That.
…and this:
Okay - and this too!
[and could we tack on the end of this last one: “, or human mind.”?]
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So–I wanted to comment, too, though that I have a deep wish to find God in a more tangible way, just as I think that most of us do. I can’t blame the ID folks for that attempt.
Rich Mullins, in his own way, describes the longing for a God who seems hard to find, but “you’ve been here all along I guess” in his “Playing Hard to Get.” It resonates with me and, I think, many of our atheist and agnostic brothers and sisters. I think that Jesus also wept and pleaded for God’s guidance in Golgotha, as @Mervin_Bitikofer noted (a deep paradox I don’t understand) in His compassion with us.
You who live in heaven
Hear the prayers of those of us who live on earth
Who are afraid of being left by those we love
And who get hardened by the hurt
Do you remember when You lived down here where we all scrape
To find the faith to ask for daily bread
Did You forget about us after You had flown away
Well I memorized every word You said
Still I’m so scared I’m holding my breath
While You’re up there just playing hard to get
You who live in radiance
Hear the prayers of those of us who live in skin
We have a love that’s not as patient as Yours was
Still we do love now and then
Did you ever know loneliness
Did You ever know need
Do You remember just how long a night can get?
When You were barely holding on
And Your friends fall asleep
And don’t see the blood that’s running in Your sweat
Will those who mourn be left uncomforted
While You’re up there just playing hard to get?
And I know you bore our sorrows
And I know you feel our pain
And I know it would not hurt any less
Even if it could be explained
And I know that I am only lashing out
At the One who loves me most
And after I figured this somehow
All I really need to know
Is if You who live in eternity
Hear the prayers of those of us who live in time
We can’t see what’s ahead
And we can not get free of what we’ve left behind
I’m reeling from these voices that keep screaming in my ears
All the words of shame and doubt blame and regret
I can’t see how You’re leading me unless You’ve led me here
Where I’m lost enough to let myself be led
And so You’ve been here all along I guess
It’s just Your ways and You are just plain hard to get"
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First, let me say this thread has evolved into a good spiritual conversation, so I too am enjoying it.
@BoltzmannBrain, regarding your comments, you come to an anti-ID site to post anti-ID. That leads me to believe you just want to get your existing opinions confirmed. You call ID’ers “arrogant” which is a really broad brush approach. Thanks for being honest that you have not engaged with that community, and that is what I am recommending - engage with that community to learn from them.
For me, I don’t come here to confirm my opinions but to learn what the opinions of others are. I could probably defend the biologos “party line” even though there is plenty I disagree with. I can discuss many of the strengths and weaknesses of the ID arguments, including those held by folks that I also disagree with.
The best option would be to maybe find some ID people in your sphere, and get to know them, chat with them over coffee. If you connect well, they will change some of their opinion, and you will change some of yours. These are your brothers and sisters in Christ, and we should start from a place of respect.
If you do post your understanding of ID, I promise not to nitpick it. I’m just trying to encourage you to find out more from those who hold that opinion, of whom there are few here.
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@Marty given there are no ID people in my sphere (I live in a vast sea of YEC) what online resource would you recommend to come to an understanding of ID?
Hi @Bill_II. As you might expect, there is a spectrum of opinion. You do best to ask, “What does ID mean to you?” That’s the same here for example, where there is a spectrum of opinion even under the biologos banner. But still, some consensus is found.
For a summary of ID, a good place to start might be http://www.conservapedia.com/Intelligent_design
Arn.org has a number of links, but probably best to stick with the most well known. FWIW they weblink to ASA (a great org), but ASA members tend to be more biologos than ID in my limited experience.
I think Michael Behe’s book The Edge of Evolution is an excellent example of ID applied to evolution at the molecular scale (DNA and mutation). Check out William Dembski, Jonathan Wells, David Berlinski. Listen to these folks on youtube.
HTH!
From my understanding ID is the idea that the complexity of life could not have arised without the intervention of some kind of inteligence, the arguments for that usually go around three main points:
A) Mutations usually lead to loss of function, so some people find it hard to believe that random mutations could produce changes which are adaptive.
