The hiddenness of God is a problem we all, including YEC, face.
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I think that you are asking some legitimate questions. If you ever resolve the tension of God’s revelation and transcendence, please pass that wisdom on to me. In the ancient but timeless book of Job, it strikes me that the one’s with pat answers were Job’s accusers.
Facts are synthesized into theories, but they also stand independently. The progression and segregation of the fossil record is properly a fact, not a theory. I cannot make sense of that in terms of YEC scenarios. What would be the sorting mechanism? Size does not work, because many mammals and dinosaurs are the same size, and does not even address microfossils. Agility does not work because there are cheetahs and sloths, and fast and not so fast dinosaurs. Biodiversity is a fact, not a theory. Why so many marsupials in Australia, penguins in the southern hemisphere, and lemurs in Madagascar? So while theories can possess tremendous explanatory power, and in that sense be beautiful, it is the underpinning facts which compel.
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This is I how I expressed it in a hymn I wrote a few years ago, and engaging with the last few chapter of Job:
O Lord, where were we when you laid the foundations of earth?
When morning stars harmonised song, when the oceans burst forth?
When you played your dice, when you planned that through chance life evolved?
In mere mortal span, still your mysteries remain unresolved.
Acceptance of mystery has always been a vital, essential part of our faith. (And I additionally ensured that the hymn overall was fully Trinitarian, to reinforce quietly that element of mystery within the Godhead.)
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Yes, how God orchestrates timing and placing is a wonderful mystery (among others ; - ).
I’m a little uncomfortable with that phrasing, though.
But maybe that covers it.
The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD.
Proverbs 16:33
And along the same line, I just read this in The Language of God:
With those discouraging thoughts [about why he even went to Africa in the first place, with all the dire circumstances], I approached his bedside the next morning, finding him reading his Bible. He looked at me quizzically, and asked whether I had worked at the hospital for a long time. I admitted that I was new, feeling somewhat irritated and embarrassed that it had been so easy for him to figure that out. But then this young Nigerian farmer, just about as different from me in culture, experience, and ancestry as any two humans could be, spoke the words that will forever be emblazoned in my mind: “I get the sense you are wondering why you came here,” he said. “I have an answer for you. You came here for one reason. You came here for me.”
I was stunned. Stunned that he could see so clearly into my heart, but even more stunned at the words he was speaking. I had plunged a needle close to his heart; he had directly impaled mine. With a few simple words he had put my grandiose dreams of being the great white doctor, healing the African millions, to shame.
Timing and placing.
Yet worse are thousands upon thousands of immobile, or nearly so, organisms above dinosaurs: oysters, plants, corals, tiny snails, etc., etc.
The fact that I can find clams larger than my hand and clams about the size of a pinhead in the same deposit also discredits that one.
For habitat sorting, there is this problem:
,
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Thanks, @Dale! That Proverbs ref. resonates well. I have included it in the commentary about the hymn.
Hymn/song: In chaos and nothingness
Commentary: Commentary on ‘In chaos and nothingness’
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No, in the light of scientific facts.
The word “theory” does not mean the same thing in science as it does in everyday colloquial usage. Scientific theories are not mere “prevailing opinion.” They are explanatory frameworks that account for the evidence that we see around us to a considerable level of detail, and that have a proven track record for making accurate and precise testable predictions. In many cases, they even find application in practical or commercial settings. Once a scientific theory gets put to work in real-world commercial or practical situations, it is, to all intents and purposes, a fact.
Conventional geology and geochronology, and evolutionary biology and paleontology, play a key role in finding oil, for example. The theory of evolution even finds application in areas of science beyond biology – for example, in computer science and software engineering. It is used in all sorts of areas, from image recognition to calculating routes in your sat-nav to optimising cloud computing costs in the face of fluctuating demand.
That’s because the formation of the Grand Canyon cannot be defended as Flood run-off. Floods do not produce tight, meandering bends for example:
As for the decay of the speed of light, I’m sorry but that’s science fiction. The speed of light isn’t just some figure that you can tweak at will to get round any and every scientific discovery that you don’t like. It’s one of the most fundamental properties of nature, and there are a whole lot of other fundamental properties of nature that depend on it. If you changed the speed of light, you would change everything else along with it. If it had been different in the recent past, even slightly, it would have had extreme and very far reaching effects that would have left very clear and indisputable evidence everywhere. For starters, we would not be here to observe it because life as we know it would not have been possible.
The problem is that we’re not just talking about the appearance of age. We’re talking about the appearance of history – 4.5 billion years’ worth of evidence of specific events happening at specific times with specific causes and specific effects. It’s not just a case of God creating Adam and Eve with twenty year old bodies. It’s as if God had created Adam and Eve with scars from skateboarding accidents that they’d never suffered, diaries that they’d never written, and memories about journeys to places that they’d never visited.
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I wonder if being a gravityist is heretical. I confess, I am one. ; - )
Really? I’m dissapointed. Nobody’s ever told me, I’d like to have gone to its funeral.
Yes, the status of scientific theory is more than “prevailing opinion.” No, a scientific theory is never a fact, for these reasons:
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They are different categories: observation vs explanation maps to fact vs theory, respectively; and
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Any scientific theory is subject to falsification, which sometimes occurs in spectacular fashion, e.g. the steady theory of the universe vs the Big Bang theory, continental drift vs plate tectonics, etc.
It’s an important distinction, and a common mistake to conflate them.
I think you’ve misunderstood me—I gave those examples as illustrations of YEC implications I consider to be indefensible.
