I think there is some confusion here. Philosophical naturalism is the belief that the natural world is all there is. Methodological naturalism, however, allows for the supernatural, but excludes it in scientific investigations. And that makes it very powerful for science because we can investigate the natural world and conduct controlled experiments. It was a great blessing when we started to unlock the workings of the brain–patients who experienced seizures could be diagnosed with epilepsy and given medication, instead of subjecting them to exorcisms. And in our daily lives, we actually operate by methodological naturalism quite a bit. If a dead body is discovered, we don’t assume that an act of God was the cause of death.
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And if our toilet is clogged, we do not assume it was demons. Most of the time.
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"We know from the principle of mediocrity that there are infinite universes from eternity. "
But we have no reason to know that the principle of mediocrity is valid under any circumstance, and particularly with regard to these questions.
If we draw from a distribution that has some reasonable level of resemblance to a normal distribution, then our chances of getting something close to the average are pretty good. But if we look closely at any one example of something in the real world (above the molecular level), it’s likely that we can find something unusual about it, because the number of possible features to look at is huge. Claiming that something must follow the principle of mediocrity, without evidence, is closer to the gambler’s fallacy than the principle of mediocrity.
We have examined one universe. Even that was not randomly selected. So we have no scientific basis whatsoever for assuming that our universe is either ordinary or unusual - there’s no valid statistics when the sample size is 1. If multiple universes exist that different significantly in properties, then it is quite likely that our universe is unusual in some way.
Can science provide evidence of the supernatural? As already noted, part of the challenge is defining exactly what are the limits of science. Personally, I would tend to say that an ID-type conclusion of design would be based on the failure of science to find an explanation rather than based on science.
Could that happen? In principle, yes. If we agree that actual scientific data on birthdates and experiences shows that horoscopes are no better or worse advice for anyone, regardless of birthday, then it seems that actually finding a correlation between horoscope applicability and birthday would constitute scientific support for the supernatural in some sense. We could imagine having a time machine and taking a portable GC/mass spec to first-century Cana, generating quantitative data on an abrupt transition from water to wine. But the evidence of the Bible, other historical sources, and personal experience indicate that events which clearly do not conform to known natural laws are quite rare. So it’s reasonable to start by trying natural-law explanations. The usual error of ID-type claims is extremely premature claims to have ruled out natural law explanations.
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The latter three, yes. But the storm stopping suddenly could be said to be miraculous timing, not a necessarily a violation of physics. It still demonstrates God’s sovereignty over the material world, and my refrain, …over timing and placing.
Eternity means all real sets are infinite, and nature self tunes. The weird thing is that nothing is unstable. Quantum uncertainty goes all the way down to nothing. The instability is the ground of being. If Jesus is real, it’s intentional and transcendent.
Most people wouldn’t mind one bit if there was some divine intervention on behalf of their favorite teams.
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I do not think that you read my whole post. It is not a simple yes or no issue, because God is not the answer to a scientific question. God can be the answer to a philosophical and philosophical questions, which are informed by science.
I affirm that it can be verified that God is the Source of the universe, in part because science has determined that the universe has no material source, so this is Not a question that can be answered by science in an affirmative way. It is best seen as a philosophical question.
The problem is that many do not accept theology and philosophy as real, when of course they are.
Popular arguments tend to get the most attention. Ultimately, the Kalam argument makes some unjustified assumptions, such as the universe emerging from nothing.
I would say that they are simply trying to figure out where and what the universe came from.
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Thanks all for an interesting discussion. There are clearly and understandably a wide range of beliefs on the relationship between science and faith. A few reflections (applied to myself as much as anyone):
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Beware of god-of-the-gaps thinking and of presupposing complete methodological naturalism
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Don’t hang your faith on any particular scientific interpretation or evidence: fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking understanding)
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Are you really as open-minded, informed and rational as you think you are?
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Open enough that I see many many different possibilities. But not so open that my brains fall out (i.e. not so open that I will go against some basic principles of rationality).
What are these basic principles of rationality?
