerns the who of creation whereas evolution concerns the when and how of creation, so there is no direct threat to the God story.
"At one time, creationists demanded that evolution be taught as a theory. Scientists were quick to agree. Most scientists who are actively involved in research pertaining to evolution view it as a theory or concept which has much merit and is generally valid. They also agree that the understanding of the details of evolution needs refining and much more research is necessary before the theory is substantiated in all its parts. The theory of evolution is testable., and the testing is going on continuously. The creationists had made a demand, and the evolutionists had acquiesced. For a while it appeared that the threat to the creationist's story had been removed. Since there was no direct threat to the God story, this should have resolved the controversy and the creationists and evolutionists were free to go their separate ways. The creationists soon revealed, however, that the threat to them had not been removed. If a controversy had indeed been resolved, it was the wrong controversy. The battle quickly resumed.
"The question remains, what is it that the creationists find so threatening in evolution? Evolution does not directly threaten the supremacy of God as Creator because it concerns itself with the "how" of creation, not the "who" or "why." Evolution does not threaten creationism by claiming to be an immutable law of science or the universe because it isn't. We must conclude by process of elimination that evolution is threatening to creationists even in the form of a theoretical alternative to the two accounts of creation which are given in Genesis. Creationists respond to the threat by calling evolution "non-Christian" and "humanist" inspired. This doesn't tell us why evolution is threatening but it does help delineate the threat and gives us a direction to follow in our inquiry. Despite the fact that creationists assert that one cannot be an evolutionist and a Christian, there are many Christians who are not at all troubled by the theory of evolution. Let us pursue the difference in response of Christians to evolution in an attempt to understand more fully the threat as perceived by creationist Christians.
"Most, if not all, Christians share the story of God's responsibility for creation, so we must look elsewhere for the reason for the different responses to evolution. This leaves the Genesis accounts of the order and timing of creation to which some Christians respond as evolutionists and some as creationists. Why don't all Christians turn to creationism in the face of the theory of evolution? It is because despite the sharing of the story of God as the "who" and "why" of creation, not all Christians tell exactly the same story about the "how" of creation. We all share the same words but the story is not quite the same.
To some, the steps and timing of creation in Genesis represent what the ancient Hebrews and their predecessors were able to understand about creation. To others, these same words and passages are a poetic statement, and the structure of the language in which the verses were spoken, and then written, did more to control the nature and order of events which were included than did any insight into fact. When creationists use these same words in Genesis they tell yet another story which is that the Genesis account is the way that God actually chose to create the universe. All of these examples are consistent with the idea of God as Creator. All of them are interpretations of Genesis to be found in Christendom today. Only one of the examples is told by people who find evolution to be threatening. The creationist not only finds evolution threatening to the biblical steps of the creation story, but it is also threatening to the ultimate role of God as Creator even to the point of threatening the existence of God.
"Creationists have set themselves apart from other Christians by intimately interweaving their story of the "who" of creation with the "how" of creation. For them, it is the flat earth problem all over again. Creationists have taken a theory of creation which is testable and tied it to an inherently untestable story about God. In the process, they have declared a testable theory to be also inherently untestable. As was pointed out earlier, this works fine, if the testable story is verified. Controversy has arisen because evolution has not verified the creationist's story. At best, research has shown the Genesis account of the "how" of creation to be incomplete. Because the creationists have tied their story of the "how" of creation to their story of the "who" of creation, any doubt cast upon the "how" also casts doubt on the "who." Creationists follow a predictable pattern as they find it easier to deny physical evidence than to deny God. Physical evidence, no matter how overwhelming, can be dismissed as the work of the devil. Christians who find evolution acceptable, or at least not threatening, are those who have managed to keep their stories of the "how" of creation separate from the "who" and "why' of creation.
"In simplest terms, creationists reject the theory of evolution not because evolution is bad, in and of itself, but because for them it threatens, indirectly yet potently, the very existence of God. Scientific arguments in support of evolution will have little if any effect because creationists are not really arguing about the validity of the theory of evolution but the existence of God." Richard W. Berry, The Beginning, in Is God a Creationist? Edited by Roland Frye, pp. 44-50.

