That’s because they aren’t scientists, and they don’t work with scientists either.
Some of us have science-based careers. We trained professionally in the sciences and have to apply science-based principles in our jobs. We have friends and colleagues who also have degrees – sometimes even PhDs – in the sciences. We are expected by our churches to invite them to evangelistic events. At some of which, we know for a fact, they will be told that if they become a Christian, they have to believe that the earth is six thousand years old and that evolution is “only a theory” despite the fact that every shred of evidence in nature screams that the earth is far older than that and that evolution is one of the most well established facts in science. Or that they will be presented with claims of “evidence” for a young earth that are so bad that if they applied the same standards of reasoning in their own work, they would kill people. Or that they will be given otherwise clueless lectures about science by people who haven’t set foot in a laboratory since they finished compulsory science education at age sixteen, yet believe that just because they’ve been spoon-fed some videos by Answers in Genesis, that somehow that means that they know more about science than “secular scientists.”
It’s not just that a young earth is demonstrably, indisputably false in the same way that a flat earth is demonstrably, indisputably false. It’s that these falsehoods are also creating an atmosphere of suspicion or even hostility in many churches towards science-minded Christians. It’s turning our churches into an adult version of the school playground where the kids who were good at maths and went to science club and learned how to program computers at age eleven ended up getting picked on by the school bullies.
Hi, so how do scientists like yourself reconcile science with claims in the bible re the virgin birth, turning water to wine, walking on water, raising the dead, and so on. There are many things in the bible that scientists would say are impossible and therefore they cannot be true. What is your opinion on these things?
Why would the opinion of someone who has never thought about the age of the earth matter to you? If you were facing brain surgery would you take the advice of someone who has never trained as a doctor?
Those are miracles – cases where God overruled the laws of science. But they are miracles that served a specific purpose, and they didn’t leave behind evidence that actively contradicted them. And none of them are being backed up with arguments claiming to be “science” that flagrantly disregard every rule of scientific practice imaginable.
A young earth requires you to either (a) believe that God created evidence for a detailed history of events that never happened, (b) reinvent scientific methodologies in ways that would kill people if you applied them in the real world, or (c) flat-out lie about the evidence. The virgin birth, water to wine, walking on water, raising the dead, and so on, do not.
I get the point you are making @Bill_II but the analogy falls down. People do take advice from non-medics all the time about things like surgery. The opinions of one’s wife, children, wider family or friends can sometimes be a greater influence on the decision to take a certain course of treatment than the expertise of the doctor.
But scientists would argue that there is no evidence that they did happen. In fact, all that we know from observations and experience tells us that they could not have happened.
And there’s another problem in addition to the one you express so well. The atmosphere of suspicion and hostility that’s being intentionally bred among church members can’t help but spill out into other domains of life because of the way the human brain works.
There’s a curious – but scientifically false – idea that you can sequester your religious beliefs and the effects of your religious beliefs from everything else in your life. But you can’t, because any major ideology you hold (whether it’s YEC or atheism or scientism or communism or whatever) acts like a major filter or organizing principle on how your brain processes both incoming and outgoing data streams.
The brain isn’t stupid. Passing fads and random bits of data won’t affect its overall architecture. But sustained repetition of tightly defined ideologies will absolutely change the brain’s architecture and cause it to link together certain parts of the brain in defined networks that lead to rapid, almost unconscious responses. This is how anger becomes a learned response. And how hatred becomes a learned response. And how resistance to change becomes a learned response. These are pan-brain responses, if you will, and they’re triggered any time you face a challenge to your personal ideology – which means a challenge to the defined networks you’ve told your own brain to build.
In other words, you can’t, from a biological viewpoint, teach your parishioners to be deeply suspicious and hostile towards some of the fundamental aspects of science (especially the role of time and timing and rates in all the important mechanisms of life) and then expect them to go out into the world and keep that hostility separate from their other choices. The brain just doesn’t work that way.
Fortunately – and the great news for Christians – is that you when you embrace the ideology of loving your God and loving your neighbour as yourself, and keep trying to learn what this means, your brain will respond by building and continually strengthening the networks involved in relationships, empathy, morality and the like.
