Does / can God lie?

Faith & Science Conversation
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The YEC position is absolutely at odds, to an extreme degree, with what the vast majority of astronomers, geologists, biologists are convinced are truths about the Universe.<

Yes- with this I would totally agree. However, please understand I am not arguing for a YEC position. I am not convinced about their position on time either.

Regarding what most astronomers, geologists and biologists are convinced about needs to be considered along with their philosophical and religious a priori beliefs. These beliefs will come first and foremost before any ‘evidence’ is weighed. A man will interpret ‘evidence’ according to his religious worldview. The reason why Lawrence Krauss has come to the conclusion that ‘nothing’ must naturally produce ‘something’ is because he is first and foremost an atheist before anything else.

What we know as modern geology grew out of the enlightenment understanding of the world which is both ant-God anti supernaturalistic and is based upon the a priori assumption that everything has continued as before i.e uniformitarianism. Were uniformitarianism ever proven to be wrong categorically, then geologists of all persuasions would need to rip up the geological time scale. But they are not going to do that because ‘evolution’ depends upon their naturalistic timescale.

But I know from being in a natural science field that they’re not talking through their hats, so I take them at their word.<

You have it right when you say the ‘natural science’ field. However anyone espousing a Christian worldview has already admitted supernaturalism with regard to origins i.e they have no necessity of totally relying upon explanations which are purely naturalistic. The real point of contention is between naturalism and supernaturalism. It is needful to factor this in when listening to ‘scientists’.

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With respect, I disagree. I understand what you’re saying in general about ideas being formed in the context of a worldview but I think the closer you get to hard natural science data, the less of a role that plays.

As a scientist (astronomer) I tried to discern and catalogue aspects and patterns of the material world. It was not my job to ponder about the agency behind those patterns, or the existence or non-existence of such agency.

To have an opinion one way or the other seemed to me to delve into superstition and/or hubris, and the culture among my colleagues was to leave such unanswerable questions to people in other more dismal and futile fields of scholarship (or if you had a view, don’t be loud about it). NB, that is not at all the same thing as a culture of atheism.

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It is interesting to me that you are an astronomer. It would also be interesting to me to know whether you are totally agnostic as to whether the universe has supernatural origin i.e. in that it was created by an agency which resides above the laws of nature. Or did the universe come about according to some other factor i.e. it created itself?

‘hard natural science data’ is one thing the interpretation and explanation of it is another. This will often and inescapably be determined by philosophical or religious wordview when it comes to that of origins.

Please explain the more ‘dismal and futile’ fields of scholarship.

Thanks

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There is also no point in pretending that evidence doesn’t heavily favor one end of that spectrum.<

The majority of scientists believed the ‘evidence’ provided by Newton for a couple of hundred years, regarding the cosmology of the day, before Einstein came along. Then the majority proceeded to reject Einstein’s ideas for a long time after that. At least until Eddington.

All the available ‘evidence’ until that time favored Newton’s theory of gravity. Yes- they had ‘evidence’ but the evidence to hand was wrongly interpreted.

The universe just did not work like that. Who would have though it? Let alone a patents clerk.

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I was agnostic. I thought it was hubris to have an opinion on the unknowable, and given the variety of conflicting opinions out there about it, I thought at best it was impossible to know which one was right, and at worst they could all be wrong. (I include atheism in that list of opinions. Atheism is a religious belief.)

I would say this was the prevailing viewpoint among astronomers, or at least, the default for polite conversation (minus allegations of hubris!) There seems to be an impression that atheism prevails among scientists, but whilst I never took a poll, that’s not my impression at all, and neither is atheism at all inherent to scientific endeavour.

Not really. I spent a lot of time writing and using computer code to numerically analyse numerical data recorded by computers and electronics, to yield measurements of numerical quantities. There were no lines of code that rejected certain calculations if they conflicted with any inadvertent religious beliefs I had picked up. (if (age > 6000 * 365.25 * 86400) {printf “Sorry Dave, I can’t do that.\n”; return 1/0;})

I understand there is room for beliefs to creep in as you build conclusions on more uncertain and complex foundations. This is why I conservatively raised parallax distances. There is no guesswork in the analysis of those, beyond what is quantified as measurement uncertainty. With other distance measures of more distant objects, there is a bit more shakiness but still it is done in a way that is mathematically agnostic. No religious bias motivates the assumption that distant Cepheid variable stars obey the same period-luminosity relationship as nearby ones, for example.

That was uncharitable of me. I apologise.

By this I meant to refer to sciences other than natural sciences, where it’s very difficult even to find reliable patterns to codify by theories. And also to the humanities, where almost everything is a matter of opinion, usually contested.

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The suggestion that God creates a universe that looks old but is not is a kind of refuge for creation fundamentalists who don’t want to accept an old universe and evolution. I do not think God has done that and therefore God is not lying about what we observe.

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Thanks,
There s a lot in that.

