I also doubt that most people reject Christianity due to some perceived intellectual or philosophical flaw. My experience here in the UK is that most ‘ordinary folk’ just don’t think that deeply enough. I don’t mean that in a derogatory way. I simply mean that they don’t think critically or self reflectively in way that some atheists, most scientists, and some Christians do. This can often be easily demonstrated by the number of contradictory spiritual or philosophical beliefs the average person holds in tension - often without knowing.
As a result, for many, Christianity is on the table but nor on their radar. That is, Christianity could be a legitimate option among many, but they are just not interested in finding out for themselves.
As a result, objections like ‘all Christians are hypocrites’ or ‘science has disproved the bible’ are sometimes genuine. But More often they appear to be treasured excuses that mean they don’t have to think about it or engage with Christianity for themselves. After all, many non-chritisans (atheist or otherwise) I talk to seem to have only marginally more knowledge of contemporary science than the average evangelical. There are exceptions, but they are not the rule.
So as to @RandomInt’s suggestion of abiogenesis based apologetics, I think the average person on the bus would first need to know be told what Abiogenesis is and why they should be interested in it. That doesn’t strike me as a particularly engaging apologetic. But (and is a big but) I am willing to concede that maybe @RandomInt didn’t have average Joe and Jane in mind
What kind of person did you have in mind for this apologetic approach @RandomInt? Thanks.
I do think that ID will end up winning the argument, but I am under no illusion that this would usher in a return to any kind of golden age of orthodox Christianity.
For most cultures, and most of human history, people have held to many mono/poly god/creator beliefs. In a scenario in which Darwinism declines I think cultures will naturally gravitate to pick up where they left off in any number of directions.
Well … strictly speaking, Darwinism already declined long ago by science’s own hand. But you are probably using it as shorthand for continued evolutionary thought even today. For what it’s worth, though, I suggest that cultures at large were not much slowed down (if at all) in their myriad of polytheistic pursuits during any of the last few centuries of scientific enlightenment. It was probably mostly just the names of the gods that changed, and their manifestation became understood differently. That is probably the extent of scientific influence on our religious / philosophical thought. And Darwin shouldn’t even have nearly all that laid at his feet given that such trajectories had already been launched long before his time.
I found it via Google on freerepublic.com. It appears someone had copied it from BioLogos and posted it there. It was your Letters to the Duchess blog that was my introduction to BioLogos. I guess it got lost in the site reorig.
I found this series incredibly helpful when engaging with an apologetics group here at Otago University, New Zealand. Unfortunately, before I met with them, none of the Christians in the group affirmed evolution. All were strong proponents of the “biological information” argument and also the consciousness argument (that neither could have come about by purely “natural” causes). Needless to say, there was some educating to be done.
I find “intelligent-design” type apologetic arguments tend to come from poor understandings of the science (especially evolutionary theory). Maybe it’s a problem with apologetics in general…that it tends to push people towards looking for arguments for God’s existence that just aren’t very good, let alone necessary, and often into areas where people lack sufficient education or knowledge of the subject area to understand why.
And as a FYI, just be aware that the nylonase story, which is a part of that series, is probably not an example of a de novo gene - it was thought to be one, but it’s unclear if it is. Now, there are many examples of well-supported de novo genes out there, so the conclusions of the piece are still fine, even if that example may no longer be a good one.
Lack of scientific explanations does not equal supernatural evidence. I just got done teaching a few sections on the Origins of Life and there are a lot of very exciting things we’ve discovered in the past few centuries. Here is a link to those slides. It’s hard to capture the excitement of the field with just text on a page. I’d recommend OoL researcher Dave Deamer’s new book for an up to date synoposis of the field.
Mostly that it might be a case of the new function arising from the duplication and modification (through mutation) of an existing gene, not the formation of a de novo gene.
If you want an example to replace it, you could try the BSC4 gene in yeast.
And your (seeming) “faith” in science’s illustrious future abilities is the same kind of “trust” that Theists have in the supernatural
Since no human alive now, or in the foreseeable future, has or will have any specific exact replicable idea about what exactly happened to start life on earth…
then it is totally pointless, unfair, foolish, unwise, unfruitful & unproductive for anyone to say anything definitive at present
Maybe one day human science will be able to explain it, but for the moment it sure looks like an extra-ordinary, supra-natural leap from pre-biotic compounds to self-replicating life… jury’s still out? And, if so, we’re all better off focusing on other topics for discussion? (I didn’t say stop investigating the issue, but interpreting our meager evidence as support for or against one position or the other is waaay premature?)
While a lack of scientific explanation is consistent with the supernatural explanation for something, it is not positive evidence for the claim. This will always be the case unless those that advocate supernatural explanations can come up with some kind of positive evidence beyond you can’t explain this, therefore I’m right. You can literally insert anything in the section in bold from the flying spaghetti monster to invisible Leprechauns that live at the end of rainbows.
