Post on 28-Jul-2020
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Sci-202 Unit 7 Thinking about Science
and Religion: The Christian Landscape
Brent Royuk Concordia University, Nebraska
Relax Our Approach The View from the Ivory Tower
Relax Relax This Stuff is Not Simple
Relax Relax This Stuff is Not Simple
Discussing Science
and Religion
Theological Traditions
Biblical Interpretation
Biblical Anthropology
of Human Nature
Definitions of Science
Science-and-Religion Models
Personal Concerns
Introduction What is Truth? John 18:38
Philosophy of Science
The Problem of Induction
Realism
Instrumentalism
Symbiosis
Logical Positivism Fallibilism
Constructive Empiricism
Kuhn & Paradigm Shifts
Popper’s Falsifiability Crieterion
Epistemological Anarchism
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A More Excellent Way John 18: 37-38
Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into
the world– to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth
listens to my voice.” Pilate said to him, “What is truth?” After he said this, he
went back outside to the Jews and told them, “I find no guilt in him.”
Different Questions Different Methods
Scientific Questions • Does the earth go around the
sun? • Do atoms exist? • Is genetic information
encoded in DNA? • Does continental drift occur? • Is the earth 4.5 billion years
old? • Are humans and chimpanzees
descended from common ancestors?
• Is space 10 or 11-dimensional, with 6 or 7 of the dimensions compactified?
Religious Questions • Does God exist? • Did God create the universe? • Was Jesus born to a virgin
mother? • Is body and blood present in
the bread and wine at Holy communion?
• Are we born sinful? • Did Jesus save us by dying on
a cross? • Are we going to live forever in
heaven after we die? • Is the body and blood of Jesus
present in the bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper?
God and Truth Two Kinds of Truth?
How do we determine truth in religion?
Why do we ultimately trust the Bible as the
revealed Word of God?
Now faith is the substance of things
hoped for, the evidence of things not
seen. Heb 11:1
“If it’s truth you’re interested in, Dr.
Tyree’s philosophy class is right down the hall” –Indiana Jones
truth Empirical
Provisional
Tentative
Skepticism
Truth Revelatory
Eternal
Absolute
Faith
truth vs. Truth What is truth?
truth vs. Truth How do they relate?
Truth is more important than
truth, right? Can Truth
inform truth?
Does Truth trump truth?
Can truth change Truth?
Compartmentalism
Complementarity Intelligent Design
Empirical Only? Natural Explanations Only?
Old Earth Creationism
Young Earth Creationism
S&R Models
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What Is Science?
Science Is: Natural Explanations for Empirical Observations?
Empirical Observations?
çOnly collect data with senses Include all we know and believeè
Natural Explanations?
çOnly natural explanations in science Intelligence is empirically detectableè
Methodological Naturalism
Complementarity Compartmentalism
Open Science
Intelligent Design
Theistic Science Young Earth Creationism
S&R Models
S&R Models
Philosophical Position
Definition of Science
Ideological Position
Practitioners
Philosophical Naturalism
(PN)
Natural explanations for empirical observations
Atheists Agnostics
The Academy
Methodological Naturalism
(MN)
Natural explanations for empirical observations
Complementarists
Comparmentalists
Templeton, ASA, Bube, Collins, Van
Till, Barbour, Polkinghorne,
BioLogos
Open Science
A formal study of the observable universe
Intelligent Design
Discovery Institute, Behe,
Dembski, Johnson
Theistic Science
Best explanations
for all we observe or
believe
Young Earth Creationism
Old Earth Creationism
CRS, ICR, AIG, Price, Whitcomb,
Morris, Gish, Ham, Ross
But first…
The cosmos is all that is or ever was or
ever will be --Carl Sagan, Cosmos.
The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins • cf William Paley’s
Watchmaker Hypothesis, 1802
Compartmentalism
Complementarity Intelligent Design
Old Earth Creationism
Young Earth Creationism
In its broadest sense, theistic science is rooted in the idea that
Christians ought to consult all they know or have reason to believe
when forming and testing hypotheses, when explaining things in science, and when evaluating the
plausibility of various scientific hypotheses.