- Logical coherence is the requirement for an explanation to be meaningful.
- Consistency with the scientific evidence is the requirement for an explanation to be reasonable.
- Compatibility with the principles of a free society is the requirement for morality in the only world/society I am willing to be a part of.
So I am not open to explanations which are meaningless, unreasonable, or immoral. But these principles are minimalistic and leave open a wide wide range of possibilities because…
- The conclusions you get from logic depend on the premises you start with. So while logical coherence does impose a restriction, it is usually fairly easy to adopt premises that will support nearly any conclusion.
- The objective evidence of science is not available for everything. It seems rather rare to me. So while consistency with this evidence does impose a restriction, there is not only no objective reason to restrict ourselves to what it can determine alone but it is rather delusional to think you can even do such a thing.
- The principles of a free society are based on tolerance, so where there is no objective evidence it supports an acceptance of a wide diversity of opinion. But this does not logically include a tolerance of intolerance.
No.
I think it is absurd to think God would break the laws of nature which He created, especially just to impress a bunch of people who frankly wouldn’t know the difference anyway. It isn’t the breaking of natural law which makes them miracles but the fact that God had a hand in bringing these events about. Christians speak of miracles in their lives constantly and none of them involve the breaking of any laws of nature.
The laws of physics are non-linear and thus include the butterfly effect.
The perceptions of bunch drunk people hardly amount to any kind of evidence in chemsistry.
The walk on water trick has been done. People have seen magic shows which put the miracles of the Bible to shame.
There is nothing in the Lazarus story which hasn’t been done millions of times by modern medicine.
There is no evidence that any laws of nature were broken. The presence of qualified observers are rather lacking. But most importantly I object to equating miracles with a breaking of the laws of nature. It is about the involvement of God in our lives, NOT about God being inconsistent and lacking in integrity just because religious people want superiority over science.
Both are good advice. The scientific method is just a tool. We can decide to use it or not. One of the reasons that we do use the scientific method is that it has been very successful in helping us understand how the universe works.
Another way to put it is to hold all theories tentatively, and be open to falsification.
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Lazarus was 4 days dead, not 4 minutes.
And the resurrection of Christ himself?
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Jesus wasn’t a fraud. You’re making him out to be no better than “John of God” in Brazil.
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Maybe so, but it seems that it also makes sense to say that as far as we can see the universe arose from nothing physical: no matter, no energy, no time, no space. Otherwise, you have a No God of the Gaps as opposed to the God of the Facts.
The cosmological argument when first presented did not have the science to back it up. That did not make it false, but now it does, so I suggest you live with it if you do not want to be a science denier.
Science works with the universe which is why it is good. On the other hand, faith works with humans which is why it is good. Love God and love your neighbor is not a scientific law, but excellent an excellent rule to live by.
Dead according to who? By the standards of the times, sure. But according to the standards of modern medicine? LOL What was the name of the M.D. who examined him?
No… the frauds are the people claiming that Jesus did something He never claimed to do.
What did Jesus say that He did?
John 5:19 Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing;
John 14:12 “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do
Break the laws of nature? Jesus never claimed to have done anything of the sort. In fact, He made it quite clear that the same rules applied to Him as they did to anybody else.
1 Corinthians 15.
The laws of nature only apply to physical/natural bodies not to spiritual bodies.
What are you seeing that makes you think the universe came from nothing? The only thing we can actually see is that energy and matter were there from the very start of our universe.
There is still no science demonstrating that the universe came from nothing.
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What we know is the universe has been expanding and if one trances the expansion backward, we see the universe disappears into nothing. Evidence from background radiation shows that there was humongous release of energy consistent with the creation of the universe at the beginning of the universe. The evidence points to creation of matter, energy, space, and time out of nothing.
Reference? Citations?
The CMB was created hundreds of thousands of years after the initial expansion of the universe.
WHAT EVIDENCE???
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The evidence of the Big Bang, which shows that the universe, matter, energy, time, and space, was created at the start of the universe. You do not have to agree with it, but it does exist.