Posted on 11/05/2015 10:05:02 AM PST by Kaslin
A Pew Research Poll released last week reports that fifty-nine percent of Americans see science and religion in conflict. But they also found that, "highly religious Americans are less likely than others to see conflict between faith and science."
I'm not a scientist, and I don't play one on TV. But it's amazing to me to see how some scientists like to claim that somehow science has disproven God.
Meanwhile, on Bill Maher's television program last month (10/2/15), he and guest Richard Dawkins essentially declared that science has disproved God.
Bill Maher: "You talk about the wonder of science probably better than anybody and, of course, it's a little bit of a difficult mission because the more you explain how wonderful and amazing science is, the more the other side says, 'Well, yeah, because God did it!"' ....
Richard Dawkins: "I think that the wonder of science above all is precisely that God didn't do it, the wonder, we do understand how it came about, we do understand how life, in particular, came about with nothing but the laws of physics, nothing but atoms bumping into each other, and then filtered through the curious process that Darwin discovered, it gives rise to us and kangaroos and trees and walruses."
And Dawkins added: "What's truly wonderful is that it came about without being designed. If it had been designed, anybody could do that, it's the fact that it came about just through the laws of physics, naturalism is what's so wonderful about it."
Oh, the glories of science. Now we know better than the ancients, who simply swapped one mystery---the universe---for belief in another mystery---God.
Or do we? G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936) was a great Christian thinker who noted this: "Science must not impose any philosophy, any more than the telephone must tell us what to say."
He also said, "Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. If you are merely a sceptic, you must sooner or later ask yourself the question, 'Why should ANYTHING go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?'The young sceptic says, 'I have a right to think for myself.' But the old sceptic, the complete sceptic, says, 'I have no right to think for myself. I have no right to think at all.'"
By using reason, Dawkins concludes that this world is essentially reason-less. His type did not invent science, nor could it have. It takes belief in reason to understand the laws of science---even to agree that there are laws of science. And reason cannot form in the void of random materialism. That is why it is historically true that science was born in Christian Europe.
Alfred North Whitehead said that Christianity is the mother of science because of "the medieval insistence on the rationality of God." A rational God had made a rational universe, and it was the object of the scientists to---in the words of the great astronomer
Energetics, Lord Kelvin
Entomology of Living Insects, Henri Fabre
Field Theory, Michael Faraday
Fluid Mechanics, George Stokes
Galactic Astronomy, Sir William Herschel
Gas Dynamics, Robert Boyle
Genetics, Gregor Mendel
Glacial Geology, Louis Agassiz
Gynecology, James Simpson
Hydrography, Matthew Maury
Hydrostatics, Blaise Pascal
Ichthyology, Louis Agassiz
Isotopic Chemistry, William Ramsey
Model Analysis, Lord Rayleigh
Natural History, John Ray
Non-Euclidean Geometry, Bernard Riemann
Oceanography, Matthew Maury
Optical Mineralogy, David Brewster
So, are Christians anti-science? Not quite. Science was invented by Christians.
Furthermore, we write: "The prevailing philosophy of the Western world today is existentialism, which is irrational. It would not be possible for science to develop in an irrational world because science is based on the fact that if water boils at 212 degrees today, it will boil at 212 degrees tomorrow, and the same thing the next day, and that there are certain laws and regularities that control the universe." No rational God, no rational universe.
So, does science somehow disprove God? Not at all. On the contrary, the heavens declare the glory of God.
In the book, What If Jesus Had Never Been Born?, D. James Kennedy and I point out (based on the findings of Henry Morris) that virtually all the major branches of science were invented by Bible-believing scientists, including:
Antiseptic surgery, Joseph Lister
Bacteriology, Louis Pasteur
Calculus, Isaac Newton
Celestial Mechanics, Johannes Kepler
Chemistry, Robert Boyle
Comparative Anatomy, Georges Cuvier
Computer Science, Charles Babbage
Dimensional Analysis, Lord Rayleigh
Dynamics, Isaac Newton
Electronics, John Ambrose Fleming
Electrodynamics, James Clerk Maxwell
Electromagnetics, Michael Faraday
Energetics, Lord Kelvin
Entomology of Living Insects, Henri Fabre
Field Theory, Michael Faraday
Fluid Mechanics, George Stokes
Galactic Astronomy, Sir William Herschel
Gas Dynamics, Robert Boyle
Genetics, Gregor Mendel
Glacial Geology, Louis Agassiz
Gynecology, James Simpson
Hydrography, Matthew Maury
Hydrostatics, Blaise Pascal
Ichthyology, Louis Agassiz
Isotopic Chemistry, William Ramsey
Model Analysis, Lord Rayleigh
Natural History, John Ray
Non-Euclidean Geometry, Bernard Riemann
Oceanography, Matthew Maury
Optical Mineralogy, David Brewster
So, are Christians anti-science? Not quite. Science was invented by Christians.
Furthermore, we write: "The prevailing philosophy of the Western world today is existentialism, which is irrational. It would not be possible for science to develop in an irrational world because science is based on the fact that if water boils at 212 degrees today, it will boil at 212 degrees tomorrow, and the same thing the next day, and that there are certain laws and regularities that control the universe." No rational God, no rational universe.
So, does science somehow disprove God? Not at all. On the contrary, the heavens declare the glory of God.