It’s awkward and challenging to our assumptions, but it’s unfortunately true (or fortunately, depending on your perspective) that what you put in your brain matters.
I’m not a scientist, so at the risk of looking foolish I will offer some thoughts.
Firstly, as to the question of evidence. We have no empirical evidence that these miracles took place. However we do have eyewitness testimonies that claim to have witnessed these miracles. That is in itself a form of evidence. And, should they prove internally consistent, a reliable for of evidence at that.
Second, science (as I understand it) is concerned with the natural world and has, to my knowledge, no mechanism for passing judgement of the existence of the supernatural (miraculous or otherwise). As such, I reject that Humean idea that observation and experience tell us that miracles cannot happen. The reason being experience and observation are finite. I don’t know about you but I have not yet observed nor experienced everything the world, let alone the universe, has to offer. I may yet experience or observe something which turns my understanding of the world upside down. As has happened from time to time. At best then, I would say experience and observation tell us that miracles are highly unlikely. But impossible? No, that’s beyond the scope of science to decide, in my humble opinion.
…which would be irrelevant. There is lots of historical stuff that science wouldn’t be able to provide any evidence for, and yet we have confidence it happened on grounds quite other than science.
Finding evidence that something did not happen is categorically different than not having access to scientific evidence that something did happen. A young earth has mountains of evidence stacked against it. Singular miracles do not since they aren’t the stuff of science at all to begin with. If one replies: “well, couldn’t a young earth be one of those miracles?” To which one then responds: “well, it wouldn’t be just one miracle, but a multitude of them, all performed for the incredible (and scripturally unsound) objective of deceit.”
I’m assuming that you believe the miracles as described in the bible were real events. What is that convinces you that these miracles really did happen?
I don’t think every bible story necessarily had to literally happen in the way you’re probably thinking … i.e. there are visions, parables, allegories and such that I don’t think are pushed as literal accounts. E.g. I’m personally fine if Ezekiel’s army of bones or Jonah fleeing God, or the book of Job could all be kinds of narrative other than historical - not to mention Jesus’ parables (not all of which are prefaced with ‘now this is “only” a parable’).
But yes, I do believe there can be and were miracles in the literal sense too - Jesus’ healings and resurrection. Some of them might be miraculous in ways that might surprise us today if we could go back and actually look. So I’m not necessarily convinced that our usual “flannel-graph” take on miracles as magic shows is always necessarily accurate. But what convinces me that miracles did take place (both in old and new testament events) is the legacy of changed lives and resulting testimonies from the people who were affected / healed / saved etc. Whatever happened, and whatever that might look like to us if we could time travel back to actually just spectate, it had a profound enough effect on the people of the day that their oral and eventually written testimonies saw fit to record it as unmistakably God’s hand that was involved.
So to summarize - what convinces me a miracle took place is the evidence and testimonies of changed lives.
[And I’ll hastily add that this is not some robust, ‘miracle-detector’ test - which I’ve little interest in devising. Skeptics will point out that all sorts of ordinary things can change people’s lives, and they’re right. The whole “let’s get a scientific handle on miracles so we can persuade skeptics” is not a big interest of mine - and I’m skeptical of that enterprise anyway. So my definition of ‘miracle’ may be a bit different than yours. If I, seemingly by coincidence, meet somebody in an unexpected place and needed words of encouragement are exchanged or some other need is met, I’m fine calling that a miracle even though skeptics can rightly write it off as coincidence. I have no need to cajole them to think otherwise on my own terms. The Holy Spirit will blow in their lives in the season where they are ready to receive it as such.]
Mervin, that reminds me of something John Walton said. He mentioned that the word “miracle” is never used in the Bible, but rather “signs and wonders.” His point was that the Bible and ancient people did not separate things into natural and supernatural, but rather that all things showed the involvement of God. A naturally explained event can thus be a sign and wonder as much as something not explained by physical laws. He said this in the context of removing conflict from the science -faith debate, but is supportive of your point.
