Oh! I assumed that you were having fun by means of the quotation and I was just joining in. Even though you meant it as sarcasm, it truly is a great illustrative quote. I enjoyed it! I just wanted to reflect on the serious side of it as well. (There really are a lot of people who do think that philosophers obsess on trees falling in forests and whether they make sounds. Of course, any competent philosopher knows that they do make sounds because air molecules are caused to vibrate even if there is no ear drum around!)
What biblical reasons are there to accept the scientific view of the earth as billions of years old?
Ok. Thanks. That does help. As an amateur physicist I am familiar with this train of thought, though it falls in the realm of speculation rather than hard physics. But, for science to observe and explain a miracle, it must operate entirety in the physical realm. This natural realm is (by orthodox understanding of God) created by God and separate from God. Science can observe and possibly explain that part of the operation involved in a miracle which lies on this side of the natural/supernatural divide, but cannot observe that which occurs on the other side. To be sure miracles may in fact involve natural operations, but those natural operations cannot describe or explain the entire event, or else God is not operating at all and no miracle has occurred.
Thanks. There is a ânotâ missing in my earlier reply as you assume. And you do clarify matters. We are definitely in substantial agreement. We do still differ on whether or not science can completely explain that which takes place when a miracle occurs. Certainly natural processes may be involved and science can (theoretically) observe and explain those processes. But something also must transpire in the supernatural realm which science cannot observe. So at best science may understand certain means God may use to perform a miracle, but it is not privy to God Himself.
I incorrectly jumped to the conclusion that you believe the supernatural does not exist, since you assume science can completely (in theory at least) explain miracles. For this to be true, then everything must be observable to science and hence everything must lie in the realm of the natural.
No, it is literally a foreign concept.
Ludwig Wittgenstein compared language to a game woven into the fabric of life, and explained the process of using words as a series of interrelated âlanguage-games,â which we learn by observing as they are played and inferring the rules. The meaning of any particular sentence (or word within that sentence) is determined by the particular language-game being played, since each has its own rules for understanding. Telling a joke, for instance, is a particular type of language-game, and it follows quite different rules than formulating a hypothesis, describing an object, testifying in court, or composing a poem. Individual words can acquire vastly different meanings when used in certain language-games. Irony and satire are two obvious examples. In a recipe book, âchillâ means one thing, but it has a totally unrelated meaning in everyday slang. Even the simple act of putting quotes around a âwordâ alters the way that we interpret its meaning. For our purposes, then, Wittgensteinâs thought has three important implications:
- Meaning is dependent on genre.
- Meaning is determined by usage.
- As usage changes, meaning changes.
First, we should notice that the words employed in the language-game of the Bible were vastly different than the words employed in the language-game of philosophy. As philosophers then and now are wont to do, Augustine of Hippo sought a general term to discuss a multitude of particulars under one convenient umbrella. He chose the Latin miraculum, which became âmiracleâ in English, and subsequently redefined the vocabulary used to describe and debate the concept to this day. The Greek of the New Testament does not have a term corresponding to miracle; its vocabulary consists of signs (semeion) and wonders (teras), which have a distinct meaning within the language-games of the Bible. Augustine created a new language-game â the theology of miracles. As Wittgenstein said, philosophy stirs up trouble for itself when it interprets one language-game according to the rules of another.
A similar thing happened when later philosophers coined the term âsupernaturalâ from Latin and applied it to events recorded in the Bible. Again, the word had no Greek or Hebrew counterpart. Perhaps this is because the very category of âsupernaturalâ would have had no meaning to a first-century individual. For the ancients, existence enveloped both the seen and the unseen â two sides of the same coin. We cannot see the spiritual realm, but it is so present that Paul (taken as a representative first-century Jew) could tell the philosophers of Athens that âwe live and move and existâ within it. Where moderns see an effect and attribute it solely to a physical cause, the ancients could see that same effect and attribute it to both a physical and a spiritual cause, simultaneously. Their worldview embraced a spiritual realm intimately involved in everyday existence. To a Jew, God was not just the Creator; he also was the Sustainer and Provider and Ruler of his creation. Jesus, for instance, could declare that God provides the ravens with food and sends his rain upon the evil and good alike, all the while knowing that plants produce the seeds eaten by birds and clouds produce the rain that falls upon the ground. For him, the fact that an observable physical cause provided a sufficient explanation did not exclude the active involvement of God in the process.