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Thanks for clearing that up Mark. I must confess I was a little bit confused about where you were coming from.
This is true. There are one or two things that get referred to as theories that probably aren’t quite ready to be described as “to all intents and purposes, facts.” String theory comes to mind here, for example.
One way to tell just how solid a scientific theory is, is to consider its maturity. We could assign it to one of five different levels:
- Frontier: subjects at the very earliest stages of investigation.
- Controversy: subjects where there are two or more competing hypotheses but not enough evidence to distinguish between them.
- Consensus: subjects where experts have reached an agreement that one particular theory is most likely to be correct and the others are most likely to be wrong.
- Application: theories that are put to work in the Real World, in practical or commercial situations.
- Foundation: theories that have other theories that depend on them. If they were wrong, all the other theories would have to be wrong as well.
Levels 1-2 are ripe for challenge. It may be possible to challenge some theories at level 3, though one would need to be careful. It’s theories at levels 4 and 5 that are, to all intents and purposes, facts.
I explain this in more detail here:
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There are a few things I can think of, like Relativity, that are kind of at multiple levels at once, depending on conditions (starts having problems if you try applying it in certain situations, but other things are based on it as well).
Beg your pardon, I meant even if EC bolsters a charge of God being rendered unnecessary by Occam’s razor.
But that’s not the case. Violations of natural laws in scripture demonstrate otherwise:
- walking on water - law of gravity
- calming the storm - laws of physics
- water into wine - laws of chemistry
- raising of Lazarus - 2nd law of thermodynamics (entropy)
Witnesses responded to these miracles with fear and belief in the presence and powerful supernatural action of God. Still some rejected this conclusion, which in the face of such evidence is condemned as unjustifiable unbelief: Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. (Matthew 11:20). The implication of the evidence is plain, but receiving it is spiritual—it is only by the sovereign grace of God that anyone is able to believe.
And, to be sure, any specific knowledge of the one responsible for such supernatural action is beyond the reach of science.
A question for us is, for example, does the formation of living matter from nonliving constitute such an event, based on a scientific assessment of the operation and limits of natural laws? Biologos allows for this possibility:
“God could have created the first life through regular processes, or God could have done a miracle. In either case, BioLogos affirms that God is the creator and sustainer of all life, from the first life form to each of us. If consensus for a particular scientific explanation emerges, we will celebrate, because we will have more insight into God’s handiwork. Yet no matter how far science progresses, we can never exhaust the wonder and gratitude we feel for God’s good gift of life.” How Did Life Begin? - BioLogos
I’m not chucking them out. Rather, on a forum discussing evolutionary creation, it is surely appropriate to focus on science and possible modes of God’s creating.
Psalm 139 is wonderful poetry, which for me is enhanced by the lens of science. A few years ago I annotated this psalm as follows (I’m not trained in the biology quoted, but you get the vibe):
For you formed my inward parts;
Fertilized oocyte, zygote, pronuclei
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
morula cell division, blastocyst formation
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
loss of zona pellucida, free blastocyst, attaching blastocyst, implantation
Wonderful are your works;
extraembryonic mesoderm, primitive streak, gastrulation
my soul knows it very well.
primitive pit, notochordal canal
My frame was not hidden from you,
Somitogenesis: Somite Number 1-3 neural folds,
cardiac primordium, head fold, neural fold fuses
when I was being made in secret,
Somite Number 13 - 20 rostral neuropore closes
Somite Number 21 -29 caudal neuropore closes
Somite Number 30 leg buds, lens placode, pharyngeal arches
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
lens pit optic cup, lens vesicle, nasal pit, hand plate
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
nasal pits moved ventrally, auricular hillocks, foot plate
in your book were written, every one of them,
finger rays, ossification commences, straightening of trunk
the days that were formed for me,
upper limbs longer and bent at elbow, hands and feet turned inward
when as yet there was none of them.
eyelids, external ears, rounded head, body and limbs.
Psalm 139:13-16
Miracles demonstrate science has the tools to study the supernatural? How is that? The fact that science can’t study God or God breaking in to our natural reality doesn’t mean miracles can’t happen or people can’t observe miracles. It means there is no scientific explanation for what was observed. Empiricism and logic are not the only sources of knowledge/truth available to humans. We also have our experiences and we can experience spiritual realities.
How can we possibly acquire the knowledge to answer this question? We can’t observe the creation of life and as of yet, we can’t replicate it. All we have is the revelation that God created life.
I’m just engaging the discussion, not telling you to sit down. 
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You made two claims: that science cannot posit or study supernatural causes and effects.
I explicitly acknowledged that science cannot study supernatural causes: “And, to be sure, any specific knowledge of the one responsible for such supernatural action is beyond the reach of science.”
I also provided a reasoned argument as to how science can, however, posit supernatural action.
Not meaning to be rude, but your selective quoting of what I’ve written and your response seems to indicate that you’re evading or misunderstanding my point.
The you are using science to mean “people who observe things” and I am using science to mean people using the scientific method. Supernatural action cannot be part of a scientific hypothesis.
No, I’m using the term science to mean application of the scientific method where, should that lead to a robust deduction that there is no plausible naturalistic explanation, provisionally posit supernatural action. To do otherwise would suggest an a priori commitment to philosophical naturalism.
I think that you and Christy agree that there can be miracles, not explained by scientific means. The point of disagreement seems to be that you feel that science can reach the conclusion that there are miracles. Can you give one example of that?
I think we disagree on what counts as science then. Science has an a prori commitment to methodological naturalism and that is a feature not a bug.