How much science should we expect other people to understand?

Faith & Science Conversation
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Firstly…

in short, your answer above is a good one and I’m mostly in favour of your idea here. Having said that, theologically, naturalism approach is not biblically compatible in any way. Whether or not anyone here agrees, that is the undeniable fact theologically. It is 100% irreconcilable for those who truly understand the dilemmas one faces well below the surface of bible theology.

You simply cannot possibly read texts like the ones i quote below (New Testament statements by Christ Himself as well as the first Bishop of the Christian church, the apostle Peter), and make the theological claim that those Old Testament stories in Genesis were not real events.

The scripture in Matthew and Luke are devastating (because they are the eyewitness account of the recorded words of Christ/God Himself) and add Peters word to that and well its “all over red rover”. The only way to avoid the texts below is to claim that all 3 apostles (Matthew, Luke and Peter) are either wrong in their memory or Christs words or, the scribes over the centuries have stuffed around with the translation (which cannot be supported by scholars because the Textus Receptus legacy proves the opposite to be true…ie we have so many independent witnesses that we know the bible we have today has the real autograph and not a stuffed version of it full of errors)

Any notion of metaphor, allegory, or just a moral story of Genesis flood account, its bluntly clear that Christ, Gods own son and our creator, new exactly what he was talking about in Matthew 24.

Anyone who thinks they can twist Christ’a own words in Matt 24 into something other than a statement of history is deluding themselves.

Just for your convenience, the texts in question are below…

Matthew 24:27/Luke 17:26
37As it was in the days of Noah, so will it be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark. 39And they were oblivious, until the flood came and swept them all away.

2 Peter 2:4
4For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them deep into hell,a placing them in chains of darkness to be held for judgment; 5if He did not spare the ancient world when He brought the flood on its ungodly people, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, among the eight; 6if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction,b reducing them to ashes as an example of what is coming on the ungodly;c 7and if He rescued Lot, a righteous man distressed by the depraved conduct of the lawless

One really interesting things i have regularly noticed when considering the theology of naturalistic driven Christians (let’s just call them TEists)…when i ask them to cite direct bible references for their beliefs…if one then refers to ones own bible concordance, one experiences great difficulty in trying to reconcile the adequacy of the supposed bible theology they preach. we rarely rarely find any consistency there and that is always a huge red flag for me.

The point is, a lack of direct biblical evidence means that the belief is almost certainly wrong. So there’s that.

Second…

I 100% agree that we could, if the naturalists and YEC could avoid the notion that its a science verse creationism debate, and only focus on the gospel. If we could do that, then I’m sure the two could find a sense of harmony.

The trouble is, Im a realist…and when one considers the political system and how that works its likely an improbable alliance.

One of the reasons why i engage on these forums is because even though I’m very much at odds with many here, my hope is that some will learn from my voice in the same way i have learned from theirs. It also provides an opportunity for those who arent sure to consider both sides of the “senate floor” and hopefully recognise that the middle ground might be the place to be. An eclectic approach to the world around us i think is the safe option.

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From the above, you might think I am entirely opposed. But this is not the case. Frankly I think both religion and science are largely specialized interests. So knowledge of neither of these can or should be a measure of the worth of people or anything like that.

Above, I have said that those without some knowledge of science are handicapped. It is a useful tool like so many other capabilities from talking and walking to driving and cooking. We can live without any number of these, but the advantages of having as many of these as you can is also clear.

The comparison between the necessity of the science and religion is complicated. On the one hand religion is more connected with living ones life. Science is founded on objective observation while life requires subjective participation, and religion is all about the latter. On the other hand, while science can be described as useful, I don’t think religion should ever be described that way. The moment religion becomes useful, is when it turns from a good thing to a bad thing. Valuable? Definitely. Both religion and science are valuable. The value of science is indisputable. The value of religion may be more disputed, but I frankly don’t think religion can ultimately be avoided. Everyone without exception has to take things on faith and choose how to live their life – how they do this is their religion. Science on the other hand can definitely be avoided – because I certainly do not agree with those who equate science with any capacity to learn anything. That fails to understand science just a badly as those who label it an ideology.

So if religion is unavoidable then why do I call it a specialized interest above. Well like psychology and biology, just because nobody can avoid thinking and living doesn’t mean we all have to study it – doesn’t mean we have to obsess and make it such a huge part of our life… certainly not as I have done with both science and religion.

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Well let’s take this to its logical conclusion shall we?

If I am debating someone, am I being intolerant and arrogant if I expect them to understand English? Or should I be expected to switch to Na’vi or Verdurian or Tauri-Hessian or Beanish instead at the drop of a hat, even though I don’t speak a word of those languages either?

Of course not! In an honest debate, we all have to expect the other party to understand something. If we didn’t, then image would be a legitimate response to “arka powke, e sešue nasitel, skxawng.”

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image

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Scorn is a poor tool to make a point.
My answer you make fun of, is to the original post by James, that transpires contempt and intolerance.