If we want to understand the Bibleâs presentation of miracles and the supernatural, we have to consider the actual words of the texts and their usage within the proper language-game of the Hebrew and Greek Bible. In those traditions, âsigns and wondersâ do not appear willy-nilly throughout history. With few exceptions, signs and wonders cluster around three epochs of new revelation: the Exodus redemption, the beginning of the prophetic movement, and the advent of the Christ. And just as the Bible provides us with no definition of the concept of âGod,â it does not define signs and wonders. Usage determines meaning, and in the language-game of the Bible, âwondersâ inspired awe and captivated attention, while âsignsâ identified and authenticated the one who spoke for God. (The Greek usage of signs and wonders is paralleled in the Hebrew Bible by oth (signs) and mopheth (wonders), so the language-game of the New Testament draws its usage from the Hebrew precedent.)
Each time that God provided signs, they were manifested first by the primary messenger (Moses, Elijah, and Jesus), continued to be shown by their chosen successors (Joshua, Elisha, and the apostles), and resulted in a written record of the message, which the recipients regarded as the words of God. It should be noted that claims of âmiraclesâ â whether ancient, medieval, or modern â rarely, if ever, fit the pattern that we see in Biblical âsigns and wonders.â Thus, it is my opinion that the Christian response should be skeptical unless indisputable evidence, capable of convincing even staunch opponents (Acts 4:14-16), is available.
Interestingly, signs and wonders are depicted as ambiguous and do not guarantee faith. By itself, a sign was capable of being misinterpreted; therefore, it never stood alone. The messengerâs word supplied context and meaning to the sign, so that sign and word always worked together.
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I donât recall ever saying âcompletely explains miraclesâ. (Did I?? At my age I canât always trust what I write.) I meant to be clear that I thought it possible that God likes to use natural processes when doing what we call âmiraclesâ just as he does in other aspects of his creation. But I always told my students of being wary about words like âallâ, âeveryâ, and âalwaysâ ----so I would be very angry with myself if I ever wrote that I thought EVERY miracle was completely explained by natural processes!
Of course, the moment our transcendent God is involved, we have left the natural matter-energy realm. My main point is that I see no reason why God wouldnât use his knowledge of physics and his power over the matter-energy universe to do things which involve natural processes. I also donât see any way (outside of new revelation) in which we could ever determine the specifics of how a given Biblical miracle took place beyond what the Bible states.
I hope that Christ-followers would realize that whether or not God uses natural processes to carry out his will has no impact on the importance or significance of that miraculous event. People speculate about the dividing of the Red Sea during the Exodus and wonder if a rock slide or some high-wind weather phenomenon was involvedâand some people get very upset about that. I donât. To me, the Biblical text is focused on God providing for his people as he carries out his will. Whether God provided a path for them by means of natural phenomena or âsupernatural poofingâ, I donât see how it matters. God is sovereign either wayâand the timing of it would make it very special no matter what!
I also donât really care if some miracles were a mixture of the supernatural and some natural processes. Why would that matter? (Of course, we know that natural processes played a role in some cases because that is what the Bible clearly states, such as when Jesus made mud with spittle and healed the blind man. Even if the mud making was somehow symbolic instead of truly therapeutic, it is still a natural process that is described. God thought it worth telling us!)
I know that there are Christians who believe anything beyond âGod spoke and it happenedâ is somehow dishonoring to God. I have no idea why. There is nothing âweakâ about God knowing and utilizing his âvery goodâ creation.
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There are 2 (or 3?) Conventional Scenarios for Godâs role in Earthâs creation, plus a third hybrid version:
[A] The fun scenario, where you hear < poof > all over the place, and things magically happen.
[B] The grueling scenario, where God has planned ever detail, including human actions via free will, and where every consequence is anticipated at the moment of Creation.
Scenario [A] accommodates the possiblity that God created the Dino-Killer asteroid somewhere in space, and then flung it at Earth (donât forget to lead the duck flying on point! - - well, actually, best practice is to shoot the trailing duck, so that the oneâs in front donât flee in panic).
Scenario [B], which Iâm more inclined to like, has the asteroid formed millions of years ago, and is knocked on collision course to hit Earth by a perfectly time collision of other planetary or sub-planetary bodies.
Scenario [C] is really the usual kind of thing where God does somethings by natural law (like rain storms) and other things, like transubstantiation, in miraculous form.
The Mission Statements for BioLogos allow for [A] and [C]; there is no mission statement Iâve ever read where BioLogos eliminates all miraculous activity.
The example I gave relies on an examiner (doctor) to make a valid observation - if he concludes the healing was not caused by his action, he would conclude it was due to some other cause - perhaps as yet unknown to science, or perhaps a chance event - the person healed may ascribe it to answered prayer, the atheist to chance, luck, misdiagnosis.
