Faith and Science

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This is a textbook on the natural sciences. Since we only address the natural, our conlcusions will be based on the emperical evidence only. We will not form conclusions that are worldview or philosophically based.
I’ve seen that in a number of texts. The one that comes to mind first is Simpson’s “The Meaning of Evolution,” written in the late 40s.

BTW, if all ID now means is “God created the universe so that it would evolve as He desired”, then Darwin was an IDer. I’m not so sure IDers would want their religion so characterized.

But even if they did, it wouldn’t fly in science classes, since religious beliefs are not part of science.
 
Well, ricmat, that’s curious. George and I had dinner together not long ago, and much of our excellent and cordial conversation revolved around the issue of fine tuning. What do you mean by the statement that he doesn’t understand it?

StAnastasia
I’ve brought up the fine-tuning argument for design several times here at CAF (over a period of a couple years). It seems that Coyne’s name is usually used in counterarguments of the sort “God didn’t need to fiddle with the universe to make it work” or something similar. I’ll take some time and try to find the original source. Perhaps Coyne has changed his mind recently.
 
Well, ricmat, that’s curious. George and I had dinner together not long ago, and much of our excellent and cordial conversation revolved around the issue of fine tuning. What do you mean by the statement that he doesn’t understand it?

StAnastasia
i am amazed that we spend so much time debating YEC and ID they are protestant arguments meant to defend Sola Scriptura. why do we spend so much time talking about them?
 
i am amazed that we spend so much time debating YEC and ID they are protestant arguments meant to defend Sola Scriptura. why do we spend so much time talking about them?
Because we have geocentrists and YECs defending these positions on the forum!

StAnastasia
 
Well, ricmat, that’s curious. George and I had dinner together not long ago, and much of our excellent and cordial conversation revolved around the issue of fine tuning. What do you mean by the statement that he doesn’t understand it?

StAnastasia
Here’s one example:

wired.com/wired/archive/10.12/pope_astro_pr.html
Anthropic arguments are based on the notion that the universe has been specially tailored for the emergence of life. On both the cosmological and subatomic scales, from the force of gravity to electromagnetic bonds, the universe is shaped by powers that seem finely tuned for life to evolve. Evidence of an intelligent consciousness that built the very laws of nature?
Coyne dismisses this idea as well. “To imagine a Creator twiddling with the constants of nature is a bit like thinking of God as making a big pot of soup,” he declares with a rare flash of sarcasm. A bit more onion, a bit less salt, and presto, the perfect gazpacho.
 
Because we have geocentrists and YECs defending these positions on the forum!

StAnastasia
well i would say ‘so what?’, but then i hang out to beat up on non-believers, so i guess to each his own and all that 🙂
 
As science, cosmology does not include God any more than does chemistry or biology or physics. But as we learn more and more about cosmology – including the apparent incredible fine-tuning of the many constants – we find that cosmological science carries fascinating philosophical and theological implications.
I agree, fascinating philosophical and theological implications. e.g. signposts pointing to the necessary existence of an intelligent agent i.e. God.

Perhaps that’s not what you were saying.

With regard to fine tuning being an aspect of God’s creation, Coyne said this (quoted in a previous post):

Coyne dismisses this idea as well. “To imagine a Creator twiddling with the constants of nature is a bit like thinking of God as making a big pot of soup,” he declares with a rare flash of sarcasm. A bit more onion, a bit less salt, and presto, the perfect gazpacho."

It looks like he doesn’t care much for the idea of a fine tuned universe.
Yes, I know this article (it’s by a friend of mine). Coyne takes a very Catholic position, rejecting the God-of-the-gaps theology of ID. I like what he has to say.
ID doesn’t have a God of the gaps theology. ID looks for evidence of an intelligent (i.e. non-random) designer. You have ID confused with YEC.
 
i am amazed that we spend so much time debating YEC and ID they are protestant arguments meant to defend Sola Scriptura. why do we spend so much time talking about them?
Are you a Catholic? So-called YEC and ID are political ideas, not reality, and they are not owned by Protestants.

The simple issue is this:

Are you an animal or an ambulatory bag of chemicals controlled by your genes?

OR

Were you created and willed by God as a special creation made to live in communion with Him? Evolutionary science says no. Atheists say no, also based on evolutionary science.

As far as the age of the earth, I an entirely skeptical about the dates given to geological strata since there are fossilized trees that pass through many, representings (supposedly) thousands of years. Any such trees, if exposed to the elements for thousands of years, should have rotted away.

Peace,
Ed
 
It looks like he doesn’t care much for the idea of a fine tuned universe.
To the contrary, as a Catholic Coyne does; he just doesn’t accept it as scientifically relevant. There is nothing science can do with fine tuning to prove the existence of God, any more than the fact that chordates have the same bone structures in their limbs proves that God loves pentadactylism.