A debate (in theory) is about putting forward opposing arguments. Considering the topic at hand, it is blatantly obvious that all participants are fumbling in the dark guessing, putting forward opinions, appealing to emotions and in general basing their ideas on incomplete data and dubious provenience that may be contradicted tomorrow.
Nothing wrong with that, when talking about theories, beliefs, or other hypothesis, but when one person wants to participate, it is common courtesy to offer an explanation to your own case, to bring the other party to level and allow the exchange. The original post, and now your own, display arrogance, intolerance and contempt, on a subject that for it’s own nature, no one can have an intransigent position, at risk of reproducing the position of the church on geocentrism with it’s consequent loss of credibility.
Your contemptuous example about language only highlights the fact that you consider others that do not share your particular niche of opinion, to be unworthy of participation.
Shame on you.

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The OP is not about debate. It’s about having reasonable expectations of the background knowledge that the average person can be expected to have regarding science.

Part of the problem trying to have a conversation with people about anything, really, is that they have different backgrounds, levels of understanding on a variety of topics and very different thinking skills.

James’s question strikes me a incredibly honest and pretty daring – attepting to come to an understanding of how people think who think differently – in order to have good conversation. Rather than assuming people are idiots, he is assuming they are not, and that he will have to make changes, rather than expect them to accomodate him.

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Facts are not relative. Engineering not based on reality has catastrophic outcomes. The specific facts James mentioned in the OP are all basic, established, and sound. There is no equivalence between documented evidence supported by precise measurement and analysis, and some blather about presuppositions.

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Responding to tone is a poor tool to address a point.

My response was an example of reductio ad absurdum which it’s a perfectly legitimate way of responding to arguments that haven’t been properly thought through.

Does it sound sarcastic? Maybe so. But in science and engineering, a sarcastic response to a bad argument is getting off lightly. If you started applying bad arguments in the workplace, at best you would end up getting fired, and at worst you would drive your employer out of business and in some cases even end up killing people in the process.

On the contrary, I am more than happy to consider others who do not share my particular niche of opinion to be worthy of participation. What I am not prepared to consider is people who promote demonstrable falsehood or misinformation.

Everybody is entitled to their own opinions. Nobody is entitled to their own facts.

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Not true. So called facts are the result of current understanding or dare I say “consensus”. The earth is the center of the universe is a fact, that depends on the definition of universe. Smoking is recommended to calm the nerves and cure “hysteria”. Another fact. Saturated fats are the cause of heart attacks and vegetable oils are much better for you. Another fact, unfortunately also a fallacy invented to protect tobacco industry and sell lubricant oils as edible disregarding the damage. I could go on all day writing a long list of political “facts”, or should we list the "facts about Covid 19?
A fact is a thing that is known or proven to be true.
Something that is known reeks of the definition of consensus … proven to be true? well that depends who or how the proof was orchestrated.
If you can not accept that most things are relative if not subjective, your debate will be rigid, dogmatic and serve no purpose outside yourself.

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On the contrary, what @rsewell said is perfectly true.

Facts are not opinions, they are not subjective, and they are not just “consensus.” They are determined through hands-on experience in situations where getting them wrong has consequences for which you could be held responsible. Consequences that, in some cases, end up with people getting killed. When your understanding of science comes from that kind of experience, then debates with people who aren’t also informed by the same kind of experience are worth diddly squat.

And if you can not accept that some things are not relative nor subjective, then you won’t last five minutes in any science or engineering based workplace.

I’m sorry if you think I’m being hard here again, but the workplace is something that I harp on about a lot in these discussions. This is because a loosey-goosey, postmodern, it’s-all-subjective-opinion attitude to facts, evidence, reason, science and the like set my own career back by well over a decade when I was younger.

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That is fine by me, but others can judge.

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It is rather dangerous to presume that you know how the world works because you don’t.
Today’s “facts” are tomorrow’s jokes, I enumerated a few dear to me.Should we quote “Eppur si muove”?
This conversation obviously leads nowhere enlightening, illuminating or otherwise waking. Is that a word? Sorry I have 5 languages competing for room in my brain.
Better luck next time. Facts today turn into lies tomorrow, like the centre of the universe … is that a fact too? No I don’t think you are being hard, I think you are being unnecessarily dogmatic particularly with your continuous reference to situations of employment.
In academia there is some logic in requesting minimum knowledge and experience requirements in order to participate in a debate. In politics it is a requirement to have been voted in or being employed by someone who has.
This is a forum for those who have an interest in faith and science and the incongruous state of some concepts that are by nature devoid of any absolutes and therefore not easily defined.
All is relative, yes. You yourself are relative to me. You could be a computer program and not even exist as another person. Fact. So can I.
And just to go back to the great Copernicus and Galileo, and the less then sharp minds in the church of the day, who was right? Who had the facts?
Sorry to say, neither Copernico nor the clergy. The universe does not have a center and it’s center is surely not the sun nor the earth.
Fact?
In fact the center of the universe is the earth from my perspective, and if you are honest so it is for you.
Do we need to run a series of IQ test for people to post in this forum to see if they are at level?
Not my forum so not my call, but seeing that there is an interest in Christian history and ethos, i doubt it would be something the administration would like to implement to satisfy some obscure cognitive itch.

