Reply to creationist re: miracles and science

[shernren]

The effects of miracles would be easy to observe: to use your own examples from your later post:

Bullets changing direction: you assume that nothing is known about the direction of the bullet at the start of it's motion: if we know (eg: from video evidence) that the bullet starts moving in direction a and ends up going in direction b then we know something inexplicable has happened.

Bullets being slowed: easy; place the shooting in a small room. There can be no way the bullet can have been fired from a great distance as determined by the ballistic study.

We have a winner!

Now, imagine if someone told you, "God slowed down the bullet and changed its direction, but then made the bullet trail look as if it had not slowed down or changed its direction. Therefore the bullet actually did slow down and change its direction, but the evidence does not show it."

There you go. Suddenly the evidence is untrustworthy. Wanton inclusion of the supernatural causes reality itself to become illusory.

 

[shernren]

I'm amazed you are still asking me this. I've given several illustrations. Which parts are you not clear on?

Just these two:

1. How is "science" different from "observation"?
2. How would the physical effect of a historical miracle be different from any other physical effect occurring in the past?

 

[laptoppop]

1. How is "science" different from "observation"?

Sometimes I feel like the kindly old uncle in the Narnia tales -- "Bless my soul! What ARE they teaching these kids these days?"
Observation is just one part of science. One must always be careful to seperate the actual observations from any conclusions (or theories, or interpretations, etc.) derived from those observations.

 

[shernren]

Sometimes I feel like the kindly old uncle in the Narnia tales -- "Bless my soul! What ARE they teaching these kids these days?"
Observation is just one part of science. One must always be careful to seperate the actual observations from any conclusions (or theories, or interpretations, etc.) derived from those observations.

Fair enough. I'm more concerned about the second question.

 

[EnemyPartyII]

And wildly off topic, the proffessor "bless my soul, what DO they treach children in these schools"

is of no relation to the Pevensie chidren. Hes just their billet during the London evacuation.

Since we're talking about facts and all...

 

[Deamiter]

Just these two:

1. How is "science" different from "observation"?
2. How would the physical effect of a historical miracle be different from any other physical effect occurring in the past?

I agree entirely. Calminian said that creationists largely accept that the universe follows consistant laws except where clearly stated in the Bible. I disagree with Calminian because evangelical Christians (certainly the majority of creationists) believe that God is moving today and enacting miracles all over the place!

Yes, it could very well be true that God's natural laws are left untouched most of the time, but if even five bullets a year are deflected, or if it's even POSSIBLE that a bullet could be undetectably deflected, then any conclusion based on forensic evidence is worthless.

If a criminal were witnessed shooting another man, and forensic evidence showed that it was his gun from about the range witnessed yet it was possible that God interviened and "set him up" for some unknown divine purpose then there is reasonable doubt and he should be aquitted.

Similarly, if we are making observations and find that the older a star is, the faster it is moving away from us (as astronomers do) you claim that it is impossible for us to make a conclusion because it is POSSIBLE that God undetectably changed the age or speed of the stars.

How is this different from any other area of science? Are you claiming that the only miracles that ever existed are recorded in the Bible? If there is even ONE extra-Biblical miracle where God undetectably changed the universe, then science is incapable of making conclusions based on observations. We are incapable of convicting criminals based on forensic evidence.

So yes, you can believe (as I do) that the universe generally follows natural laws set by God. But as soon as you start throwing out some of the conclusions based on observations, then you are essentially claiming that ALL observations are suspect. Yeah, we might get lucky here and there when God DIDN'T perform a miracle, but as there's no way to tell when this happens, there's no way to conclude that a particular observation is accurate.

So yes, by claiming that God sometimes undetectably changes the universe to make it look different than it really is, you are claiming that NO observations are trustworthy.

 

[laptoppop]

Two quick points:

Similarly, if we are making observations and find that the older a star is, the faster it is moving away from us (as astronomers do) you claim that it is impossible for us to make a conclusion because it is POSSIBLE that God undetectably changed the age or speed of the stars.

The observation is that the spectrum of light is shifted. The conclusion is that it is moving relative to us. The secondary conclusion is regarding its age.

So yes, by claiming that God sometimes undetectably changes the universe to make it look different than it really is, you are claiming that NO observations are trustworthy.

