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To: DittoJed2
Science is far from infallible ...

No one claims that science is infallible. Science is constantly looking for new evidence, and revising old theories. If you're arguing against infallability, you're arguing against something that isn't there.

... and Darwinistic science has no foundation for answers about life (not the biological mechanisms, the rest of life)because it has no foundation for such having thrown out the supernatural.

Darwin never set out to write a book of morality. He wanted to explain the way species develop over time. Nor did he throw out the supernatural. No more than other sciences do when they explain natural phenomena that had been previously believed to be divinely caused: disease, storms, earthquakes, volcanoes, comets, lighting, the power of the sun, etc.

The TRUTH belongs to God, and all truth is His truth.

Yes, now we're back to my original question. If a scientific observation clearly conflicts with scripture, how do you decide what to believe? This is exactly the problem presented to the Christian world when Galileo discovered evidence for the solar system, which was believed to contradict several passages of scripture. The church forced Galileo to confess heresy, they banned his book, and they confined him to house arrest for the last seven years of his life.

Do you reject the solar system? If not, why not?

2,381 posted on 08/24/2003 11:28:54 AM PDT by PatrickHenry (Hic amor, haec patria est.)
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To: PatrickHenry
Science is far from infallible ...

No one claims that science is infallible. Science is constantly looking for new evidence, and revising old theories. If you're arguing against infallability, you're arguing against something that isn't there.

They treat each statement as if it is a statement of truth. They treat their presuppositions as if they are infallible, and then belittle those who show that they aren't. If I picked up a book 40 years ago, it would say the earth is 3.5 billion years old. It wouldn't say "scientists believe that it is 3.5 billion years old." It would claim it as incontrovertable truth, just as it does the 4.6 billion years today. It assumes uniformity and excludes both the suggestion that maybe conditions were not always the same as they are today and we can't even consider a supernatural explanation for things.

... and Darwinistic science has no foundation for answers about life (not the biological mechanisms, the rest of life)because it has no foundation for such having thrown out the supernatural.

Darwin never set out to write a book of morality. He wanted to explain the way species develop over time. Nor did he throw out the supernatural. No more than other sciences do when they explain natural phenomena that had been previously believed to be divinely caused: disease, storms, earthquakes, volcanoes, comets, lighting, the power of the sun, etc.

Darwin took two books with him on the Beagle. The Bible, and Charles' Lyell. His mother was a unitarian, a religious group that is arguably not Christian as they deny Christian essentials, and Darwin was a failed seminarian who admitted to having lost his faith at 40. No theory comes forward in a vacuum. People's experiences, presuppositions, and biases all shape how they look at things. Darwin sought to explain world without God then superficially added a few "The Creator" phrases to make it more palatable to an 19th century audience. He was not a Christian and the theory he proposed did not honor the creator of anything. Chance mutation is all we are, and that is diametrically opposed to the Word of God.

The TRUTH belongs to God, and all truth is His truth.

Yes, now we're back to my original question. If a scientific observation clearly conflicts with scripture, how do you decide what to believe? This is exactly the problem presented to the Christian world when Galileo discovered evidence for the solar system, which was believed to contradict several passages of scripture. The church forced Galileo to confess heresy, they banned his book, and they confined him to house arrest for the last seven years of his life.

Galileo taught things which contradicted not the Bible but church teaching. This is where he ran into trouble. There is no conflict between Scripture and true Science. The Bible was not meant to be a science book, and the Catholic church was dead wrong in what they did with Galileo. Castigating Christians (many of whom aren't even Catholics)today for something that happened to Galileo 400 years ago is the ultimate of a straw man tactic (which I have so often been accused of building).

Do you reject the solar system? If not, why not?
Hardly. I do reject the age placed on the Universe (which seems to vary between 12 and 20 billion years -a 40% difference if I'm dividing right, yet almost always is viewed in absolute terms "The universe is X billion years old).

As for believing in the solar system, I can see it and Scripture attests to it (including more stars than can be numbered).

2,389 posted on 08/24/2003 5:41:05 PM PDT by DittoJed2
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