 

[lucaspa]

OHHHH. The link's been broken for years.

The one WayBack did was to the TheologyToday website. At first this article was apparently there for free. Now you have to pay for it. I had accessed the free version thru Dr. Berry's website. Since he was the author he could link to his own article for free. But he passed away earlier this year and his institution took down his website.

 

[mindlight]

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?



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.

How these things are measured is science I did in school and for which I got A Grades I might add. At the time I was doing that I believed in evolution like everybody else. Thats not the point though , the point is that remote cosmological measurements or statements about our origins cannnot be reliably tested and the evidence we do have is not sufficient grounds for the certainty often held by scientists about these theories.

But yes I do not believe in an Old Universe or macroevolution for primarily scriptural reasons and it overstates the power of the scientific method to suggest that it can either prove or disprove that conviction.

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.

And other people known to the church have been miraculously cured of progressive diseases making a mockery of any kind of inevitabilty notions.

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.

Actually that is not true, the Chinese nation was successfully invaded by both the mongols and the Manchus for instance. It has a history of dynasties replacing each other. Its borders have also varied over time

It is a good example of catastrophism in action rather than gradual development.

 

[mindlight]

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.

No I did not say that. The view that theological ideas e.g. the book of God and the book of nature made separations that were then developed into atheistic evolutionary perceptions that rejected the book of God and then "demystified" the book of nature may have themselves have been problematic is more to the point. These theological categorisations were made mainly in the twelfth century as the churches scholastics rediscovered Aristotle and tried to absorb and Christianise him.

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.

That definition is problematic. Cancers should progress to fatal concusions yet sometimes go into miraculous remission for instance. Bread and fish should not appear out of thin air or water turn into wine. A man cannot walk on unfrozen water and yet Peter did.

What happened in the 19th century was Higher Criticism. This looked at scripture and applied the scholarship that was applied to every other document.

Yes that is a little out of date though. I talk to a great many German theologians who are still trapped in that glorious era for German theology which pioneered Higher Criticism and took it to its extremes. But the church survived their challenge and a great many theological institutions in Germany have still not woken up to the fact that theology and the global church have passed them by.

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

Ah the documentary /Graf Wellhausen theory is actually quite discredited today and since the internal biblical evidence is in favour of Mosaic authorship and theology is actually quite open on this issue it is still credible to argue Moses wrote the books

Did Moses Write the Pentateuch?

Then the LORD said to Moses, 'Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.

If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me.

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.

Nonsence- Can you produce a copy of Q for us to scrutinise? But you are right that Higher Criticism approached the scriptures with the intent of debunking its supernatural content. It distorted the biblical material in accordance with its naturalistic assumptions. But theology has already long moved on to a more open arrangement and higher criticism has its critics even from within liberal theological circles.

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.

The Jewish calendar dates from creation and most of the main churches accepted creationism long before they considered evolution so again this is nonsence. Also you are talking from a very American perspective of the experience of creationism and really only about one particular manifestation of it.

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 agree Science must necessarily be agnostic about things it cannot know or prove. As well as the things of God, aspects of human nature e.g. love, remote cosmology and origins should also be things science should be inquistive but ultimately agnostic about . cause at the end of the day it cannot know about these things.

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.

I actually agree with that.

 

[mindlight]

The layers can't be. This is what geologists established in the period 1780-1831. The geological layers at Siccar Point cannot possibly have been laid down by a single catastrophe. The layers of fossilized forests at Yellowstone cannot possibly have been the result of a single catastrophe. The Green River varves cannot be te result of a flood.

The Yellowstone petrified forests

Green River Formation Very Likely Did Not Form in a Postdiluvial Lake - Answers in Genesis

There are answers to all these kinds of scientific proofs that at the very least introduce an element of doubt. At the end of the day my contention is not a precise description of what happened but an acceptance that no one else can say they have the definitive scientific conclusions on this.

 

[mindlight]

What do we "know" from scripture? Scripture is contradictory on this matter. In the OT there are no "souls" separate from the body. Nor is there a "heaven" as most of us conceive of it. So please, list how much we "know" from scripture, making sure that what we "know" isn't contradicted by something else in scripture.

