A little bit of philosophy on God and science

[Gerhard (Gerhard Nebe-von Caron, formerly "Marvin", Sceptic Christian)]

@St.Roymond

Question: is there any such thing as a “natural” process? Doesn’t the name itself assume that nature is independent from God?

I had a quick go at the problem of Natural" with Chatty ChatGPT - Natural Process Causes . tell me what you think about it

[mitchellmckain (Scientist and Christian)]

@Gerhard

It is like they Declare Boris divine for he could ignore the laws he put upon the public and they think this to be a sign of power.

Doesn’t this sound a bit like Nietche? Well… at least that is what it sounded like when I read that part for myself. Others seem to think it wasn’t so much about discarding morality but rather creating ones own - which I can get behind. Though it does seem a bit self-serving if you do not at least consider traditional morality and whether there might be something to it.

[St.Roymond]

@Gerhard

it already becomes obvious that “natural selection” is not a material process but that the selection process is a metaphysical one

Um, what? It’s definitely a material process, whether it is more than that or not. “…to be useful for the overall propagation of creation” is a physical matter.

[St.Roymond]

@Gerhard

I had a quick go at the problem of Natural" with Chatty ChatGPT - Natural Process Causes . tell me what you think about it

Much of it is basic stuff. There are some good points about ontology as well as about perspective, i.e. whether a thing is viewed from within a system or from outside.

[Vinnie]

@mitchellmckain

Because we don’t see massive violations of the laws of nature. We just don’t. I am not saying God cannot do it, but I also don’t see why God would break the laws of nature He created.

@Gerhard

I always say that the demand by the likes of Hume and atheists in general to demand that God breaks the logic on which he built reality is revealing their intellectual bankruptcy. A God that cannot pursue what he willed in existence is an impotent God, not an omnipotent God. It is like they Declare Boris divine for he could ignore the laws he put upon the public and they think this to be a sign of power. So far for the “Brights” and their logic.

It seems to me that a discussion like this would benefit from defining what a “law” of nature is? Is it just shorthand for the regularity we see in nature? Shorthand for mathematical abstractions that are extremely reliable? Shorthand for final causality (teleology)? Is a law a real “platonic” thing or a useful mental fiction and predictive tool? Is a miracle a violation of the natural law or God going beyond nature like a jazz artist going beyond the score with a bit of improv? Defining a miracle would also be helpful.

@Gerhard

The current hot topic in the social media apologetics circles is the (re) conversion of a popular agnostic atheist to Catholicism, explicitly the recognition of Catholicism as true due to the “catholic miracles”. It looks more like a publicity stunt to me,

Did you watch his 3 part 25 hour conversion video where he argued for Catholicism and the existence of God? Yup. 25 hours. I said that right. The running joke seems to be these are good videos for the Catholic or curious who are unemployed

[1Cor15.54 (Massimiliano)]

@Gerhard

The question is “Has God violated the integrity of his creation principles by interfering with it to show his power?” Blessed are those who believe so - they need all the blessings that they can get - but cursed are those who demand him to do so in order to judge him powerful according to their standards.

The bolded part sounds very much like you’re implying they’re braindead/retarded or something like that. That wasn’t probably your intention but it sounds extremely condescending, to put it mildly.

And you are building your argument on an assumption that has not been established, namely that if God acts extraordinarily within creation, He must therefore be “violating the integrity” of His own creation.

That doesn’t follow.

Classical theism does not normally treat God as one physical cause among other physical causes, bound from the outside by the regularities of nature. The regular order of nature describes how created causes ordinarily operate, an extraordinary divine act would therefore not necessarily constitute a contradiction or a corruption of creation any more than an author acting within the story he sustains would somehow “violate” the existence of the story.

There is also a difference between saying that miracles can be signs of divine action and “demanding” that God perform miracles before we are willing to regard Him as powerful.

[St.Roymond]

@1Cor15.54

And you are building your argument on an assumption that has not been established, namely that if God acts extraordinarily within creation, He must therefore be “violating the integrity” of His own creation.

That doesn’t follow.

Yeah. The Romans asked, “Quis custodiet custodes?”; one might also ask, “Quis causas causat?” or “Quis causa causarum est?”

[mitchellmckain (Scientist and Christian)]

@Vinnie

It seems to me that a discussion like this would benefit from defining what a “law” of nature is?

The laws of nature are basically just the geometry of space time and the logical/mathematical consequences of this.

[Gerhard (Gerhard Nebe-von Caron, formerly "Marvin", Sceptic Christian)]

Not sure what part you read, but I consider that Nietzsche was right to pronounce God dead in the sense that Europe abandoned God for Santa Clause instead, proved this God non existent and ended up in a nihilistic society - as we have. He diagnosed the symptoms of society correctly. Just his view on the death of worldviews that unite societies is incoherent as they can evolve. Some evolve / adapt by replacing the holy spirit with the Zeitgeist and are therefore bound to fail, others seek the holy spirit to improve logic coherence and advance the understanding of the scriptures