I wasn’t intentionally ignoring you. You posted several links that I had to read, digest and, in a couple of cases, pray on. I thank you for the links. Pretty much killed half a day that should have been spent working, but it was worth it!
Hard science is rarely provisional, but it depends on existing knowlege. A poster upthread (courtesy pinged) is a Ph.D in semiconductors - those things may as well be magic to me by my understanding of how they work, since the only thing I know about them is n-p-n and p-n-p junctions, and that is hazy.
Sure, the whole idea of causality is having some problems at the moment (heck, it gives me a headache trying to follow the arguments), and for things you can’t see your are working through inference and inspiration more than observation, but that is no huge problem.
And in v. 2 the "was" = "existed" cannot be linguistically twisted to mean "became" = "the result of a process"?? Worth pondering on -- eh?
You're welcome. I kind of had an inkling you might find them "worth it". :) I know exactly what you mean about having to spend time digesting what you were reading, because when I first ran across his blog several years ago, my first reaction was, "whoa". :) He is Robert W. Godwin, Ph.D, (forensic clinical psychologist) who blogs as, "Gagdad Bob". Now I read his blog every day.
You wrote: "....and for things you can’t see your are working through inference and inspiration more than observation, but that is no huge problem."
I agree. Per "Gagdad":
"Intellectual intuition (nous) involves the direct perception of Truth. Logic (dianoia), on the other hand, is merely a mental operation that can lead to true or false conclusions, depending upon the data provided it. Logic is particularly useless -- even dangerous -- without the a priori intuition of Truth, without which logic alone eventually leads one over the abyss.
"The most important truths are indeed "self evident," that is, evident to the higher self. .....
"The scientific plane discloses relative truths that provide causal explanations for various material processes. As such, science is obviously entirely appropriate for the horizontal plane to which it is addressed. But religious truths do not have to do with horizontal causation, or only secondarily. Rather, they are intended to provide the higher mind with a means to realize vertical truth (and virtue). There is nothing that can be provided by mere logic alone that can help one ascend this vertical hierarchy. .............
"... the deep structure of the Left may be traced all the way back to the first appearance of humanity in its horizontal maninfestation. It is not so much that relativism is incorrect as such. Obviously, our own existence proves that relativism is real, otherwise there would only be God. But by the same token, relativism cannot be absolute. Rather, the absolute is precisely that which makes hierarchical relativity possible to begin with. By definition, there is no such thing as an incomplete hierarchy. To paraphrase Richard Weaver, if a series is hierarchically ordered it is conditioned from top to bottom and so cannot be infinite. If it is infinite, it cannot be conditioned top to bottom, and there is no higher or lower -- only Hegel's "bad infinite," or the black night ....
"Our existence proves beyond the doubt of a shadow that we inhabit a hierarchical cosmos with degrees of being -- atoms, molecules, cells, animals, Man. Man is an arrow that points beyond himself to his source above, not below or behind.
"Certain things are known; other things have to be thought about. Some of the things we know we don't think we know because we think about them. Yet they are there in front of us and if we didn't consider them separate from ourselves and worthy of thinking about, we would know them for what they are.... The feeling of losing yourself is often the feeling of remembering yourself -- you are losing your personality and gaining your center....
"Our society has chosen its priorities quite clearly: surfaces. So it is no surprise that centers hold no interest. And yet, whether there is interest or not, the lie of the surfaces... is a lie.... Thus we have lost the knowledge of 'wholes.' We can 'think about' and 'talk about' wholes, but we do not know them. As a result, much of our world has been destroyed by... the lack of intuitive knowledge of centers.... Science is a view from exactly one perspective.... its discoveries are discrete and always relate to the world as defined by science.... But only knowledge of centers (or Center) will fix the core of our world... " --Keith Jarrett, Changeless