Slightly paraphrasing the original:
There is a God-shaped void in everyone that only Christ can fill.
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A lot of what you wrote is outside my expertise to assess.
But on the above, in fact, “material forces alone are sufficient” is more than a pre-selected conclusion, it’s fundamental to what science is. (IIRC Falk talks about this a bit in “The Fool and the Heretic” when he says he doesn’t think what Todd Wood does is science.)
That’s because science is about making sense of what appears to be an inherently intelligible universe. Answering questions with “God did it” doesn’t really serve to make sense of the world. You need to be really really sure you can’t and can never find a material explanation before you invoke miracles, and when you do, you’ve left the scope of science.
Does this mean that science is inherently atheistic, or at best, deist? I don’t think so. In Him all things are held together. All things, even things that appear to conform to readily intelligible patterns, not just the rare occasions when those patterns are violated, involve God’s agency.
Being a theist doesn’t mean you should drop the scientific method of trying to explain observations materialistically. It just means 1) you believe regular events occur under dual causation, material and divine (ie that God creates and sustains an ordered, intelligible Universe) and 2) you believe there are some pattern-breaking events that are therefore outside the scope of science. For example, the Resurrection.
It also doesn’t mean you should focus on finding further examples of those pattern-breaking events, as if belief in God hinges on finding them. (ID/God of the Gaps.) For whatever reason God seems to be very sparing in his use of those events. Really although during Jesus’ incarnation there were many signs and wonders, as Paul noted, the spread of Christianity really in large part has been built on a single miracle: the Resurrection.
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Of course, the distinction between philosophical naturalism and methodological naturalism is useful here. In terms of absolute beginnings, though, the distinction may not be as easy to parse.
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Limiting science to only exploring marterial forces is a reasonable limitation.
concluding that, therefore, material forces must be an adequate or sufficient explanation for any particular phenomenon is logically fallacious. that is completely non sequitur.
i trust we dont take that approach to the resurrection… i would agree that science, as science, simply cannot explore non-material or supernatural forces, and could not speak further on the topic…
concluding, therefore, that strictly material forces can sufficiently explain the resurrection would be completely fallacious.
and thus my main and core question… is the creation of the first life one of these pattern-breaking events?
and can science tell us anything that could legitimately inform our conclusion on that topic?
Science tells us about atomic and molecular behavior, and my nephrectomy account tells us that God is sovereign over the timing and placing of those reactions (which I don’t think you doubt), kidney DNA in particular. So it is not a leap to imagine, even though we don’t know the particulars, that in some extreme providence, abiogenesis is also within God’s realm.
So you agree that science is limited to material or non-supernatural forces. Given this any explanation has to be limited to non-supernatural forces. So what is your problem? The supernatural explanation comes from the Bible. Which thankfully is not limited to non-supernatural forces.
Why is the Bible’s explanation not adequate for you? Why do you want confirmation from science? Which you will never get.
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this again is completely non sequitur, unless i misunderstand you. it should be obvious if i take your method and try to apply it to examining the resurrection of Jesus…
you would really say that “any explanation of the resurrection has to be limited to non-supernatural forces”?
I have just read Falk’s review (which I ought to have done earlier; forgive me). I don’t see that he’s doing that. He says, on spontaneous abiogenesis, “the jury is still out”. There is a difference between thinking materialism currently can’t explain something, and thinking it never will be able to. It’s wise to be careful about that distinction, because things in the first category have a habit of becoming explained, because scientific knowledge grows incrementally.
I have also just realised I’m getting two different threads mixed up, but hey, might as well run with it: Again, I’m not qualified to assess the RNA replication evidence. So I am willing to defer to those who are. Who says the jury is out? “Everyone doing the science.”
Having now read Falk’s review, I wonder if you’re getting two things - abiogenesis and evolution - mixed up here:
As I understand it, Falk’s point is that evolution is well established (the jury is not out on that one, in the eyes of those doing the science). Yes he just asserts it here rather than expounding the reasons to believe that, probably because he knows Meyer already accepts that. He’s really saying, if you believe evolution then you shouldn’t write off spontaneous abiogenesis as impossible, since both involve the creation of information by materialistic forces.
I think it’s pretty well accepted that the Resurrection would be a pattern-breaking affair. This is why being a Christian is a religious position, not a scientific one. Science, witnessing the Resurrection, would just say “I can’t explain that”, not try to deny that it had happened (as an atheist / philosophical materialist would be forced to).
Actually we could ask the question of whether or not it really happened, and we could try to examine the evidence for and against. That would be doing history, not science. People have done that and the evidence is quite good, as it happens. But still at the end of the day, I don’t think many people these days come to Christian faith purely by reasoned examination of the historical evidence. Mainly they come through a spiritual experience, perhaps supported by awareness of that evidence. So again, it’s a religious position, not a historical one.