I thought it was hubris to have an opinion on the unknowable<

To this I can only say that knowledge is one thing and belief is another. This goes right back to Plato.

Quite often I find that scientists stray outside of the field of pure science (or what can be regarded as being purely scientific i.e empirical findings based upon observation and measurement ) an into the field of philosophy perhaps without self awareness.

I agree totally with you that atheism is a religious belief e.g. on what ‘scientific basis’ did Carl Sagan pronounce that ‘the universe is all that there is’?
He strayed out of his field of ‘science’ at this point into another area of which there are others more qualified to speak. But his words carry weight with those of a similar worldview because he was a well known cosmologist.

hard natural science data’ is one thing the interpretation and explanation of it is another. This will often and inescapably be determined by philosophical or religious wordview when it comes to that of origins

Not really. I spent a lot of time writing and using computer code to numerically analyse numerical data recorded by computers and electronics, to yield measurements of numerical quantities. There were no lines of code that rejected certain calculations if they conflicted with any inadvertent religious beliefs I had picked up<

I did qualify my statement by saying that I was referring beliefs about ‘origins’. To my knowledge, and when it comes to computers, input = output. It is human beings that programme computers and also design the hardware. As I see- no amount of numerical data a computer can crunch will give it a saving faith that there is an intelligence over and above all natural data or give it a belief in a transcendental reality beyond that of the material universe.

I understand there is room for beliefs to creep in as you build conclusions on more uncertain and complex foundations. This is why I conservatively raised parallax distances. There is no guesswork in the analysis of those, beyond what is quantified as measurement uncertainty. With other distance measures of more distant objects, there is a bit more shakiness but still it is done in a way that is mathematically agnostic. No religious bias motivates the assumption that distant Cepheid variable stars obey the same period-luminosity relationship as nearby ones, for example. <

Yes- again I would bring the question back to those of origins i.e. how does data concerning Cepheid variable stars speak into that basic question? i.e. how/why did the universe originate?

The overarching question of this thread I understand to be ‘Does / can God lie’? which is obviously basing the question on the belief (of the questioner) that there most definitely is an intelligent creator. (This I take to be your original question.)

The line of thought being that the YEC explanation of origins implies that God is a liar or perhaps at best a deceiver when compared with modern scientific findings. The modern scientific theory regarding that of ‘origins’ being the ‘truer’ picture.

I am suggesting that this is a questionable leap in logic.

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So your God is basically a computer programmed to do all that is good: the holy computer in the sky. Should we admire this computer? It is not like the great figures of human history who found determination to do good and great things. The sky computer was just following its programming.

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Science doesn’t answer ultimate ‘why’/‘who’ questions. Scientists (Sagan, Dawkins) can try do so but they should be aware and explicit they’re moving outside their field of expertise and offering up a personal religious belief that science has nothing to do with.

What science can do is tell us a lot about what the Universe is like and how it has changed over time. The inconsistency of this with YEC is the thrust of my original post. Specifically we do actually know that the Universe and life is older than 6000 years and that species (including humans) arrived by evolution, through common descent. So either YEC is wrong, or the aforementioned scientific knowledge is wrong on account of being a consequence of an extremely elaborate hoax perpetrated by God.

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Science doesn’t answer ultimate ‘why’/‘who’ questions. Scientists (Sagan, Dawkins) can try do so but they should be aware and explicit they’re moving outside their field of expertise and offering up a personal religious belief that science has nothing to do with. <

It seems that this would be too late after the fact.

I am at present reading a book about Theistic Evolution which is a scientific, philosophical and theological critique. Edited by J.P. Moreland, Stephen C Meyer. Christopher Shaw, Ann K. Gauger and Wayne Grudem. There are a good number of scientific contibutors providing articles which provide good reasons as to why universal common descent is questionable. I don’t think that theistic evolutionists have it all as wrapped up as you seem to believe. I don’t think that many of them belong to the YEC stable, if any.

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And any scientist worth their salt should be the first to see how many unanswered questions there still are to tackle.

So it isn’t so much that things are all “wrapped up” as it is that so far, common descent is the theory that fits (explains) the largest pool of data that we do have - by far. As in there is no other theory out there that begins to make sense of nearly as much and from so many diverse fields.

Unanswered stuff can always be found (so far, abiogenesis may largely still be in that category). But if one takes into account all the stuff that is consistent with common descent, then indeed one can see why informed scientific thinkers do casually refer to some things as being “wrapped up”. In the same way that the case against flat earth was neatly wrapped up long ago.

But common descent isn’t wrapped up in the sense of leaving no questions unresolved.

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Welcome! Good for you for reading. I have not read that book yet, but I wonder if, after you are done, you would find this response from Dr Haarsma interesting.

Blessings.

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So you say, but I was talking to someone else.