--J. P. Moreland
Compartmentalism
Complementarity Intelligent Design
Old Earth Creationism
Young Earth Creationism
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It is my contention that recognizing the Bible as a
reliable source of information for the conduct of science is essential for an effective use of resources and for correct
results. --Larry Vardiman, ICR
Compartmentalism
Complementarity Intelligent Design
Old Earth Creationism
Young Earth Creationism
Things that look like they were designed, probably were... If intelligence is an operative
component of the universe, a science that methodologically excludes its existence will be
susceptible to being trapped in an endless chase for materialistic
causes that do not exist... --Donald L. Ewert
Compartmentalism
Complementarity Intelligent Design
Old Earth Creationism
Young Earth Creationism
The difference between science that is open and closed is the difference in responding to a
question: Has the history of the universe included both natural and non-natural causes? In an open science (liberated from MN) this question can be
evaluated based on scientific evidence; a scientist begins with MN, but is flexible and is willing to be
persuaded by evidence and logic. In a closed science (restricted by MN), evidence and logic are not the determining factors because the inevitable conclusion — no matter what is being studied, or what is the evidence — must be that "it happened
by natural process.” --Craig Rusbult
Compartmentalism
Complementarity Intelligent Design
Old Earth Creationism
Young Earth Creationism
Sure, Ham talked about some science here and there, but almost all of what he said focused on trying to support a young earth viewpoint. Since
he's not a scientist, the great majority of his arguments amounted -- over and over again --
to "Because the Bible says so." Nye's main argument was, "Because the scientific evidence
says so," and he cited a lot of reasonable evidence for an old earth. While Ham did make a
few effective points that you don't have to accept evolution to do good science, the
compelling scientific evidence for design in nature got skipped over. –Casey Luskin
Compartmentalism
Complementarity Intelligent Design
Old Earth Creationism
Young Earth Creationism
The Two Realms View: Propositions, theories or methodologies in theology and another discipline may involve two
distinct, nonoverlapping areas of investigation. For example, debates
about angels or the extent of the atonement have little to do with organic
chemistry. Similarly, it is of little interest to theology whether a methane
molecule contains three or four hydrogen atoms. --J.P. Moreland
Compartmentalism
Complementarity Intelligent Design
Old Earth Creationism
Young Earth Creationism
Hoimar von Ditfurth writes “To this day science is by definition the attempt to see how far man and nature can be explained
without recourse to miracles.” This is not a statement of materialist philosophy. This is
an explanation of the rules of the game. The rules are well understood. The game has been a highly successful one in the past and continues successful today.
Playing the game according to the rules does not make one an atheist. --Jean Pond
Compartmentalism
Complementarity Intelligent Design
Old Earth Creationism
Young Earth Creationism
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For the origin of the universe the current consensus in cosmology and physics is that the big bang theory
accounts best for the observational data we now have and is supported by excellent and straightforward
evidence… For the adherent to NOMA, of course, the Bible neither supports nor refutes the big bang, or vice-versa. We are happy to accept the cosmological knowledge that
the big bang offers, but we recognize that (as a scientific theory) it is subject to revision. We may find, personally, that the big bang fits well (or does not fit well) with our overall worldview, including our idea of what is aesthetically pleasing in nature… [We] do not worry about it too much one way or the other. --Jean
Pond
Compartmentalism
Complementarity Intelligent Design
Old Earth Creationism
Young Earth Creationism
Independence is a way of resolving the conflict by affirming separate spheres of validity for science and religion, with a demilitarized if fuzzy boundary… Neo-
orthodox religion is comfortable with this resolution, and most working scientists are
also quite happy with this pragmatic approach. Lutherans may feel at home
here, seeing this as a version of Luther's "two kingdoms," and there is the air of
Copenhagen and Bohr's complementarity about it. --Daniel Johnson
Compartmentalism
Complementarity Intelligent Design
Old Earth Creationism
Young Earth Creationism
Criticism I find [the Compartmentalist] view of scripture
and science (along with NOMA) to be an elaborate cop-out that gives total precedence to science at every point in the discussion carrying any significance for discovering physical reality.
Pond (and NOMA) seem to overlook the turbulent nature of scientific theories throughout history while discounting the possibility that the
Bible has a divine author capable of giving a general but accurate description of physical
reality that science is yet to fully discover. --Roy Massie
Compartmentalism
Complementarity Intelligent Design
Old Earth Creationism
Young Earth Creationism
Science and faith have different methodologies, but
they are complementary, not contradictory; a faith
without reason is as stultifying as a reason
without faith. --R. J. Berry
Compartmentalism
Complementarity Intelligent Design
Old Earth Creationism
Young Earth Creationism
They [S&R] ask different questions: in the one case, how things happen, by what
process?; in the other, why things happen, to what purpose?... The fact that we now know that the universe did not spring into being ready made a few thousand years
ago but that it has evolved over a period of fifteen billion years from its fiery origin in the Big Bang, does not abolish Christian talk of the world as God's creation, but it certainly modifies certain aspects of that
discourse. --John Polkinghorne
Compartmentalism
Complementarity Intelligent Design
Old Earth Creationism
Young Earth Creationism
Paul Dirac invented something called quantum field theory which is fundamental to our understanding of the physical world. I can't
believe Dirac's ability to invent that theory, or Einstein's ability to invent the general theory of relativity, is a sort of spin-off from our
ancestors having to dodge sabre-toothed tigers. It seems to me that something much more profound, much more mysterious is going
on. I would like to understand why the reason within and the reason without fit together at a deep level. Religious belief provides me with a entirely rational and entirely satisfying explanation of that fact. It says that the reason within and the reason without have a common origin in this deeper rationality which is the reason of the
Creator, whose will is the ground both of my mental and my physical experience. That's for me an illustration of theology's power to
answer a question, namely the intelligibility of the world, that arises from science but goes beyond science's unaided power to answer. Remember, science simply assumes the intelligibility of the world.