B) They claim that “novelty” is to dificult to arise from mutations (I.E. A novel enzyme with a completely new function, rather than minor modifications to a pre existing one)
C) The idea that some systems are “irreducibly complex”, that is, that some sets of proteins used to do some function would not work properly until all of them were gathered, and thus it would be unlikely that the whole system would rise by chance since it would require many steps in which proteins with no function should be selected and passed by common descent.
The views on ID vary, some people in the community are creationists while others believe in common descent, but with modiications guided by a inteligent force. But they do try to make those statements scientific, which can be seen in the fact that they try to publish scientific papers on that (like people from Discovery Institute).
I don’t think the objections raised by ID are bad a priori, some of them are actually interesting and it is legitimate to question a scientific theory. The problem is that all of them have long been answered and most of the scientific community, including people who believe in a superior force, have agreed with that and yet the proponents of this idea just keep repeating the same arguments over and over despite of that.
Now could you comment on why you think I’m misrepresenting ID?
I don’t know, may “anti-darwinists” claim that evolution is completely incompatible with Christianity, and that one cannot believe in both coherently. I’ve seen many people who started to accept evolution also talking about how they found it hard to reconcile it with their faith, so I believe that at least some of them are trying to warrant their beliefs, while others think that people are being fooled and driven away from faith by evolution and do try to find proof to convince them that evolution is false. If not trying to prove God, they are at the very least trying to prove evolution wrong (from the premise that God would not use it as a means of creation).
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@marvin, you are exactly right. Thank you for saying it so well. God is the other side of the universe that gives it form and meaning.
On what basis do you believe that the background noise forms a barrier through which humans cannot perceive? There is no scientific law which indicates this, unless you mean E = mc squared which indicates that the Big Bang was the beginning of matter, energy, time and space meaning there is nothing before the Bing Bang and nothing outside the universe.
So why are you speculating about nothing? On the other hand when God reveals that God is Love, why can you not accept it? Why must God be a thing, rather than the Incarnate Logos Who came into the world so that those who believe in Him might receive Eternal Life with God?
I don’t think Einstein’s matter to energy conversion equation has any thing to do with the beginning of time and space or the creation of matter and energy. So it doesn’t show there is nothing before or besides the expansion of the singularity which has given rise to the known universe.
My understanding is that the cosmic microwave background radiation is left over from the beginning of that expansion so that is the oldest signal we can detect. I don’t really know that it isn’t or never will be possible to look beyond the bubble of the expansion in which we reside, but that is my personal hunch. If there were multiple universes like ours it is hard to say how they might interact or what the possibility would for detecting anything within one of them from within another.
I take it your hunch is that there only is the one universe which includes us and all that we can see. You along with plenty of other people disagree with me all the people who share my hunch. It remains to be seen if that question will ever be resolved. In the meantime I think you’ll have to agree that this one universe we know is no more evidence for there only being one universe than it is for thinking it is one of many. Or maybe you do have evidence of its exclusivity?
God inspired the record of all his creation activities that he felt important or relevant, they are recorded in scripture. Science is God’s gift to us as conscious beings capable of understanding his design and creation, using that understanding to better worship him, and giving us access and understanding of technologies to produce medicines and increase food, and the plethora of other benefits that God knew were possible through understanding of his creation. Science was not given to us to promote a denial of his existence or to create a belief system/religion that demeans and denigrates what he established.
Science is obviously not the foremost understanding that God has called us to: there is no science entry exam to get into Heaven, the General Revelation provided addresses some overall concepts but not in a rigorous scientific manner, and Jesus never gave a science parable.
But, Romans 1 makes knowing God through his creation a clear condition of obeying God, given well before science became formalized. Consequently, it is not knowing science, per se, that God requires, or proving God using science. Faith is the foundation of salvation and God apparently knows he has revealed enough of himself to hold us accountable.
Another factor is, I believe, God is God, not answerable to anyone, omniscient, omnipotent, and beyond the vagaries and details of disclosure that science could demand, especially given the animosity, contempt, cynicism. skepticism and hostility that many have for what is not purely physical or material. I do not believe God is opposed to asking questions, to desiring to understand, and he does reveal himself to those who earnestly desire to know him, but such is not the mood or modus of science, especially in the present demanding climate for accountable and specificity.