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Thanks for directing me to the article. I would recommend reading the book not least because it is written by a number of people many of whom are scientists themselves. It is a weighty tome to get through but does highlight quite early on where some commonly held beliefs regarding theistic evolution do undermine core Christian doctrines. These differences they hold to be irreconcilable differences. One other book I have recently read is by Wolfgang Smith and is called ‘Theistic Evolution: The Teilhardian Heresy’. A quite different sort of book which examines Theistic evolution and Theilhard De Chardin’s beliefs from a philosophical and metaphysical perspective. Smith has also had a video produces recently called ‘The end of quantum reality’. I have yet to see this.

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I’m not familiar with that book; on to the reading list it goes!

My approach as a once-professional astronomer is to to trust the consensus of experts speaking within their field of expertise. I know that trust was justified in my field, because I know that my colleagues were neither stupid nor arrogant nor devious nor corrupt. I extend the same trust to professional biologists, because I have no reason not to.

I feel like it would be arrogant of me to even deem myself fit to try to build a scientific opinion about evolution on the basis of evidence that is waved before me. If I wanted to have a legitimate opinion based on my own evaluation of the evidence, I would have to find the means to study biology to doctorate level at least, if not work in the field for a few years. I have nothing near that! When I cut up a deer, I can just about point out every corresponding muscle and bone in my own body. That’s about as far as my biology expertise goes! :nerd_face:

As I have grappled with this rift and sought to ensure I’m approaching it in a way that pleases God, I have been drawn to watch this video many times over, and read the associated book twice over - https://youtu.be/AvNc0sgaClY

Of note to me, apart from the excellent example set here, is that Todd Wood, despite being absolutely committed to YEC on scriptural grounds, thinks the evidence for evolution is very solid.

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Thanks. One day…
Here is a discussion of Wayne Grudem’s thoughts on the irreconcilable differences, if you find it interesting.

Grudem’s 12 Objections to Theistic Evolution - Open Forum / Biblical Interpretation - The BioLogos Forum

However, do you think that we should change our understanding of science based on how we understand the Bible?
Thanks.

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People understand the word ‘science’ in a variety of different ways. Unfortunately, it is often taken to mean an incontestable body of fact. That men in white coats have all the keys and means to unlock the secrets of the universe. However, even a cursory glance at the history of scientific endeavour will show that this is has rarely been the case.

Quite often, what is taken to be ‘science’ and therefore ‘fact’ is built upon many other factors some of which are assumptions that are really quite philosophically shaky when examined. One of these factors would be the belief that human reason possesses the inherent and unaided ability to work out the puzzle with regard to human origins by studying remnants of the past, whether these remnants are stars, radiation, fossils or rock strata etc.

The belief that unaided human reason is the undisputed means by which we measure all things is a huge assumption in and of itself.

However, do you think that we should change our understanding of science based on how we understand the Bible?<

This depends upon what your own understanding of what is deemed to be purely scientific and what is purely speculative or theoretical or what ‘appears’ to be the answer to a problem. In the context of historic Christianity, the Genesis account is much more than a mere morality myth or a naive attempt at explaining where the human race came from. The Genesis account contains the basics of a fully coherent Christian gospel grounded in historicity. As I see- Theistic evolution strikes at the heart of this coherence and historicity and is theologically undermining.

I don’t think I need to spell that out.

People won’t like to hear that, but this is the concern of many Christians, scientists included, who deem the Bible to be the supreme authority over and above fallen human reason.

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Thanks for your honesty.

My approach as a once-professional astronomer is to to trust the consensus of experts speaking within their field of expertise. I know that trust was justified in my field, because I know that my colleagues were neither stupid nor arrogant nor devious nor corrupt. I extend the same trust to professional biologists, because I have no reason not to.<

We needs must also factor in that Theology is also a science and where it conflicts with evolutionary theories then matters need to be resolved. Non believers don’t have this problem. There are many who believe that current notions about evolution are far less than solid and not all of them are Christians. Keep on studying.

Thanks

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It seems that God accommodated to the science of the day (see Dr Lamoureux, both a scientist and theologian, who wrote about the Bible and ancient science) @Dol)

God accommodated to our understanding of a geocentric universe, flat earth, three tiered (Philippians) strata, and many other things.

That doesn’t mean the Bible’s wrong in faith. If I tell my little daughter, “The Sun has risen,” it is not a true statement in fact, but she understands what I’m saying.

I would be interested in what you think.
Thanks.

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Not really. The natural sciences aren’t nearly as prone to overconfidence and flip-flopping as some people seem to think.

Spherical Earth theory came to prominence in the Old World around 2500 years ago and has remained to this day. Geocentrism has been in vogue for 500 years, Newtonian mechanics for 300 years, evolution for 160 years, Mendelian genetics for almost as long, special and general relativity for 110 years, quantum mechanics for 100, continental drift for 60 years, DNA as the basis of heredity for about the same interval. Some of those have been revised but none have toppled, despite decades of unprecedented investment and technological effort in scientific research, that has only served to bolster and refine those theories.

Ok, I need to check my calendar to work out whether butter is good for me, but, physics and biology aren’t like nutrition.

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