Maybe I misunderstood you.
So science is or is not limited to non-supernatural forces?
Would "any explanation offered by science has to be limited to non-supernatural forces” be clearer?
I think just about everybody here knows you can’t apply science to the resurrection of Jesus. So how do we know Jesus and the other people recorded as being raised from the dead were actually raised from the dead? I do believe the Bible, and not science, tells me so.
Just like I believe God guided evolution in a manner that is not detectable by science.
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Just like the first apostles did?
Sure, we believe because of the testimony of those who witnessed actual data with their senses. But they concluded that a resurrection happened not because they read it in their bibles, but because of what their eyes saw, ears heard, and hands touched, no?
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Strange, but not immediately. So I guess just having the data (nice touch trying to get science in this) wasn’t enough.
not science per se, but certainly empirical data.
yes, thanks. And on that, my point is not that i have any need for science to “confirm” a miracle or divine intervention happened (which is indeed impossible.)
what i’m objecting to is the propensity of scientists, even Christian ones, to insist on finding (or insisting that there must be yet undiscovered) a materialistic explanation when exploring biological data (whether we might be talking about a resurrected corpse or abiogenesis).
my bottom line claim: science, even while acting well within its own lane, should yet be able to know when to refrain from offering an (materialistic) explanation.
and given that such divine intervention is possible and recognized by us Christians as something that has occasionally happened… science even as science should reasonably be able to conclude “there is no conceivable scientific explanation given everything we currently know about science.”
by its nature, any such scientific conclusion is tentative and open to correction by future discoveries or new data, but the conclusion “this is beyond the ability of any known or even conceivable materialistic cause” should indeed be a reasonable scientific conclusion. had there been a scientist there to examine a biblical resurrection, or some other bona fide miracle or divine intervention, i would hope and edpect that would be the conclusion he would so reach.
There is no comparison between any entirely natural process like abiogenesis, whether grounded by God or no, and supervention of the laws of nature. They are infinitely different categories.
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The example I’m about to cite isn’t biological, but it is illustrative. Copernicus and Gallileo. Although persecuted in their lifetimes, their persecutors, people who insisted both on reading the Bible as a science textbook, and insisting on their authority as arbiters of that, were eventually shown to be foolish on both fronts.
It seems to me, reasonable lessons to draw from that are, don’t read the Bible a science textbook, and, don’t be too quick to declare settled, any matter that is subject to future scientific examination.
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The geniuses of the RCC, no sarcasm, just needed time to process the information [to ensure their power]. They understood the implications immediately. Galileo, better than Bruno before him, tried to hurry them along. They took him on a wordless tour of the torture chambers. Truth is what we say it is. When we say it is. That’s power.
oh, absolutely, and no disagreement. i could site example after example of bad, unwarranted, literalistic interpretations of Scripture wherein the biblical evidence is used to provide evidence for things that i think it rather obvious were not in the minds of the original author. even worse is when a framework, or larger narrative is formed, and then biblical evidence is unnaturally forced into becoming “evidence” for things that it truly cannot provide evidence for, And we must be extremely humble in interpreting special revelation (Scripture), and not try to take what is there and force it to fit any preconceived framework or forgone conclusion.
My only plea is for the same humility on the other side, when it is general revelation in view. because i see so clearly on the other side how often some basic fact or discovery in science is overinterpreted as firm or solid evidence for a larger framework when it is nothing of the kind. the two discoveries i noted quoted by Dr. Falk above were clear examples to me… his use of such modest lab work as “case closed!” level evidence simply didn’t sound like an objective observer dispassionately weighing evidence and drawing reasonable conclusions…
once i read further the actual studies, it struck me at least: in a manner similar as to how the Medieval church cherry picked biblical data, and drew far more “evidence” from those data as was warranted, it seemed to me that Dr. Falk similarly cherry picked some scientific experiments, characterized them as doing and demonstrating far, far more than they conceivably could, all in pursuit, so it certainly seemed to me, of forcing whatever paltry “evidence” that he could find to buttress his predetermined conclusion.
so i agree absolutely with your wisdom and assessment:
I would just ask that this advice be heeded by the staunch defenders of materialistic evolution as well.
Yes. Because science can do no other. Questions about purpose and agency do not form testable hypotheses and remain outside of the realm of science.
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He didn’t say “case closed”. He said “the jury is still out”. In fact, he cited that lab work in an effort to refute Meyer’s premature, inexpert claim that the case was closed and that science would never be able to understand abiogenesis.
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This tends towards (I am not saying you are making one) an inherently deistic “god of the gaps” argument, i.e. “if there is a natural explanation for something, then there cannot be a supernatural one, and vice versa”.