Maybe you should visit Why There is No Proof of God.
Which is why I believe the earth to be genuinely billions of years old.
Iām interested as to why this is your perception, and why you would think that only those who subscribe to a materialistic worldview which excludes God would admit to an ancient Earth. Just because Christian scientists who are employed by apologetic ministries or are on the speaking circuit are creationists, that does not mean that Christians in industry, academics or research are generally so. My own experience is that of the Evangelical Christians I know who are working scientists or applied scientists, all subscribe to more or less the mainstream account of the universe and life on Earth, and none are YEC. These are people who work directly with the evidence in their fields, they do not need to be told what to think, by a cabal or otherwise. The majority of evangelical university science departments also have no argument with the consensus.
It isnāt. It is based on evidence, which with some effort, is available to anyone.
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It is my experience that scientists in general could not care less about world views, materialistic or metaphysical. They are interested in the wonder of science and the discovery of what was previously unknown. Christians in science are far more often persecuted by those in the church than from their fellow scientists of whatever or no religious conviction.
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It has always been my understanding that scientists are constrained from considering any supernatural explanations or evidences for āintelligent design.ā In most cases, scientists in the academy who are open to non-materialistic explanations, including biblical ones, are discharged before reaching tenure. Do you disagree?
Perhaps these Christians hold to different views in private? Certainly, it would extremely damaging to anyoneās career as a serious scientist to admit that they rejected scientific dogma regarding the age of the universe, etc. I donāt understand why that isnāt obvious.
No, I just think they understand that the Bible doesnāt conflict with science, so there is no such thing as supernatural science.
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I believe that science will never be able to do any of the following:
Produce something from nothing;
Produce biological life from non-organic material;
Produce intelligent life from non-intelligent life.
Regarding the lack of conflict between science and the Bible:
Even if you believe in a darwinian evolution that is somehow modified to allow for Godās guidance in some manner (which contradicts the fundamental precepts of evolution, but Iāll grant that to you regardless), you would nonetheless need to account for the origin of matter. Science has no explanation for the origin of matter, beyond the concept of the singularity. Enter the Bible, which would tell us that the singularity was created by God from nothing. If you were to assert this to your colleagues in the academy, would they not derisively reject your assertion?
Regarding the resurrection of Jesus ā what is your explanation which causes science to be consistent with the Bible?
I vehemently disagree.
There are thousands of tenured Christian scientists in the American Scientific Association, and as Christians they all believe in non-materialistic explanations of origins.
However, they generally believe that the God who created all that is operated behind the scenes in ways that cannot be scientifically detected.
In this way, they do not follow the example set by John Calvin and Martin Luther, who ferociously opposed scientific ideas that did not agree with their view of what was obviously true in the Scripture. Instead, they follow in the footsteps of Galileo Galilei, who said:
āThe Bible shows the way to go to heaven, not the way the heavens go.ā
I agree wholeheartedly with your statement.
Were you aware that this has nothing to do with evolution? The theory of evolution starts with the first life on Earth (no explanation), and makes explanations and predictions based on a variety of biological processes that have been observed. The origin of life is an interesting subject to biologists, but it has nothing to do with the theory of evolution.
I was not aware of this until a few years ago, and I thought I knew more than the average bear about biology at the time. Now I know Iāve got a long way to go!
Blessings,
Chris Falter
Are you claiming the resurrection is a scientific event?
I am claiming that the bodily resurrection of the āflesh and bloodā man, Jesus Christ, is an actual, historical event. How can this be reconciled to science?
It would be incredibly interesting to interview more than a few of these folks regarding how they navigate their careers given their presuppositions.
I suppose we should attempt to define āevangelical.ā I would want to argue that an evangelical in this context is someone who believes in a true Adam and Eve, a true Garden of Eden and true Trees of Life and of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. If we reject a true Adam, I believe we lose the worldview which gives Jesus Christ His biblical significance; moreover, Jesus as well as Paul and Peter demonstrate that they believed in a true, historical, non-allegorical Adam. The notion of Adam and Jesus as the Second Adam is simply crucial to the Gospel.