In the NT thare are examples of Paul being caught up to heaven and johns revelation at Patmos for instance. Or the souls of the martyrs at the throne crying out for justice for instance. The NT is the richer and deeper revelation.

those statements are much too inclusive without enough evidence. Many economic models do work "in practice". We are looking at the models of supply and demand working just as predicted in the amount of money being charged for ads by television and radio stations in the political campaign, for instance.

Oh come on - there would not have been a financial crisis in 2008 if economics actually worked. Of course people can make predictions based on carefully organised and analysed informationn but the degree of chance and continual examples of overthrow of these efforts must mean that economics does not qualify as a real science. Also to be honest in most peoples view the stakes are far higher if we are talking about millions of pounds invetsed in products or projects which are then overthrown by malice, events , better organised competitors etc. The attempt to organise and predict is worthwhile and some people do it better than others but it cannot be regarded as strictly scientific.

You just put yourself on shaky theological grounds here. Remember, God is supposed to be able to predict and know what we are going to do. That makes human nature "predictable", doesn't it? One way that creationists harm Christianity (among many) is that they make arguments that are very specific and don't think of the broad consequences of the argument. So they often end up contradicting some basic principles and knowledge of Christianity.

I submit that much of human nature is predictable. My daughter is a social worker and she predicts the human nature of her clients all the time. Occasionally she is surprised, but then we do get free will, don't we?

Gods foreknowledge and our occasional access to it is not what I am quesioning here. Your daughter is not reading people scientifically she is reading people. And yes even with the gift she has they often surprise her. What many people identify as a intuition or a gut feel is actually an ability to connect with the spiritual nature of another human being and having access to that to read their thoughts. When people like your daughter are asked to write down their thoughts in a text book form . they are in effect reducing their abilities to words that will not work for others and most often contradict the thoughts of others asked to do the same.

 

[shernren]

How these things are measured is science I did in school and for which I got A Grades I might add. At the time I was doing that I believed in evolution like everybody else. Thats not the point though , the point is that remote cosmological measurements or statements about our origins cannnot be reliably tested and the evidence we do have is not sufficient grounds for the certainty often held by scientists about these theories.

If you got A grades for them then surely you remember a little bit of the science. I genuinely do not know of any direct measurements of distance within the Solar System - none that don't assume the speed of light, which I assume you've never personally measured before.

 

[mindlight]

If you got A grades for them then surely you remember a little bit of the science. I genuinely do not know of any direct measurements of distance within the Solar System - none that don't assume the speed of light, which I assume you've never personally measured before.

We have sent spaceships to many of the locations in the solar system proving the calculations made about it. We have not done that with the stars.

 

[shernren]

We have sent spaceships to many of the locations in the solar system proving the calculations made about it. We have not done that with the stars.

How do you know the spaceships actually went where NASA said they went? After all, you've never been there to check. Maybe their cameras malfunctioned. Maybe the speed of light decreases so drastically outside the Earth's atmosphere (it's not like you've measured it there, right?) that although the spaceships may seem to take many hours to communicate with us, they're actually stranded just a little bit away from the Moon.

 

[mindlight]

How do you know the spaceships actually went where NASA said they went? After all, you've never been there to check. Maybe their cameras malfunctioned. Maybe the speed of light decreases so drastically outside the Earth's atmosphere (it's not like you've measured it there, right?) that although the spaceships may seem to take many hours to communicate with us, they're actually stranded just a little bit away from the Moon.

The issue is about trust and where we set the boundaries on whether this can be credibly given or not. Solar System spaceship explorations and calculations confirm each other and like you , I would guess, I regard the Capricorn One conspiracy theorists as deranged nutcases on this issue. Go beyond the Solar system and my trust in modern science breaks down but yours remained. This is due a greater scepticism on my part on the credibility of sciences calculations without actual spaceship experiences of the places hypothesised.

 

[shernren]

Solar System spaceship explorations and calculations

What calculations??

I don't understand why you're so difficult to pin down on this. Precisely what calculations do you trust, and what calculations don't you trust?

The locations per se have got nothing to do with it - after all, if I told you that my bedroom was two kilometers away from my living room, you wouldn't trust me, even though both locations are still well within the Solar System.