God has revealed enough of himself to hold us accountable and gave us science to even better understand him, his design, and his creation. After all, he created the most complex information system, DNA, to implement the foundation for all life, yet science has not recognized this irreducibly complex intelligent design, but it is presumed and used to elaborate a naturalistic theory that attempts to deny God’s existence and find fault at every level.
Finally, present science, crippled and encumbered by philosophical naturalism and the Lewontin Mandate, is so restricted in scope it can never prove God because is outside the universe and bigger than it, so the impotence of universe limited science will never “discover” God. Much of the problem is that many in science cannot comprehend God as greater than the universe and insist on using the self-limiting tools the universe has to try to understand all of reality.
As self identified illogical atheist, tell me if you have any “proven theory” you believe to be true and how you do that. I guess it is only possible if you are employing atheist logic 
Hahah. Well, outside of math and logic, I mostly get by without proofs at all. For empirical questions I mostly rely on peer reviewed, mainstream science. But for questions of what truly matters I feel my way there consulting my own conscience. How about you, Marvin?
That is strange. Somehow you don’t think that Einstein’s Theory had anything to do with the Big Bang, but the scientists including Albert himself, who formulated the Big Bang did. How can agree with the theory while utterly disregarding its basis?
Can you tell me what was before the Big Bang? Can you tell me what is the Source of the singularity? Now I understand that science cannot say what was before the Big Bang, except there was no matter, no energy, no time, and no space. That equals Nothing in my book, but maybe you have a different definition of Nothing.
If the Big Bang is the beginning of the universe, and the beginning to matter/energy, and time/space , then it is clear to me that the universe did not and could not create itself. These are not hunches, these are logical thoughts dictated by the logical structure of the universe.
I understand that the universe is based on rationality, not hunches. Science has come a long way based on the study of a rational universe. It would be a shame if humans gave up all that because non-believers could not accept the fact that the universe is governed by the Logos. Christians are willing to stand with science against fundamentalist irrationality. Science needs to stand with Christianity against New Atheist irrationality.
Dear Roger, This is the spirit of my project, Torn Between Two Worlds - meeting in the middle. The conclusion I came to in my life and my work is that both science and religion need to concede the mistakes they have made and to both make efforts to improve. When Galileo took science from the church, he left some important pieces behind. Nobelauriate Erwin Schrdinger rediscovered how the founders of science blended their knowledge of natural science with the wisdom of philosophy to understand the both the physical and spiritual world around us. There were not two sets of law, but one Law.
I have come to BioLogos in the spirit of helping enlightened Christian scientists dispel the illogical doctrines that keep mainstream science from taking it seriously. There is no reason a scientist should not use the tools of logic and reason to question manmade doctrines about the creator of a world filled with logic, reason and purpose.
@BoltzmannBrain I retract my statement that you don’t understand ID, but I think there may be more to it than you have seen so far. There are other huge areas in addition to the history of life. The Anthropic Principle is a major issue - our universe is fine-tuned for life like us to an unimaginable degree. I also think naturalist origins of life is clearly refuted by the science itself. These are two other large categories.
Let me add some details to your points above.
A) Adaptation can be microevolution, as in geographical speciation. But coordinated morphological changes were required for some changes (e.g., mammal to whale) and many of us don’t have faith that microevolution could do that. Clearly it happened, but the mechanisms are in question. Being a devout person, I don’t need natural mechanisms to do everything. And I don’t care how it happened, whether there was divine intervention or not. But at this time, I’m skeptical that we have anything close to the answer for mammal to whale.
B) Good summary of that point.
C) Also good. I personally don’t like the term “irreducible” because it has left the door open to the word being refuted without the concept being refuted. If he had called it “constructed complexity”, that would have been better.
An important point is this: Evolution is partly science and partly a narrative. That’s the same with ID. They are both explanations that surround the science with emphasis on different areas: Evolution stresses solutions, ID stresses problems. In the past, some of the “problems” have been solved because they were only god-of-the-gaps arguments. But meaningful ID arguments avoid what we don’t know, and focus on what we do know from the science.
“all of them have long been answered” is simply not true. That’s the ad hominem attack on all ID by atheists. But atheists need natural causes to answer everything, so they hold tightly to their narratives and defend them aggressively by any means. And simply dismissing infidels as bumpkins is their favorite tactic.
