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Wesrock
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Because it wouldn’t exist and have any causal power without God.
I don’t know what’s complicated about that statement.
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I don’t know what’s complicated about that statement.
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Wesrock
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This is what I keep hearing.
Why the focus on life in particular when the Church stresses God as the causal agent for the creation of and development of anything and everything?
That type of talk keeps making it sound like God stumbled on the inorganic world which he has nothing to do with and then played around with it to make life and complex things.
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edwest211
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I would post nothing further about this topic if it was so uncomplicated. Here, only science is offered. The Church offers the whole answer. Here, God is just a word that can be applied or discarded. That is the issue.
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Wesrock
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Who says God can be discarded?
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edwest211
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There are people who do not believe in any God. So they follow the Biology textbook as their source of origin and implied purpose. Tacking the word God onto the Biology textbook does not mean it contains all the information a human being needs.
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Wesrock
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And what does that have to do with the rest of the discussion?
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edwest211
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This is about “evolution and origins.”
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Bradskii
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niceatheist
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That’s the Church’s business. Science only works when it sits firmly in its domain. If some people over-interpret science to imagine that it is an answer to or replacement of faith, then that is an issue with those people. Science must remain agnostic on God. If you wish to insert God as a causal agent, then, providing you’re not making specific testable claims, then there’s nothing to reconcile. Assertions like Irreducible Complexity do make specific claims (the aforementioned vertebrate immune system), and when such a claim is made, science becomes involved. At that point, it’s quite possible that science will debunk the claim. If that creates a crisis of faith in someone, then I’d suggest that person’s faith was shaky at best.
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Wesrock
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To be a mediating voice, the scientific method is only capable of measuring that which is quantifiable and material (in the broader sense of material) . That’s what it sets out to do. It is incapable of measuring God or God’s action of formal and final causes.edwest211:
That’s the Church’s business. Science only works when it sits firmly in its domain. If some people over-interpret science to imagine that it is an answer to or replacement of faith, then that is an issue with those people. Science must remain agnostic on God. If you wish to insert God as a causal agent, then, providing you’re not making specific testable claims, then there’s nothing to reconcile. Assertions like Irreducible Complexity do make specific claims (the aforementioned vertebrate immune system), and when such a claim is made, science becomes involved. At that point, it’s quite possible that science will debunk the claim. If that creates a crisis of faith in someone, then I’d suggest that person’s faith was shaky at best.
I will say, though, that with our reason we can deduce formal and final causes and first principles or even just extrapolate broader claims. Some may disagree with that. But either way, that’s not the physical sciences itself. That’s a separate field which can use the physical sciences for data.
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niceatheist
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Then you reach into metaphysics. While I understand the fundamental issues that metaphysics broaches, because when you talk about problems like possible starting conditions for the Big Bang, then you may reach an area where physics simply has no capacity to answer. It may be able to answer in the fullness of time what those initial variables were, but the question of “where do the laws of physics come from” may very well be something that science can never answer. What I question is whether metaphysics, whether religion-based or otherwise, can really do much more than restate the problem. At that point, I guess if you believe in God, you have your answer, and if you don’t, then you’ll never have an answer.niceatheist:
To be a mediating voice, the scientific method is only capable of measuring that which is quantifiable and material (in the broader sense of material) . That’s what it sets out to do. It is incapable of measuring God or God’s action of formal and final causes.edwest211:
That’s the Church’s business. Science only works when it sits firmly in its domain. If some people over-interpret science to imagine that it is an answer to or replacement of faith, then that is an issue with those people. Science must remain agnostic on God. If you wish to insert God as a causal agent, then, providing you’re not making specific testable claims, then there’s nothing to reconcile. Assertions like Irreducible Complexity do make specific claims (the aforementioned vertebrate immune system), and when such a claim is made, science becomes involved. At that point, it’s quite possible that science will debunk the claim. If that creates a crisis of faith in someone, then I’d suggest that person’s faith was shaky at best.
I will say, though, that with our reason we can deduce formal and final causes and first principles or even just extrapolate broader claims. Some may disagree with that. But either way, that’s not the physical sciences itself. That’s a separate field which can use the physical sciences for data.
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edwest211
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I mention the Church because science has limits. The Church does not. It can take science and comment on it authoritatively.
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Bradskii
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Oh, good grief. Stop feeding the trolls.
They wander aimlessly around the forum until they find a subject associated with evolution and, limpet-like, attach themselves and bring up the same ol’ same ol’ and…guess what? People keep addressing the nonsensical views.
Keep it up if you find it makes you feel superior. I got over that and drifted to embarresment quite some time ago.
They wander aimlessly around the forum until they find a subject associated with evolution and, limpet-like, attach themselves and bring up the same ol’ same ol’ and…guess what? People keep addressing the nonsensical views.
Keep it up if you find it makes you feel superior. I got over that and drifted to embarresment quite some time ago.
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niceatheist
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But that requires that you accept the Church’s teachings. If you don’t, it doesn’t serve that purpose at all, and no more answers the question than any other metaphysical system.
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Wesrock
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The Church is specifically on record as stating science is not its purview. It just sets some boundaries on theological, doctrinal truths.
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Wesrock
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Well, not just metaphysics, but philosophy in general, whether it be philosophy of nature, philosophy of science, philosophy of knowledge (epistemology), etc…
And religious people aren’t the only ones who do that in response to science.
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niceatheist
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No religious people aren’t the only ones, but my argument is theistic, agnostic and outright atheistic metaphysical systems haven’t, at least, answered any question.
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Wesrock
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Unless you’re an absolute solipsist, I don’t think that’s correct. People are implicitly using philosophy or drawing philosophical conclusions all the time. Is there an outside world? Do we sense things? Are things casually related? Is there only the material world? Is human reasoning reliable if it has proper knowledge? Should doing the same experiment over and over again return consistent results? And so on.
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edwest211
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I recall the rejoicing on the internet “Church accepts evolution!” That was about an out of context statement made by Pope John Paul II. Then, when Cardinal Christof Schoenborn wrote an Op-Ed piece for the New York Times titled “Finding Design In Nature,” there was some freaking out. Two scientists wrote the Vatican to warn against “falling on the wrong side of history” - whatever that means. So, yes, when the Church agrees, sometimes even slightly, with secularists, it is praised. When it does not regarding scientific matters, it becomes the villain.
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niceatheist
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If the latter two questions come out negative, then science doesn’t work. Except our experience suggests that it does work. So I suppose there’s a meaningful philosophical statement, but it’s really just to restate what we already know.niceatheist:
Unless you’re an absolute solipsist, I don’t think that’s correct. People are implicitly using philosophy or drawing philosophical conclusions all the time. Is there an outside world? Do we sense things? Are things casually related? Is there only the material world? Is human reasoning reliable if it has proper knowledge? Should doing the same experiment over and over again return consistent results? And so on.
It’s more when philosophy tries to jump ahead of physics, particularly in the origins of the Universe, that it just simply becomes unhinged. And I’d argue that certain paths some physicists and cosmologists take, for instance extrapolating upon string theory to produce claims like multiverse theory, leap so far ahead, without providing any means of confirmation, that currently, at least, they really a philosophical statements.
Now that’s not to say that string theory isn’t useful. Even if it is ultimately wrong, it has given physicists and mathematicians a whole suite of tools and methods, so I’d say it has a productiveness, and maybe even an indirect utility. But as it makes no claims that we can actually test, at least in the foreseeable future, if it’s science, it’s interesting mathematics being confused for science.
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