 

[lucaspa]

The view that theological ideas e.g. the book of God and the book of nature made separations that were then developed into atheistic evolutionary perceptions that rejected the book of God and then "demystified" the book of nature may have themselves have been problematic is more to the point. These theological categorisations were made mainly in the twelfth century as the churches scholastics rediscovered Aristotle and tried to absorb and Christianise him.

You find St. Augistine in the 4th century AD writing:
"the great book ... of created things. Look above you; look below you; read it, note it." St. Augustine, Sermon 126 in Corpus Christianorum

That God had 2 books, therefore, was present in Christianity from its beginning. Consider this quote:
"To conclude, therefore, let no man out of a weak conceit of sobriety, or an ill-applied moderation, think or maintain, that a man can search too far or be too well studied in the book of God's word, or in the book of God's works; divinity or philosophy [science]; but rather let men endeavour an endless progress or proficience in both." Francis Bacon: Advancement of Learning

Bacon did not get this from Aristotle. He got it directly from Christian theology.

That definition is problematic. Cancers should progress to fatal concusions yet sometimes go into miraculous remission for instance. Bread and fish should not appear out of thin air or water turn into wine. A man cannot walk on unfrozen water and yet Peter did.

You are thinking Gravesende's words forbid miracle. They don't. Instead, they make "natural" just as dependent on God as miracle. Look again:
" Every Law does immediately depend upon the Will of God." You think of God only when the water is turned into wine. But God is also there when the water and grapes were fermented to produce wine.

Yes that is a little out of date though. I talk to a great many German theologians who are still trapped in that glorious era for German theology which pioneered Higher Criticism and took it to its extremes. But the church survived their challenge and a great many theological institutions in Germany have still not woken up to the fact that theology and the global church have passed them by.

When you look at the curricula of seminaries, you find that all major seminaries teach Higher Criticism. All the seminaries for my church, for instance, teach Higher Criticism.

Higher Criticism was never a challenge to Christianity. It was only a challenge to Biblical literalists.

Ah the documentary /Graf Wellhausen theory is actually quite discredited today and since the internal biblical evidence is in favour of Mosaic authorship and theology is actually quite open on this issue it is still credible to argue Moses wrote the books

It's only "credible" in Fundamentalist circles. Go to Barnes and Nobles and look at all the commentaries of Genesis on the shelves. They ALL state the Documentary Hypothesis as fact. Putting me to a website that has "2001 W. Plano Parkway, Suite 2000" as its address is not "credible" nor does it discredit the DH. All it shows is that you have cranks around you advocate the Mosaic authorship despite the facts to the contrary.

Look, I can post a website that says the shape of the earth is quite open on the issue and it is still credible to argue that the earth is flat! The Flat Earth Society

Nonsence- Can you produce a copy of Q for us to scrutinise?

Can you produce the body of Jesus for us to scrutinize? Can you produce the baskets of fish and bread collected? Can you produce the barrel of wine? Then, by your own admission, all those are "nonsence".

Have you ever heard of inference? Q is inferred from the text of the synoptic gospels. Haven't you ever noticed that, in those gospels, that many of the sayings of Jesus have different contexts, being spoken at different times and places in his life? If they had all come from eyewitnesses to Jesus' preaching, then the times and places would be the same.

But you are right that Higher Criticism approached the scriptures with the intent of debunking its supernatural content.

I never said they did that. That is Haque's claim. From my study of religion, including Higher Criticism, as an undergrad, that was not how scripture was approached. Nor did Higher Criticism ever really try to debunk the supernatural content. What it did do was challenge those poor souls that had no personal relationship with God and were totally dependent on scripture being completely "authoritative".

The Jewish calendar dates from creation and most of the main churches accepted creationism long before they considered evolution so again this is nonsence. Also you are talking from a very American perspective of the experience of creationism and really only about one particular manifestation of it.

That's a jumbled history. By default, both the church and science were creationist. Remember, YEC was the accepted scientific theory up until 1831. The first quote in my signature is the Christian response to 1) that the earth is very old and 2) there was never a world-wide Flood and the falsification of Flood Geology. That is from England, not the USA.

