Thank you. Can you clarify? Would creating life be wrong?
There’s the humorous story about a scientist who wanted to prove to God that he could do the same thing. God agreed to watch him, and the man assembled his ingredients to make life: dirt, water, etc. God interrupted him, saying, “Not so fast–you have to make your own dirt!”
On the other hand, God has so many other roles–Judge, confidant, friend–does He have to be the only source of anything?
Thanks.
It’s beautiful here in Michigan today–we had a nice, soaking rain after a prolonged dry spell, and the grass and flowers are perking up. My garden is growing weeds nearly as well as the eggplant (aubergines, I think, in England), but I’m looking forward to reducing the weeds’ number this weekend. I hope your day is going well!
Not necessarily but humans do not have the wisdom for it.
Someone will decide it is a good idea to recreate Dinosaurs or other extinct creatures. You only have to look at history to see what happens when humanity decides it knows best in terms of fauna and flora. We do not understand the dynamics of ecology well enough to understand what changing it can do.
If Evolution is a long drawn out process to find balance and harmony a quick fix by humanity is doomed to failure. We cannot distinguish between compassion, fantasy, and meddling.
Yep. Back in school – Late in the evening, while taking samples from a column in order to purify a bacterial protein, a friend popped their head into the cold room and asked, “What are you up to?” I jokingly said, “Same as the rest of us, finding a cure for cancer.”
I didn’t think for a moment my work might have any impact on a cure for cancer, and for the record, it still doesn’t. Basic research isn’t ‘unfocused research’, it is just work that may not have immediate social or applied benefit. Sometimes it can have big impact but most of the time, it advances knowledge a bit at a time. And those bits often add up in someone else’s work that does have a big impact.
The advent of agriculture about 12k years ago falls in that problem too. That drove a lot of changes. At least on the plus side of our short-sighted manipulations, there are dogs.
In any case, I don’t think discovering how life emerged is necessarily risky because our best application would likely make a crappy cell. It’s so much easier to modify existing organisms, which are more robust and pre-adapted to current environments. Origin of life research is unlikely to speed the systems biology and bioengineering developed and applied to current organisms.
Personally, given some issues I’ve had with my back, I think life never should have left the water.
I like Polkinghorne’s description of YEC exegesis: “flat-footed”.
He has written some brilliant books, BTW; Science and Creation is excellent.
It is a bit bizarre.
There are computer “games” where the input is simple spots on the screen. The spots move and change according to very simple rules, and depending on the starting conditions can produce some amazingly complexity and beauty. Some of us in my university days spent an afternoon varying the initial conditions by one pixel at a time to see how such tiny changes could have immense impact. And we recorded the inputs so we could repeat especially impressive progressions.
If we humans can get enjoyment out of watching such simple inputs turn into complex, beautiful patterns with myriad beautiful patterns along the way, I see no reason why we should exclude the possibility that God just enjoyed watching the process!
That one drives me up the proverbial wall! I still maintain that if God had meant to teach science in the scriptures, He would have at the very least given instructions that the “bronze sea” in the Temple would be thirty-one cubits around since it was to be ten cubits across.
“Do not confuse your labels with reality”.
– Dr. Mikhel Soovik
Mental image: “God of the planks” – the bridge is continuously planks.
And about His nature, and what “good” means, and a lot more. It often comes down to setting one’s self up as God’s judge.
Like a rock ‘dam’ in a river: it’s fun at any stage, and only happens one rock at a time (well, generally; there was the summer that a friend brought rocks by the raft-load and just dumped them) and for the most part can be enjoyed at any stage.
From my sister-in-law at Boeing . . . you’d be surprised how often “good enough to work” is the engineer’s standard!
FWIW, she worked on the stealth bombers.
Quite nicely delineated! It contain perhaps the best definition of “scientism” as I normally encounter the term – far better than some authors have done.
As for those apologists, the real trouble is when they are confident that harmonization can be achieved solely by appeal to other Bible passages, as though the writers had no worldview or culture or idioms or ignorance.
To quote one of my math professors, “Nicely done – but there is a more elegant proof”.
As opposed to how some people think it means we don’t know anything.
I’d say that goes too far – it’s scientific in that it is a conjecture that conforms to known scientific/natural laws/rules. It’s not a hypothesis until testable, though would it being a hypothesis make it more scientific?
Would it capture the points being made to say that belief that “the model is possible” is scientific, but belief that “it must be correct” is not? We can say that a model is compatible with scientific knowledge. Also, most people would probably grant that a model presuming that observed patterns continue to apply is more scientific than one that doesn’t. Technically, the claim that all laws of nature will change dramatically tomorrow is compatible with all scientific knowledge, but it does not seem very scientific.
There are a number of semantic issues - what exactly does it mean for something to be scientific or true?
Quick fixes by humanity have a tendency to create additional problems, possibly worse than the original problem. In that I agree.
What you wrote about a “process to find balance and harmony” describes something else than evolution. There is no long-term balance or harmony in nature, and evolution does not aim towards these goals.
Evolution put simply is merely heritable changes in the gene pool of a population. External conditions (natural selection) tends to filter gene combinations that increase the proportion of those genes in the future generations (higher fitness), locally. Cooperation and symbiosis may increase fitness and may therefore become more common in suitable conditions. In such conditions, it could be claimed that evolution leads towards cooperation and symbiosis, locally. Even that is not the same as ‘balance and harmony’ as altered conditions could remove any selective advantage gained through cooperation - the cooperation is selfish by nature.
Only if you consider Evolution to be a cold scientific process. If it is indeed from God ther will be purpose and harmony.
In fact Nture is remarkably harmonious and balanced, a fact that brings people to a belief in God. Unfortunately such values are not measured or valued by sceince.
