If ID Theorists Are Right, How Should We Study Nature?

Evolution News and Views ^ | January 23, 2014 | Denyse O'Leary

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for all of your insights, dearest sister in Christ!

It occurs to me that Ayn Rand, notorious atheist that she was, was probably also an empiricist and thus hung onto Aristotle's wisdom while distrusting Plato's and smearing him falsely with labels of the political demons she opposed.

[Alamo-Girl]

Praise God for this illuminating insight for you! And thank God for both of you!

On the rest of it, please remember that God's timing is perfect.

[Alamo-Girl]

So very true and so very true!

[betty boop]

"There is why I 'do science' — and how I go about it: I search through the evidence He embedded for us in His Created Universe, to discover the wonders of it — and to reveal and understand His designed-in principles and the awesome grandeur of The One Who did it all..."

Oh such a beautiful credo, dear brother in Christ!

Plus Romans 1:20 would be the perfect frontispiece for your "presentation a-building!" (I'm so looking forward to seeing it, but am being patient, for I know you've got archeological/geological irons in the fire right now....)

May our Lord ever bless you and all your dear ones!

Thank you so much for writing!

[betty boop]

It occurs to me that Ayn Rand, notorious atheist that she was, was probably also an empiricist and thus hung onto Aristotle's wisdom while distrusting Plato's and smearing him falsely with labels of the political demons she opposed.

Indeed. I don't know what other conclusion to draw.

[hosepipe]

There is one difference. The effects of those things can be quantified.
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The "Flat Earth" was also quantified..
as well as those following Phrenology..... quantified things..

not to speak of those that quantify Babies to be Fetus's..
a sever reduction in quality and quantity..

Is the quality and quantity of things measured "spiritually".. -OR- "Carnally".... or even "Materialistically"..

A Worm looks at things one way.. a Butterfly another way..
The Chrysalis of life... makes quantity an open question..
Is it possible to be a Worm and a Scientist as well?..

[betty boop]

As a student of the Bible, I can say with personal certainty that Jesus is making those who believe on Him (that is faithe in Him as their Soter) joint heirs in this greater dimensionality, for when we see Him, we shall be like Him. To see Him in His fullness requires that we have the greater dimensionality very nearly to His limits, but not quite, for He is The Great I Am.

Thank you, dear brother in Christ, for your beautiful meditation!

That you thought it through in terms of "relative dimensionality" is particularly intriguing to me.

You point out that the best man can achieve is to come "very nearly to His limits, but not quite." This coheres very well with my own understanding of man as imago Dei, the creature made in the image or "reflection" of God. God is Source: we are reflections. Ineluctably, there is a categorical difference here of cosmic proportion.

And that categorical difference suggests that man can never be god himself — there is an insurmountable chasm between the divine and its human image.

I do believe that Jesus Christ incarnated as a man and suffered most grievously to die for us on the Holy Cross, so to pay the blood price for the sins of men, imputed to them since Adam's Fall, that they may be redeemed. And on the third day, He rose again from the dead, and was resurrected unto His Father in heaven. Thus our Lord Jesus Christ shows us, in the entire Crucifixion drama, the future of every living soul who loves Him in faith, hope, and love of neighbor.

God alone knows how many dimensions there are. But it seems to me for the above reasons that man vis-a-vis God will always come up at least one dimension short. For the image is not the Source.

Your wrote:

"...when we see Him, we shall be like Him."

Yes!!! But the operative word here is "like Him"; which does not mean "same as He."

I just mention this to dissuade people who might think there's any kind of beneficent pay-off in actual reality for exercises in "self-divinization." Examples: Hegel's Phaenomonologie; Nietzsche's Ubermensch; Obama's presidency....

If you were to ask me, these all signify Second Realities. All sound and fury, signifying nothing.... Going nowhere, and causing as much misery as possible along the way to Nowhere. Thomas More coined a term for this "Nowhere": he called it Utopia.

I'd better put a sock in it for now, dear brother!

Thank you so very much for writing, dear MHGinTN!