To be fair, I get the impression that this is partly true. I see this at play when I see people arguing that creationism or ID are āreligion, not science,ā or āintroducing religious presuppositions into science.ā I also see it when people appeal to the First Amendment as a reason why creationism should not be taught in schools on those grounds. (Not least because I am not American and I donāt live in the USA.)
But that does not mean that the Earth could be six thousand years old, that humans and animals could be unrelated, or that creationism should be allowed to be taught in science classes in schools. Even if you allow for the possibility of miracles, and even if you reject methodological naturalism, there are still problems with non-evolutionary creationism in general, and young-Earth creationism in particular, that have nothing whatsoever to do with āmaterialismā or ānaturalismā or āsecularismā or āatheismā or anything like that.
The fact of the matter is that when you practice science, you have to follow certain standards of rigour, factual accuracy, and quality control. But this is where the problem with non-evolutionary creationism lies. I have not been able to identify any reasonable standards of quality control in YEC claims whatsoever. Take, for example, their claims of radiocarbon in ancient coals and diamonds: although the quantities they are reporting are so low as to be indistinguishable from contamination, they dismiss contamination as a ārescuing device.ā If you dismissed contamination as a ārescuing deviceā in any other area of science, you would kill people.
Before creationism can be taken seriously by anyone, and before they even start to discuss whether there is any kind of religious discrimination going on, they need to clean up their act and demonstrate a commitment to quality, rigour and factual accuracy that at the very least matches that of mainstream science. Because until and unless they are prepared to do so, it would simply be reckless and irresponsible to allow their approach to be taught in science classes in schools.
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You seem unwilling to consider that the evidence for the age of the universe is so deep to be incontrovertible, and that evolution is no longer the open question it was when On the Origin of Species was first published. Anyone who is educated in science is exposed, in the classroom and in the laboratory, to the body of knowledge leading to these conclusions. Whether Christian or otherwise, it is familiarity and not dogma which inform the understanding gained in the pursuit of science.
That Christians who are in a position to competently evaluate the evidence first hand, assert the consensus on the age of the earth and evolution, represents a threat to those who wish to cast science as a matter of world view and not rigorous research. Those Christians researchers, then, cannot be allowed as honestly persuaded, so some ulterior pressure or influence must be invoked. You suggest that ā¦
ā¦inferring that thousands of Christian researchers are engaged in a massive violation of the ninth commandment and living a lie, and in so doing imputing the intellectual and academic integrity of these scientists. It is one thing to contend that somebody is wrong, quite another that they do not know their own mind or are engaged in deceit. We all prefer to be taken at our word; please practice the golden rule.
Your criteria here may be more appropriate to define āfundamentalistā.
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I see no need at all to cater to the desire for religionists to be the only one with answers about the origins of things. Here we see the honest truth ā this opposition to evolution was always about a desire by religionists for science not to make inquiries into things that might challenge their attempt to assume knowledge and authority they never had.
The difference between a REAL world and a DREAM world is logical coherence. For the physical universe this would include a consistency with measurable principles.
Hardly. Failing to follow instructions and a dire warning does not a rebellion make. It was just foolish. Refusing to acknowledge their mistake by blaming others was frankly the greater error.
Making up stuff which is not in the Bible? It is only mankind which is not in harmony with the creator. The Bible only says that all the world has suffered because of it.
True. The real lie is told by those who claim that God did something which He did not do. And there is an objective standard by which such claims can indeed be judged.
Indeed, that is because it simply isnāt true that nothing of that history is recorded. We know what happened because we can read the record.
All of this is demonstrably incorrect. According to quantum physics, something can come from nothing ā for short periods of time particles and energy can simply appear randomly. And all the evidence tells us that life can and did come from non-life. A big part of showing that this is the case is coming to understand what life is ā not some magical stuff added to matter as in fantasy stories, but an interaction of complex chemical cycles with self-organizing behavior like so many other self-organizing processes that have been documented. And with AI we have demonstrated that intelligence only requires something which can follow a set of rules.