Regarding devout scientists, I think you’ll find a diversity of response. Very few scientists want to stick their necks out, and I don’t blame them cuz the environment can be hostile. Dr Tour (Rice U) has had his “advancement” in the scientific community threatened because he is speaking out about origins of life.
You seem thoughtful so I hope you engage with ID more. Yes there is unfortunately plenty of junk science out there which gives fodder for the criticisms, but hopefully you’ll spot that. There are also some very capable people making excellent points.
Thanks, and I hope this is helpful!
@Relates as I understand it, in a singularity Einstein’s equations break down. The singularity which gave rise to our universe in the Big Bang precedes Einstein’s equations.
It’s probably fair to say that all opinions regarding the origins of the universe require faith. They are all scientifically untestable.
To me, the big surprise is that anything exists at all! Having accepted that (yep, we really do exist), it “only” remains to determine the nature of existence, but the existence of a God is vastly less surprising than that anything exists at all (including God). Logically speaking, it’s like going from zero to one, and we’re arguing whether God is a property of one. It’s logically much more bizarre that we’re here arguing about it at all, than whether God exists.
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Pretty much. I believe equations, like natural laws, are descriptive rather than instrumental. So the question isn’t whether they had anything to do with bringing about the bang, but rather does that equation describe anything useful about that event. My understanding is that at the moment of the big bang and in its early moments there was nothing we could describe as matter. So I don’t see a role for it.
In a singularity all equations break down, so Einstein’s equation are not alone. If this event was not governed by natural law it must have been a miracle. In some sense it must be considered such because based on the best evidence we have the universe emerged out of noting, no matter, no energy, no space, and no time.
Now if the emergence of something out of nothing is what science means as a singularity, then we clearly do not know how that happened. That is beyond our understanding.
On the other hand Einstein’s theory says that time, matter, energy, and space are interdependent and the Big Bang confirms this. The expansion of the Big Bang confirms GR. The only problem is the interface with quantum physics, which is real but not fatal.
Yes, all theories concerning the origin of the universe require faith, so some require blind faith while others do not, and theory based on Christianity do not require blind faith. Yes, I agree that one could say that the biggest surprise if one is going to look at the universe through the eyes of materialism is that anything exists at all.
I would say that natural laws describe hoe nature works, They are more than a simple descriptions, because they give us the ability to understand and work with nature.
GR tells us about the relationship between mass and energy. The Big Bang released an unbelievable amount of energy which cannot be understand without GR.
The Big Bang describes the beginning of the universe, which is the beginning of mass (not matter,) energy, time, and space. This is the realm of General Relativity.
Shawn,
I appreciate your desire to bring science and faith together, but I do not think that I agree with your methodology. Science and Theology are different because they are concerned with two different aspects of life, Nature and God, but they need to work together to meet all the needs of reality. This is possible because God made Life to be one as well as complex.
God bless.
That’s not true at all. I am an atheist and I don’t need a natural explanation for everything. I don’t know how life started, and I am fine with that. If evidence surfaces that life was started by a deity then I will stop being an atheist.
The massive problem is that ID is a God of the Gaps argument. For example, ID supporters will argue and argue against abiogenesis, but never produce any evidence for their claims as to how life did emerge. Their argument boils down to, “There is no evidence for a natural origin of life, therefore God”. The same applies to irreducible complexity, and biological complexity as a whole. ID doesn’t put forward any positive evidence for their proposed mechanisms. If I am wrong I would love to see examples that prove me wrong.
If ID proponents are just fine with life coming about through natural means, then why do they argue so vehemently against evolution and abiogenesis? It would seem to me that they agree with some atheists (myself not included) who say that finding natural processes proves that God doesn’t exist. It’s the same as young Earth creationism, where the YEC’s claim that a 4.5 billion year old Earth disproves the Bible.
It would seem to me that the Biologos approach is a much better approach. Finding natural processes for the origin of life or the origin of species is just evidence for how God did it. They don’t rule out miraculous or supernatural intervention, but they don’t require it, either. With ID, supernatural intervention seems to be a required part of the program.
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