There was initial opposition to evolution from the Protestant churches in England. Never from the Catholic Church. But even here acceptance of evolution was fairly quick:
"When my Father [Frederick Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury] announced and defended his acceptance of evolution in his Brough Lectures in 1884 it provoked no serious amount of criticism ... The particular battle over evolution was already won by 1884." F.A. Iremonger, William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury, His Life and Letters, Oxford Univ. Press, 1948, pg. 491.

By 1884 evolution was accepted by the Anglican Church in England and in the remaining Protestant churches there and on the continent. In the USA the same rejection of creationism and acceptance of evolution played out. Asa Gray, America's foremost botanist, a devout Christian, a lifelong friend of Darwin, and one of evolution's first supporters, was giving lectures at theological seminaries in America.

"I trust that the veneration due to the Old Testament is not impaired by the acertaining that the Mosaic is not an original but a compiled cosmology. Its glory is, that while its materials were the earlier property of the race, they were in this record purged of polythism and Nature-worship, and impregnated with ideas which we suppose the world will never outgrow. For its fundamental note is, the declaration of one God, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things, visible and invisible, -- a declaration which, if physical science is unable to establish, it is equally unable to overthrow." Asa Gray, Natural Science and Religion: Two Lectures Delivered to the Theological School of Yale College, 1880, pg 9.

Charles Hodges was the President of the theological seminary at Princeton and a creationist. When he retired, his replacment was Rev. James McCosh. That's the second quote in my signature.

Across the Atlantic, British theologians were writing:
"The scientific evidence in favour of evolution, as a theory is infinitely more Christian than the theory of 'special creation'. For it implies the immanence of God in nature, and the omnipresence of His creative power. Those who oppose the doctrine of evolution in defence of a 'continued intervention' of God, seem to have failed to notice that a theory of occasional intervention implies as its correlative a theory of ordinary absence." AL Moore, Science and Faith, 1889, pg 184.

"The last few years have witnessed the gradual acceptance by Christians of the great scientific generalisation of our age, which is briefly if somewhat vaguely described as the Theory of Evolution. ... It is an advance in our theological thinking; a definite increase of insight; a fresher and fuller appreciation of those 'many ways' in which 'God fulfills Himself'. JR Ilingsworth, Lex Mundi, 12th edition, 1891.

So Christians on both sides of the Atlantic had rejected creationism and accepted evolution. All this predates the publication of The Fundamentals (starts 1900).

Going back before this is not accurate, because it does not reflect what happened in Christianity between 1800 and 1890.

Even after The Fundamentals were published, Christians were trying to reach out to Fundamentalists. Read the open letter of Osborne to William Jennings Bryant: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/sts/cain/texts/osborn.pdf

I agree Science must necessarily be agnostic about things it cannot know or prove. As well as the things of God,

Science is agnostic about God. This is not a generic "agnostic", but the specific "agnostic" as it applies to the question "Does deity exist?". Science neither believes God exists nor believes that God does not exist. Science does not know whether or not God exists. That "does not know" is the exact definition of "agnostic" given by Huxley when he coined the term in the 1860s.

aspects of human nature e.g. love, remote cosmology and origins should also be things science should be inquistive but ultimately agnostic about . cause at the end of the day it cannot know about these things.

Now you are not working with the limitations of science, i.e. methodological materialism, but instead putting off limits things that you think will threaten religion. At the end of the day, science can know about the origins of Meteor Crator, the mid-Atlantic ridge, H. sapiens, life, stars, galaxies, etc. The reason is that these things left evidence of that origin that is present today that we can study. We get evidence of "remote cosmology" by the EM radiation that has traveled from those remote places and times.

The problem is that you associate only one method of origin with God. If God didn't create by miracle, then in your view God didn't create. Can't you see the does-not-follow in that viewpoint? You don't think science can know because, from what science does know, God didn't create the way you insist He had to. But no, science does not have to be agnostic about the origin of life, or the origin of our species, or that the universe began as an infinitely hot, infinitely dense, infinitely small volume of spacetime. Science can know that. Is the Big Bang God's method of creating the universe? Science has to be agnostic about that because it is agnostic about God's existence. OTOH, I am not agnostic about God's existence, so I have no problem believing that God created the universe by the Big Bang.