Who are we to restrict God as to when He may or may not perform miracles? I see no basis to limit God to only acting in the times and places recorded in Scripture. God is alive, and He can do as He pleases.

 

[Brennan]

We have a winner!

Now, imagine if someone told you, "God slowed down the bullet and changed its direction, but then made the bullet trail look as if it had not slowed down or changed its direction. Therefore the bullet actually did slow down and change its direction, but the evidence does not show it."

There you go. Suddenly the evidence is untrustworthy. Wanton inclusion of the supernatural causes reality itself to become illusory.

Wow. Hear the sound of goalposts being moved. Slightly dishonest debate style you have there.

Btw, what's my prize?

 

[Calminian]

TWho are we to restrict God as to when He may or may not perform miracles? I see no basis to limit God to only acting in the times and places recorded in Scripture. God is alive, and He can do as He pleases.

Which I also agree with BTW. Even if pentecostal views of the sign gifts are correct, they still believe natural process to be vastly normative. A healing of a man in one spot wouldn't affect any of the countless natural processes surrounding it. The plane above would still fly and the apple on the tree across the street would still drop to the ground. Honestly just a little thinking would prevent 90% of these questions. Even from a pentecostal perspective, miracles are rare exceptions to the norm. The point is, one doesn't need to be charismatic to believe the miracles of Genesis.

 

[Calminian]

Wow. Hear the sound of goalposts being moved. Slightly dishonest debate style you have there.

Btw, what's my prize?

You noticed that too?

 

[shernren]

Wow. Hear the sound of goalposts being moved. Slightly dishonest debate style you have there.

Btw, what's my prize?

I wanted to rep your post but all I got is this: This post has not received any reputation. You currently have 7456 reputation point(s). huh?

Anyways, I don't consider it dishonest. Your original question which I was responding to was:

#71
I think that arguments about the 'presuppositions' of science are baseless - science makes no supposition beyond the one that we can trust what we observe around us. Name one scientific theory that actually requires a non-belief in God, Miracles or angels... Having trouble?

I said:

#72
Why do we assume that, as you said, "what we observe around us can be trusted"? It is only because we assume that any effect we observe has a quantifiable (and hence observable) cause. To assume supernatural intervention instantly assumes that anything we observe may not have had a quantifiable cause which we can naturalistically investigate.

Your response:

#79
The effects of miracles would be easy to observe: to use your own examples from your later post:

Bullets changing direction: you assume that nothing is known about the direction of the bullet at the start of it's motion: if we know (eg: from video evidence) that the bullet starts moving in direction a and ends up going in direction b then we know something inexplicable has happened.

Bullets being slowed: easy; place the shooting in a small room. There can be no way the bullet can have been fired from a great distance as determined by the ballistic study.

Now, your original question as I interpreted it was "don't scientific theories have room for God?" The problem I see with that is that scientific investigations necessarily assume that no physical effects, miracles or not, are obscured. That is why I responded with:

#81
Now, imagine if someone told you, "God slowed down the bullet and changed its direction, but then made the bullet trail look as if it had not slowed down or changed its direction. Therefore the bullet actually did slow down and change its direction, but the evidence does not show it."

I probably was very unclear, this is a point addressed more to Calminian than to you, and in that respect I did goalpost-shift a bit (aiming for a different corner of the field). It is related however to your original question about assuming that what we see around us is trustworthy. Supernatural intervention can be invoked in such a way that nothing of the physical evidence is amenable to scientific investigation, and under those circumstances scientific investigation is useless at investigating the nature of the actual reality (which in itself is a very interesting philosophical question. If God made it look like a tree didn't fall in the forest, did a tree fall in the forest? But that would really be goalpost-shifting!). So in answer to your first post:

science makes no supposition beyond the one that we can trust what we observe around us.

my answer is that sometimes even that supposition is made unavailable by supernatural intervention.

Which was what I was saying.

Now, I can be incredibly stupid, especially at unearthly times like 1:26am after a hard day's work with unearthly papers like English as Second Language. But dishonest? I thought we only start throwing ad homs at each other once we run out of better things to say.

 

[Brennan]

Well, you admit to goalpost moving...

If God makes miracles undetectable, how do you know they have happened?

