Posted on 01/15/2014 8:57:46 AM PST by xzins
One of the most misleading headlines imaginable recently appeared over an opinion column published in USA Today. Tom Krattenmaker, a member of the paper’s Board of Contributors, set out to argue that there is no essential conflict between evolution and religious belief because the two are dealing with completely separate modes of knowing. Evolution, he argued, is simply “settled science” that requires no belief. Religion, on the other hand, is a faith system that is based in a totally different way of knowing—a form of knowing that requires belief and faith.
The background to the column is the recent data released by the Pew Research Center indicating that vast millions of Americans still reject evolution. As the Pew research documents, the rejection of evolution has actually increased in certain cohorts of the population. Almost six of ten who identify as Republicans now reject evolution, but so do a third of Democrats. Among evangelical Christians, 64% indicate a rejection of evolution, especially as an explanation for human origins. Krattenmaker is among those who see this as a great national embarrassment—and as a crisis.
In response, Krattenmaker makes this statement:
In a time of great divides over religion and politics, it’s not surprising that we treat evolution the way we do political issues. But here’s the problem: As settled science, evolution is not a matter of opinion, or something one chooses to believe in or not, like a religious proposition. And by often framing the matter this way, we involved in the news media, Internet debates and everyday conversation do a disservice to science, religion and our prospects for having a scientifically literate country.
So belief in evolution is not something one simply chooses to believe or to disbelieve, “like a religious proposition.” Instead, it is “settled science” that simply compels intellectual assent.
The problems with this argument are legion. In the first place, there is no such thing as “settled science.” There is a state of scientific consensus at any given time, and science surely has its reigning orthodoxies. But to understand the enterprise of science is to know that science is never settled. The very nature of science is to test and retest hypotheses and to push toward new discoveries. No Nobel prizes are awarded for settled science. Instead, those prizes are awarded for discoveries and innovations. Many of those prizes, we should note, were awarded in past years for scientific innovations that were later rejected. Nothing in science is truly settled.
If science is to be settled, when would we declare it settled? In 1500? 1875? 1960? 2013? Mr. Krattenmaker’s own newspaper published several major news articles in just the past year trumpeting “new” discoveries that altered basic understandings of how evolution is supposed to have happened, including a major discovery that was claimed to change the way human development was traced, opening new questions about multiple lines of descent.
But the most significant problem with this argument is the outright assertion that science and religion represent two completely separate modes and bodies of knowledge. The Christian understanding of truth denies this explicitly. Truth is truth. There are not different kinds of truth that operate by different intellectual rules.
Every mode of thinking requires belief in basic presuppositions. Science, in this respect, is no different than theology. Those basic presuppositions are themselves unprovable, but they set the trajectory for every thought that follows. The dominant mode of scientific investigation within the academy is now based in purely naturalistic presuppositions. And to no surprise, the theories and structures of naturalistic science affirm naturalistic assumptions.
“Religion”—to use the word Krattenmaker prefers—also operates on the basis of presuppositions. And those presuppositions are no less determinative. These operate akin to what philosopher Alvin Plantinga calls “properly basic beliefs.”
In any event, both require “belief” in order to function intellectually; and both require something rightly defined as faith. That anyone would deny this about evolution is especially striking, given the infamous gaps in the theory and the lack of any possible experimental verification. One of the unproven and unprovable presuppositions of evolution is uniformitarianism, the belief that time and physical laws have always been constant. That is an unproven and unprovable assumption. Nevertheless, it is an essential presupposition of evolutionary science. It is, we might well say, taken on faith by evolutionists.
For starters, “belief” means something different in a religion conversation than it means when we’re talking about science. In the case of faith, it usually means accepting the moral and spiritual truth of something and giving it your trust and devotion. In talking about evolution, it is more precise to call it “scientifically valid” or “an accurate account of what we observe.” No leaps of faith or life-altering commitments required.
He really does believe that science and theology operate in completely different worlds. The late Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould believed the same, arguing for science and religion as “non-overlapping magisteria.” But, as both scientists and theologians protested, science and religion overlap all the time.
Krattenmaker argues, “A scientific concept backed by an overwhelming amount of supporting evidence, evolution describes a process by which species change over time. It hazards no speculations about the origins of that process.”
But this is not even remotely accurate. Evolutionary scientists constantly argue for naturalistic theories of the origin of matter, energy, life—and the entire cosmos. The argument that the existence and form of the cosmos is purely accidental and totally without external (divine) agency is indeed central to the dominant model of evolution.
On one point, however, Krattenmaker is certainly right: he argues that it is possible to believe in God and to affirm evolution. That is certainly true, and there is no shortage of theistic evolutionists who try to affirm both. But that affirmation requires a rejection of the dominant model of evolution in favor of some argument that God intervened or directed the process. The main problem with that proposal, from the scientific side, is that the theory of evolution as now taught in our major universities explicitly denies that possibility. Theistic evolutionists simply do not present the model of evolution that is supposedly “settled science.”