And those signs and wonders were used to confirm a message. I absolutely believe they happened, and I don’t expect any scientific evidence to have been left behind.
I don’t see changing radioactive decay rates as being a sign or wonder to confirm a message. It doesn’t make any sense, either as a natural phenomenon (that would vaporize everything on earth) or a sign/wonder. Looking at how God used signs and wonders throughout the Bible, I have no problem with many of those things that did not leave behind any evidence other than eyewitness accounts recorded in the Bible. There are no accounts in the Bible telling us the age of the earth or about changing the radioactive decay rates (or moving continents, for that matter). At most, the genealogies get you maybe to Adam, and I agree that Adam probably lived around 6000 years ago. I also think other people were around (having evolved) at the time of his creation (be it by birth or being scooped out of dust… I lean toward birth due to the highly figurative language used in those two chapters, with creation from dust just meaning he was mortal, as that phrase is used elsewhere in the Bible).
Now how does this matter to me? My daily life outside of church, not much. My life in church, a whole lot. How people treat me affects my walk with Christ. I’m thankful to be in a church where I have the freedom to discuss differences of opinion on this matter, and my brethren have been very kind to me. Sometimes, though, comments will be made in class by people who don’t know what I believe, and those comments will be mocking my views or suggesting my views are dangerous or even atheistic. That ends up being a stumbling block for me, especially as I rebuild my faith, returning from atheism. Again, when talking to people individually (even after they’ve made such comments), I’ve had nothing but kindness and love exhibited toward me. Usually, once they see why I believe what I believe, they realize I’m not dangerous or compromising the Bible, even though we still disagree. But yes, the issue affects my life at church and how freely I can talk about God’s creation around my brethren. Some of them believe that if evolution is true, the Bible is false and should be thrown out. So I have to be careful not to discuss evolution without first explaining that the Bible and evolution don’t conflict. I wouldn’t want to be a stumbling block to them due to the false dichotomy they’ve been taught all their lives. I first have to address the false dichotomy and convince them that it’s false before I can feel comfortable discussing what the science actually says.
That is reminiscent of several accounts of God’s providence seen here, the most startling maybe is Maggie’s, and gbob’s is right up there, too. And I have more than several of my own, some just pure fun.
As far as “rightly write it off as coincidence” goes, I would think that only the most resolute unbelievers should fail to recognize from those accounts that “the game was rigged”, as gbob put it. But spiritual blindness is pervasive and persistent, and it sometimes takes a 2x4 “upside the head” to open eyes or just to get someone’s attention.
For me, it’s not an either/or question. How we think is partly a matter of science (physics, chemistry, biology), but it’s also a matter of how we choose to use our free will to align our thinking with the needs of Heart and Soul. Our thinking patterns can be anywhere on a vast spectrum from having no openness to God to having great openness to God. But no matter what we choose, we still have to work within the limits of our human biology and we still have to take responsibility for what we put in our brains. Accepting these two basic realities is the start of building a healthy relationship with God. Your half of the relationship involves looking after the body and brain that allow you to experience many marvels (dare I say “signs and wonders”?) as a human being. God’s half of the relationship is to be a constant source of love, forgiveness, resilience, and guidance for you. So yes, if you have a relationship with God, it will definitely affect your thinking, just as your relationships with others on Planet Earth will affect your thinking. These relationships can become toxic on your side if you let your brain fill itself to the brim with anger and hatred and the like. Or these relationships can become a neverending source of joy, kindness, and wisdom if that’s what you make a concerted effort to build.
It’s up to each individual to decide what his/her side of the relationship bridge will look like. If you build a bridge of hatred, though, can you really expect God’s love to align with that?
It’s not a question of changing the evidence. It’s a question of changing the interpretation of the evidence.
You are missing the point. The hypothetical starting point is: “…it was proven that the Earth is no more than 10,000 years old.”
Simply denying the hypothetical premise means you’re not playing the game.
If you don’t want to play, then don’t play.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
60
I’ll play. How could it be proven? What scientifically could encapsulate a disinterested, perfectly fully, completely rational 4.543 ga Earth in 10 ka?