Theology can take that striking fact and make it profoundly comprehensible. --John Polkinghorne
Compartmentalism
Complementarity Intelligent Design
Old Earth Creationism
Young Earth Creationism
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Criticism Christians who adopt evolution are
inconsistent because they are accepting the foundation of the humanistic
worldviews. Essentially, they are telling God that they believe Him when He told
us about the Virgin Birth, Crucifixion, and Resurrection of Christ, but they do not trust Him when He tells us about
how He created the world. –AIG Website
Compartmentalism
Complementarity Intelligent Design
Old Earth Creationism
Young Earth Creationism
Criticism • Too Deistic
God is portrayed as being more active in the Bible “He makes grass grow for the cattle” Ps. 104:14 “You bring darkness, it becomes night” Ps. 104:20 “He covers the sky with clouds” Ps. 147:8
• Evolution, being naturalistic, is fundamentally incompatible with the Christian faith The road of compromise looks attractive at first, but long experience has proved it to be a one-way street. The evolutionists at the end of the road are never satisfied until their opponents travel all the way to the atheistic void at its end. --Henry Morris
• Many aspects of evolutionary theory are directly contradictory to God’s Word. Evolution cannot be “baptized” to make it compatible with the Christian faith. --A.L. Barry
Compartmentalism
Complementarity Intelligent Design
Old Earth Creationism
Young Earth Creationism
The Game Analogy
Compartmentalism
Complementarity Intelligent Design
Old Earth Creationism
Young Earth Creationism
The God of the Gaps
Compartmentalism
Complementarity Intelligent Design
Old Earth Creationism
Young Earth Creationism
Historical Varieties of Creationism
OMPHALOS: An Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot by Phillip Henry Gosse,
1857
“Omphalos” means “navel” • Appearance of age: navels, tree rings, starlight
Publication met with derision and
indifference, faded from
history
Chief argument against: God does not lie
An invincible and untestable proposition
The Omphalos Hypothesis AKA Fully Formed Creation
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Recent (special, fiat) creation, 6000-10000 years ago
Six 24-hour Days (yom)
Macroevolution vs. Microevolution
Flood Geology Catastrophism vs. uniformitarianism Canopy Theory
Dinosaurs & Humans
Concurrent Many Varieties of
YEC
Compartmentalism
Complementarity Intelligent Design
Old Earth Creationism
Young Earth Creationism
Criticism • Scientific Philosophy • Hermeneutical Considerations
• “Blowing up one’s young people”
Compartmentalism
Complementarity Intelligent Design
Old Earth Creationism
Young Earth Creationism
Kaboom
• In the book The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, Francis Collins argues that young people brought up in homes and churches that insist on Creationism sooner or later encounter the overwhelming scientific evidence in favor of an ancient universe and the relatedness of all living things through the process of evolution and natural selection.
Compartmentalism
Complementarity Intelligent Design
Old Earth Creationism
Young Earth Creationism
The day-age position acknowledges that Bible authors sometimes use figurative language to convey God’s message and meaning, but such
language always conveys truth and never
contradicts it. –Hugh Ross
Genesis 1-2 offers an answer (to the fossil record). During six long eras, God systematically introduced new life-forms as changing conditions permitted or even required. During the seventh- the human era- God ceased from his work of creating new life-forms. –Hugh Ross
Compartmentalism
Complementarity Intelligent Design
Old Earth Creationism
Young Earth Creationism
What then is Intelligent Design? Intelligent Design begins with the observation that intelligent causes can do things which
undirected natural causes cannot. Undirected natural causes can place scrabble pieces on a board, but cannot arrange the
pieces as meaningful words or sentences. To obtain a meaningful arrangement requires an intelligent cause…
Intelligent Design presupposes neither a creator nor miracles. Intelligent Design is theologically minimalist… It is the empirical detectability of intelligent causes that renders
Intelligent Design a fully scientific theory, and distinguishes it from the design arguments of philosophers, or what has
traditionally been called "natural theology…" Intelligent Design entails that naturalism in all forms be rejected. Methodological
naturalism, the view that for the sake of science, scientific explanation ought never exceed undirected natural causes, is
to be rejected because it stifles inquiry. --William Dembski
Compartmentalism
Complementarity Intelligent Design
Old Earth Creationism
Young Earth Creationism
Irreducible Complexity • Michael Behe, the
mousetrap example
Complex Specified Information • William Dembski, the
alphabet example
The Fine-Tuning of the Universe • The universe has characteristics that allow life to exist, including the value of many physical constants, the strength of nuclear forces, etc. If any of these values were different by a small amount, life would be impossible. Taken together, these circumstances are highly improbable and suggest the existence of a designer.