 

[Deamiter]

Two quick points:

The observation is that the spectrum of light is shifted. The conclusion is that it is moving relative to us. The secondary conclusion is regarding its age.

Not quite. You are correct that the conclusion that these stars are moving relative to us is based on the redshifting, but the conclusion regarding the ages of far-off galaxies is based on direct observations (via parallax) of the distance of many stars.

Of course, since we have observed a direct relation between the redshift and the distance of stars we CAN verify the distance too, scientists have concluded that this relationship extends further than we can directly measure. This is a very well-known assumption, and you can be sure that the person who shows it to be invalid will win a Nobel Prize! The bottom line is that there are objects we can directly verify to be much further away than 10k lightyears, yet we are seeing light from them. There is no evidence that God has adjusted the speed of light in the past. You can believe what you like and ignore all the evidence, but the fact remains that you're twisting both the evidence and the Bible to conform to your beliefs.

Who are we to restrict God as to when He may or may not perform miracles? I see no basis to limit God to only acting in the times and places recorded in Scripture. God is alive, and He can do as He pleases.

You insinuate that I am "restricting God" when I am doing no such thing! I firmly believe that God enacts miracles daily, but he does it within the framework that he chose to create for our universe. God knows perfectly well what miracles he will choose to perform in the future, and before the beginning of time, he designed the laws of physics to allow these miracles to happen.

No, I am not going to claim I have evidence for these beliefs, but I find an incredible amount of leeway in physics (particularly quantum mechanics) for God to move as he chooses. At the same time, I see no evidence ANYWHERE that God has ever chosen to violate the laws of physics. Again, I find it rather silly to base one's beliefs ON and ABSENSE of evidence (see below)!

If scientific research concluded the earth really did form only 6 ,000 years ago, that would prove it's young, but also that it was not created supernaturally.

 

[laptoppop]

Not quite. You are correct that the conclusion that these stars are moving relative to us is based on the redshifting, but the conclusion regarding the ages of far-off galaxies is based on direct observations (via parallax) of the distance of many stars.

Of course, since we have observed a direct relation between the redshift and the distance of stars we CAN verify the distance too, scientists have concluded that this relationship extends further than we can directly measure. This is a very well-known assumption, and you can be sure that the person who shows it to be invalid will win a Nobel Prize! The bottom line is that there are objects we can directly verify to be much further away than 10k lightyears, yet we are seeing light from them. There is no evidence that God has adjusted the speed of light in the past. You can believe what you like and ignore all the evidence, but the fact remains that you're twisting both the evidence and the Bible to conform to your beliefs.

observations: degrees of parallax, and redshift
deduction: age

(and, btw, there is evidence that the speed of light is changing, and has changed. While I have not studied it enough to understand it / think it is true / support it - I find it a fascinating topic. The speed of light has been measured multiple times, by multiple people over the years, and the later measurements of the speed of light have been beyond what many of the researchers specified as the error band for their experiments.)

You insinuate that I am "restricting God" when I am doing no such thing! I firmly believe that God enacts miracles daily, but he does it within the framework that he chose to create for our universe. God knows perfectly well what miracles he will choose to perform in the future, and before the beginning of time, he designed the laws of physics to allow these miracles to happen.

No, I am not going to claim I have evidence for these beliefs, but I find an incredible amount of leeway in physics (particularly quantum mechanics) for God to move as he chooses. At the same time, I see no evidence ANYWHERE that God has ever chosen to violate the laws of physics. Again, I find it rather silly to base one's beliefs ON and ABSENSE of evidence (see below)!

OK, so you reject many of the miracles of Jesus? Walking on water, changing water into wine, etc? Many of these violate our current understandings of the laws of physics....

 

[Deamiter]

observations: degrees of parallax, and redshift
deduction: age

(and, btw, there is evidence that the speed of light is changing, and has changed. While I have not studied it enough to understand it / think it is true / support it - I find it a fascinating topic. The speed of light has been measured multiple times, by multiple people over the years, and the later measurements of the speed of light have been beyond what many of the researchers specified as the error band for their experiments.)

And yet, using the SAME methods, researchers have NEVER measured significantly different ages.