The relevant point is the event would be out of the ordinary. A supernatural event as I understand it, is ascribed through some data to a âthingâ identified as super-, or above-nature, and thus would need to have a cause-effect relationship that is physically identifiable. Otherwise we cannot do much more than ask, what was the cause?
If I understand your comments, and @T_aquaticus, you feel that Christians (or theists) MUST provide some definable setting, such that a cause-effect is clearly established and then we may conclude the cause is either natural or supernatural. From that you automatically decide to include or exclude a god. If you fail to identify a god through this exercise, I guess you would draw some conclusion.
I confess I cannot follow such a line of thought.
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But this isnât true. We were left evidence. We were left eyewitness testimony from people who said they saw the complete history of the wine. And what they saw was that one moment it was water, and the next moment it had miraculously been turned into wine. So we have a record of the complete history of the wine, and every part of that history tells us it was the direct product of a miracle. Jesus left no misleading evidence of a false history. There was no false evidence left of a past which never existed. Thatâs why this is a false analogy, the way youâre using it.
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To address the original question again, I will lay out the Biblical reasons to accept the scientific view of the age of the earth. This is relevant since none of them have been addressed in this thread.
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The Bible says nothing about the age of the earth, and provides us with no information for determining the age of the earth. None of the passages which modern exegetes use to try and determine the age of the earth or the date of creation, are used that way in the Bible. Trying to use the Bible to date the earth or the creation is necessarily unbibical; you need to abandon the way the Bible interprets itself. This is a huge red flag.
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The Bible tells us that the natural creation is a reliable witness to God and His work. That means we can look at the natural creation to understand what He has done, and science is the correct tool for that task since God has written a record of His work into the earth itself. This is the concept of the two books, Scripture and the natural creation (not Scripture and science, or nature and science).
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The Bible tells us that God created animals out of the earth itself, not out of thin air, and not out of His imagination. In fact the Bible goes one step further and tells us that the way God created animals out of the earth was actually to command the earth to bring them forth, making the actual creation a second order event; God is the initiator, the ultimate cause, but not the proximate cause. The popular idea that God spent an afternoon hand making clay snakes, is simply not supported by the Bible. The Bible tells us that God told the creation itself to bring forth life, and to multiply. This is far closer to the history of life on earth as revealed in the fossil record than it is to the views of Young Earth Creationism, and is in harmony with geology and evolution.
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The Bible provides internal evidence that other humans already existed at the time of Adam and Eve, who were unrelated to them. Cainâs wife and the people Cain feared (whom he knew were already abroad on the earth), are clear indicators of such people, in the Bible itself, that humans already existed, and that the earth had a history with more detail than we read in Genesis 1. Numerous commentators have wrestled unsuccessfully with these texts, attempting to explain them away or just avoid them, arguing that God wanted His chosen people to indulge in incest for centuries, and that God later changed His mind and decided incest was an abomination after all. Such arguments scarcely deserve comment.
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The passages which speak of God creating the heavens and the earth in seven days have long been understood in ways which do not require the entire universe to be less than six thousand years old, and which do not require everything in the universe to have been created in only six days, even when interpreting the days as literal 24 hour days (as I do). Such interpretations pre-date the modern era, and were not invented to try and harmonize with science.
Consequently, it is unsurprising to find that as geologists discovered the earth and creation were countless years older than anyone had expected, most Christian commentators (even those of a conservative nature), had virtually no difficulty accepting the fact, and Young Earth Creationism was a fringe view by the end of the nineteenth century.
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This example (of healing) is based not on a statistical formula that seeks to predict the chance of an event - it is based on clear evidence before and after, and expert testimony. However, it does not depend on people wishing it would be so, but simply ascribing the healing to God is purely due to the person making a statement, âI prayed for healing, and happily I believe my prayer was answeredâ.
You and I may or may not believe her statement. There is little else to say.
Events that are recorded as witnessed events, are so, but those who attribute them to the power of God do so based on faith.
I get the impression you think there should be another explanation, or at the very least, some demonstration that you or others may set up, to show what faith may or may not be - at least this my best effort at understanding your comment.
