Nothing I have read that is officially Biologos would suggest that the domain of all that is true is limited to the scientific consensus. Scientific consensus is a pretty reliable, not to be confused with infallible, guide to what is true about natural phenomena. Note also that consensus itself varies from essentially universal “the earth is old”, to a contested or tentative majority, “dark matter consists of yet to be discovered particles”. Objections to well established, universal consensus are generally unqualified, misinformed, and ridiculous.
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I agree and would add that a good scientist (good science) operates on the principle of trying one’s best to FALSIFY the hypothesis. So the best hypotheses stand up over time (and become more generally accepted within the scientific community) not because scientists buy into “group-think” naively, but because they have done their darndest (is that a word?) to refute their own hypothesis, but have failed to do so. I agree that ego affects us all, and sometimes scientists are reluctant to give up on their “pet theory” but competitive scientific colleagues are always waiting in the wings to shoot your own hypothesis down if you are not 
Prestige in science comes not often from just confirming existing ideas, but by coming up new and better ones (that can be tested and falsified of course!).
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Most folks here don’t accept naturalism either, and certainly not the BioLogos staff. And don’t confuse philosophical naturalism with methodological naturalism.
Accepting consensus science is a matter of trust. We have good reason to trust most scientists, As a guest writer explained here long ago, God has blessed the scientific enterprise with fruitfulness, making our lives so much better.
Occasionally science is used for nefarious purposes, but usually it is used for good. In the curious case of Fritz Haber, science was used for both good and bad–he killed millions but saved billions!
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I think that the most important thing to understand about consensus is that it isn’t the final word on what is true and what isn’t. There are two levels of scientific maturity over and above expert consensus that are far more robust and far harder to challenge.
The first is application level science. This is where scientific theories are put to work in real world situations where they have to deliver real world results. We can be pretty confident that application-level science is true because if it were wrong, then at best its failure to work as described in the textbooks would kill off your startup, and at worst it would kill off your customers, your colleagues, or you.
The second is foundation level science. This is where scientific theories have other theories that depend on them. We can be even more confident that foundation-level science is true because if it were wrong, then everything else on which it depended would be wrong as well. Since foundation level science usually has application level science that depends on it, that would make things very, very, very, very messy indeed.
I understand your frustration here. I do sometimes get the impression that academics look at consensus-level science as if it were the be-all and the end-all of what is real and what isn’t, when to be fair the scientific consensus does change from time to time and it can be influenced by social and political pressures, groupthink, or biased editorial policies. But at the same time, one does need to be careful. I often hear people viewing potential weaknesses of scientific consensus or the peer review process as if they were a free pass to let them disregard anything and everything about science that they don’t like. They aren’t. Consensus level science may occasionally turn out to be flaky, but application level science and foundation level science are about as rock solid as you can possibly get.
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Is it fair to say that without our understandings of genomic activity and molecular biology we would not have been able to develop mRNA COVID vaccines and follow the mutations, the evolution of the virus? Someone active in the science could probably say it better. Our understanding of evolution and the tools developed to study it have application level status and are also foundational?
Yes, that’s an example of both application-level science and foundation-level science.
There are certainly at least some aspects of the theory of evolution that are at both application level and foundation level. Evolutionary algorithms in computer science are the example that I am the most familiar with – these depend on the ability of mutations and natural selection to be able to produce new information in order to deliver their results. Other areas that come to mind include virology, epidemiology and cancer research, though biologists would be better qualified to provide details than I am.
There was a thread that discussed this particular question a few years back:
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Whatever is true is going to line up with reality. A literal/historical reading of genesis1-11 for example is not true because it does not line up with reality.
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Allen - you are on to something. A problem with referencing ‘consensus’ as an authoritative, even absolute, perspective on a topic, is that it is then inferred that that perspective is irrefutable, i.e., no idea that conflicts with the ‘consensus’ is even allowed to enter the discussion. In our world I mostly see this linked to environmental activism on a range of topics. Activists are by definition ‘true believers’ so it is convenient for them to justify their actions or proposed interventions using the ‘consensus’ argument. Unfortunately, history has not been kind to environmental activism in particular. I could list all the things they have been wrong about but others have done that much more eloquently and researched the topics so that they are well-referenced and thus worthy of attention. Examples would be Ronald Bailey’s book The End of Doom, Matt Ridley’s book The Rational Optimist, and Hans Rosling’s Factfulness. For me, utilizing ‘consensus’, and especially one someone attaches ‘scientific’ to it is a red flag alerting me that I’m about to be ‘told’ what to think.
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Only problem is that book authors usually do not write about consensus science, but rather more edgy views, unless they are writing textbooks.