[betty boop]

No different then, than gravity, or magnetism, or electrons, or a whole host of other things that scientists accept as fact based not on direct observation but the effects these things have on other things.

Great observation, dear sister in Christ! Thank you!

[Alamo-Girl]

Indeed and Amen!

[Alamo-Girl]

Truly there are many things which can be quantified, e.g. the flatearth of 2 spatial dimensions plus 1 dimension of time. That does not make it real.

Another example is coordinate transformations. That coordinates may transform between systems does not mean that all such systems are real.

[Alamo-Girl]

God alone knows how many dimensions there are. But it seems to me for the above reasons that man vis-a-vis God will always come up at least one dimension short. For the image is not the Source.

So very true, dearest sister in Christ, thank you for sharing your insights!

[metmom]

There is one difference. The effects of those things can be quantified.

Quantify love.

Quantify will.

Quantify beauty.

Quantify a changed heart and life, like Chuck Colson's.

Quantify a miracle.

Jesus does that stuff and the effects of it can be observed and quantified.

This was quantified....

Aaron Shust shares Michael's miracle story

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVRy-t3S0ts

[Alamo-Girl]

Indeed, qualia can only be experienced, not conveyed.

[metmom]

Yet.

And it is no less real in spite of the fact that there is no substance to them.

There is more to reality than the physical, material world in which we find ourselves.

One thing that I think many of the atheist/evo/scientist types forget is that we know and understand today because of the increase of knowledge and technology, would be considered the supernatural of years gone by. Being supernatural doesn’t mean that there’s no explanation for it, nor even a good one. It simply means that we don’t know yet.

To God, there is no supernatural. But he is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, so He has full knowledge.

So those materialists who write off stuff as superstition are no better than those the denigrate because THEY are the ones impeding the advance of knowledge. By labeling something as *supernatural* and then claiming that science does not deal with the *supernatural* they are excluding it from study in which we might actually learn something.

Not everything that appears random necessarily is. It only appears that way to those who have not figured it out yet. But to exclude something from study because we don’t understand it yet is the height of folly. They then end up doing the very thing they condemn.

They’re cutting off their nose to spite their face.

[betty boop]

The Great Chain of Being corresponds to an interconnected hierarchy of different unseen dimensions or astral-planes within the impersonal mind of the World Soul....

Jeepers dear sister in Christ, RE: this "great chain of being" business, I hope you didn't draw the conclusion from my earlier post regarding the Great Hierarchy of Being that the latter is a synonym for the Hermetic "great chain...."

The supposed "great chain of being" has been thoroughly co-opted by Darwinism. It is godless.

Not so the Great Hierarchy — which is the divine creation of the triune Creator God.

JMHO FWIW

Thank you so very much for your highly informative essay/post!

[CodeToad]

God made the world and it is our job to figure it out. This idea by some people that think our only job is to believe in God and he will fill our bellies and prevent us from being sick is naïve and arrogant. He never said h would fill our bellies; he said he would provide the means for us to do it ourselves. This is a great world we live in and it has everything we need.

[Alamo-Girl]

Exactly, dear sister in Christ, thank you for sharing your insights!

[cookcounty]

Study science just like anyone else, but with an open mind. That is to say, maintaining the possibility that some things may be beyond the explanatory capacities of science.

[hosepipe]

There is more to reality than the physical, material world in which we find ourselves.

---

Well said... i.e. art.. music.. prose.. dance.. fashion..

* A look at an instrument cannot possible measure the quality or even type of music that can come out of it....

* A painting speaks un-uttered words heard by eyes..

* A lyric sounded in different cadences can be ugly or beautiful..

* A body language gesture can be clumsy or svelte..

* A Love loved can be hidden or obvious or both..

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

*** Many things get by the UN-observant.. and crass..
or are Non- existent to the willfully blind... or unimportant to the politically naive...

[metmom]

A rainbow or sunset over the Gulf can be explained *scientifically*, but the beauty can only be appreciated by the human observer.

Science cannot quantify beauty and yet it is real and people recognize it when they see it.

Willfully blind says it all.