I view math as something much deeper then language. Languages come and go, there are no ‘linguistic truths’ that are say comparable to theorems (e.g., Fermat’s Last Theorem). Language may not even distinguish us from animals. Clearly there are examples of animals communicating, sharing information and there is structure in its make up. This discussion could go on for days but for myself I think there is more evidence for the Platonist interpretation. (I prefer to call it the Pythagorean interpretation! Why you may ask? Remember the Disney movie, ‘Donald Duck in Mathemagic Land’, the portrayal of Pythagoras & pals? I loved that! Those guys still give me a chuckle! I used to have a screen saver of that scene!)
DNA could not survive without repair mechanisms. DNA repair mechanisms make no sense in an evolutionary presupposition. Error correction requires error detection, and that requires the detection process to be able to compare the DNA as it is to the way it ought to be. Without DNA repair, spontaneous DNA damage would rapidly change DNA sequences
Micromolecules do not spontaneously combine to form macromolecules.
It always worked in the past, I expect it to work in the future - logical fallacy.
“. Or better yet, demonstrate it experimentaly.â€
And when they do, will you become an athesit?”
Show me first- then we’ll talk.
1. Functional InformationHow could such a system form randomly without any intelligence, and totally unguided?
2. Encoder
3. Error Correction
4. Decoder
What would come first - the encoder, error correction, or the decoder? How and where did the functional information originate?
Furthermore, DNA contains multi-layered information that reads both forward and backwards - DNA stores data more efficiently than anything we've created - and a majority of DNA contains metainformation (information about how to use the information in the context of the related data). The design inference is obvious.
Absolutely risible. Science requires the very axioms that it itself cannot prove to even work. And the improbability of macroevolution of even a simple orhanism from left-handed only proteins - let alone all life as we know it and opposite-gender sexual procreation - defies credulity. It sets the pseudoscientists’ beliefs squarely in the camp of faith.
In such a country, the Dunhams would’ve left for the Soviet Union in the 1940s and committed mass suicide when it fell. Zero would never have existed.
I hear you, but Fermat’s Last Theorem isn’t the thing that lasts, it’s the truth that Fermat’s Last Theorem proves.
Language can (could) convey the same truth, although we tend to convey more than logic in our language so it’s much less precise.
I didn’t know logic had laws. I thought it had rules. I view logic as a human construct.
I don’t think the universe follows mathematical laws. I think mathematics models the laws the universe follows.
Your last one is very interesting. If I am holding 6 rocks, the fact that there are 6 is simply a reality, but does the fact that there are 6 and not 5 or 7 have any meeaning without a mind to comprehend the difference? In one case the number 6 is a reality of its own. In the other it’s a construct of the mind which conceived it.
I think I’ll go with the latter, but I can understand the case for the former.
Thanks.
I hope to find time to watch the video tonight, but I much prefer written information if you know where to find it.
Would you settle for Proof of Intelligent Design?
In this context Rules = Laws; and you knew that, in spite of your attempt at obfuscation. And besides - in spite of your professed ignorance, there are laws of logic.
But I will humor you - where did the rules come from? How can we be certain of them? How do we know they will always apply? Without this confidence, science is impossible.
Why can we be certain that two contradictory statements cannot be true at the same time? How can we be confident that the rules will apply tomorrow?
How do you know that 6 rocks today will be the same number tomorrow?
It is all information.
Where did the information in our DNA come from? How is information added in order to evolve from a simple life-form into more complex life forms?
Information theory states: “there is no known law of nature, no known process and no known sequence of events that can cause information to originate by itself in matter” it further states: “When its progress along the chain of transmission events is traced backward, every piece of information leads to a mental source, the mind of the sender.”
The SETI Project depends entirely on these two theorems.
Therefor, Two sciences, Genetics (information contained in DNA) and Information Theory (information is not spontaneously generated but originates from a mind - confirmed by scientists on the SETI Project) establish (because, taken together they demand) the existence of a source mind - God. (Logic and mathematics, upon which all science must necessarily depend, consist of specifically defined and arranged information.)
So if math describes what is observable in nature, how is it that this is so? Why is the circumference of a circle always 2pi*r? and the area pi*(r squared)? And why is it that integral calculus perfectly explains the relationship between the radius and circumference of all circles for all time?
So - did math exist before humans, and did humans just discover these concepts, or was math simply an invention of man; and therefor fallible? Ditto logic. If simply an invention of man, were circles different before someone created math? could x and not x both be true before man invented the laws of logic? If an invention of man, by what power are these laws held universally and eternally consistent,since the inventor is not able to be in all places at once, nor is he able to be in all time?
Therefor, it is illogical and unscientific to conclude other than that science confirms the existence of God.
Even more than a curiosity question it is a bible imperative, a necessity in “subduing the earth.” The parts of science (we now call it technology) that aren’t trying to duke it out with theology, but simply master their own realms, just happen to be the ones that are going most gangbusters today.
“I think mathematics models the laws the universe follows.
And where did those laws come from? Or to put it another way, where did the information, of which those laws are comprised, originate?
They can “prove it” in the sense of setting forth more detail about what the bible calls the glory of God.
But even yet, recourse to spirituality is needed to complete the picture. Even psychology is dreadfully difficult to treat as a science, how much more spirituality.
No.
On free will - the short answer is I don’t know. I understand (vaguely) from quantum mechanics that the fact of laws governing matter may not mean everything is deterministic.
And since I believe we are spirits with bodies, not the other way round, there is the question of how our spirits and bodies relate; natural law may apply to the latter, but not the former. I’m not sure how to test that offhand. It’s a good question...
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
- Hamlet
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