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IQ tests are not the diagnostic tool they appear to be. They test certain logic pathways, observation and connectivity. You can train yourself to “beat” IQ tests and get a better score.
And this seems to be the problem here. There is an assumption that anyone can understand anything, but some people have a affinity for languages and others mathematics and so on. It has been said that women think differently from men, and although I am reluctant to go down this road, there would appear to be evidence to back that up. Not everyone can thing scientifically. There is a step by step logic that underpins science but not everyone cognisises like that.and the genius is usualy the person who thinks latterally or “out of the box”.
Let’s admit it, you can sometimes explain something over and over until our blue in the face until someone else say “you mean this?” and it then clicks., other times you bang your head against the proverbial wall and never get anywhere.
What seems logical or obvious to one person can be beyond the reach of another An obvious example being metaphors or analogies. Some people just can’t grasp concepts enough to understand let alone form analogies. and without being rude it would seem that the scientific mind is less comfortable with analogies, perhaps because they tend to encompass the whole thig rather than building up to it?
So to expect people to understand us would seem to be folly… Especially as the only tool we have is language which open up several cans of worms. Linguistic gymnastics is an art all of its own.

Richard

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It seems your definition of ‘fact’ is different than most people on this forum use.

We have observations about the world that stay the same no matter who makes the observation, for example a measurement of mass or temperature. There are different scales, for example we can measure temperature as Celsius, Fahrenheit or Kelvin degrees but that does not change the underlying fact as the temperature can be transformed from one scale to another in an objective way.

The interpretations of the facts, like why average temperatures are rising or why people get fever, are not facts, they are interpretations based on theories or hypotheses. The prevailing theories or even paradigms may change but the underlying facts do not change. We just interpret the facts in a different way.

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Subject to the proviso that interpretations of facts are not unconstrained but have to obey the basic rules and principles of honesty, accuracy and mathematical and logical consistency.

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You sound like somebody who’s been burned a few too many times … becoming jaded.
Some “facts” do turn out to not be factual. But others endure - and a great many endure in modified and clarified form. Nobody will ever be discovering tomorrow (or ever) that the earth really is flat. But just because it turns out that it isn’t perfectly round either, doesn’t mean that the round-earthers were just as wrong as the flat-earthers. The latter remain permanently and enduringly more wrong about reality. Sorry, but reality doesn’t let go of its facts no matter how much you want to doubt them. Reality is the thing you bump into when you’re trying to be on your way somewhere else. Asimov’s “degrees of wrongness” is profoundly useful to understand.

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In my experience, one of the most common flaws in those who challenge the scientific consensus is that they don’t understand the differences between scientific models, hypotheses, facts, and conclusions. Your post is a perfect example. Let’s go through them.

The position of the Earth in the universe and our solar system is a conclusion, not a fact. Heliocentrism, the conclusion, attempts to explain the observable facts such as stellar parallax, the observation of smaller moons orbiting larger planets, and the retrograde motion of planets such as Mars.

That was never a fact. It was always a proposed conclusion, and shaky one at that.

Not a fact. Yet another concusion.

Given your inability to distinguish between facts and conclusions, I’m not sure it would be fruitful to list more wrong examples.

And this gets me back to @jammycakes opening post. What I would hope every person learns from their science classes is the difference between facts and conclusions. Unfortunately, those hopes aren’t often fulfilled.

Much of this leads to one unfortunate state of affairs. Creationists will often claim that they are just disagreeing with the scientists. They aren’t. They are disagreeing with the facts. They are disagreeing with observable reality. This isn’t a matter of differing worldviews. This is a matter of ignoring facts, ignoring reality.

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Not sure that is as clear cut as you are trying to make it.

That ToE is a conclusion I would accept, but that is not how it comes across. Furthermore the “facts” that accompany this conclusion are embedded in the conclusions in terms or how they are perceived.

Facts can, and are, interpreted which then devalues the accuracy or at east relevance of the fact itself.

IOW there is a difference between the idealism of science and the practice of science. This not so much an insult, as a practicality.

Richard

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Could you give examples of “the “facts” that accompany this conclusion are embedded in the conclusions”?

The whole purpose of science is to interpret facts. If science was just observations we would call it observing. We call it science because we use the scientific method to interpret and explain facts.

What “idealism of science”, and how does it differ from what you view as the practice of science?

Remember, scientists are using the scientific method to explain facts. It all starts and stops with facts.

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Virtually any defined ancestral connection beyond the immediate bloodline.

That a fact proves something

The perfection of science fails the same as inerrancy of scripture. That is with the understanding. More often than not for every theory based on a set of data there are two opposing and usually opposite views.

It is not the method that fails but the human application of it. (sometimes)

IOW Science does not (cannot) provide all the answers, despite what scientists would like to think

Richard