[quote=âGJDS, post:689, topic:36256, full:trueâ]
The example I gave relies on an examiner (doctor) to make a valid observation - if he concludes the healing was not caused by his action, he would conclude it was due to some other cause - perhaps as yet unknown to science, or perhaps a chance event - the person healed may ascribe it to answered prayer, the atheist to chance, luck, misdiagnosis.[/quote]
Sure. Yet, some information has been gained. Healing has taken place under a specific set of circumstances. If this specific event or similar ones are never repeated, the information will remain of little value. However, over time, if related events occur, small pieces of information build up and can become of greater value. To be clear, Iâm speaking hypothetically hereâIâm not trying to make a case that the absence of such information would definitely exclude any particular possibility.
The relevant point is the event would be out of the ordinary. A supernatural event as I understand it, is ascribed through some data to a âthingâ identified as super-, or above-nature, and thus would need to have a cause-effect relationship that is physically identifiable.
Iâm not sure about that definition of a âsupernatural eventâ. I think youâre describing unexplained events. If someone believes in a supernatural cause for an unexplained event, they will make an assertion about it. They may advance this case in various ways, but if there were a physically identifiable cause, youâd be talking about something natural and not supernatural.
Otherwise we cannot do much more than ask, what was the cause?
Indeed. But, when an event occurs, we do gain information.
If I understand your commentsâŚyou feel that Christians (or theists) MUST provide some definable setting, such that a cause-effect is clearly established and then we may conclude the cause is either natural or supernatural.
If we can find evidence in nature for something, then we can conclude it is natural. Otherwise, it is unexplained. I donât see how we would conclude that something is definitively supernatural. Also, I donât see why you think I feel Christians must do anything. The only thing I said in this vein was that if theists make assertions which canât be analyzed scientifically, the assertions are not being deliberately excluded from scientific analysis.
From that you automatically decide to include or exclude a god. If you fail to identify a god through this exercise, I guess you would draw some conclusion.
No, thatâs not my thinking in this at all. Iâm interested in the epistemological aspects of this question. If thereâs natural evidence for a god, Iâll look. If the evidence is not grounded in the natural world, Iâm still listening.
I confess I am struggling to understand your point, but I will try, Are you interested in arriving at a method, or perhaps build up a data base, of events that people may regard as miracles? As I understand it, the Catholic Church follows a procedure which enables an assessment of a miracle, and if this is the central point, you may wish to comment on their processes that they follow to ascertain if it is a miracle, or not.
If instead you feel a data base may be built over time, and this may be assessed, you would face problems of data gathering, filtering out unverified observations, and end up disappointed, since I cannot see how anyone can anticipate a miracle (or supernatural event as you say) and prepare to gather information.
You also allude to unexplained phenomena - from my perspective, natural phenomena can in principle be explained using science - a phenomena to be considered a miracle requires additional criteria, and as such is talked after the event. I cannot see how you can quantify or measure faith - nor develop a methods by which we may test a faith something.
In my experience, it is common Christian practice to ascribe all events to Godâs will, and so to a Christian everything would be supernatural, if I understand you correctly. This is a general assertion that we term providence - I do not identify specific instances in my life as miracles, and in rare cases where a miracle is claimed, a great deal of examination is needed before this claim is accepted.[quote=âJohn_Dalton, post:693, topic:36256â]
If thereâs natural evidence for a god, Iâll look. If the evidence is not grounded in the natural world, Iâm still listening
[/quote]
This broadens the question considerably - if I understand this, you would seek some evidence that would demonstrate to you the existence of god, and this evidence may be data from the physical world or elsewhere. I remember reading such material many years ago, but nowadays, I base my views on the existence, and great need we have to seek, what is good. This outlook is based on reflection and experience, and thus may lack the objectivity demanded by an impersonal scientific enquiry. Faith and the necessity for us to seek and find some measure of goodness in our life and this world form the basis imo for such an outlook.
I guess it all boils down to what we personally regard as evidence on this matter.
Now I understand your point - if theist make assertions than we must accept scrutiny from others - I am not sure such scrutiny would be scientific as I understand science. On natural evidence for Godâs existence - I understand what this means, but I also restate that if I find a natural evidence (as I understand this) of a god, I would reject it outright, since God cannot be subject to natural forces or phenomena, or to experimental investigations of an object. Indeed Christians believe that knowledge of God is purely an act by God (revelation) and thus is God dependent (if I can state it in this awkward way) - so if we need demonstration and proof we need to look elsewhere (perhaps in our life and experiences).
I think that a meaningful dialogue would need to be more specific.
No. Iâm only pointing out that when events occur information is gained which could potentially be subject to scientific analysis. Thatâs it.
Not in my mind. Thatâs just my personal outlook, which I offered to set straight that your statement âFrom that you automatically decide to include or exclude a godâ does not reflect my viewpoint.