On the other hand, such a blending of theology and evolution also requires major theological alignments. There can be no doubt that evolution can be squared with belief in some deity, but not the God who revealed himself in the Bible, including the first chapters of Genesis. Krattenmaker asserts that “it is more than possible to accept the validity of evolution and believe in God’s role in creation at the same time.” Well, that is true with respect to some concept of God and some concept of creation and some version of evolution, but not the dominant theory of evolution and not the God who created the entire cosmos as the theater of his glory, and who created human beings as the distinct creature alone made in his image.
I am confident that Tom Krattenmaker fully intended to clarify the matter and to point to a way through the impasse. But his arguments do not clarify, they confuse. At the same time, his essay is one of the clearest catalysts for thinking about these issues to arrive in recent times in the major media. It represents an opportunity not to be missed.
I am always glad to hear from readers. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/albertmohler.
Watched the entire video. Excellent.
I think that the difference in our thought lies chiefly in the chronology. It seems to me that Christianity came into existence before Science. In fact, I have often insisted that Science is Christian Western Civilization’s happiest inspiration, as evidenced by its application of intellectual rigorousness and the unrelenting pursuit of intellectual honesty to the “new” field of its discovery.
Witness, then, the subsequent seizure of Science by the Liberal/Socialist movement in a desperate attempt to disprove the validity of the whole Judeo-Christian Tradition (see Marx’s comic attempts to validate his particular brand of Socialism as “Scientific” and the breathless pursuit of the same theme by his latest and most ardent disciples; the 0bmatrons).
In any event, our differing views seem to lead us to the same conclusion.
Honestly . . . I don’t think our differences amount to anything even worth discussing beyond the initial recognition.
I didn't even know we had differing views. That's how aware of things that I am. :>)
Isaiah 40
22 It is he that sitteth upon the globe of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as locusts: he that stretcheth out the heavens as nothing, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in.
A globe is not flat like a pancake as far as i know, as i said God knows how he created the earth.
Argue with God.
Mohler rightly emphasizes that the “Laws of science” are assumed to have always been the same. But we really have no way of knowing that instruments we devise to measure phenomena today would produce the same measurements if they, or least their specifications could somehow be transported back in time, and used to make observations like the ones being made today.
Which is deism, always inadequate, because—ironically—it leaves man , the observer,out of the account. How does he fit into the picture ?
Provine, the atheist, is stating that in his opinion Deism is no better than atheism, both lack God's moral law.
The atheist, if he is wise, will approach all persons and all things pretty much as a babe does, as enigmas.
No that verse says circle just like you said originally. You have purposely changed the words in the verse. The verse does not use the word globe.
Looks like you had to go through a whole pile of different bible versions on the Internet to find that.
And to be frank, if Isaiah had intended to speak of the earth as a globe, he would probably have used the word he used in 22:18 (dur), meaning “ball”. Instead he used the hebrew word hug.
There are also many other verses in the bible that speak to the 4 corners of the earth etc.
Rightly or wrongly, it is talking about a flat earth.
Having said that, it is all okay because the bible is all about faith. If there is something not quite right in it, well that is okay as you have your faith and that is fantastic.
No that verse says circle just like you said originally. You have purposely changed the words in the verse. The verse does not use the word globe.
Looks like you had to go through a whole pile of different bible versions on the Internet to find that.
well that is okay as you have your faith and that is fantastic.
first you accuse me of purposely changing the word, then you say i must have went through a pile of versions to find it.
Then you say i have faith.
It can not be all of the above, if i purposely changed the word why would i have to go through a pile of translations to find the word?
Second, if i purposely changed the word i would be a liar, how much faith does a liar have?
The D.R. version is where the scripture comes from and is translated into English from the Latin Vulgate which is one of the earliest Bibles we have and which i started going to several months ago.
I don,t know if Isaiah had any knowledge of how the earth looked.
But even the language we use today would confuse any one who did not know.
What time will the sun come up? or what time will the sun go down?
As if the sun was moving around the earth.
While it is true that the majority believed we lived on a flat earth the majority was wrong and usually are.
From what i have heard it was the seafarers who first come up with the idea that the earth was not flat and not scientist,but you can bet God knew.
So my point is that using Biblical scripture to prove evolution or to prove there is no God is just as ridicules as using the science book to prove science is false which in some cases it most likely is.
The Bible comes out of another culture and linguistic setting. Metaphorical imagery can mislead the reader into thinking the Bible is saying something, when it means something different. In Hebrew, as in English, one can speak of the four “corners” of the earth (Isa. 41:9; cf. Ezek. 7:2). Is the Bible saying that the world is square? Some critics say so. Yet the earth is also described as a circle or globe (Isa. 40:22). Is it possible that corners is metaphorical language that may mean the geography covered by the four “quarters” of the compass, just as it means when we say it?
Faith is not a leap in the dark as skeptics like to suggest. Rather, faith is an action based on the confidence one has in the object of their belief.
That is not true.
http://www.lawrencehallofscience.org/pass/passv10/flat-earth.html
That is not true.
Thanks.
Actually even then i believe the sea faring people realized the truth.
It says circle and it means circle and it does not mean globe, ball or sphere. There were specfic hebrew words if the writer wanted to describe ball etc.
It says circle and it means circle and it does not mean globe, ball or sphere.
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