Evolutionists argue by assumption • If God is excluded from any possible manifestation with the physical world, of course you’ll end up with something that looks like Darwinism. This elevates the theory to more of a belief system, that has found its way into all the sciences, often inappropriately.
Compartmentalism
Complementarity Intelligent Design
Old Earth Creationism
Young Earth Creationism
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Criticism
• MN vs. Open Science • The Chicken or Egg Question • Modern Version of “God of the Gaps”
• Theology of the Cross vs. Theology of Glory
Compartmentalism
Complementarity Intelligent Design
Old Earth Creationism
Young Earth Creationism
MN vs. Open Science • Intelligent Design supposes that supernatural forces have
crafted the world as we see it. Supernatural forces are simply not within the scope of science. Science necessarily only concerns itself with natural phenomena and natural causes. Supernatural causes are not testable, quantifiable, or qualifiable. They are simply not the scope of science. ID is unscience. Those proponents of ID are not simply insisting on better science. They are insisting on being antithetical to science and sitting down at the science table. Science cannot and should not concern itself with causes that it cannot empirically demonstrate or test. It should make no assertion that cannot be shown to be false by another scientist using the scientific method. --anonymous email blog post
Compartmentalism
Complementarity Intelligent Design
Old Earth Creationism
Young Earth Creationism
The Chicken or Egg Question • It is… possible that some un-religious scientist might become convinced, on scientific evidence, of the existence of Intelligent Design, while remaining perfectly open minded about any of the truths of religion. When that scientist shows up, I shall begin to take Intelligent Design seriously. --John Derbyshire
Compartmentalism
Complementarity Intelligent Design
Old Earth Creationism
Young Earth Creationism
Modern Version of “God of the Gaps” • ID theory posits that certain features of the natural world CAN
ONLY be explained by the active intervention of a designing intelligence. Since the entire history of science displays innumerable instances of hitherto inexplicable phenomena yielding to natural explanations (and, in fact, innumerable instances of "intelligent design" notions to explain natural phenomena being scrapped when more obvious natural explanations were worked out), the whole ID outlook has very little appeal to well-informed scientists. A scientist who knows his history sees the region of understanding as a gradually enlarging circle of light in a general darkness. If someone comes along and tells him: "This particular region of darkness HERE will never be illuminated by methods like yours," then he is naturally skeptical. "How can you possibly know that?" he will say, very reasonably. --John Derbyshire
Compartmentalism
Complementarity Intelligent Design
Old Earth Creationism
Young Earth Creationism
Theology of the Cross vs. Theology of Glory • If Luther is right, if the cross is where we really see what
God is like, then we should expect that God’s actions in the world bear the mark of the cross… Just as the Son of God limited himself by taking human form and dying on a cross, God limits divine action in the world to be in accord with rational laws which God has chosen… A theology of the cross then suggests that, contrary to the belief of ID advocates, methodological naturalism is appropriate for natural science, which is not to invoke God as an explanation for phenomena… But this God does not compel the belief of skeptics by leaving puzzles in creation which science can’t solve. The mark God has placed on creation is both more stark and more subtle. “An evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah” (Matthew 16:4 NRSV). --George Murphy
Compartmentalism
Complementarity Intelligent Design
Old Earth Creationism
Young Earth Creationism
U.S. Supreme Court, 1987: Edwards v. Aguillard “...Because the primary purpose of the Creationism Act is to advance a particular religious belief, the Act endorses religion in violation of the First Amendment.”
U.S. District Court, 2005: Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District “We have concluded that Intelligent Design is not science, and moreover that I.D. cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious antecedents.”
Compartmentalism
Complementarity Intelligent Design
Old Earth Creationism
Young Earth Creationism
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Two choices for a definition of science in the Ohio Science Standards, 2001-02: • "Science is an active process of
investigating, learning, and thinking about the natural world.”
• "Science is a method of explaining the natural world using natural processes.”
• http://www.intelligentdesignnetwork.org/OhioPoll.htm
Compartmentalism
Complementarity Intelligent Design
Old Earth Creationism
Young Earth Creationism
Some Wise Words From Neil DeGrasse Tyson
The Meta Approach
Speculative Theology: Theology based on human philosophy rather than God's revelation. • God could have…
A medical analogy: Veritable vs. Putative
“Luther has been called the Copernicus of
theology while, on the other hand, Copernicus
has been called the Luther of astronomy.”
--Donald H. Kobe
Scientists believe that…
Some Final Thoughts Finally!