Thatâs not my point at all. I never said such a thing.
I think my point was quite specific, but you seem to be broadening its scope well beyond my intent or my words. If it doesnât seem meaningful enough in its own narrow right, I understand.
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Thanks for an interesting exchange, but I must say I am struggling to understand your point - perhaps we cannot identify common ground.
In such a scenario, it would be indistinguishable from God doing nothing and natural processes being the cause. This means that it is not conducive to scientific investigation because it is impossible to construct a null hypothesis, the conditions under which the lack of Godâs actions could be detected. This is what I meant earlier when I said that Christians define Godâs actions in such a way that it is excluded from scientific investigation. If you want to believe through faith that God is acting through nature I fully support you in doing so, but I think it is wrong to accuse scientists of excluding explanations when those explanations are not falsifiable, a basic requirement for hypotheses in science.
What would this evidence be?[quote=âGJDS, post:692, topic:36256â]
You and I may or may not believe her statement. There is little else to say.
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In science, you need empirical observations that can be repeated. This doesnât mean you have to repeat the actual event, but you need something like MRI scans, x-rays, chemistry labs, and so forth that others can examine. In science, you need evidence that is independent of the person making the claim.[quote=âGJDS, post:692, topic:36256â]
Events that are recorded as witnessed events, are so, but those who attribute them to the power of God do so based on faith.
I get the impression you think there should be another explanation, or at the very least, some demonstration that you or others may set up, to show what faith may or may not be - at least this my best effort at understanding your comment.
[/quote]
I am not trying to challenge the faith aspect of these comments, or at least I am trying not to. It isnât my purpose here to try and convince people not to be Christians or not to have faith. Rather, I am addressing the much narrower question of whether claimed miracles or supernatural events meet the standards needed for a scientific investigation. If none of the evidence points to anything outside of natural processes and you believe through faith that God is acting through these processes, then I have no problem with that. The only problem I have had is the accusation that scientists are purposefully excluding obvious and observable evidence for supernatural events because of a pre-existing commitment to exclude supernatural explanations.
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Just to make my own position clearer . . .
You donât HAVE TO do anything. If you believe through faith that God heals people through means we mere mortals can not observe or perceive, then thatâs fine. Iâm not going to tell you what you should or shouldnât believe when it comes to matters of faith, and I would hope that you wouldnât let me do so.
However, when it comes to science there are requirements. I am merely pointing out what those requirements would be. If you want to claim that miracles can be inferred through the scientific method, then I am going to ask for testable and falsifiable hypotheses. It isnât a matter of excluding or including God. It is a matter of constructing hypotheses. Science doesnât make absolute statements about what doesnât exist. Science can only state that our limited knowledge is either consistent or inconsistent with a given hypothesis.
In my own opinion, the great scientists in history are those that figured out unique and simple ways to test simple hypotheses. For example, Einstein didnât win the Nobel Prize for Relativity. Instead, Einstein won the Nobel Prize for a simple experiment that demonstrated the photovoltaic effect. Higgs didnât win the Nobel Prize for theorizing the Higgs boson. Rather, he won the Nobel Prize along with the staff at the LHC for demonstrating through experimentation the existence of the Higgs boson. Science isnât about excluding ideas. Science is about including hypotheses that have been supported by experimental evidence. That is the idea I am trying to get across.
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Yes, if I understand you correctly, you are saying science would be able confirm this scenario - absolutely agreed!
But whatâs your point? The scenario is one of the possibilities⌠but ANY scenario about God is also something science cannot confirm.
What exactly is it that you are trying conclude?
I know of no testable hypotheses that is testable.
I donât see why science couldnât confirm something God does. We can confirm when a human does something, so why not God? If God came down to Earth as a 1,000 foot tall avatar of some kind and started hurling down meteors, I think science could confirm that.
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Back to the OP:
First, note the false dichotomy Mike sets up in the title, âWhat biblical reasons are there to accept the scientific view of the earth as billions of years old?â
Itâs not merely a scientific view that the earth is far more than 6000 years old, itâs painfully obvious to any observer who is not clinging to a selectively-literal view of Genesis.
Again the false dichotomy. One can see that the age of the earth is far more than 6000 without listening to a single scientist. Mike is not only declaring science out of bounds (except, apparently, when he chooses to repeatedly bring it up and misrepresent scientific epistemology), he is declaring the most basic, direct observations by himself to be out of bounds.
Heliocentrism is not obvious from direct observation, yet Mike accepts it. An old earth is obvious from direct observation.
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