StAnastasia
 
Am I correct in saying that there is not ONE reader who accepts the Church’s decree that the sun orbits the earth and the earth is immovable at the centre of the universe?
No takers, so the answer is yes, I am the only one who accepts the Church’s 1616 decree that made a moving sun a matter of Catholic faith?
 
Am I correct is saying that there is not one Genesis literalist contributing to this thread.
Am I still correct in thinking I am the only Catholic here who believes the direct creation of everything in 6 days (or in one instant in the case of St Augustine)?
 
Am I still correct in thinking I am the only Catholic here who believes the direct creation of everything in 6 days (or in one instant in the case of St Augustine)?
I can’t speak for anyone else, but yes, I do not share your belief in a hexaemeral creation.

StAnastasia
 
To the contrary, as a Catholic Coyne does; he just doesn’t accept it as scientifically relevant. There is nothing science can do with fine tuning to prove the existence of God, any more than the fact that chordates have the same bone structures in their limbs proves that God loves pentadactylism.

StAnastasia
Wisdom 13.

And it seems to me that our purpose is to find and know and love God through all things that we do. That’s why we were created. No where do I see, or am I able to reason out (theologically) an argument that we are to find, know, and love God - oh, except where science is concerned. Love God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul (except where science is concerned).

Why would God give us the ability to reason scientifically, if not to find him in some way? We are designed to look for God, and find him. That is our main purpose as children of God made in his image, it is not an afterthought. Science is just one of many paths God has given us.

I understand that people who interact a lot with those scientists who are atheists might need to hide their religion (or make substantial concessions) to avoid ridicule, and damage to their professional pride (although that might be a good thing from what I’ve seen). Note: I’m not referring to Fr. Coyne here, I don’t know his views well enough.
 
Are you a Catholic? So-called YEC and ID are political ideas, not reality, and they are not owned by Protestants.

The simple issue is this:

Are you an animal or an ambulatory bag of chemicals controlled by your genes?

OR

Were you created and willed by God as a special creation made to live in communion with Him? Evolutionary science says no. Atheists say no, also based on evolutionary science.

As far as the age of the earth, I an entirely skeptical about the dates given to geological strata since there are fossilized trees that pass through many, representings (supposedly) thousands of years. Any such trees, if exposed to the elements for thousands of years, should have rotted away.

Peace,
Ed
yes i am a Catholic, but i am a materialist, to me the question is not how the machine functions, it is where this machine came from.

frankly evolution is too small a target for my interests, and outside of its chemistry it has no bearing on my interests.

i despise scientific orthodoxy for its own sake. phlogiston and all that.

but accepting evolution, and accepting a Creator are two separate deals,

i dont care at all in the end who is right because you cant extrapolate a Creator less universe from evolution.

its simply not a threat. let the atheists rattle that cage all day long. it doesn’t in any way support their basic arguments.

i dont bother to fight mouthy 12 year olds either, for the exact same reason.

they arent a real threat to me.
 
The devil doesn’t run nature. God does it. And we have learned that when a theory is “ugly”, it’s probably wrong. One time after another, when we get to the bottom of a phenomenon, the theory that best describes it is elegant (in the sense of functional simplicity) and yes, beautiful.

Would you expect any less of God?

He exists, but he’s a wretched being who can only attempt to twist and distort what God creates. And he is not able to change the rules by which nature works.
Thank you Barbarian, this post (and the post that prompted your reply) is one of the most interesting of all I have read. At last someone else mentions the real culprit among us, the Devil himself. Given Jesus called him the ‘Father of Lies’, and the 1st person of the Trinity ‘Father’, there are NO LIMITS to his ability to deceive.
But I bet you put limits on this ability StA. No. it is a certainty, and I will prove it. I say that the Devil deceived the combined intelligence of mankind into accepting the sun is fixed in a solar system and that the earth orbits it.

Now elsewhere I have said that this world-view was once a religion of the Devil. Here is a history of that religion for any who doubt:

The Mysteries

The Mysteries were religious institutions that arose throughout the populated world arising from the post-flood confusion and may be regarded as the church of the ancient pagan gentile nations. In them all there is found a peculiar though common conception of the divine nature as a type of pantheism that constitutes their common bond of unity. These institutions, not exactly uniform in their various rites, were widely distributed and flourished in Egypt, Chaldea, India, China, Japan, Canaan, Africa, Greece, Rome, Mexico, and in the isles of the sea. Their mode of religious instruction was esoteric. This was not taught in a dogmatic way but by rite and symbol of religious conception communicated to the initiated only. The mysteries were known and transmitted by priests. The sages and philosophers taught in these institutions what they hardly dared to teach in public, and the disciples were bound to secrecy concerning the things heard and learned. It was contended by some of the priests that if the secrets therein taught were divulged, the universe would fall.
Prominent in the mysteries was sun worshipping with its sexual connotations. In the Bible we are told of Baal, the sun god of the Phoenicians (3 Kings 16:31-33), characterised by the most scandalously impure rites (3 Kings 14:24). Second only to him are the sun gods of the Canaanites and Mithraists of Persia. It is sufficient for this thesis however, to focus on one particular source of sun worshipping; that founded on the myth of Osiris and Isis in ancient Egypt. This myth was viewed as a picture of the daily life of the sun combating darkness but succumbing to it only to appear again in renewed splendour as the young Horus, his son. It was also seen as a picture of human life, its perpetual conflict and final seeming destruction, to be restored in the new youth of brighter existence. Isis is the same as Demeter, earth mother or nature and Osiris is the sun, the fertilizer of earth, and generator of earthly life.

Copernicus, Bruno, Kepler and Isaac Newton were all into hermetism.
Newton the Alchemist
Westfall shows that ‘Sir Isaac Newton hated and feared Popery.’ Koestler shows that he was: ‘A crank theologian…who held that the tenth horn of the fourth beast of the Apocalypse represented the Roman Catholic Church.’ Newton’s exhaustive studies of the ancient religions led him to believe the old Vestal Cult as the original true religion. This cult adored the god of nature (the god of forces) and had a temple designed to imitate a heliocentric solar system, within which was a burning fire with seven lamps orbiting it. Thus Newton’s belief in the hermetic legend of the City of the Sun re-enacted by the Freemasons, as befitted their origins in the ancient occult Mysteries.

Quote:
‘Newton had a profound belief in prisca sapientia, an original wisdom given to the Ancients. He thought that in the earliest times God had imparted the secrets of natural philosophy and true religion to a select few. The knowledge was subsequently lost but traces could be still found hidden in myths where it would remain unnoticed by the vulgar. Many mysteries had been deliberately disguised to guard them from minds not fit to receive them. Newton turned to the most esoteric of Alchemical books where he believed the real secrets to be hidden.’ —
William Rankin: Newton and Classical Physics, Icon Books, UK, 2000, p.107.
 
cassini,

Why does a gravity meter measure a higher g at the poles than it does at the equator? I never saw your “serious” reply.

Peace

Tim
 
Originally Posted by The Barbarian
The devil doesn’t run nature. God does it. And we have learned that when a theory is “ugly”, it’s probably wrong. One time after another, when we get to the bottom of a phenomenon, the theory that best describes it is elegant (in the sense of functional simplicity) and yes, beautiful.

Interisting that Copernicus described the G model ‘UGLY’ and the H model a sign of God in His heaven. Bruno spent his life trying to get Catholicism to adopt to hermetism. Kepler described his Heliocentrism as as ‘beautiful’.

Today of course no text book on the Copernican revolution would offer its readers a beautiful truth in preference to an ugly untruth. So in place of beautiful we get ‘SIMPLE’, and in place of ugly we get ‘COMPLICATED’ as a theory and ‘IMPOSSIBLE’ according to physics.

Now consider the damage done to the authority of the Catholic Church as a result of the adoption of H. Consider its effect on scriptural exegesis, where one time literal interpretations of the church could now be regarded as metaphor. Consider that when evolutionism was introduced the Church hadn’t a leg to stand on after the Galileo case so was SWEPT aside as evolutionism became a belief system for man. Consider that more people have rejected instirutional religion and even a God because of their belief in evolutionism, something both Churchmen and State now accept as a fact.

Now any Catholic worth their salt should know instinctively that there is something badly wrong here in this history and current world-view. I offer an explanation that rejects all the Devil’s illusions and restores the divine guidance back to those Churchmen of 1616 and 1633.

But the devil has almost won the war already, for to restore the truth then those who fell under the Devil’s Copernican spell will have to be exposed. I’m afraid that intellectual pride will make sure that doesn’t happen. God help us all. Catholicism is indeed down to a handfull.
 
cassini,

Why does a gravity meter measure a higher g at the poles than it does at the equator? I never saw your “serious” reply.

Peace

Tim
What in God’s name has that got to do with faith and science. It is another of those questions you think ‘proves’ a rotating earth or something like that. The answer of course is that a gravity meter measures a higher g at the poles than it does at the equator because thats what the readings say. Now give us your ‘proof for H’ reasoning.
 
What in God’s name has that got to do with faith and science. It is another of those questions you think ‘proves’ a rotating earth or something like that. The answer of course is that a gravity meter measures a higher g at the poles than it does at the equator because thats what the readings say. Now give us your ‘proof for H’ reasoning.
Why would the meter read differently cassini? If you don’t know, just say so.

Peace

Tim
 
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