This is not true and it is not what that passage in Romans says.
When you remove the inconsistencies in the claims that God has done such things then I believe we will be able to do all of these things. Creation ex-nihilo simply means Godās act of creation alone is sufficient, but we already know that action is sufficient to produce matter and we have done so. Living things produce biological life from non-organic material all the time ā that is what living things do, it is called reproduction. No doubt the last one has more to do with a difference that is poorly defined and will simply be redefined in order to insist this hasnāt happened. But we have not only made intelligent machines but continue to study the difference between man and animals, and it doesnāt look like such an enormous unbridgeable gap.
So why do you imagine we will never be able do do any of those things? Is this some belief that the difference in these cases is magical or supernatural? The evidence does not support such a belief.
Iām not aware of anyone who thinks we should do so.
Ok, but just to remind you of your original point, which perhaps I have misunderstood, here is the statement you made to which I have been responding:
No, I just think they understand that the Bible doesnāt conflict with science, so there is no such thing as supernatural science.
Not sure I follow, but my point is that one off miracles are not something that can be studied by science and science does not address. Fossils, stars, and radiation decay can be studied and understood.
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I donāt agree that Calvin was defending geocentrism per se in that sermon on 1 Cor 10-11. Perhaps he was, but this has frankly not been established. In that same post of mine (elsewhere) that you kindly cited, Chris, I went on to explain this, as follows:
Calvinās French sermon on 1 Cor 10-11 does refer pejoratively to āthese madmen who have a spirit of such venomous contradiction, contriving to gainsay everything and perverting the very order of nature.ā He means those who say āthat the sun does not budge, and that it is the earth that bestirs itself and that turns around [qui se remue et quāelle tourne].ā In fact, Calvin probably did NOT refer here to the Copernican view, despite appearances. Probably, he had in mind Ciceroās Academica , where the character Hicetas holds that the earth spins on its axis diurnally in the center of the world, but does not circle about the sun. For the details, see Christopher Kaiser, āCalvin, Copernicus, and Castellio,ā Calvin Theological Journal 21 (April 1986): 5-31.
Virtually all 16th C intellectuals would have fully agreed with Calvin on this: the motion of the earth on its axis (let alone around the Sun at a much greater speed) was simply absurdāand, frankly, it still is absurd to ordinary observation. They knew full well that the earth is somewhere from 18-30 K miles in circumference, such that if it spins daily then weāre all moving at hundreds of miles per hour, which flies in the face of all evidence then available. Even today, most people untrained in physical science cannot give a coherent account of the evidence supporting such an outlandish claim. This is one of the main reasons why there were no more than 12 or 13 people in all of Europe who believed Copernicus was right, prior to the publication of Galileoās āStarry Messengerā in 1610. Most astronomers who admired the Copernican theory agreed that it wasnāt literally true, though it might be useful to them for mathematical purposes. As Galileo himself said in the Dialogue (1632), he had much admiration for anyone who could believe the Copernican view, in spite of the evidence, prior to his own work.
So, for Calvin the issue wasnāt geocentrism per se. As he knew full well, everyone with half a brain knew that the earth is at rest in the center. That simply wasnāt contestable by rational minds. The issue was the sheer audacity of those who nevertheless denied the obvious. Like Luther, he dismissed them as conceited self-promoters, who just wanted to draw attention to themselves by saying outrageous things. Not to emphasize this, IMO, is to misinterpret that sermon.
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Hi Van,
You seem to believe that it is impossible to believe in these things and also accept the science of evolution. You may be surprised, then, that it is very much possible to do both.
I commend to you the book The Genealogical Adam and Eve by Joshua Swamidass, an evangelical Christian and tenured biology professor at Washington University in St. Louis. He contends that God created Adam and Eve miraculously, in Eden, in the midst of a sea of humanity that already existed. And because of the way that population genetics works, all of us today can point back to Adam and Eve as an ancestral couple.
So it is possible to reconcile everything you have pointed to, on the one hand, and the science of evolution. Why not explore this possibility in greater depth?
Best,
Chris
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