I actually agree with that.

Great! Then let's concentrate on how atheists misuse science instead of attacking science by trying to tell us what science can and cannot do. Your "enemy" is atheism, not science. Science is simply telling you how God created.

 

[lucaspa]

The Yellowstone petrified forests

This explanation doesn't work for several reasons. First, the trees do have roots. Second, Yellowstone is not in isolation. The alternative hypothesis of giant waves washing in forests from neighboring areas doesn't work because of the dino nests 100 miles away in Montana. Remember, according to creationists the layers of sediment containing those dino nests were also laid down in the Flood. However, those nests are so delicate that any large movement of water would have ripped them apart, much less the extremely violent waves necessary to uproot entire forests!

Mindlight, in science the website is known as an ad hoc hypothesis. You have a hypothesis: all sedimentary rock laid down by a world-wide flood. You find evidence that falsifies the hypothesis, in this case the Yellowstone forests. So now there is an ad hoc hypothesis to save Flood Geology: a very violent flood that uprootes neighboring forests from hundreds of miles around and dumps them at Yellowstone. But now the ad hoc hypothesis also gets tested. As I've shown, the Maiasaura nests in neighboring Montana can't possibly be there if the ad hoc hypothesis is correct. So it is falsified and Flood Geology is still wrong.

There are answers to all these kinds of scientific proofs that at the very least introduce an element of doubt.

They are not valid answers to the disproofs. They only introduce "doubt" by playing upon your ignorance of the full picture. (I'm short of time and will do the varves later)

At the end of the day my contention is not a precise description of what happened but an acceptance that no one else can say they have the definitive scientific conclusions on this.

But unfortuneately, we do have a definitive scientific conclusion that there never was a world-wide Flood. What we have are creationist apologists trying hand-wave the evidence away. From my standpoint as a Christian, it is unfortunate that they so often do so by false witness. Christians should behave better.

 

[Calminian]

This explanation doesn't work for several reasons. First, the trees do have roots. Second, Yellowstone is not in isolation. The alternative hypothesis of giant waves washing in forests from neighboring areas doesn't work because of the dino nests 100 miles away in Montana. Remember, according to creationists the layers of sediment containing those dino nests were also laid down in the Flood. However, those nests are so delicate that any large movement of water would have ripped them apart, much less the extremely violent waves necessary to uproot entire forests!

I don't think you're right that all creationists believe all dino fossils were laid down by the flood. Certainly much of it was, but not all, as they believe some dinosaurs existed for a time post Flood.

Mindlight, in science the website is known as an ad hoc hypothesis. You have a hypothesis: all sedimentary rock laid down by a world-wide flood. You find evidence that falsifies the hypothesis, in this case the Yellowstone forests. So now there is an ad hoc hypothesis to save Flood Geology: a very violent flood that uprootes neighboring forests from hundreds of miles around and dumps them at Yellowstone. But now the ad hoc hypothesis also gets tested. As I've shown, the Maiasaura nests in neighboring Montana can't possibly be there if the ad hoc hypothesis is correct. So it is falsified and Flood Geology is still wrong.

I think you make a good case, except for the ad hoc conclusion you added at the end. Not to say you were right on the rest just that you made a fair case before throwing in your conclusion at the end.

They are not valid answers to the disproofs. They only introduce "doubt" by playing upon your ignorance of the full picture. (I'm short of time and will do the varves later)

then you got emotional and insulting.

But unfortuneately, we do have a definitive scientific conclusion that there never was a world-wide Flood. What we have are creationist apologists trying hand-wave the evidence away. From my standpoint as a Christian, it is unfortunate that they so often do so by false witness. Christians should behave better.

And then you dive into circular reasoning. I can see the emotion in the post, so I'm not surprised. If the creation of the world and the Genesis flood are special acts of God, i.e. miracles, you can't disprove them through science, for science starts with the premise miracles never happened. This would be drawing a conclusion based on a premise. I wish people touting science understood its foundational assumptions better. If you're not too proud I could probably help you understand those better.