I appreciate the cordial and thoughtful discussion. Considering the basis of this thread, I am very grateful to see that everyone here has been civil. That is the best way to go forward in a pluralistic world. I understand that we come from two very different ways of looking at the world and, short of God popping up and saying “here I am”, we’ll just have to find the most agreeable world we can together where we are free to explore our ways of thinking.
You base your view on what we know (or can know). As a scientist, I appreciate the logic and rational structure of world views based on these arguments and I appreciate that it allows for the possibility of revision if new information arises. It is one of the strengths of science that I have come to respect deeply as a practicing scientist who has made discoveries in this venue. In its best form, it is integrated. By this I mean that its structure can be largely built from some very fundamental principles and when those principles are stumbled upon, they demolish a lot of notions that are basically junk and affirm the parts that make sense, though sometimes in ways we don’t expect.
My path has been a little different. I am a hardcore scientist, but I am also an artist. I entered the university with the plan to be a musician, and I do write music and continue to perform regularly, mostly in church, but also in secular venues or some mix of the two. I gravitated to improvisational music, I have my own way of expressing myself in jazz improvisation, but I also appreciate proper interpretation in classical music and even how that can be very creative too. I fell into a serious career in science somewhat by accident; a professor who seemed to appreciate my creative ways of attacking problems invited me into a research project in my undergraduate studies. There, I soon recognized that advances in science are a place where creative people are sometimes welcome. I was soon hooked. Obviously, the “rules” of science are quite different from the “rules” of music. I had a lot to learn, and that has been a very long journey.
I found that I seem to have some sort of limited skill at solving some difficult problems. I would say that it is by God’s grace, as it seems folly to think I can solve anything at all that really nobody knows the answer to. Research is where the textbooks are not. One can feel he (speaking as me) has just driven off a cliff like in those old Hanna-Barbara cartoons where the character keeps going horizontally until he looks down and realizes that he doesn’t have any ground underneath. (I always asked, “why do you look down you idiot? Look forward!!!”) Science resembles detective work – the main exception being that the witnesses don’t lie; we have to learn how to overcome our own prejudices and opinions when faced with interpreting data and that is just as problematical as the detective.
That is to say that I am no stranger to unpopular ideas. I am no stranger to having to stand up to big kahunas in the science world and say “you’re wrong”. Of course, there were times I was wrong, I have made some real mistakes. Nevertheless, it is clear to me now that there have been times I was basically right too. The way we can know a concept is true is because good science bears fruit, it keeps bearing fruit, and it always leads to a deeper understanding that keeps reinforcing those fundamental principles in a consistent way. That is about the only way we can understand that an idea is sound.
Religion and particularly believing in Jesus seems to be have become a very unpopular idea in the sciences these days. I can only say that it is my “hunch mentality” in problem-solving that keeps me following Jesus in the real world. I don’t know where it will lead, I cannot even say that it will do me good, let alone whether it is right. I cannot read the bible like a fundamentalist, but that artist in me sees something there between the words of the pages (at least some of them) that reach beyond this world.
I simply cannot convey to you how my artist’s brain sees this any more than I can convey what I feel when the music hits a groove, why I pick certain chords at an instant based on a mere hunch, or how I stumbled on some of my scientific findings. Maybe it is all just chemicals in the brain, and the rest of my “feelings” stuff is just my own prejudice and pride. Nevertheless, my artist’s brain rejects that notion that “stuff” is all that is. Maybe as J. B. S. Haldane famously said
I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.
I don’t say that it is wrong to think that “stuff” is all that is. On that, I don’t know. It is the artist in me that rejects it. We are human, we can be wrong, even on things we think are right. At least understand that I am following my hunches and intuitions and seeing where they lead.
From a pragmatic standpoint, we have to try to build a world where a pluralistic view of justice can generally be agreed on, whether there is that bigger picture or not. But where the artist’s brain says “I feel there is something more”, respect that it might be true, even if we artists cannot articulate it in a logical, rational, or even remotely testable way. There is probably plenty that we cannot know about — which would drive the positivists into a tizzy at me for me saying that — but if we talk about the world in the times of the Greeks, we can see that they had much to learn, and I think we do too.
– by Grace we proceed
