How the posts pour in while I’m asleep!
Ratio1:
If during his lifetime, Jesus miraculously demonstrated, publicly and to thousands of people, that he was able to produce unlimited food from nothing, then it is strange that a year or so later not a single one of them defended his execution as a common criminal apart from a few friends. If this was a miracle, it didn’t create much permanent faith among its witnesses.
If, after his death, Jesus ‘got better’ and continued his teaching career, or stayed dead but simply disappeared, then it is strange that hundreds of years later, thousands of people were prepared to die in his defence. If this was not a miracle, then surely its long term effect certainly was.
Miracles are interesting concepts, and much thought has been given to them. Glark, who equates his personal conviction with Catholic dogma, declares infallibly that miracles are by definition irrational, but I disagree with him. I don’t think my views are contrary to Catholic teaching, but I don’t want to explore them further here, which will simply distract from the main topic, but might leave the sub-subject with the observation that although miracles are actual events to the people who witness them, they are accounts of events to the much greater number of people who don’t, and so the effect of the account, in terms of the strengthening of faith, can be much greater that the effect of the event.
The theology of evolution revolves around the rationality of God, and whether he interferes with it. When Pope Benedict gave his celebrated speech at Regensburg University he was at pains to point out that Catholicism is founded in rationality. He was amused to quote (ironically, of course) that “there was something odd about our university: it had two faculties devoted to something that did not exist: God.” He went on to expound on the idea that: “The decisive statement […] is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature.” The subject is capable of discussion, and is certainly not black and white. I am comfortable with the idea that certain things have occurred which I cannot explain rationally, but that do have rational explanations.
Your response to my “rule of thumb” was, I thought, weak. Try not to use the word “proof” in scientific contexts. Science doesn’t do ‘proof’. It doesn’t, sensu stricto, begin with assumptions; it begins with observations. Evolution does not “start with a false premise”; it does not start with any premise at all, true or false. It starts with observations, and attempts to link them rationally. In so far as those attempts appear, to the ‘scientific community’, to be coherent, then we call it science. Science is not a dogma, or a proof, or even fact; it is a set of coherent explanations which fit observations. It has only one axiom, which is held as strongly by atheists, Hindus, Muslims, Catholics and Jedi Knights, namely: “not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature”.
