[OneWingedShark]

>If you asked me, giving fallible science priority over infallible scripture is a devaluation of scripture by definition.

Then what do you think of the like of Blase Pascal (Pascal’s Wager) who used science and reason to buttress his faith and help convince others about it?

[GodGunsGuts]

==Then what do you think of the like of Blase Pascal (Pascal’s Wager) who used science and reason to buttress his faith and help convince others about it?

Perhaps the following will help answer you question:

All the above confuses the ministerial v magisterial approach to science. Scientism is an example of the magisterial use of science, where it stands over Scripture like a magistrate and judges it. Such ‘science’ is bound to be flawed, because science by its very nature is tentative, and starts with axioms invented by fallible humans and not revealed by the infallible God. Science should never be elevated to the same level as logic, because valid logical deductions from true premises always lead to true conclusions, while scientific theories come and go. This characteristic of science especially applies to origin science (the study of one-off origins in the past), and some apply this even to operational science (the science of repeatable observations in the present²), although it’s not our main point of debate.

The ministerial use of science occurs when science submits to Scripture. This means that all things necessary for our faith and life are either expressly set down in Scripture or may be deduced by good and necessary consequence from Scripture. Many Scriptural passages show that Christians are not supposed to check in their brains at the church door, but to use their God-given minds in subjection to God’s Word.³

The following section from Refuting Compromise should explain further why we like RATE, and why it is diametrically opposed to scientism.

Ministerial and magisterial uses of science contrasted

The ministerial use elaborates on the clear teachings of the Bible, and may help us decide on equally plausible alternatives consistent with the language. Note that this approach to Scripture does not deny the authority of Scripture, but recognizes that while Scripture is ‘true truth’ it is not exhaustive truth. In contrast, the magisterial use overrules the clear teaching of the Bible to come up with a meaning inconsistent with sound hermeneutics. Instead of the Reformation principle of Sola Scriptura (Scripture alone), this is Scriptura sub scientia (Scripture below science). The following examples can aid our understanding of the differences between the magisterial and ministerial use of science in the interpretation of the Bible:

• Scripture teaches that a year-long global flood (with various stages) occurred about 1,600 years after creation. Creationist geologists, such as CMI’s Dr Tas Walker, have worked on building a scientific model, based on the types of rock formations predicted in every stage.⁴ A magisterial use of science is to claim that uniformitarian science disproves a global Flood, so that Genesis must be reinterpreted to mean a local Flood, or even dismissed as unhistorical.
• The whole tenor of Scripture is that the individual is a human being right from the beginning of biological life; there is nothing to indicate that there is any secondary event of ‘ensoulment’ after the beginning of biological life. In particular, the Psalmist teaches that life begins at conception (Psalm 51:5), i.e., he explicitly states that it was ‘me’ that existed from conception, not some blob of cells that later became ‘me’. Science elaborates on this by showing that the union of sperm and egg (fertilization or conception) is the scientifically irrefutable beginning of the individual’s life, so can be equated with the Biblical term.
• The Bible teaches (ten times in Genesis 1) that living organisms reproduce after their kind, and that man was created supernaturally from non-living matter, not from a pre-existing living creature (Genesis 2:7). Since kinds are defined by reproduction, creationists have used hybridization studies to elaborate on the boundaries of the original created kind to elucidate the Biblical teaching. For example, the wholphin, a hybrid of a killer whale and a dolphin, shows that they were descendants of the same created kind, despite man’s classification of them into different genera. In fact, since the wholphin is fertile, it means that its parents were really members of the same ‘biological species’ by definition. And since the Bible does not specify that the ‘kind’ must equal any modern definition of ‘species’, science can help demonstrate that [Hugh] Ross’s equation of these two terms is false.

A magisterial use of reason is that of theistic evolutionists who claim that all living organisms, including man, have evolved from a simple cell. So if they regard Genesis as remotely historical at all, it must be ‘reinterpreted’ to be compatible with the idea that one kind has changed into another kind, quite contrary to the plain language of the biblical text.