God may use evolution as a tool that leads towards a goal He has decided. That kind of external guiding of what happens is not evolution, it is one form of creation.
The marvels of the universe may bring people closer to God. Yet, nature is not harmonious or stay in a state of balance in the long term. The belief that there is a balance of nature was fairly common a century ago but was abandoned as more data accumulated. After that, the idea of a lasting balance of nature has mainly been supported as part of ideologies that paint a picture of the Earth as an interacting whole (the Gaia hypothesis and similar beliefs).
If you use the words in a non-standard way, please tell some examples of the balance and harmony of nature. That would help to understand what you are thinking when you use those words.
Who is denying science? Not me. However, it is not God neither is it infallible or complete in its assertions.
I get so tired of "all or nothing " mentality.
That works. If it’s merely compatible, it’s conjecture; if it is testable, it’s hypothesis.
Language can be sloppy. A “scientific model” can be on the level of law or anywhere from there down to conjecture. BTW, conjecture is above “guess”; it has to be framed in ways that lean towards developing hypotheses from it.
Okay – another aspect of conjecture: it has to be linked to existing scientific knowledge; wild speculation doesn’t count. “There’s something wrong with general relativity” would not rise to conjecture; “I think there’s something wrong with general relativity – look at this data” closes the gap; “I think there’s something wrong with general relativity; this data suggests it’s incomplete – I think if we modify it in such-and-such way it will work” makes it to conjecture because it identifies problem and at least points to a solution.
Off the top of my head, I’d say “scientific” applies if something is sufficiently rigorous that at the very least someone clever enough could draw hypotheses from it. I’m reminded of a panel discussion where one cosmologist declared that string theory is not science but is mathematical metaphysics; I think it was Neil Tyson who suggested that it is nevertheless scientific because it conforms to what is known, a suggestion the panel agreed with.
That suggests a sort of border region where things can be scientific without qualifying as science – which I grant just muddies the waters.
As for “true”, in scientific terms, I’ll pass, with the note that one geology professor said that truth is beyond the realm of geology; that the best we can do is accurate.
One of my botany professors maintained that there is self-reinforcing and -correcting dynamic equilibrium in the long term. But the self-correcting aspect can be quite chaotic for periods that are long in human terms, and not at all harmonious; self-correcting in an ecology can be devastatingly hostile as corrections just eliminate some or many species.
I think of that every time I encounter a clump of a certain invasive species here. It has no natural enemies that can survive here (that anyone has found, anyway), it outcompetes everything native, and it outcompetes the previous most devastating invasive species. There aren’t even any native diseases that bother it, so the leaves are always pristine to the point of looking artificial. In the long term, the ecosystem will adjust; something insect or other animal will adapt and see it as food, or some other adjustment – but between now and that point there will be definite disharmony as it wipes out other species.
That is not evolution. Insects and other animals cannot “see” a void, or potential food in that manner. That involves diagnostic intelligence that is beyond the scope of ToE. It is precisely the criticism made of media commentators who claim purpose, direction and self aware intelligence to evolution.
@St.Roymond (and others) Let me first say that I have enjoyed reading your posts. Many thoughtful.
I would disagree with this one minor detail here:
God also conforms to what is known, albeit with almost 8 billion interpretations of how they fit together. So “conformance” seems necessary but not nearly sufficient.
In the same post you had previously mentioned “testable,” which I think is utterly foundational to science. They have come up with no testable predictions from String Theory.
Regarding Origins, people are coming up with testable tiny subsets of cellular processes, such as electric gradients and auto-catalytic cycles. The hypothesis is that these were involved in Origins. If there was a naturalist Origins of life, these would be involved. True. The research is creative. But the fastidious laboratory conditions of these studies challenge the geochemical relevance of it being “Origins research” (early earth was not like that). For those who have faith that a naturalist pathway to life will be found, I’m OK with “starting somewhere.”
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And @T_aquaticus please stop raising the straw man that divine considerations are a “science stopper.” Kepler pointed out 500 years ago that by studying nature, we get to “think God’s thoughts after him.” Your “internet atheist” argument requires and imposes a theological belief held almost exclusively by atheists.
Try this on: for an atheist, nothing has meaning so why bother, and that is a science stopper. Equivalent in being ideological rubbish. So please stop.
And yet … here T is finding plenty of meaning in life and happy to do science! So he, along with millions of others are living breathing contradictions to that false trope that atheists can have no meaning in life and no motivation to do science! Please stop repeating it. It just showcases to atheists and everyone else that some Christians are not interested in actual truth or reality.
And for that matter …
No it isn’t! Many Christians, including myself and a whole lot of scientists historically and now have held the belief that while we believe God is involved, it need not stop us from investigating the causes of things in physical terms. Einstein also believed he was “thinking God’s thoughts” after him even though he was no traditional kind of theist. T is right that using God as an explanatory crutch to get past some unexplainable step is to not being doing science at that step. And if you’re satisfied then that “God just did it” and you don’t ask questions as a result, then indeed it was a science stopper. The one who investigates for physical causality is doing science. Just like the plumber who looks for a leak instead of just praying over your pipes is doing the real plumbing. I guarantee you, Marty, you will fire the second plumber and hire the first. Science is no different - and no more atheistic than the plumbing as a result.
@Mervin_Bitikofer You did not read my post carefully before assuming its content. You argue against positions I do not hold and statements I did not make.
Let me try to clarify: T argues that considering divine action is a science stopper. I toss out a dumb statement about atheism which is “equivalent ideological rubbish.” You then take strong issue with what I am calling ideological rubbish as if I am promoting it.
I also point out T’s argument requires a theological position which is anything but mainstream. You then respond as if I am arguing FOR that theological position.