On environmental issues, it is common for critics to quote provocative voices and represent them as consensus. Also, predictions are by nature opinions and conjecture rather than science, and of course are more likely to be in error.
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Sure - but you do need to read the books to know what they say.
Regarding environmental activists, they of course are seeking to inspire activism or justify their activist stance, and so being hyperbolic and apocalyptic is necessary, or at least they believe it to be necessary.
The interesting thing about the apocalyptic environmental predictions of the 70s is that they are almost all wrong by orders of magnitude. That is why one should be skeptical of those who lean on ‘consensus’ statements to justify their positions and don’t bother to give you factually salient and contextually accurate information to make your own conclusions (because they can’t).
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Global warming is a scientific consensus, nothing to do with activism. I bought in to anti-nuclear hysteria for decades. No more. So how are you with the scientific consensus on global warming?
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Why do accept this consensus of your Christian community in this way?
Or… can you demonstrate this “free thinking” you talk about in some way. How do you think differently than your family or church?
Me neither. But… I had it easier than those raised Christian. I started with science and then read the Bible, never reading it in a way that was contrary to the findings of science.
I reject naturalism. I also don’t harbor any delusion that there is anything purely logical about it. Logic only takes you from premises to conclusions (or visa versa). So you have just chosen to adopt premises which preclude naturalism just like me.
The only contradiction is with the premises you have chosen to accept.
The majority of the world is theist, so I don’t know what consensus you are talking about.
That is not quite correct. This is far less the case for science than it is the basis of your church and fellow Christians accepting something as true because of their consensus. Science relies on the testing of hypotheses and written procedures anyone can follow to get the same result no matter what they want or believe. For religious groups, consensus is all they have.
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Hole in the ozone? We fixed that environmental hazard. Leaded gasoline? We fixed that environmental hazard. Smoking? We regulate it much better now. Nobody can sicken us with 2nd hand smoke in this country. Global warming is upon us now, it’s not something in the future. And so on.
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Wildfires pretty much globally fits one apocalyptic book I’ve read.
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I highly doubt that you reject scientific knowledge which is based on methodological naturalism. If you have an infection do you accept the scientific consensus that it is caused by germs? Do you seek out a doctor who is highly trained and bases his treatments on the scientific consensus, often involving antibiotics that were themselves developed through the scientific method?
This is just the tip of the iceberg. The fact that you rely on computers and the internet to communicate with us means you are relying on methodological naturalism.
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Read the books and then respond.
I believe the earth’s atmosphere is warming (fact based) and that human activity is a likely contributor (untestable hypothesis that seems likely). The apocalyptic predictions of future events, and the apocalyptic assertions about current conditions are not likely to be true. For example, describing global warming as an existential threat to life on earth and human existence is hyperbolic in the extreme. Also, statements about needing to bend the temperature curve by 2030 or we loose our window of opportunity to save the planet have no basis in fact, and are not even accurate conclusions based on IPCC (consensus) modeling. The recent bill passed by the Senate and expected to pass the house and be signed by President Biden is being taught as necessary actions to stop global warming. The Rhodium Group estimate for CO2 emissions reductions from the bill, if plugged into the United Nations climate model to measure the impact on global temperature by 2100 finds the bill will reduce the estimated global temperature rise at the end of this century by all of 0.028 degrees Fahrenheit in the optimistic case. In the pessimistic case, the temperature difference will be 0.0009 degrees Fahrenheit, i.e., inconsequential impact on the climate but consequential in the sense that there are many other places to spend money that would impact human well-being, e.g. malaria vaccines.
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There isn’t anything untestable about it. Arrhenius and others in the late 1800’s hypothesized that if we continued to increase atmospheric carbon dioxide levels that temperatures would rise, and they based their hypothesis on solid physics which is just as true today as it was over 100 years ago. Well, we ran the experiment, and wouldn’t you know it, temperatures went up as predicted. Hypothesis tested.
I don’t know of any scientist who as ever said that global warming will sterilize the planet, nor have I heard of any scientist who has said that global warming will cause humans to go extinct.
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The physics allow one to make the hypothesis but they do not provide evidence that the hypothesis is correct, i.e., that the human contribution to elevation of O2 gas in the atmosphere is the primary cause of elevated atmospheric temperatures. Correlation does not equal cause, at least that is what scientists were taught to think when I got my degrees. So far, the science has been insufficient to make useful projections about how climate will change over the coming decades, much less what effect our actions will have on it. Despite the media driven overreach of existing data, there has been no detectable impact on hurricanes over the past century, Greenland’s ice sheet isn’t shrinking more rapidly today than 80 yrs ago, nor is sea level rising at a rate that would be different than many previous changes in sea level over past millennia.
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