I have indeed looked at this evidence, and all I found was an incomplete set of data. I've seen measurements from 80 years ago that are both above AND below our current measurement. Error bars are only accurate if all sources of error are accounted for -- and when you're pushing the edge of your equipment's abilities, it's not at all uncommon to make mistakes in the assumptions that go into error calculations!

In addition, to make the earlier (slower) measurements correct would mean that the speed of light were changing fast enough that it'd be easily within the detectable range of today's instruments.

Finally, if the speed of light changed -- even a little bit -- the sun would become much hotter or cooler than it currently is. Not only would this be evident in ice cores (showing a systematic increase or decrease in radiation -- much more than the current 11 year and 100 year cycles) but a shift significant enough to be detected in 1950's labs would make the Earth uninhabitable.

OK, so you reject many of the miracles of Jesus? Walking on water, changing water into wine, etc? Many of these violate our current understandings of the laws of physics....

Not at all. Jesus apparently chose to prove his divinity through these miracles. But when you claim that evidence showing great age in the geological column and common ancestry between humans and other apes is in fact evidence AGAIST these things... you're essentially positing the magical pink unicorn who created the universe last Tuesday.

Believe what you will, but don't pretend that our observations of the universe to date support your ideas! You have, in effect, created the ultimate unprovable conspiracy theory! Everything (no matter WHAT) is taken as "proof" for your hypothesis.

Maybe it's just me, but I would find it exceedingly deceptive for God to create the universe, then go back and make it look like it were billions of years old. If the guy can do anything, any way he likes, to inspire an account of creation that disagrees with the universe he has created is just nonsensical!

Of course I deny both that he inspired Genesis to be some sort of modernist ultra-factual historical account AND that the universe is less than a few billion years old. MY God is perfectly capable of creating a universe that is consistent and of writing an account of creation that conveys truth even to those who were born after the Renaissance!

 

[shernren]

Well, you admit to goalpost moving...

If God makes miracles undetectable, how do you know they have happened?

By definition, of course, we cannot. If God makes a miracle undetectable we cannot detect it.

We can however discuss the idea of an undetectable miracle philosophically, not scientifically.

And having said that, most creationists believe that the miracles of a literal Genesis are detectable miracles: http://www.christianforums.com/showpost.php?p=27142139&postcount=51

 

[Calminian]

By definition, of course, we cannot. If God makes a miracle undetectable we cannot detect it.

We can however discuss the idea of an undetectable miracle philosophically, not scientifically.

And having said that, most creationists believe that the miracles of a literal Genesis are detectable miracles: http://www.christianforums.com/showpost.php?p=27142139&postcount=51

Can you please tell us which miracle of Genesis you can detect using science alone?

 

[laptoppop]

At the same time, I see no evidence ANYWHERE that God has ever chosen to violate the laws of physics.

Not at all. Jesus apparently chose to prove his divinity through these miracles.

So you retract your previous statement? Many of Jesus' miracles violated the laws of physics.

 

[Deamiter]

So you retract your previous statement? Many of Jesus' miracles violated the laws of physics.

Ah I am sorry, I have seen no scientific evidence anywhere that the laws of physics have been violated. In the past few centuries where scientific discovery has been in vogue, I would expect many significant anomalies that are unexplainable by the scientific method.

None of Jesus' miracles are evidenced except by second-hand accounts. Prayer has been carefully tested and its healing (or predictive) power has always been well within statistical norms. We do not see people walking on water, performing unexplainable healings or stopping the Earth's rotation in the middle of a battle. I fully believe Jesus could (and I think did) perform miracles outside of the laws of physics to demonstrate his divinity. I also believe that many Biblical accounts use poetic language that was common at the time, but to our fact-obsessed culture sound like miracles. Only 200 years ago NOBODY would have confused "fact" with "truth." Now creationists on the board seem to do it incessantly!

When your hypothesis leads you to make up things (like God's changing the speed of light) that not only are unevidenced (not even in a Biblical account), but have evidence to the contrary... just to support your interpretation of scripture...

When support for your ideas consist of "what if" rather than "look at this" then you can be sure you are searching for support for your viewpoint, not for the truth.

 

[Calminian]

Ah I am sorry, I have seen no scientific evidence anywhere that the laws of physics have been violated.

Deamiter, not to distract, but eventually can you give me a hypothetical of what that scientific evidence might look like?