I’m not sure that it is accurate to characterize the evidence we have as “meager.” Generally speaking though, a lack of scientific explanation is not evidence against scientific explanations. For example, not understanding the nature of dark matter is not evidence against the positive evidence that we do have for dark matter. Just because our experiments to measure it in the laboratory setting haven’t yielded any results yet does not falsify the cosmological evidence we have for dark matter. And at the end of the day, I wouldn’t say the “jury’s still out” for God being the ultimate source of life. My belief in that is not dependent on a lack of scientific explanation.
I don’t see how those situations are at all parallel. Science doesn’t require faith, it has a proven track record of having continually returned more and more detailed empirical information about the world/cosmos we live in. I have heard atheists assert irrational optimism regarding all that science will reveal, but none of them were practicing scientists. I find the people actually doing the science to be much more measured and humble in their predictions. Science doesn’t require faith to be effective. Religion may inspire confidence by association with God’s knowledge but which humans do you know who have reliable access to that information?
I hear the Christians on this site who are employed in fields of science as expressing the same faith you assert in creation being an expression of God’s will. I’m neither a scientist nor a Christian and I do not share faith that creation required God’s direction. I think His more important function involves putting together the coherent world of our experience and helping to steer lives in meaningful directions. To my mind that would be enough.
Forgive me but Science has as much faith as any religion. You only have to look at people like Dawkins to see that they hold onto their beliefs with as much if not more vehemence than any religious fanatic.
Evolution is a Scientific theory with all the nuances and special meanings that can contain but it is just an excuse for saying that it can never be proven beyond doubt. And anything that cannot be proven is faith.
Dear Mark,
As a scientist and philosopher I am able to to see the blind faith that I was taught as scientist. Yes, science has learned much about the material world we live in, but little to none about the non-material world we live in due to this blind faith that everything is materialistic. The belief that mental illness is purely an unbalanced chemical reaction has created the highest level of addiction to prescription drug on record.
My main point is that the efficacy of science does not rely on faith. But I also don’t think the existence of one scientist who exhibits irrational exuberance for the power of science and combines that with an anti-theist agenda is all one needs to paint the lot of them with one brush. Frankly I think you could pick a more extreme negative example in Lawrence Krauss, but identifying a bad apple or two is still not the way to go.
There just isn’t any reason I can think of to turn to the Bible for empirical answers. Given that its message was originally intended for people who knew far less about the world than we do today, it would be odd to find empirical answers relevant to us today in the Bible.
With respect, I think your choice of brushes is too limited. Proof is a subject best fitted to logic and mathematics. Science makes use of math but operates differently. I’m no scientist so I won’t say more about that. As an outsider, I just think it is sad when Christians feel it is necessary to argue against science in order to preserve marginally held positions which are really not central to what is best about Christian faith. But that too is not my specialty so I’ll leave it to those who accept and practice both Christian faith and modern science. My wish for you is that you find your way to walk in both worlds.
Whilst I agree with you Mark that Science doesn’t require faith in the way that Christianity does. What is your view on the argument that there are certain foundational beliefs required to do science which cannot be proven by science?
Such foundational beliefs might include, but are not limited to:
The reliability of sense experience for ‘doing science’ (Eg. What I see really is what is there).
That one truly exists as an agent in the world (eg. when a scientist walks into a bar, she is a real person walking into a real bar).
That reality can be understood in a scientific way. That is to say, conclusions we draw from scientific evidence may be imperfect or incompletely, but are ultimately based on reliable information about what is really ‘out there’.
That certain things are unchanging and immutable (eg. 2 + 2 has always, and will always equal 4).
I’ve heard it argued that a measure of ‘faith’ in these foundational beliefs is required to do science but science cannot (yet) necessarily prove that any of these things are true or false. Here I use faithin the sense of trust or belief in something without complete or exhaustive evidence.
I never mentioned the bible. Nor am I claiming that the bible has some say over science. I could have quoted Paul’s definition of Faith but it might be taken the wrong way.
What I am claiming is that any view that relies on conclusions rather than pure facts must, ultimately rely on faith for its existence. There is no way anyone will be able to prove TOE from scratch to Humanity, without a time machine. The evidence just does not exist. Fossils are not that conclusive.
TOE started from a very simple understanding of how a single species diversified due to varying conditions. It has now expanded beyond all recognition claiming changes and ancestries that are both wild and unprovable (but are the only apparent alternative to a simple God creation). And research is Hell bent on proving the theory (not disproving it). People are not looking for alternatives. They are not even looking for errors. They are only looking for confirmations. And they will find them. (The same applies to searching Scripture for a specific answer) People will “find” or “see” what they need to.
And anyone like me will be marked as ignorant, uninformed, or just a crank.
I will go on record that I hope that man never learns the secret of creating true life (as opposed to artificial intelligence). I have a feeling that if it ever happened, God would be forced to show His hand. And the world would not want that.
Which is why science is best done in a community that gets to critique our ideas.
I’m sorry you feel that way. It’s not bad to be ignorant, and we can’t be informed about everything, and a little crank is good sometimes depending on what ones does with their crank-ness.
