Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article

To: annalex
The blind faith of science is the scientific method itself. That if an effect can be reproduced every time it is tried, then it is a "hard fact", -- is the deductive scientific method and it requires just as much faith as the Incarnation

Not even close! Scientific method is restricted to creating working models, through observation and experimentation. Within a defined environment, the model works. Thus, the Ptolemaic navigational system works today as it did in the 2nd century A.D. although it is factually wrong.

Clearly, today we know for certain that the Sun is not located between Venus and Mars. But his system predicts positions of heavenly bodies because it was tailored to observed motions and expressed (described) by mathematical fourmlae. Mathematics is simply a system of expressions that describe a relationship of terms, whether they are real or not. That relationship is absolute, i.e. a straight line is defined by two points.

There is nothing to disbelieve science: it either works, in which canse we "believe" it (more like "accept" it), or it doesn't work, in which case we discard it, "disbelieve" the reasoning behind it and reject it as false.

Faith is "evidence of things unseen" says +Paul; it is hope; it is not something you can observe, systematize and define so that it may "produce" desired effect on demand, repeatedly.

4,378 posted on 04/04/2006 3:36:16 PM PDT by kosta50 (Eastern Orthodoxy is pure Christianity)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4368 | View Replies ]


To: kosta50; Agrarian
There is nothing to disbelieve [in] science: it either works, in which canse we "believe" it (more like "accept" it), or it doesn't work

Yes there is. In astronomy, for example, all you know is that the given mathematical model worked for the observations done in the past. You then believe that it works for the future observations also. Forget the specific astronomical model; how do you know that the sun will come up tomorrow? You observe it come up in the past, and you came up with one or another model with circles and ellipses that fit the past observations. Whether or not that will work in the future is a "thing unseen" requiring faith.

The Scripture offers another model, whereby the sun will not come up one day:

On the contrary, It is stated (Apocalypse 10:6) that the angel who appeared, "swore by him that liveth for ever and ever . . . that time shall be no longer," namely after the seventh angel shall have sounded the trumpet, at the sound of which "the dead shall rise again" (1 Corinthians 15:52). Now if time be not, there is no movement of the heaven. Therefore the movement of the heaven will cease.

(Summa, Supplement, 91.2)

Both models work for the observed past, and both require faith to make statements about the future.
4,381 posted on 04/04/2006 5:40:54 PM PDT by annalex
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4378 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson