Don’t Buy “The Science Guy”

Don’t Buy “The Science Guy”

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By Bob Perry

Bill Nye, “The Science Guy” used to host an enjoyable and informative TV program for kids. In the last few years, however, Bill Nye has entered into a different realm. Apparently, he fancies himself an arbiter of all truth; the man who can quite literally save the world. But if you have any interest whatsoever in seeking that truth in a coherent, consistent, intelligent way, please watch this two-and-a-half-minute video. As you do, think about what he is saying. And don’t just focus on his defense of Evolution. Listen to his method of reasoning. It really is beyond me how someone who is considered a scientific sage could ever deliver such a rambling string of nonsense. But he doesn’t stop there. He goes on to admonish anyone who dares to disagree with him. And if you do, he wants you to shut up and leave the education of your children to real scientists… like him.

The Actual Bill Nye

There are a few facts you should know about Mr. Nye that are directly applicable to the content of this video. For starters, one would think that the media’s favorite “science guy” would be … Oh, I don’t know … an actual scientist. In fact, given the topic of this video, we might assume that our “science guy” would have some kind of background or advanced degree in the biological sciences. Bad assumption.

Bill Nye has nothing of the kind.

Mr. Nye’s education consists of a B. S. in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University. While he was a student there, he took an astronomy class from Carl Sagan. Thus ends the list of Bill Nye’s scientific credentials.

After college, Nye was hired by the Boeing Aircraft Company in Seattle, Washington. There, he developed a hydraulic pressure resonance suppressor. But that wasn’t what gained him his notoriety. His real fame came after he won a Steve Martin look-alike contest and started doing stand-up comedy in Seattle nightclubs in 1978.  Since then, he has received two Honorary Doctorate Degrees. But these weren’t awarded for scientific work. They were conferred on him for giving a couple of college commencement addresses after he became “Bill Nye, The Science Guy.”

You can’t make this stuff up.

Ridicule Is Not an Argument

I want to be fair here. Just because Bill Nye’s resumé as a “science guy” is lacking, it doesn’t mean we should dismiss him out of hand. We need to look at his arguments. But we also need to recognize the difference between an argument and an assertion. Anyone can make assertions. But no one should accept those assertions unless they are supported by evidence, logic, and sound reasoning. Mr. Nye gives none of these. He simply offers a diatribe that completely collapses when you take the time to think about what he’s saying. So, let’s look at Mr. Nye’s case.

What Does He Mean by ‘Evolution’?

The “science guy” starts off by lecturing us about how ridiculous it is to not believe in “evolution.” The problem is, he never defines what he means by the word. Does he mean that species change and adapt to the environment? If so, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a single person who doesn’t believe that. But there are several other definitions of evolution. Which one must we accept?

Let’s assume that Mr. Nye subscribes to the most comprehensive definition of evolution. This is what I refer to as Big ‘E’ Evolution. It’s the idea that all life is the result of a purposeless, materialistic process that began by a random accident. That process can account for every imaginable life form, from the first self-replicating, single-celled organism to you and me.

Let’s break down his argument.

Truth Doesn’t Depend On Geography

First, he offers us this:

“Denial of evolution is unique to the United States … we are the world’s most advanced technological society … people move to the United States because of our general understanding of science.”

This first assertion is baseless and demonstrably false. I know of plenty of folks who live all over the world who do not accept ‘Evolution.’ They do so because they have not seen any credible evidence to support the most comprehensive view of evolution Mr. Nye subscribes to. But let’s say Mr. Nye is correct. Let’s pretend the only people who don’t believe in Evolution are Americans. What does this prove?

Nothing.

Where someone lives does not determine the truth content of what they believe. And the claim that people immigrate to the United States because of our general understanding of science is ridiculous on its face.

Denying Evolution Holds People Back?

But what of Bill Nye’s second assertion? Here, he claims that:

“When you have a portion of the population that doesn’t believe in Evolution, it holds everybody back.”

How, exactly, did Mr. Nye come to this conclusion? My undergraduate education is in Aerospace Engineering. I learned how to design airplanes and then how to fly them. I don’t accept Evolution. So how is it that I am “holding everybody back”?

To show the absurdity of it, let’s turn this one around. Suppose I claimed that those who do accept Evolution are holding everybody back. Would that be a valid argument against Evolution? Not in the least.

Misapplying Metaphors

So far, Mr. Nye’s comments have only demonstrated some flaws in basic logic. But then he takes things further and detonates a suicide vest on any trust we should have in him as a “scientist.”

“Evolution is the fundamental idea in all of life science … [Not believing in it] is analogous to doing geology and not believing in tectonic plates … you’re just not gonna get the right answer. Your whole world is just gonna be a mystery instead of an exciting place.”

Whatever one thinks of the concept of Evolution, there is one fact about it that we all agree on. Evolution is a process that explains the emergence and diversity of life on Earth. It is a noble attempt to explain how life emerged from the chemical elements that existed on the early Earth. It is a theory about how those chemicals combined and interacted with one another to produce complex biological systems that live and grow and reproduce.

The heart of Evolution is a process, not the parts that are used by the process.

So, let’s look at Mr. Nye’s comments in that light. He mentions tectonic plates. Tectonic plates are enormous slabs of rock in the Earth’s crust that slide and rub against one another to cause earthquakes. Geology is the study of the process that moves those plates around. So, Mr. Nye is confusing the plates with the process that moves them. He doesn’t seem to understand that he is equating completely non-analogous categories of things. Parts are physical things. But the processes that act on those things are something completely different. It seems to me a “science guy” would comprehend the difference.

A “Complicated” World

Building on his last point, Bill Nye begins his transition to questioning the character and motives of those who disagree with him;

“Once in a while, I get people who don’t really — who claim — they don’t believe in evolution. My response is, ‘Why not?’ Your world just becomes fantastically complicated when you don’t believe in evolution.”

Notice that Mr. Nye believes that no one could really disbelieve in Evolution. They only “claim” to do so. And he never offers any examples of the responses he receives to his “Why not?” question. Who is he asking? Why does he dismiss them? We can’t really know how to evaluate their answers unless we know the actual reasons they are giving. The fact that Mr. Nye doesn’t accept their responses is hardly a reason for us to reject them. After all, we’ve already demonstrated that his reasoning in support of Evolution is flawed.

But there’s another question. Why would someone’s rejection of Evolution make their world “fantastically more complicated”? Once again, the conclusion does not follow.

Using Young Earth Creationist Logic

Mr. Nye’s next point is pretty fantastic all by itself. And let me be clear. I am not taking a stand one way or the other about the age of the universe here. I am simply pointing out how Mr. Nye is using the same logic as a young earth creationist when he says this:

“Here are these ancient dinosaur bones … radioactivity … distant stars … the idea of deep time … billions of years … if you try to ignore that your worldview just becomes crazy.”

Here, Mr. Nye says that rejecting Evolution is the equivalent with believing in a young universe. Or, conversely, believing in an old universe means that you accept Evolution. But, once again, he is confusing categories.

Evolution is a theory about biology. The age of the universe comes from the study of cosmology. These are completely different areas of study! All one would have to do to show that Mr. Nye’s assertion is false is declare themselves to be either an “old universe, non-Evolutionist,” or a “young universe Evolutionist.” Voila!

This is the same false equivalence most young-Earth creationists use against those of us who believe the universe is old. I wonder how Mr. Nye would react if someone pointed out to him that his thinking is exactly like the young-Earth creationists he abhors.

Questioning Your Parenting

Finally, Bill Nye makes it personal. He wants you to know that if you disagree with him, your status as a parent is in question:

“I say to the grownups, if you want to deny evolution and live in your world that is completely inconsistent with the universe, that’s fine … but don’t make your kids do it … because we need them … we need engineers who can build things and solve problems …”

Once again, Mr. Nye demonstrates his failure to understand basic logic when he ties belief in Evolution to our ability to produce “engineers who can build things and solve problems.”

It seems fairly obvious that one can be a perfectly competent airplane designer and not have any opinion about Evolution. In fact, a highly competent engineer can be completely ignorant about the concept of Evolution. Mr. Nye proved that himself when he designed a hydraulic pressure resonance suppressor for Boeing.

But beyond that, Mr. Nye has stepped out of a scientific critique (if you could consider him to have ever been inside one). In his arrogance, he assumes he has the right to tell you what you should be allowed to teach your children.

The Totalitarian Impulse

This is the totalitarian impulse. It’s a mindset that thinks some people can determine what other people should be allowed to think. Those of us who honor scientific objectivity, free thought, and academic tolerance need to recognize this kind of talk when we hear it. People who think like this are the most intolerant kinds of people in the world. They are destroying the concept of free thought in the academy. It is intellectual dishonesty writ large. And it can become dangerous for those who don’t think the “right way.”

Mr. Nye insists that you need to believe in Evolution. If you don’t, you must be overcome because our society needs “… scientifically literate voters and taxpayers.”

Be careful what you wish for, Mr. Nye. If scientific literacy suddenly became a prerequisite for voting, it looks to me like a certain “science guy” would have to stay home on election day.

 

Bob Perry is a Christian apologetics writer, teacher, and speaker who blogs about Christianity and the culture at: truehorizon.org. He is a Contributing Writer for the Christian Research Journal and has also been published in Touchstone, and Salvo. Bob is a professional aviator with 37 years of military and commercial flying experience. He has a B.S., Aerospace Engineering from the U. S. Naval Academy, and a M.A., Christian Apologetics from Biola University. He has been married to his high school sweetheart since 1985. They have five grown sons.

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/30bWkij

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Blinded by Science

Blinded by Science?

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By Terrell Clemmons

Don’t Be; That’s Just the New Atheists Masking Their Faith Choice

In the November 2006 cover story of Wired magazine, Gary Wolf thoughtfully gave ear to some of atheism’s most aggressive voices and labeled the movement that they lead “New Atheism.” Envisioning a brave new world in which science and reason overcome religious myth and superstition, New Atheists labor to purvey a comprehensive worldview that explains who we are and how we got here (Darwinian evolution), diagnoses our most urgent ill (ancient superstitions about God), and, most importantly, prescribes a cure for that ill (eradication of religion).

In the same month that Wired reported on New Atheism, Time magazine artfully depicted the science and religion quandary with a combination double helixÆrosary on its cover. The title, “God vs. Science,” might have led a casual reader to expect a story about a theologian opposing science, but the article actually covered a debate between two scientists. Geneticist Francis Collins, director of the Human Genome Project, and biologist Richard Dawkins of Oxford University weighed in on Time’s questions about science, belief in God, and whether the two can peaceably coexist in an intellectually sound world-view. Collins said they can; Dawkins said absolutely not.

Recent battles over textbooks in America lend credence to the notion of science and religion as perennial foes, and ABC News, reporting on a survey of atheism among scientists, casually commented that “the clash between science and religion is as old as science itself,” as if that’s what everybody with any gray matter already knows. But historians of science reveal a different story, one that is more in line with the view of Dr. Collins.

In his course Science and Religion, Lawrence Principe, professor of the History of Science and Technology at Johns Hopkins University, meticulously untangles the historical accounts of events commonly bandied about as proof that religion suppresses science, such as the trials of Galileo and John Scopes. Principe teaches that, contrary to irreligionist lore, the two disciplines were generally viewed as complementary until a little more than a century ago.

Principe identifies two late-19th-century publications as the origin of the idea of warfare between science and religion: A History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science, written by skeptic scientist John William Draper in 1874, and A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, published in 1896 by Andrew Dickson White, first president of Cornell University. It is noteworthy that both writers seemed to want the church to back off; Draper wrote at the request of a popular science publisher, and White in response to criticism that he had received for establishing Cornell as the first American university with no religious affiliation.

Principe reveals that the premise of both books—that science and religion have occupied separate camps throughout history, and that religion has always been the oppressor of science—is unfounded, calling Draper’s book “cranky,” “ahistorical,” and “one long, vitriolic, anti-Catholic diatribe,” while White’s is “scarcely better.” Still, he credits the two sub-scholarly works with crystallizing in the popular mind the image of ongoing, intractable warfare between science and religion. Today’s New Atheists echo and amplify their war cries.

Are We Talking Science or Faith?

Skeptics ardently defend their right to reject religious dogma and make up their own minds about ultimate reality. Certainly, atheists, scientific or not, are free to adopt whatever belief system they choose, but can they legitimately claim science as the basis for atheism? Put more simply, has science disproved God, as the irreligionists maintain?

A closer look at Richard Dawkins and Francis Collins sheds light on that question. The most significant difference between the two scientists is not that one believes in biblical creation and the other in Darwinian evolution. Both affirm Darwinism. The salient distinction is that Collins allows for the possibility of God, whereas Dawkins does not.

But it wasn’t always so. The fourth son of two freethinkers, Francis Collins, was homeschooled until age ten. His parents instilled in him a love for learning, but no faith, and the agnosticism of his youth gradually shifted into atheism as his education progressed. He was comfortable with it, discounting spiritual beliefs as outmoded superstition until he began to interact with seriously ill patients as a medical student. When one of them, a Christian, asked him what he believed, he faced a rationalist’s crisis. “It was a fair question,” he wrote in The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. “I felt my face flush as I stammered out the words ïI’m not really sure.’” At that point, Collins realized that he had never seriously considered the evidence for and against belief.

Determined to practice authentic, what-are-the-facts science, Collins set out to investigate the rational basis for faith. Reluctantly, he found himself feeling “forced to admit the plausibility of the God hypothesis. Agnosticism, which had seemed like a safe second-place haven, now loomed like the great cop-out it often is. Faith in God now seemed more rational than disbelief.”

In contrast to Collins’s rational inquiry and personal struggle over the question of God, Richard Dawkins, the de facto spokesman for scientific atheism (think Madalyn Murray O’Hair with a Ph.D.), lays out his case for unbelief without struggle or reservation. In chapter four of The God Delusion, titled “Why There Almost Certainly Is No God,” Dawkins introduces his “Argument from Improbability,” and though the chapter waxes long, its reasoning distills to something like this:

  1. The universe we observe is highly complex.
    2. Any creator of this complex universe would have to be even more complex than it.
    3. It is too improbable that such a God exists; therefore, there almost certainly is no God.

The first two statements qualify as acceptable premises, but the conclusion that Dawkins reaches simply does not follow from them. This isn’t legitimate reasoning. It’s rationalization—that is, finding some plausible-sounding explanation for arriving at a conclusion that he has already chosen.

Dr. Dawkins is certainly free to choose to disbelieve, but his conclusion was not derived through scientific or rational means. Rather, it hints at an underlying personal, philosophical faith choice to disbelieve. Ernst Mayr, one of the twentieth century’s leading evolutionary biologists, made a similar observation when he analyzed reasons for disbelief among his Harvard colleagues. “We were all atheists. I found that there were two sources,” he said. One group “just couldn’t believe all that supernatural stuff.” The other “couldn’t believe that there could be a God with all this evil in the world. Most atheists combine the two,” he summarized candidly. “The combination makes it impossible to believe in God.”

Former atheist and biophysicist Alister McGrath concurs, noting that most of the unbelieving scientists he is acquainted with are atheists on grounds other than their science. “They bring those assumptions to their science rather than basing them on their science.” Dawkins’s rationalization, as well as the observations of McGrath and Mayr, reveal the choice to disbelieve for what it is—a personal, philosophical choice made apart from reason or scientific inquiry. I call it a “faith choice” because it involves choosing a foundational presupposition concerning a realm about which we have incomplete (but not insufficient) knowledge.

A Choice of Faith

Francis Collins’s conclusion, that the God hypothesis is not only plausible but compellingly supported by evidence, flatly controverts New Atheism’s premise that faith constitutes an irrational belief without evidence. It also reveals that the real conflict isn’t one of science versus God. It’s a conflict between those who allow and those who disallow the possible reality of God.

Polemicists will continue to clamor for converts to their side on the question of God because between the poles live thoughtful, educated people—not necessarily working scientists, but people who value science. Some believe in a supreme being called God, and others haven’t made up their minds. It is these theological moderates that New Atheism seeks to recruit with pithy epigrams such as “God vs. Science” and “My beliefs are based on science, but yours are based on faith.” What believers need is a calm, judicious counter-strategy when New Atheism advances under the guise of science, one that can transform verbal sparring into illuminating dialogue. Let me give you an example of what I mean.

My friend Dana has known Sam for decades. Over the years, Sam has peppered her with questions about her faith. Despite feeling intimidated—Sam is a highly respected leader in their community—she has answered as best she could and maintained their friendship. One evening over dinner in her home, Sam turned his questions on her teenagers, essentially asking them, “Do you really believe all that stuff and why?” Dana allowed them to speak for themselves for a while before intervening.

“Sam,” she started agreeably, “you and I have discussed this many times. I’ve told you what I believe and why, and you’ve told me all of your reasons for not believing.” Then she posed a question that she had never put to him before. “What if there really is a God, but you just don’t know about him? Are you willing to consider that possibility? Are you willing to ask him if he’s out there? Something like ïGod, I’m not even sure if you’re there, but if you are, would you show yourself to me?‘”

Dana let her question hang in the air. The teenagers likewise waited for Sam to break the silence. “No,” he finally said. “I’m not willing to do that.” And he hasn’t brought the subject up since.

Dana gently—but powerfully—pierced the facade of scientific skepticism with one question: Are you willing? It is not a question of scientific reasoning, but a question of choosing, of making a personal faith choice that, once made, establishes the starting point for one’s reasoning. Atheism isn’t founded on science or reason any more than theism is based on faith devoid of reason. The atheist, too, has made a faith choice. He has just chosen differently.

The Eternal Conflict

The “eternal conflict,” as it’s called, is not really between religion and science; after all, the two got along quite amicably before the twentieth century. No, as the following quotations indicate, the real quarrel has always been between those who believe that science and religion are at odds and those who do not.

“A legitimate conflict between science and religion cannot exist. Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.”

—Albert Einstein

“It is… Idle to pretend, as many do, that there is no contradiction between religion and science. Science contradicts religion as surely as Judaism contradicts Islam—they are absolutely and irresolvably conflicting views. Unless that is, science is obliged to change its fundamental nature.”

—Brian Appleyard

“Science and religion are two windows that people look through, trying to understand the big universe outside, trying to understand why we are here. The two windows give different views, but both look out at the same universe. Both views are one-sided, neither is complete. Both leave out the essential features of the real world. And both are worthy of respect.”

—Freeman Dyson

“Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each can draw the other into a wider world, a world in which both can flourish.”

—Pope John Paul II

“When religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic.”

—Thomas Szasz

“Science is an effort to understand creation. Biblical religion involves our relation to the Creator. Since we can learn about the Creator from his creation, religion can learn from science.”

—PaulæH. Carr

“There is more religion in men’s science than there is science in their religion.”

—Henry David Thoreau

“Science makes major contributions to minor needs. Religion, however, small its successes, is at least at work on the things that matter most.”

—Oliver Wendell Holmes

Science as Religion

One needn’t speculate about whether science is a religion for Darwinists such as Richard Dawkins. In a 1997 essay published in The Humanist, Dawkins tackles this question directly, arguing that his onetime tendency to deny that science is a religion was a tactical error that he has since repudiated. Instead, he writes, scientists should “accept the charge gratefully and demand equal time for science in religious education classes.” The reason? Well, according to Dawkins, whereas science is a faith “based upon verifiable evidence,” religion “not only lacks evidence,” but “its independence from evidence is its pride and joy.” Thus, science is the only religion worth imparting to future generations.

Rather than delineate the evidence that makes science outclass “any of the mutually contradictory faiths and disappointingly recent traditions of the world’s religions,” however, Dawkins chooses instead to describe what science might someday do for a society that religion does today. Chiefly, this amounts to inspiring in people an awe for “the wonder and beauty” of the universe in the same way that God currently inspires awe in religious believers. Indeed, as far as Dawkins is concerned, “the merest glance through a microscope at the brain of an ant or through a telescope at a long-ago galaxy of a billion worlds is enough to render poky and parochial the very psalms of praise.”

But here is where the evolutionary biologist gets himself into trouble. Yes, science has given us access to astonishing truths about the hidden nature of the universe, and yes, all that it has definitively revealed is based on incontrovertible evidence. It is also true, however, that most religions in the world do not posit faith claims in opposition to such breathtaking factual findings. Rather, religion lacks evidence at precisely those points where science does as well.

The faith that is the “pride and joy” of religious believers is in an invisible God who created the world and still interacts with it. The faith of Darwinian scientists is in the power of evolution to create the world and then continue to adapt it. There is no conclusive evidence for either of these faith claims, which is why some have accused science of being a religion in the first place, as well as why Dawkins must hawk the replacement value of science instead of citing the “verifiable evidence” that makes science superior to conventional religion.

All this is to say that Dawkins is correct to concede that science is a religion for him, but wrong to contend that this particular religion accomplishes something that others do not. When it comes to the significant questions of life—Where did we come from? How did we get here? Why are we here? —Science’s answers prove to be as faith-based as those of even the most fundamentalist religious sect. That science might successfully fulfill the function of religion is thus hardly reason enough to warrant a switch.

 

Terrell Clemmons is a freelance writer and blogger on apologetics and matters of faith.

This article was originally published at salvomag.com: http://bit.ly/2J9O9vV

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How Naturalism Defeats Science As A Knowledge Discipline

How Naturalism Defeats Science As A Knowledge Discipline

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By Luke Nix

Introduction

One of the core necessities of science is the constancy of the laws that govern this universe. The fact that the laws of physics have the same since the beginning of the universe and will continue until the universe is destroyed allows scientists to not only observe and know what is happening in the moment of their observation, but it allows them to discover what has happened in the past and even make accurate predictions of the behavior of objects and conditions in the future. Some scientists even use the understanding that the laws of physics are constant to make predictions of what we will observe in the past (by observing distant celestial objects), then conduct multiple observations to test their theory. But where do they come up with the idea that the laws of physics are constant in the first place?

The Constancy of the Laws of Physics

We certainly cannot look inside this universe to establish it, for that would be to beg the question (assume what we are trying to conclude). Without something outside the universe that established the constancy of the laws of physics, such an assumption has no justification. So, on this view, since our first assumption has no justification, neither do any of the conclusions that follow it. At best, the constancy or variability of the laws of physics is unknowable. Since scientists foundationally base their claims about the past and the future upon something that is unknowable, then their claims about the past and the future can only reach the same level of knowledge: unknowable.

At this point, many scientists would object based upon observation of distant celestial objects. My response is to point out that a subtle fallacy is in place. While we think that we can observe the past by looking at distant celestial objects to observe how the laws of physics behaved back then, we are still stuck with merely a suspicion (thus the whole scientific enterprise that is dependent upon constancy is suspect). I ask that the objector recalls that in order to correlate the observation to any point in time, the speed of light (governed by the laws of physics) must be finite and constant– light does take time to travel, so we are seeing light as it was when it left the object not as it is now. To say that observing distant objects establishes the constancy of the laws of physics is to commit the fallacy of begging the question. The objector has sneaked his conclusion into his argument. This invalidates his conclusion that our observations establish the constancy of the laws of physics. But all is not lost, they do still have a suspicion that the laws have been constant into the past.

Naturalism Defeats Science As A Knowledge Discipline

If this universe is all that there is, then there really is no possible way to justify the belief in the foundational idea that the laws of physics are constant. All further conclusions will remain as merely suspicions and will remain unknowable. However, if something exists outside the universe that does provide a foundation for the laws of physics, then we at least have something to reason toward constant laws of physics without begging the question. If God exists and created this universe, then He certainly would be the source for the laws of physics, but this alone does not tell us if they are constant or variable over time.

Christianity Provides The Foundation For Science As A Knowledge Discipline

Interestingly enough, though, God has revealed to us which option He selected, and it matches the observations that cause us to suspect one or the other. Let us examine Jeremiah 33:25-26:

Slide5

In this passage, God compares His constancy to the laws that govern His creation. If these laws are not truly constant, then the comparison means, at best, nothing, and at worst, the exact opposite (that the laws are variable).

If scientists wish to claim that their conclusions are more than mere unknowable suspicions, then they have no choice but to be dependent upon God’s existing. And we’re not talking about some deistic god, for a deistic god does not reveal Himself to His creation (God is revealing His constancy, among other characteristics, in the passage above), nor are we talking about some generic theistic god. We are talking about the God of the Bible.

This God not only told us the truth of something that we only became suspicious may be true in recent centuries (the constancy of the laws of physics), but He came to earth, died, and resurrected from the dead (see this historical evidence in the post: “Did The Historical Jesus Rise From The Dead?“). In that resurrection, He confirmed His claims to be God, the Creator of the universe: the Source of the laws of physics.

Slide11

Conclusion

Naturalism simply cannot justify the conclusion that the laws of physics are constant, and unless scientists are willing to ground this foundationally necessary concept in the God of the Bible outside the universe, none of their conclusions can be more than suspicions, and suspicions hardly counts as knowledge. In order for any conclusions that count as knowledge to come out of the scientific enterprise, God must exist to be the source of the constancy of the laws of physics. If naturalism is true, then science necessarily is not a knowledge discipline.

 

Luke Nix holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and works as a Desktop Support Manager for a local precious metal exchange company in Oklahoma.

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2JxRMOV

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Whirled Views

Whirled Views

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By Terrell Clemmons

A Framework for Mapping Reality & Engaging Ideological Confusion.

“Science is more than a body of knowledge. It’s a way of thinking,” said Carl Sagan in the last interview he gave before his death in 1996 at age 62. Sagan and Charlie Rose were discussing Sagan’s last book, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, and the danger that America’s deficiency in basic science posed for future generations. People in positions of power, they agreed, as well as the electorates who put them there must have a correct understanding of “the way the universe really is” and not be informed by doctrines that “make us feel good.” “If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true,” Sagan stressed, “then we’re up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes ambling along.” The upshot of it all was that science, rather than demons or doctrines, must be the “candle” that lights our way to the future.

Sagan is best known as the author and host of the 1980 PBS series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which was the most widely watched PBS series of the 1980s. His legacy lives on in the 2014 Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, which aimed to capture for a new generation the “spirit of the original Cosmos,” according to host Neil deGrasse Tyson. Building on the popularity of the original, Tyson explained, the 21st-century remake would “present science in a way that has meaning to you, that could influence your conduct as a citizen of the nation and of the world—especially of the world.”

Salvo readers should be familiar with the concept of agenda-driven science, and to those who listen with an ear to discern it, it’s clear that Sagan, Rose, and Tyson are using science as they understand it to advance an agenda—to influence the way people think, with the aim of changing their behavior. This is the stuff of propaganda, and like most propaganda, Cosmos served up a slickly produced package of truths, half-truths, and subtle lies, skillfully laced with running undercurrents of moralistic appeals to emotion.

How does one respond to wholesale agendas like this without coming off as an abject contrarian? Try the worldview reset.

Worldview Reset

In How Now Shall We Live? (1999), Nancy Pearcey and Charles Colson laid out a framework for worldview analysis that can be applied to any narrative, idea, or agenda that comes ambling along. Here’s how it goes: Any worldview must provide an answer to three questions:

Who am I, and where did I come from? This is the question of origins.

What is wrong with the world? This is the question of the problem.

How can it be fixed? This is the question of the remedy.

Put through this filter, Christianity can answer each question in one word: Creation, fall, and redemption. God, sin, and Christ or the cross would work equally well. The point is not to nail down precise terminology, but to sketch out the main points on the biblical map of reality. Christianity is not just a relationship with Jesus, or adherence to a set of doctrines or rules, or association with a religious institution. Those things may have their place, but it’s more than that. Christianity is a full-orbed, comprehensive worldview that puts forth testable truth claims about all of reality.

The same framework, then, can serve as a test for coolly analyzing alternative worldviews. All agendas operate according to some worldview, and our first objective in the face of one should be to identify it. In the case of Sagan and Tyson, this is straightforward. They’re scientific naturalists. But even if we didn’t know that, we could figure it out from the grandiose opening to the original Cosmos, where Sagan intoned, “The cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be.” From there, given the title of his book and his discussion with Rose, we can see that the problem they diagnose in the world stems from authorities and doctrines that are unscientific. Following through, the remedy they prescribe is for people to question those authorities, reject those doctrines, and think “scientifically,” just like they do.

Popularized through folksy celebrities like Tyson and Bill Nye “the Science Guy,” this materialistic narrative, along with its socio-moral dictates, is just one of the subliminal narratives that have become deeply entrenched in our culture.

First Things First: The Question of Origins

In practice, worldviews tend to bleed together, but the most prevalent ones in the developed world today are: scientific naturalism, which says that God is effectively nonexistent; postmodernism, which says that the question of God is unanswerable or irrelevant because cultures make up their own stories; pantheism, which identifies God with nature or the universe and then sees in nature a myriad of non-transcendent deities; and Judeo-Christianity, which says that there is one transcendent God who created the universe and everything in it.

It is supremely important to note that, of these, the Judeo-Christian worldview is the only one that is actually theistic. It alone, along with its offshoot Islam, answers the question of origins with a self-existing God. All the others are non-theistic. They amount to some form of philosophical naturalism and then try to explain all of reality, including human history, behavior, and culture, within those limits.

In 2016-2017 Morgan Freeman hosted a National Geographic series on religion called The Story of God, in which he traveled the world asking people of different faiths how they viewed death, evil, the afterlife, and other matters related to religion. The series was visually stunning, but its name is actually a misnomer. It was really a “story of a man”— a professed atheist attempting to explain the panoply of human experience within the confines of naturalism. Freeman’s worldview governed his interpretation of all the incoming data, and viewers who don’t understand that at the outset will likely find the series confusing.

Worldview and Ideologies

The concept of worldview is closely related to the concept of ideology, but the two are not quite the same thing. Every ideology is born of a worldview, but not every worldview is an ideology. Dictionary.com defines ideology as a body of doctrine, myth, or belief that guides an individual, group, or movement, together with a socio-political plan and devices for implementing it. In simpler terms, an ideology is an idea that has been elevated to worldview status and then activated into an agenda.

Let’s look at a few ideologies that are dominant today and identify the worldview behind them. Broadly speaking, environmentalism is an ideology that begins with philosophical naturalism, diagnoses the problem in the world as human mismanagement of the earth’s resources, and then prescribes changes to resource management, usually to be implemented by the government. Marxism, too, begins with naturalism, but it diagnoses the problem in terms of some kind of inequality between people groups. From there, it prescribes as the remedy some form of equalization, also usually to be implemented by the government.

Sexual ideologies grew out of Freud’s naturalism-based diagnosis that human problems stem from sexual repression, and they accordingly prescribe a remedy of casting off restraint. And, for an example of how ideologies bleed together, LGBT demands for “equality” effectively fuse the Freudian and Marxian diagnoses of the problem and then demand equalization for “sexual minorities” with respect to such social benefits as moral approval and state-endorsed marriage.

Interrogating the Disconnect

When one is confronted with a pre-assembled agenda masquerading as a good idea, applying the three-point worldview framework will facilitate dialogue in a way that clarifies, rather than clouds, the conflict. The framework does this by keeping attention on the incoming worldview and examining its truth claims. To use Sagan’s terminology, we interrogate it —Where is this idea coming from? What unstated presuppositions lie behind it?—with the goal of mapping the worldview disconnect and then peacefully shifting the discussion to the actual point of contention.

This can revolutionize a conflict in two ways. First, it draws all ideas out into the open. I was recently invited to participate in an informal roundtable discussion with Ben, a college student majoring in philosophy. When asked about my worldview, I answered within the three-point framework: God, sin, Christ. He liked that structure and used it to articulate his worldview as well: evolution, dogma, better science education—right in line with the Sagan-Tyson synthesis. Then he elaborated. Scientists aren’t doing enough to educate the public about what they know, he said, particularly with respect to the beginning of the universe and the origin of the first living things.

Now, if you’ve been reading Salvo for any length of time, you know why scientists aren’t providing these explanations. It’s because they don’t exist. And our discussion exposed this and other gaping holes in Ben’sworldview that are being filled with a materialistic version of faith.

Second, a worldview reset can reorient a potentially contentious dialogue. With most conflicts regarding secular ideologies, the disconnect is, at root, a clash between the theistic and non-theistic foundations. This can be the case even if both sides are invoking biblical imagery.

For example, sexual ideologies are often pushed with slogans like, “Jesus would accept gays and transgenders.” That may be true, but if Jesus is going to be invoked, then it’s fair and intellectually honest to redirect the discussion to the question of worldview foundation. If the Judeo-Christian God created humanity male and female and instituted marriage, then certain implications for sexuality follow from that. If not, then anything goes.

The relevant point for discussion would be, Which worldview foundation are we starting from? Is it Christian theism? Or is it some form of philosophical naturalism? If naturalism, then moral dictates based on what Jesus may or may not have done are irrelevant. Furthermore (and worse for the naturalist), in naturalism, morality is an ungrounded, arbitrary chimera. Whenever possible, then, ideologues, whether sexual, environmental or otherwise, should be pressed to grapple with the full implications of their worldview foundation. This is not rhetorical tit for tat. Wisely executed, it’s an act of Christian love.

Practical Peacemaking

Another entrenched narrative out there says that truth claims are the source of human conflict. But a worldview reset can actually be a move toward peace. Family counselor Beverly Buncher created a communication strategy for families of addicts called BALM—Be A Loving Mirror. It involves remaining calm in heated situations and, as lovingly as possible, reflecting back your opponent’s thoughts and emotions. The objective is to stay in the relationship, grounded in your own reasoned composure, in hopes of serving over time as a peacemaking, transformative presence for your loved one.

Both the worldview filter and the BALM approach are powerful aids for remapping ideological impasses and bridging relational divides. More important, they provide a setting for illuminating truth.

 

Terrell Clemmons is a freelance writer and blogger on apologetics and matters of faith.

This article was originally published at salvomag.com: http://bit.ly/2zJGiBe

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Book Review Scientism and Secularism by J. P. Moreland

Book Review: Scientism and Secularism by J. P. Moreland

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By Timothy Fox (Orthodox Fox)

J. P. Moreland is one of the most prominent Christian thinkers of our time, and I’ve been greatly impacted by his works, such as Love Your God With All Your Mind and Kingdom Triangle. In his latest popular-level work, Scientism and Secularism (Crossway, 2018), Moreland addresses one of the most dangerous ideologies facing our culture and church. But the true danger of scientism is not that is necessarily being argued for, it is simply assumed to be true. So Moreland’s task in this book is not just to refute scientism but to first expose it and how it has influenced society and Christianity.

But first, what is scientism? It “is the view that the hard sciences – like chemistry, biology, physics, and astronomy – provide the only genuine knowledge of reality” (26). Obviously, this would place theology outside the bounds of knowledge and leave religion to the realm of mere belief, feelings, and opinions. Thus, Moreland has quite the hill to climb.

Content

In the first three chapters, Moreland defines scientism and explains its influence on the church and the university. The following three explain the failings of scientism: how it is self-defeating, how it is the enemy of science, and how weak scientism – the belief that science is the best way to know truth – is no better than strong – the belief that science is the only way to know truth.

In chapter 7, Moreland discusses three areas that we all know internally or intuitively and that science cannot account for logic and math, our personal conscious states, and moral knowledge. In the case of logic and math, science cannot operate without them. I view chapter 8 as a bonus chapter that delves deeper into consciousness and neuroscience. Those interested in science will love it, and those who aren’t can skip it. But laypersons who wish to learn more about these topics will definitely need a few thorough reads through the chapter.

Chapter 9 explains the importance of philosophy in science, how it forms the foundation and framework by which proper science can be performed. This is another of the more challenging chapters, containing a lot of philosophical content and terminology. But since scientism is a philosophical assumption about the nature of truth, it is an extremely important chapter and should not be skipped. Moreland continues explaining the importance of philosophy in science in chapter 10, in which he provides examples for the authority and autonomy of philosophy.

The next three chapters deal with how we explain reality. Chapter 11 shows the difference between scientific and personal explanations and introduces the concept of methodological naturalism, the idea that “one must seek only natural causes/explanations for scientific data” (121). Then in the next two chapters, Moreland outlines the shortcomings of methodological naturalism. Chapter 12 is another critical chapter in that it discusses five things that theism can explain but science cannot: the origin of the universe; the origin of the laws of nature; the fine-tuning of the universe; the origin of consciousness; and the existence of moral, rational, and aesthetic laws. While this chapter is only a few pages long, every Christian should explore these topics more as they not only undercut scientism but are also powerful arguments for the existence of God. Chapter 13 discusses two competing Christian views to the origin of life, Intelligent Design, and Theistic Evolution, which are also important topics that require further study.

The final two chapters discuss integrating science and Christianity, explaining why it is important and offering five ways to do it.

Assessment

This is a critical book for the Christian as scientism is possibly the number one enemy facing the church today. As the belief that science is the only way to know truth becomes more widespread, the claims of Christianity simply cannot be taken seriously by society.

Depending on your prior knowledge, this may be a challenging read – not because of Moreland’s writing style but by the nature of the content. Moreland himself urges the reader to read it again in the book’s epilogue, and it may require multiple thorough reads to fully grasp. Thankfully, the book is only around 200 pages in length, and it includes plenty of footnotes and a selected bibliography for further study, as well as a glossary since technical vocabulary cannot be avoided.

Pretty much everything Moreland writes is a must-read, and Scientism and Secularism is no different. Every Christian is going to encounter scientism of some form, and so we all must be on our guard to defend against it. J. P. Moreland has provided us another valuable resource in our ongoing struggle with a secular culture.

 

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2DTflz1

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The Darwin Tales

The Darwin Tales

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By Terrell Clemmons

It’s Time to Remit Darwinian Storytelling to the Annals of History.

Stephen Meyer was a young geophysicist working in the oil industry in Dallas, Texas, in 1985 when he saw that an interesting science conference was coming to town and he decided to drop in. During a panel discussion on the origin of the first living things, Charles Thaxton, a highly credentialed chemist, noted that the information stored in DNA could not be explained by chemical evolutionary processes. This was generally known already and uncontroversial. But Thaxton ventured a step further by suggesting that the information could point to an intelligent cause. This was a reasonable inference, Thaxton said because, in our regular human experience, we know that information is typically attributable to intelligent causes.

This struck Meyer as both intuitive and plausible. But what really piqued his interest was the heated reaction of some of the other scientists at this suggestion. They got really personal. Some criticized Thaxton’s intellect; others, his motives, as if he’d broken some unwritten convention. What was with all this emotion? Meyer wondered. He’d always thought scientists were objective professionals who coolly looked at data and followed the evidence. This was an interesting problem.

The encounter led to some follow-up discussions with Thaxton and a burning new question, which Meyer would take with him to Cambridge University a year later: Could this idea of intelligence—or intelligent design—be made into a rigorous scientific argument?

But during his first year there, an after-lecture social gathering brought home a sobering reality. Everyone at Cambridge was openly atheistic. In fact, atheism was so preemptively the assumed worldview that theism was not even on the table. Meyer not only believed in God; he was a Christian. Clearly, this could be a lonely work environment, and the widespread atheism around him could present obstacles to collaborations on this question. But he took heart in remembering the great scientists of history whose science had been specifically driven by their Christian worldview.

The Closed Darwinian Circle

Science writer Tom Bethell, who had arrived at sister university Oxford about twenty-five years prior, experienced a similarly disappointing revelation. He’d arrived at Oxford “naively imagining that philosophy taught us the meaning of life.” It didn’t.

But Bethell later came to see its usefulness. Many problems in philosophy had flourished, he discovered, because the words used to formulate theories weren’t clearly defined. Sometimes, he further realized, the vagaries seemed to be intentional. Bethell would go on to a long career as a philosophically astute journalist, brilliantly clarifying and parsing some of the most crucial enigmas of public life and history.

Case in point: Charles Darwin’s central postulate said that the diversity of biological life on earth could be explained by natural selection operating on random variations. Herbert Spencer, a contemporary of Darwin, summarized this notion as “survival of the fittest.” The phrase stuck, and today, Darwin’s postulate reigns as the grand unifying theory of established science.

But was there an inherent problem with it, philosophically, from the very start? “Doubts about evolution first arose in my mind when I looked at the title page of The Origin of Species,” Bethell wrote.

I read, and then reread that page:

On the Origin of Species

by Means of Natural Selection

or the

preservation of favoured races

in the struggle for life

by Charles Darwin, M.A.

1859

The words ‘preservation’ and ‘favoured’ stood out. Was there any way of knowing what ‘races’ (meaning species, or individual variants) were favored other than by looking to see which ones were in fact preserved?

This was no pedantic quibble. For if there truly is no way of determining what is “fit” other than by seeing what survives, then Darwin was arguing in a self-confirming circle: the survival of the survivors. In rhetorical terms, this is what’s called a tautology—a statement that is true by definition, due to the construction of the language by which it is expressed. In effect, Darwin’s proposed mechanism—natural selection—rested on the observation that, “Survivors survive.” To which any clear-thinking middle-school student might say, “Well, duh.”

Curating History

Beginning with this observation, Bethell’s latest book examines the dialogue that has taken place among scientists since the publication of The Origin. But rather than giving us a chronological point-counterpoint synopsis of it, Bethell presents a kind of “tour” of the topics over which the debate has been hashed out—the “rooms,” if you will, of the 150-plus-year-old house of Darwin: common descent, natural selection, the fossil record, information theory, evolutionary psychology, artificial intelligence, the growing intelligent design movement, and more.

The upshot of it all is captured in his title: Darwin’s House of Cards: A Journalist’s Odyssey Through the Darwin Debates. Darwinism is an idea past its prime, he concludes, one whose collapse is inevitable and is in fact already demonstrably underway.

Examining a Theory and Its Theorist

He states that forthrightly, but also backs it up with characteristically sound logic—examining, like a museum curator, Darwin’s various claims in light of both mounting new evidence against them and the ongoing lack of evidence supporting them. Room by room, he shows how evolutionary theory today is being propped up by logical fallacies, bogus claims, and outdated empirical evidence that has all but disintegrated under the weight of new discoveries.

In addition to covering the high points of the scientific discussion, Bethell also delves into the man Darwin as he revealed himself through his personal writings. While Darwin was in his own right a legitimate scientist, his theorizing was influenced, inordinately as it turns out, by three ideas of his day: Malthusian economics, Progress, and philosophical materialism.

  • Malthusian Math: Political economist Thomas Malthus had speculated that when population growth outstrips food supply, then death by starvation would result in some sectors of society but not others. Darwin had read Malthus, and he simply transferred the calculus of overpopulation to the plant and animal kingdom. “It at once struck me that under these circumstances favorable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavorable ones to be destroyed. The result would be the formation of new species.” Darwin had no evidence of the formation of any new species, though. That was pure extrapolation.
  • Progress: Capitalized to denote the philosophy as it existed in his day, “Progress” was the reigning metanarrative in post-Enlightenment England, the all-encompassing, assumed a trajectory of reality. It was “as difficult for him to escape as the air he breathed,” wrote Bethell, and Darwin was a confirmed believer. The word “evolution” doesn’t actually appear in The Origin. He referred rather to improvement, progress, and perfection, in the end, writing that “all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress toward perfection.”
  • Materialism: Darwin himself was a full-blown materialist, but he avoided outwardly confessing the extent of his belief. He’d worked out his theory by 1837, but didn’t go public with it for more than twenty years, partly because the 1830s climate of opinion was highly unfavorable to materialism. Even at publication in 1859, he still didn’t deploy it consistently in The Origin, but rather strategically and progressively invoked it over the course of six editions.

Darwin’s metaphysical outlook was not a deduction from his science, though, but was influenced by his theology. He raised theological issues in several of his writings, and Bethell devotes an entire chapter to his evolving religious views. Two points are worth mentioning here. In his autobiography, Darwin mentioned being “heartily laughed at” for quoting the Bible while on the H.M.S. Beagle. We can only speculate about the psychological effect of this incident, but it obviously affected him enough to write about it forty years later. Afterward, he reconsidered the Bible’s place in his view of the world and concluded it was “no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos, or the beliefs of any barbarian.”

In addition, like many in insulated societies, he took issue with God over the problem of evil and suffering, ultimately deciding that the concept of an all-loving and all-powerful God could not be reconciled with the reality of misery in the world. “Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete.”

More a product of their theorist and the zeitgeist, then, than of science, Darwin’s postulates found easy acceptance among an elite intelligentsia predisposed to believe in materialism and Progress. Sadly, liberal clergy went along without objection or concern.

Straightening Out Bad Philosophy

Molecular biologist Jonathan Wells concurs with Bethell that Darwinian evolution is one long argument bolstering an a priori metaphysics. In Zombie Science: More Icons of Evolution, he gives three common definitions of science: (1) empirical science is the enterprise of seeking truth by formulating hypotheses and testing them against evidence; (2) technological science comprises the advances that have enriched modern life; and (3) establishment science consists of professionals conducting research. These can all be legitimate uses of the word.

In addition, though, he notes, some people have come to define science as (4) the enterprise of providing natural explanations for everything. But this would more accurately be called methodological naturalism. And while it is true that the methods of empirical science limit the causal explanations, it can confirm or disconfirm to the material realm, to go further and assume that only material causes exist is to assume an unstated claim about metaphysical reality. Furthermore, to do so and call it science constitutes fraud.

Metaphysical Storytelling & the Judgment of History

Fraud aside, it also compromises science. When priority is given to proposing and defending materialistic explanations over following the evidence, materialistic philosophy is running the show. Where this happens (and it does), Wells calls it zombie science. “Evolution is a materialistic story,” he writes, “and since the materialistic story trumps the evidence, it is zombie science.”

Listen to biologist-turned-filmmaker Randy Olsen’s explanation for why he knowingly passed off falsehood in his 2007 film Flock of Dodos: The Evolution-Intelligent Design Circus: “Scientists must realize that science is a narrative process, that narrative is story; therefore science needs story.” This is stunning! What Olson is saying here is that metaphysical storytelling should override accuracy in science reporting.

Returning to Meyer at Cambridge, during his first year, he was granted a second telling revelation when his supervisor offered some unsolicited advice. “Everyone here is bluffing,” the kindly old school don said. “And if you’re to succeed, you must learn to bluff too.”

Fortunately, Meyer opted for personal integrity and legitimate science over bluffing and storytelling and then left it to others to sort things out. Imagine the exhibit in some future Museum of Science and History: Everyone believed the Darwinists, boys, and girls until a few brave scientists concerned with data and following evidence came along and called their bluff.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is a science story worth telling.

 

Terrell Clemmons is a freelance writer and blogger on apologetics and matters of faith.

This article was originally published at salvomag.com: http://bit.ly/2z72XqW

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Theistic Foundation of Science, parte 3

Theistic Foundation of Science, part 3

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By Ken Mann

Think Week: The Foundations of Science Found in Christian Theism, 3

We have been considering five presuppositions of science and how they can be explained by Christian theism. In the previous post we considered first three, here we will address the last two presuppositions, An Understandable World, and An Expressible World.

An Understandable World

We now turn to the significant mystery of why the world is understandable. From the perspective of naturalism, how or why this is the case usually boils down to a story describing how the evolutionary process increased brain capacity which led to a greater ability to survive. The purely physical view says the size and complexity of our brain is the reason we can understand the world.

However, there is a flaw in this argument as described by Alvin Plantinga in his Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism. In short, there is an important distinction between survival and truth. Evolution is a process that favors the capacity to survive, but that does not guarantee that our reasoning processes or our senses can be trusted, merely that they have facilitated our ability to survive. Patricia Churchland, a philosopher who embraces naturalism, made the following observation: “Boiled down to essentials, a nervous system enables the organism to succeed in the four F’s: feeding, fleeing, fighting, and reproducing. The principle chore of nervous systems is to get the body parts where they should be in order that the organism may survive… Truth, whatever that is, definitely takes the hindmost.”[1] In other words, what governs survival is behavior, not beliefs. Beliefs do directly cause behaviors. In fact, a combination of beliefs, desires, and other factors lead to behavior. So it is more than conceivable that false beliefs about the world can lend themselves to survival just as well as true ones.

The evolutionary story is in stark contrast to how Christian theism not only explains why

creation is understandable but also the motivated observation as a part of science. Let’s consider three aspects of the intelligibility of creation: the nature of man, the nature of creation, and the transition from reason to observation.

The Nature of Man. The most foundational and misunderstood aspect of the nature of man, as described in the Bible, is that humanity was created in the image of God. I would like to offer three observations about this theologically deep topic.

First, the naturalist’s wooden interpretation of this phrase leads to the idea that God is physical being like us. In truth, God is an immaterial and transcendent being. Therefore whatever “image of God” means it cannot mean something merely physical.

Second, it is helpful to see this phrase in terms of the attributes of God that have been shared with humanity. God is a personal being, meaning He has mind, will, and emotions. In this way, human persons are finite examples of God. We have a mind that allows us to think, to reason.

We have a will that allows us to make decisions, to have intentions and purposes. We have emotions that allow us to experience relationships.

Third, there are attributes of God that cannot be shared with humanity. For example, God is infinite versus humanity being finite. In terms of knowledge, God is omniscient. In terms of time, God is eternal, without beginning or end. God is self-existent while humanity is contingent.

We exist because God created us, but God’s existence is not dependent on anything else.

We have a finite version of God’s rational capacities to reason and have intentions. Humanity and creation are the products of the same rational mind. Therefore, it makes sense we would have the capacity to understand creation.

An Object of Study not Worship. Christianity stands apart from other religions in its perspective toward creation. In contrast to many cultures and religions that believed creation was populated by gods, the Bible de-deifies the world. This allowed humanity to study rather than worship creation. As Nancy Pearcey explains: “The monotheism of the Bible exorcised the gods of nature, freeing humanity to enjoy and investigate it without fear. When the world was no longer an object of worship, then-and only then-could it becomes an object of study.”[2]

From reason to observation. A final observation about how Christian theism explains why creation is understandable can be found in the origins of the theological view know as voluntarism. During the Middle Ages, theologians such as Thomas Aquinas wrestled with reconciling with certain aspects of Aristotle’s views of nature with orthodox views of God and creation. For Aristotle, nature was understood to the extent that the purpose of any object or creature could be discerned. Once the purpose was understood nothing else needed to be known.

Regarding God and the nature of the universe Aristotle believed “that the ultimate rational causes of things in God’s mind could be discovered by the human reason; and that he had in fact discovered those causes, so that the universe must necessarily be constituted as he had described it, and could not be otherwise.”[3]

As various thinkers started proposing views that directly undermined the nature of God, based on an application of Aristotle’s views, the Church reacted. In 1277 the Bishop of Paris published a list of 219 statements condemning any statement that limited God’s freedom of action regarding creation. Some specific examples of physical concepts Aristotle believed clarify the intention of the Bishop’s condemnations. For example, Aristotle believed that a vacuum was physically impossible, heavenly objects can only move in circles, and ballistic motion (e.g. a baseball) was sustained by displaced air pushing the moving object.

The condemnations did not limit the work of natural philosophers (a term that referred to theologians who studied nature). Instead, it freed them from continued adherence to Aristotle’s views on the natural world. A new form of theology, known as voluntarism, was inspired.

According to Pearcey, “Voluntarism insisted that the structure of the universe-indeed, its very existence-is not rationally necessary but is contingent upon the free and transcendent will of God.”[4]

Voluntarism inspired and justified what we would refer to today as an experimental methodology. It established that the nature of creation could not be found via reason alone. We must observe nature to understand what the creator did. The need for observation, a foundational concept within science, was discovered by 13th century Christians attempting to defend the nature of God while thinking about the study of nature.

An Expressible World

Finally, let’s consider the existence of mathematics. As was noted in a previous post, mathematics as a discipline is completely devoted to abstract concepts. These concepts are frequently applied to physical reality as tools of explanation, and description. They sometimes even guide future research in disciplines like physics. Not only is the naturalist viewpoint unable to explain the existence of mathematics, it cannot acknowledge the existence of the abstract objects that make it possible.

The laws of nature, as noted above, are written in the language of mathematics. The character Ellie Arroway in the movie Contact, called mathematics the only universal language. According to Christianity, by virtue of sharing aspects of God’s nature, we are given access to that language. By describing nature via theories and mathematics, we are “thinking God’s thoughts.”

This points to an obvious and delightful concept that God created humanity to know Him directly through Jesus and indirectly through creation.

The heavens are telling of the glory of God;

And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands.

Day to day pours forth speech,

And night to night reveals knowledge.

There is no speech, nor are there words;

Their voice is not heard.

Their line has gone out through all the earth,

And their utterances to the end of the world.

Psalm 19:1-4

We have now completed looking at five presuppositions of science and how they are grounded within Christianity. As I bring this series on foundations of science to a close, I hope I have made it clear that Christianity, far from being hostile or impeding science actually played a significant role in the thinking that made science possible. No matter how many secularists today denigrate Christian theism or the historical role it played, they cannot escape the idea that the study of nature serves two important ends: glorifying God and serving man.

In the next part of this series, we will look at some of the models, which describe how Christianity and science interact.

Biography

Carlson, Richard F., Wayne F. Frair, Gary D. Patterson, Jean Pond, Stephen C. Meyer, and

Howard J. Van Till. Science & Christianity: Four Views. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2000.

Collins, C. John. Science and Faith: Friends or Foes?. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2003.

DeWeese, Garrett J. Doing Philosophy as a Christian. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2011.

Deweese, Garrett J. Philosophy Made Slightly Less Difficult: A Beginner’s Guide to Life’s Big

Questions. Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2005.

Gould, Stephen Jay. Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life. New York, NY: Ballantine Books, 1999.

Hume, David. “The Project Gutenberg eBook of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.” http://www.gutenberg.org/files/9662/9662-h/9662-h.htm (accessed April 14, 2015).

Moreland, J. P. Christianity and the Nature of Science: A Philosophical Investigation. 2nd ed.

Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1999.

Moreland, J. P., and William Lane Craig. Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview. IVP Academic, 2003.

Numbers, Ronald L. Galileo, Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion. 1st ed.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009.

Pearcey, Nancy. The Soul of Science: Christian Faith and Natural Philosophy. Wheaton, IL:

Crossway Books, 1994.

Stark, Rodney. For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-

Hunts, and the End of Slavery. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004.

Notes

[1] Journal of Philosophy 84 [October 87], p. 548

[2] Pearcey, The Soul of Science, Kindle Locations 191–193.

[3] Ibid., Kindle Locations 295–297.

[4] Ibid., Kindle Locations 289–290.

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Human Nature According to Darwin – A Christian Response

Human Nature According to Darwin – A Christian Response

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By Ken Mann

The following is was delivered as a plenary session at a Biola on the Road conference in April 2017 at Faith Bible Church in Houston Texas.

Introduction

Charles Darwin. Evolution. Perhaps no other man and no other idea have had a wider influence on western culture. Since On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection was first published in 1859, how we perceive our world and ourselves has been transformed. For those who have embraced Darwinism, humanity and every other living thing are the end products of a natural process. There is no Creator. There is no purpose. There is just survival. Humanity is a cosmic accident.

Since as early as 1888, scientists and academics have asserted that Darwinian evolution is a fact as certain as gravity. The momentum behind Darwin’s theory strengthened in the 20th century to the point that nearly every aspect of human behavior and culture has been subjected to an evolutionary explanation. Today, scientists who are merely skeptical about evolution risk losing their jobs if their views become known.

In the face of such an onslaught, what should a Christian think? In my own experience, I was always convinced that evolution was false. Not because I knew anything about it. Rather, I was certain of the existence of God and the reliability of the New Testament. I believed I had adequate justification to believe in a literal Adam and Eve, in the Fall, and in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

But for many years I was plagued by an internal conflict. Setting aside evolution, I have always loved science. Since studying physics in college, I have adhered to the adage that science is “thinking God’s thoughts after Him.” Despite the myriad of apparent conflicts between science and religion, I suspected that Psalm 19:1, the heavens declare the glory of God, meant that the study of creation was compatible with the Christian worldview.

Then in 2010, I enrolled in the Science and Religion program at Biola. During my first year, I took a class that focused on Darwin. At the time, Darwin seemed like the Mt. Everest of a “Science and Religion” program. Looking back on it now, this subject embodied everything that made the program so valuable. The tools I learned and the confidence I gained have transformed my Faith.

I always rejected evolution not because I understood the science, philosophy or history that surrounds it, but because I trusted God more. Today, I know the reasons why Darwinian evolution is not fact, and I should emphasize, none of them are based on Christian doctrine.

That might alarm some of you so let me explain. There are many myths and distortions about the relationship between science and Christianity. Perhaps the worst is that science and Christianity are in hopeless conflict, that the Christian church has been an impediment to science since Galileo. In reality, the foundations of modern science, the assumptions that made science possible, come from the Christian worldview. The pioneers of modern science were all committed Christians, most of whom saw science, in the words of Kepler as “thinking God’s thoughts after Him.”

In other words, science and Scripture are merely two sources of revelation. There is the “book of nature” and the “book of Scripture.” These two “books” cannot contradict each other because they have the same author, God. When they seem to contradict, something has gone wrong with our understanding of Scripture, nature or both.

Since Galileo’s confrontation with the Catholic Church in the 17th century, there have been conflicts between doctrines promoted by the Church and the conclusions of science. In Galileo’s time, almost everyone accepted an earth-centered view of the cosmos that originated with the Greeks and had later become sanctified using certain passages from the Old Testament. Galileo questioned the conventional wisdom of his time and advocated an idea that would not be widely accepted for another century.

In the 19th century, Charles Darwin also challenged widely accepted ideas about God’s role in creating the world. Since then Christianity has been challenged by variety conclusions based on his writings.

How should we deal with these challenges? The first and more important step is to understand them. We shouldn’t run away from something that attacks our Christian worldview. We should run toward it. Engage, learn, and trust that God is sovereign.

As we engage with Evolution today, I want to reassure you that we are not going to wander off into the tall grass of the biological sciences. We are not going to talk about the Prevalence of Functionally Significant Glutathione S-Transferase Genetic Polymorphisms in Dogs. (That is the subject of a research project my daughter, a biochemistry, cell, and molecular biology major, has been working on since last summer.) Not because the science isn’t important, but because it takes a lot more time than we have available today. Further, there are far more obvious problems with Darwinian evolution.

It is assumed that Darwin’s theory was the triumph of science over the myths of religion. It is claimed Darwin was not influenced by religion; he studied nature and “discovered” how it really worked. Based on his empirical observations he proposed an idea that explained how life developed via natural processes without the direct intervention of a creator. In reality, Darwin had certain assumptions about God and how He would create that was inconsistent with what he found in the natural world. In short, Darwin was convinced his theory was true because his God would not have created the world as we find it.

My highest priority this morning is to be understood; therefore I want to be clear what I am talking about. I also want to inform, which means some of what I share might be challenging and new to some of you. I would ask for your patience as we go along. I will be around to answer questions and the substance of this talk, along with a list of some relevant books, can be found on my website under “resources.”

I am going to cover two things this morning. First, I am going to discuss some terminology that is foundational to this subject. Next, we will consider the theological ideas that were at work in the 19th century and still influence public perception of the relationship between science and Christianity.

Terminology

Whether you are engaging with someone with a different worldview or simply trying to learn more about a subject, navigating terminology is a crucial task. You have to be aware of words you haven’t heard or seen before. Whether I am reading or in conversation, I am always alert to such words. If I am reading, I will stop and look up the word. In conversation, it is difficult but still just as important to interrupt and ask the other person what a word means. If they can define the term for you, your conversation has been enhanced. If they can’t, you may or may not be able to continue. Regardless, it is important to prevent either side of a conversation from assuming what certain words mean.

Evolution

So what does the word evolution mean? That depends on the context and the intention of the author. Just on this subject, there are actually six different definitions that are routinely used. Only one definition is in view this morning, but if you read articles or blogs on evolution, you may encounter one or more of these definitions. You may even find authors who use the word in one sense, then later switch to a different meaning later in the same article.

  • Change over time. To quote the Screwtape letters, “…to be in time means to change.” The study of nature frequently entails discerning what has happened in the past from the evidence we can examine today. Clearly, no one is going to disagree with this definition.
  • Change in the distribution of different physical traits within a population. This refers to a field within biology known as population genetics. It studies the genetic composition of biological populations, and the changes in genetic composition that result from the operation of various factors, including natural selection.
  • Limited Common Descent. “The idea that particular groups of organisms have descended from a common ancestor.” The best-known example of this is the finches encountered on the Galapagos Islands. Today there are many examples of different species that probably have a common ancestor.
  • The mechanism of limited common descent, natural selection acting on genetic mutations. Darwin’s theory had three premises: organisms varied, variations could be inherited, and all organisms were under pressure to survive. Those variations that enhanced survival were passed on to other generations. Again, in a limited sense, such variation is observed, and it is plausible that survival could select certain traits over others.

None of the definitions so far are controversial. However, the next two are where most of the disagreements occur.

  • Universal Common Descent. This definition of evolution asserts that every organism is descended from a single original organism. As controversial as this may sound, it is not the final word on what most scientists believe is meant by evolution.
  • “Blind Watchmaker” thesis.
    The term “blind watchmaker” was coined by Richard Dawkins in the title of his 1986 book, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence for Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design. Dawkins was ridiculing an argument made by William Paley published in 1802. Paley argued that the existence of a watch implies the existence of a watchmaker. Whereas a rock merely implies the processes of geology over time.
    This definition of evolution is that all organisms have descended from common ancestors solely through an unguided, unintelligent, purposeless, material process. This process is completely sufficient to account for the appearance of design in living organisms.
    Or more succinctly, “Molecules to men by way of chemistry and physics.”

This final definition is what really drives the conflict of worldviews between materialism and Christianity. It goes by a couple of other names: “Darwinism” or “neo-Darwinism.” (The later term is a more technical and specific in that it refers to the integration of Darwinism and the science of population genetics in the middle of the 20th century.)

While you should always press for definitions, when you hear Darwin’s name or evolution invoked in a discussion about human origins or the development of life, you can be confident that the “molecules to men” idea is usually what is meant.

Science

The term science needs not so much a definition as a lot of warning labels. Being that it is in the title of my major, it will come as no surprise that I have developed some opinions on the subject. I am going to limit myself to two ideas.

First, science cannot be constrained by a specific detailed definition. There is no definitive list of criteria that says, “that is science, but this other field is not!” In other words, specific examples of science (e.g., physics, biology, and paleoanthropology) seem obvious, however, coming up with a list of criteria that separates astrology from astronomy, for example, is harder to do. Most everyone is going to agree that simply studying the movement of the stars and planets does not make astrology a science.

Second, beware of an inflated view of science as a source of knowledge. The view known as “scientism” asserts that the only things that can be known are from the natural sciences. It is a tactic designed to give the guy in a lab coat, as opposed to a theologian or a philosopher, a privileged status that ends the discussion. It is also a self-refuting concept because there is nothing we can learn from science. However you define science, that demonstrates scientism.

Theology

Theology is the study of the nature of God. I believe that the Bible is the best source for theology. But we can also learn something about the nature of God from other disciplines, such as science and philosophy.

Human Nature

Now that I’ve defined Darwinism, I should also touch on the term human nature.  Obviously, this is a subject as vast human experience. An entire conference could be devoted to addressing this subject. How you define, human nature is determined by your worldview. One may approach this question from a scientific, philosophical, or theological perspective. For my purposes this morning I simply want to address the crucial differences between human nature according to Darwinism and human nature according to Christian theism.

From the perspective of Darwinism, human beings and every living thing is simply the end result of a blind, unguided physical process. In other words, we are merely animals. The process of natural selection has been invoked to explain nearly every aspect of human culture and behavior. Many of these explanations are simply unsubstantiated stories, but they have captured the imagination of many. From religion to sexual infidelity, to altruism there is an evolutionary story for everything about human nature.

Darwinism denies the possibility of the soul; it makes no room for the existence of the immaterial. As a consequence, one must come to grips with the idea that everything we do, everything we think, everything we feel is not evidence of our soul, but is merely the output of a physical process.

According to Darwinism, the difference between human beings and every other animal is a matter of degree, not kind. Let me illustrate what I mean by these two words with an example.

Steph Curry and Russell Westbrook are reputed to be among the best point guards playing in the NBA right now. The difference between them is a matter of degree.  However, if we were to compare Curry or Westbrook to a basketball, we would have to say the basketball is a different kind of thing.

Since we are just animals, it shouldn’t surprise you that ethical decisions about humans and animals are a bit different for the Darwinist. Peter Singer, a professor of bioethics at Princeton University, popularized the term speciesism, which refers to privileging members of a particular species over others. In other words, it is not always wrong to kill human beings under circumstances such as severe mental or physical handicaps. Some environmentalists have seized upon this idea to argue that the death of a logger or the economic destruction of a community are acceptable when weighed against the safety of a type of animal.

The Christian view of human nature is radically different. In addition to being grounded in Scripture, it is also consistent with our experience and deepest intuitions.

According to Christianity, human beings are unique in creation, a completely different kind of creature from every other animal. We are physical creatures. We are similar to other animals in many ways. Yet we also have an immaterial nature, a soul if you will. I have always been fond of this passage from the Screwtape Letters:

Humans are amphibians— half spirit and half animal… As spirits, they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time means to change. (p. 37).

I would quibble with Screwtape to the extent that we are not “half spirit and half animal” rather we are embodied souls. Our soul completely occupies and animates our bodies. Our soul can also exist apart from our bodies, but a human body cannot continue without a soul.

The most essential aspect of human nature, what makes us unique, is found in the phrase the “image of God” first mentioned in Genesis 1:26-27.

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

To briefly unpack this phrase, if we consider the Hebrew words used here for “image” and “likeness” and Greek word (eikōn), it would seem that God created us to be similar but not identical to Himself.

Consider just three ways we are similar to God.

  • We are spiritual. Part of our nature is an immaterial soul or spirit united with a physical body.
  • We are personal, that is to say, we are self-conscious and rational beings. We have a mind, will, and emotions.
  • We have the power to choose. Sometimes referred to as free agency, we have the capacity to deliberate and make choices.

Finally, no discussion of the Christian view of human nature would be complete without considering the Fall. As unique as we are, as much as we were created to be in fellowship with God and with each other, the most certain and painful fact is that something is horribly wrong.

Darwinism and the materialist worldview it supports must deny our daily awareness of evil. In ourselves, in our culture, even to some extent in creation itself, we are constantly confronted with the results of human rebellion.

Christianity explains the existence of evil, our embrace of and revulsion from it; and it offers a solution in the person and work Jesus Christ.

Theological Foundations of Darwinism

In Matthew 16, Jesus asked His disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” This is the most important question anyone will ever answer. Understanding who Jesus is and what He did is an essential step to trusting Him as your personal savior.

That question is just as relevant if God the Father asked it. What you believe about God has a profound effect on every aspect of your life. Our perception of reality, how we choose to live, how we choose to solve our problems, everything about us is ultimately effected by our view of God.

This is no less true in science. For as long as people have tried to understand nature, their beliefs about what or who created the world has impacted how they comprehend nature.

In the 19th century, there were several trends in theology that set the stage for Darwinism. Consider one example. It was argued that it would demean God to believe every animal species was a unique act of creation. Rather, God would be a wiser and more capable creator if the capacity to create species by some natural process was built into creation. This view also downplayed or dismissed other things God did like miracles in the New Testament. This was sometimes referred to as “Greater God Theology.” Ideas like this and others we will now consider motivated Darwin to reconcile what was observed in nature with the theology of his day.

Natural theology and the ‘theory of creation’

The idea that God created is not really controversial in Christianity. It’s right there in the first verse, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Now a tremendous amount of words have been written about this verse and all that it means, however, no one doubts that central phrase, “God created.”

In the 18th and 19th century the perspective of creation was that from the motion of the heavens down to the myriad of animals and plants that occupy the earth, all of creation was a perfect, harmonious system that reflected God’s wisdom and benevolence. Starting in the 17th century a variety of theologians and scientists advanced the idea that evidence for God could be found in the study of nature. Known as “Natural Theology,” this field reached its peak in the works of William Paley at the beginning of 19th century. Natural theology argued, some would say brilliantly, that evidence for design could be found in nature.

However, there was a significant flaw in Paley’s perspective. Paley believed that God’s purpose in creation was the happiness of His creatures. Creation was idealized in such a way that God’s benevolence, wisdom were seen everywhere. Allow me to read a quote from Paley’s book Natural Theology:

It is a happy world after all. The air, the earth, the water, teem with delighted existence. In a Spring noon or a summer evening, on whichever side I turn my eyes, myriads of happy beings crowd upon my view. The insect youth are on the wing. Swarms of new-born flies are trying their pinions in the air. Their sportive motions, their wanton mazes, their gratuitous activity, their continual change of place without use or purpose, testify their joy, and the exultation which they feel in their lately discovered faculties. A bee amongst the flowers in spring is one of the most cheerful objects that can be looked upon. lts life appears to be all enjoyment, so busy, and so pleased: yet it is only a specimen of insect life.

In short, the Natural theologians claimed nature demonstrated God’s wisdom and goodness but they ignored His providence, judgment or use of evil.

The problem of Natural Evil

The problem of evil is something that has harassed Christian belief for a long time. If you haven’t heard that phrase before, it refers to the tension that exists between the obvious instances of evil we find in the world and the characteristics typically attributed to God. It is sometimes put as a question: “How can God be benevolent and omnipotent and yet allow the evil we experience in the world?”

Most discussions of this topic make a distinction between moral evil and natural evil. Moral evil is simply what people have been doing since Adam and Eve rebelled in the Garden. Natural evil, broadly speaking, is anything in nature that causes death or suffering. This could include everything from earthquakes, to disease, to all the horrible things animals do to each other.

Darwin, like other naturalists, did not see happiness and joy in creation. He saw death, suffering, and waste that he could not reconcile with Paley’s “happy” creation. He was particularly bothered by the suffering and death found in the animal kingdom. One particular example was a type of wasp that lays its eggs into the body of a caterpillar. After hatching, the larva starts consuming the host while it is still alive.

Darwin’s solution, consistent with greater God theology, was that God did not create the parasitic wasp or any of the other natural evil in the world. Rather, God created a system of natural laws which resulted in the world he studied. In a letter to Asa Gray (an American botanist) Darwin summarized his view this way. “I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance.”

To put it another way, God directly acting in creation was rejected in order to make the existence of natural evil comprehensible to human beings. If God did not directly create each individual species but merely created the natural system that resulted in the species we have today, then God is not directly responsible for natural evil.

“Nature is not perfect.”

A second aspect of natural theology to which Darwin objected is that all of the creation reflected God’s perfection. Of course, what is meant by perfection was apparently open to a wide variety of interpretations. For Darwin and many others since it has been the claim that many things found in nature are poorly designed.

Perhaps the most popular example of bad design in nature is the vestigial organ. When an organ or structures are no longer needed, it is “vestige” of the evolutionary process. It was needed in an ancestor species, but evolution has yet to remove it. In 1895 a German anatomist published a list of 86 vestigial organs in the human body. I am not aware of a single credible example today. Vestigial organs are not evidence of evolution. They are a combination of assuming evolution is true and ignorance of a particular organ’s function.

A more modern example of a claim of bad design is known as “Junk DNA.” This term was originally coined in 1972. When research first began into how DNA worked, the first thing discovered was the correlation between certain sequences of DNA bases (“rungs” on the DNA ladder) and the production of certain amino acids (20 different organic molecules that makeup proteins). The function of vast regions of DNA outside of these “protein coding,” upwards of 98% of the human genome was dismissed as “junk” until about five years ago. The Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) project began publishing results demonstrating that vast regions of the “junk DNA” in the human genome are being used.

Similar to vestigial organs, ignorance combined with an acceptance of evolution, resulted in the conclusion that subsequent research has proven wrong. In short, the existence of “Junk DNA” something that was once dogma is now becoming another failed prediction of Darwinism.

Theological Naturalism

A third theological idea that motivated Darwin and many others in the 19th century has to do with how God acts in creation. In order to make this clear I have to make a distinction between primary causes and secondary causes. An event which is caused by God and impossible by any other means, a miracle, is an example of primary causation. Something that occurs in accordance with natural law is an example of secondary causation. For example, the parting of the Red Sea as the Jews fled from Egypt was primary causation, the deaths of the Egyptian army caught when the water was released was secondary causation.

For many theologians and scientists since before Darwin down to the present day, science is not possible if God acts in the world. If primary causation is possible, then it is impossible to know the difference between an event caused by natural law and an event caused by God. In order to study nature, to understand the structure of “laws” that govern it, we must assume that God never acts in creation.

The net effect of this view does not deny that God was the creator of the universe, it simply means there is no evidence that He did. Of course, that is not the worst of it. If God has not done anything since the moment of creation, the incarnation and the resurrection of Jesus could not have happened.

Perhaps the simplest way to sum up this view is that God cannot be trusted. If He is capable of acting in creation, He is capable of tricking us. Science would become the “study” of the whims and unpredictable behavior of an omnipotent being.

Naturalism asserts that everything arises from natural properties and causes; supernatural or spiritual explanations are excluded or discounted. For theologians in the 19th century, this meant that God acted in creation through the laws he created. They argued God was greater, glorified more if He did not intervene in creation. Dr. Cornelius Hunter refers to this as theological naturalism because theological reasoning motivated it.

Today the default position of science is a view known as methodological naturalism. This is the idea that when you are doing science, you can only consider natural causes. The actions of an intelligent agent cannot be considered. God does not act in creation. From there, it is a short trip to atheism, where God does not exist.

But let me emphasize this point–the origins of naturalism that motivated Darwin and have become dogma within science today were philosophical. Naturalism was not a conclusion of science; it was a starting point.

Conclusion

Human nature according to Darwin, how should the Christian respond? First and foremost, when confronting an opposing worldview, you must understand what it believes and why. By exploring some terminology and its theological foundations, I’ve given you an introduction into the worldview of Darwinism.

I provided a summary of some of the ideas about God and his role in creation that motivated Darwin. Since On the Origin of Species was published down to the present day, Darwinism has relied on a perception of God that cannot be found in Scripture. Either God is absent from creation and cannot intervene, or He is incompetent because nature is full of “bad design.” Evolution is accepted as true because a distorted view of God and creation seems to be false.

This is not merely about science. It is not merely about religion. It is an example of how assumptions about God, religion if you will drive the process of science. Darwinism is not fact. Darwinism is less of a science than it is a theological viewpoint that claims empirical support from science.

Human nature according to Darwinism, including its denial of the soul and denial of human uniqueness, is not learned from various scientific disciplines. It is implied by the science and therefore it is accepted because Darwinism is accepted. However, if Darwinism is false, then whatever it claims about human nature is also false.

Time did not permit addressing the evidence used to support and critique Darwinism. What I can say in terms of a summary is that the evidence for Darwinism is only compelling if you are already convinced it is true. On the resources page on my website, today’s talk is available along with a list several books that cover today’s material in more depth. I would also encourage you to check out the books that focus on the scientific critiques of Darwinism.

I would like to leave you with some questions to ask someone who believes “molecules to men by way of physics and chemistry” is the best explanation for the vast diversity of life we find.

  1. What is the evidence for evolution?
  2. What is the Christian view of creation?
  3. How did life originate?

Each of these questions, depending on the responses you get, could be followed up with two questions. (1) What do you mean by that? (2) How did you come to that conclusion? These two questions from Greg Koukl’s Columbo technique seek clarification and evidence that will help you understand the other person’s perspective better.

It has been my prayer preparing for today that the summary I would offer here would encourage believers. It is also my prayer that you would leave today motivated to learn more about this subject and others that will be discussed today. As Christians, we are heirs to a tremendous heritage of thought that I fear has been abandoned. We worship a Being that created all things, sustains all things, and knows all things. Our trust in God should not be limited to our salvation. God is sovereign over everything. He is sovereign over every domain of human knowledge. He is sovereign over every lie that could deceive.

Don’t run away from a challenge. Engage, learn, and trust that God is sovereign.

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Theistic Foundation of Science, part 2

Theistic Foundation of Science, part 2

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By Ken Mann

Think Week: The Foundations of Science Found in Christian Theism, 2

Five Explanations

In this post, we will begin to consider how the presuppositions of science described in the previous post can be explained or grounded. Recall that these presuppositions cannot be discovered or defended via any kind of scientific process. Rather they form a foundation that makes science possible.

In order to explore how to explain or ground the presuppositions of science, we necessarily turn to the question of worldviews. For the sake of space, I am going to contrast Christian theism with naturalism. By naturalism, I mean the view that everything that exists is physical. Immaterial things such as souls, consciousness or numbers do not exist. This would also exclude the existence of immaterial minds.

Let’s consider three of the presuppositions.

A Real World

In contrast to other religious systems (e.g., Hinduism or pantheism), Christianity teaches that the creation is real. Human beings were created as both physical and spiritual beings that must interact with the reality of their physical existence.

For the naturalist, this is not a strange idea, in fact, one definition of naturalism is simply that physical reality is the only reality.

An Orderly World

The Christian perspective as to why creation is orderly is based on three things. First, there is a single, transcendent creator. Creation is not filled with multiple, immanent, and competing gods.

Rather, all of reality is the unified and coherent product of a single mind. Second, the order of nature rests on the character of God. Since God is revealed to be reliable and unchanging, it is reasonable to expect creation to be the same. Third, God is the divine legislator. If God were the source and foundation of morality, why wouldn’t He also be the source for the “laws of nature.”

It is important to note that the very idea of “laws of nature” or even that creation should be orderly and predictable was unknown until the Middle Ages. Scholastic thinkers wrestling with how to integrate Aristotle’s views of creation with the Bible concluded that laws govern nature.

Further, they believed while God was the author of such laws, He was not constrained by them.

Nancy Pearcey makes the following observation: “The order of the reasoning here is important.

The early scientists did not argue that the world was lawfully ordered, and therefore there must be a rational God. Instead, they argued that there was a rational God, and therefore the world must be lawfully ordered. They had greater confidence in the existence and character of God than in the lawfulness of nature.”[1]

A Continuing World

The following passage by David Hume is a powerful description of the problem of induction, the process by which we infer that the future will be like the past.

For all inferences from experience suppose, as their foundation, that the future will resemble the past, and that similar powers will be conjoined with similar sensible qualities. If there be any suspicion that the course of nature may change, and that the past may be no rule for the future, all experience becomes useless and can give rise to no inference or conclusion. It is impossible, therefore, that any arguments from experience can prove this resemblance of the past to the future; since all these arguments are founded on the supposition of that resemblance.[2]

From the naturalist perspective, there is no answer to this issue other than the mere hope that the world will continue and that the “course of nature” will not change. However, the Christian theist turns to the doctrine that God sustains creation. Everything continues because God chooses for it to continue.

In the next post, we will consider the last two presuppositions, An Understandable World, and An Expressible World.

Biography

Carlson, Richard F., Wayne F. Frair, Gary D. Patterson, Jean Pond, Stephen C. Meyer, and

Howard J. Van Till. Science & Christianity: Four Views. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2000.

Collins, C. John. Science and Faith: Friends or Foes?. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2003.

DeWeese, Garrett J. Doing Philosophy as a Christian. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2011.

Deweese, Garrett J. Philosophy Made Slightly Less Difficult: A Beginner’s Guide to Life’s Big

Questions. Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2005.

Gould, Stephen Jay. Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life. New York, NY: Ballantine Books, 1999.

Hume, David. “The Project Gutenberg eBook of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.” http://www.gutenberg.org/files/9662/9662-h/9662-h.htm (accessed April 14, 2015).

Moreland, J. P. Christianity and the Nature of Science: A Philosophical Investigation. 2nd ed.

Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1999.

Moreland, J. P., and William Lane Craig. Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview. IVP Academic, 2003.

Numbers, Ronald L. Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion. 1st ed.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009.

Pearcey, Nancy. The Soul of Science: Christian Faith and Natural Philosophy. Wheaton, IL:

Crossway Books, 1994.

Stark, Rodney. For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-

Hunts, and the End of Slavery. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004.

Notes

[1] Nancy Pearcey, The Soul of Science: Christian Faith and Natural Philosophy (Wheaton, IL:

Crossway Books, 1994), Kindle Locations 221–223.

[2] David Hume, “The Project Gutenberg eBook of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding,” http://www.gutenberg.org/files/9662/9662-h/9662-h.htm, (accessed April 14, 2015).

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Galileo and the Catholic Church

Galileo and the Catholic Church

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By Ken Mann

The question is asked in different ways. Are science and religion compatible? Are science and faith in conflict? The answer, once one has properly defined what is meant by science and faith, is it depends. Critics of Christianity will assert, based on history, that there is an inherent conflict between science and religion and they use the trial of Galileo before the Inquisition as an “example” of the conflict. We’re told Galileo was tortured, forced to recant his belief in a heliocentric universe, and imprisoned for the remainder of his life for the heresy of advocating heliocentrism. This paper will address how aspects of this narrative are false, and others are misleading. Galileo’s conflict with the Church has been described as “… a clash of ideas⎯ between scientific claims fervently held by a small band of scientific reformers on the one hand and opposing theological doctrines supported by centuries of church tradition on the other.”[1] Galileo is described as a martyr of science because the Catholic Church was opposed to science.[2] In order to explain how Christianity and science are compatible today the Christian apologist must be able to explain how, for good or ill, they have interacted in the past. Over the course of this paper, we will see that the Galileo affair was not about science but about the authority of the Catholic Church over how to interpret the Bible. The nascent disciplines of astronomy and cosmology suffered at the hands of an entrenched and embattled institution, however, the conflict was not about truth per se, but control.

This paper addresses the myths, complexities, and lessons we can learn from Galileo’s trial. In terms of myths, there are two aspects accepted by history that are in fact false, specifically that during his trial Galileo was tortured and that he was imprisoned for the remainder of his life. In terms of complexity, there were many different factors at play that ultimately culminated in Galileo’s trial. It is simply a grotesque oversimplification to assert that this incident represents the collision between science and theological doctrines. Finally, we can learn a great deal about the conflicts in our own day between theological and scientific authorities.

In order to understand these 17th-century events, it is worthwhile to take a step back and understand the state of cosmology[3] at that time. The Church and much of Europe, since at least the 13th century, had adopted an Aristotelian cosmology. The works of Aristotle had been reintroduced into Europe, in Latin, and were eventually integrated into Church teaching.

Aristotle’s view of the cosmos was the source of the geocentric (earth-centered) view of the universe. The earth was immobile. The center of the earth is where all matter was drawn, to where things naturally moved. The sun, moon, planets, and stars all revolved around the earth on celestial spheres. The moon and beyond was a realm of eternal, changeless perfection, while the domain of matter was subject to change and decay.[4] Aristotle’s view of the cosmos was integrated into Christian theology finding concord with such passages that indicate the earth is stationary (Psalm 75:3; 93:1; 96:10; 119:90; 1Chronicles 16:30[5]) and that the sun moves (Joshua 10). In the second century, Ptolemy developed a model of the geocentric cosmos that would explain the observed motions of planets. The combination of an explanatory model for astronomical observations and the imprimatur of the Church made the geocentric view the only rational and acceptable view of the universe for over 300 years.

In 1543, Copernicus’ magnum opus, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres) was published with the encouragement and blessing of the

Catholic Church. It barely caused a whimper. It was, in fact, the writing and agitation of Galileo some 73 years later that resulted in Copernicus work being put on the Index of Prohibited Books, where it remained until 1835.[6] From its original publication until Galileo, heliocentrism did not draw the ire of Church officials for the simple reason that it was merely a theory. Copernicus offered an alternative mathematical model for the movements of the various heavenly bodies.

Neither Copernicus nor any other astronomers in the 16th century argued, at least strongly or publicly, that Aristotelian cosmology was false. In fact, prior to the invention of the telescope in the early 17th century, the only argument in favor of heliocentrism was theoretical elegance or simplicity. The predictions made by Copernicus’ model were no more accurate than those based on Ptolemy’s geocentric model.

Moving now to the early 17th century, Galileo started using the newly invented telescope to make astronomical observations. With an eight-power instrument, he started making observations of the moon, the sun, the phases of Venus, and the moons of Jupiter. His publications Starry Messenger (1610) and Letters on Sunspots (1613) launch him into the public spotlight as an advocate of heliocentrism. As Galileo tried to argue (in conversation and in letters) for the truth of heliocentrism, he was confronted with what he thought was an exegetical problem. Simply put, he believed that the scientific content of the Bible needed to be discussed in light of the observations supporting heliocentrism. According to Galileo, the Bible communicated truths about salvation that are beyond human reason. However, he also argued (as summarized by David Lindberg) that, “When the Biblical text oversteps those limits, addressing matters that are within reach of sensory experience and rational knowledge, God does not expect these God-given capacities to be abandoned… It follows that theologians, before committing themselves to an interpretation of such passages, would be well advised to examine the demonstrative arguments of scientists and natural philosophers.”[7] Galileo’s ideas about exegesis in defense of heliocentrism were eventually brought to the attention of the Inquisition. In 1616 the Holy Office formally censured two key tenets of heliocentrism: the sun is at rest (labeled “formally heretical”) and that the earth moves around the sun (labeled “erroneous in faith”).[8]

Galileo was summoned by Cardinal Roberto Bellarmino and informed him that heliocentrism “had been declared false and heretical and was not to be held or defended.”[9] Galileo was not accused of any wrongdoing, but the decision of the Inquisition ended his campaign on behalf of heliocentrism.

In 1623, with the ascendency of Maffeo Barberini to the papacy as Urban VIII, the fate of heliocentrism seemed to have changed. Barberini was a close friend and admirer of Galileo and his work in astronomy. Over the course of six meetings with the new pontiff, Galileo came to believe that he was free to write a book on heliocentrism provided he treated it as a mere hypothesis. When Galileo completed Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems in 1629, he had in fact gone beyond merely debating competing hypotheses. Instead, what he had written was “… nothing less than a powerful argument on behalf of the indubitable truth of heliocentrism; no reader could have understood it otherwise. Nor did one have to read between the lines to perceive this as Galileo’s purpose, for in the Dialogue itself he repeatedly claimed to have demonstrated the ‘truth’ of his conclusions.”[10] Despite having gone through appropriate channels within the Church prior to publishing Dialogue, its reception within the Vatican was disastrous for Galileo. In addition to his overall treatment of heliocentrism, Simplicio, “… a slow-witted Aristotelian laughing stock of the dialogue,”[11] voiced the same arguments Galileo had heard during his audiences with Urban. A letter to Florence from the Florentine ambassador describes a meeting where the pontiff “… exploded into great anger…” at the mere mention of Galileo. The pope believed Galileo had deceived him, as he clearly did not treat heliocentrism as a hypothesis.

Further, in the character Simplicio, he made the pontiff an object of ridicule.

Alienating the pope with such obvious insubordination was possibly the least of Galileo’s problems. Since Dialogue clearly advocated for the truth of heliocentrism, it violated the Congregation of the Index decree from 1616 that condemned heliocentrism as “…false and completely contrary to the Scriptures.” The same decree not only prohibited Copernicus’ book from being printed, it went on to assert that “… all other books teaching the same thing are prohibited, as the present Decree prohibits, condemns and suspends them all respectively.”[12] The Inquisition appointed a Special Commission to investigate further. In the files of the Holy Office a memorandum was discovered[13] which claimed that Galileo had been given a specific injunction by the Commissary General of the Holy Office to “relinquish altogether” his acceptance of heliocentrism and to no longer “hold, teach, or defend it in any way, either verbally or in writing.”[14] Because of the weight of all this evidence Galileo was brought to trial in Rome in April of 1633.

Having set the stage in terms of the historical context, let’s begin to look at the myths, complexities, and lessons of Galileo’s trial. The myths, things that were at one time assumed to be true are now known to be false, are tied to the outcome of the trial, specifically that he was tortured and imprisoned. Galileo was found guilty of “vehement suspicion of heresy” for his advocacy of heliocentrism in Dialogue and for denying that the Bible is a scientific authority.[15]

In any trial, the activities of the Holy Office were kept under strict secrecy. The Cardinals and those who were prosecuted never discussed the proceedings in public. Very accurate and reliable records were kept including transcripts of interrogations and even details of how the accused responded to torture.[16] However, in the case of Galileo’s trial, under explicit orders from the Urban VIII, the sentence document and the abjuration recited by Galileo were widely distributed and printed in books and newspapers. The pope wanted Galileo to serve as an object lesson for all Catholics and to demonstrate his bona fides as a staunch defender of the faith.[17] Two items from the sentence document are significant. First, it says that Galileo was subjected to “rigorous examination” (a.k.a. torture).[18] Second, that Galileo was to be imprisoned at the discretion of the Holy Office. This was understood to mean imprisoned at the Inquisition palace in Rome for an indefinite period of time.

If the sentence and abjuration had remained the only known documents, prison and torture administered by the Catholic Church would have remained the historical record.

However, letters written by Galileo and the Tuscan ambassador to Rome that became public in the late 18th century and the release of Inquisition records on the Galileo trial in the late 19th century corrected both of these myths. The Holy Office records demonstrate fairly conclusively that Galileo did not experience any physical torture. From the records themselves, there is no indication that any physical torture took place. It seems clear that it was threatened as a possibility but never actually occurred. Further, Galileo’s advanced age (69) would have precluded the possibility of torture.[19] As to Galileo’s imprisonment, from his arrival in Rome on February 13, 1633, until he left Rome on June 30th, only three days in June are unaccounted for where Galileo might have been held in prison. The rest of his time in Rome was spent at either the Tuscan embassy (the ambassador’s residence) or the prosecutor’s 6-room apartment. After spending 5 months at the home of the archbishop in Siena, Galileo returned to his own villa in December of 1633. He lived there until his death in 1642.

Turning from the outright myths, we will now address the complexities of Galileo’s conflict with the Church. These can be broken down into two categories. First, there are four factors, not generally understood from a modern perspective, which prevented the acceptance of heliocentrism. Second, there is a fundamental misconception about the nature of Galileo’s confrontation with Church.

The first problem that prevented widespread acceptance of heliocentrism was that the evidence available at the time was not sufficient. The modern view of heliocentrism is in light of what we know from science rather than what was known or could be proven during Galileo’s time. The arguments Galileo marshaled at the time supported the heliocentric view, but they were also compatible with the model put forward by Tycho Brahe.[20] Galileo was convinced that the hypothesis of heliocentrism was true, but there was not enough evidence to overturn over 300 years of adherence to Aristotelian cosmology.

Second, if the task of overturning Aristotle’s long-established cosmology was not herculean enough, Galileo’s undertaking was seemingly made impossible by his arrogant and impulsive demeanor. He was typically far more effective at making enemies than converts. It is assumed by many experts on Galileo’s trial that his fate was in some sense made certain by the various enemies he had created in the years leading up to 1633. David Lindberg concludes, “Galileo’s personality was a consistent and important factor; indeed, it seems clear that had he played his cards differently, with more attention to diplomacy, Galileo might have carried out a significant campaign on behalf of heliocentrism without condemnation.”[21]

A third impediment Galileo faced was the issue of epistemological authority. Where does knowledge of the cosmos come from? Is it available via human capacities of sense and reason? Is it only found in the scriptures? Is it some combination of the two? The prevailing view of both Catholic and Protestant theologians was that knowledge of the heavens was, in principle, unavailable to the natural sciences. The nature of the celestial realm was a divine knowledge that was inaccessible to the human intellect. Thus, the work of Copernicus and Ptolemy were merely models used to predict the locations of the planets, they were mathematical instruments and not intended as descriptions of reality. Galileo’s argument regarding heliocentrism went far beyond a debate about which model was more accurate. He believed that the heliocentric model of the universe was a description of reality. Thus, he defied conventional wisdom not only about the inaccessibility of the heavens; he also claimed that scientific observation could attain knowledge not available from the Bible.

Fourth, the argument for another epistemic authority collided, rather violently, with the Catholic Church’s stance, after the Reformation, on the interpretation of scripture. One of the decrees issued by the Council of Trent (1545 – 1563) on the interpretation of scripture said in part:

The Council decrees that, in matters of faith and morals… no one, relying on his own judgment and distorting the Sacred Scriptures according to his own conceptions, shall dare to interpret them contrary to that sense which Holy Mother Church, to whom it belongs to judge their sense and meaning, has held and does hold, or even contrary to the unanimous agreement of the Fathers.[22]

Galileo’s two-books inspired reasoning was not without support within the Church, however, the Decree issued in 1616 that heliocentrism was “contrary to Scripture” was a clear and convincing indication that the Church was going defend its authority on matters related to cosmology.

Besides the obstacles that prevented acceptance of heliocentrism, the Galileo affair is treated simplistically as a conflict between scientific rationalism and religious doctrine. In response to this assertion, consider the following: every one of the participants in this debate were Christians who accepted the authority of the Bible, were theologically informed, and could make rational arguments for their respective views on cosmology. Further, within the Church itself, there were various opinions on hermeneutics, some agreed with Galileo, others did not.

From the domain of science, among the experts in astronomy, heliocentrism was not a widely held view. In short, rather than a confrontation between science and religion, it might be more accurate to describe the Galileo affair as a conflict within science and religion.[23]

In light of all this, what really happened? Simply put, it was a confrontation over the authority of the Church, not a scientific debate. Considering the Church’s stance on who may interpret scripture and Galileo’s temperament arguing for heliocentrism, a collision was inevitable. David Lindberg offers the following one sentence summary, “The trial was about disobedience and flagrant insubordination: the issues dealt with in the decree of 1616 were not reexamined; its conclusions were merely reasserted.”[24] The merits of Galileo’s arguments were insignificant when contrasted against centuries of consensus. The authority of Aristotle’s geocentric cosmology was not going to be discarded simply because the heliocentric view was plausible. The Church chose to stake its authority on that consensus and science suffered as a result.

Finally, let us consider what lessons can be drawn from the Galileo affair. When studying history, one must always be careful not to fall into the trap of anachronism, judging events in the past through the lens of the knowledge and sensibilities of the present. When considering the heliocentric debate in context, the evidence available, and the consensus of the time, it was reasonable to support the geocentric view. Another form of temporal snobbery we should avoid is condemning the Church for how it exercised its authority. Lindberg makes the following observation about that period:

“The early seventeenth century was a time of growing absolutism in Europe, in both religious and political terms. The freedom to express dangerous ideas was as unlikely to be defended in Protestant Geneva as in Catholic Rome. The idea that a stable society could be built on general principles of free speech was defended by nobody at the time, and police and judicial constraints were therefore inevitable realities.”[25]

Another important lesson is to eschew stark, simplistic contrasts regarding such broad categories “science” and “religion.” Such conflicts are rarely as simple as the contrast between truth and error; rather they are proxies for more subtle discussions. In this case, the issue of epistemological authority was at work. It was not merely a question of how things are known (mere epistemology) but what would be considered as a source of knowledge (authority). The Church sought to defend its interpretation of the Bible as true and correct in all “matters of faith and morals.” The mistake we perceive looking back is extending such control over matters of cosmology.

In our modern era, it is widely believed that we have developed to a stage where what is actually true or false dictates what is considered knowledge. We believe we are no longer at the mercy of any bureaucracy or human institution to gain knowledge. In the 17th century, the Bible was the dominant source of knowledge about reality. What we have seen in this paper is that Galileo was tried not for rejecting the Bible but for challenging the Church’s sole authority to interpret the Bible. Today, the Church (Protestant and Catholic) has been eclipsed by science as the preeminent (or perhaps only) source of knowledge for mankind. In reality, however, the Church and institutional science have merely switched roles over the last 350 years. Today, the fields of science that attempt to explain the origins and development of life are trapped in a dogmatic devotion to an idea imagined over 150 years ago. Despite an overwhelming body of evidence to the contrary, neo-Darwinism is adhered to dogmatically as the only explanation for the development of life. As discussed in the film Expelled and numerous intelligent design blogs, advocating dangerous ideas that contradict the reigning consensus is punished, not with torture or imprisonment, rather the destruction of academic careers. Perhaps that is the strongest lesson we can learn from history; it always repeats itself.

Bibliography

Blackwell, Richard J. Behind the scenes at Galileo’s trial: including the first English translation of Melchior Inchofer’s Tractatus syllepticus. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008.

Ferngren, Gary B., ed. Science and Religion: A Historical Introduction. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.

Lindberg, David C., and Ronald L. Numbers, eds. When Science and Christianity Meet. 1st ed. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2003.

Numbers, Ronald L. Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion. 1st ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009.

Notes

[1] David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers, eds., When Science and Christianity Meet, 1st ed. (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2003), 33.

[2] Gary B. Ferngren, ed., Science and Religion: A Historical Introduction (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 105. Galileo and the Catholic Church Ken Mann.

[3] Cosmology being the study of the nature or composition of the universe, the attempt to understand how the universe works.

[4] It is outside of the scope of this paper to address the “Copernican Principle” that supposedly demoted humanity from the center of the universe. In short, it would be accurate to say that in ancient Greek cosmology the Earth was the sump of the universe. This is amply, and metaphysically, expressed in Dante’s Inferno.

[5] Richard J Blackwell, Behind the scenes at Galileo’s trial: including the first English translation of Melchior Inchofer’s Tractatus syllepticus (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008), 115.

[6] Lindberg and Numbers, When Science and Christianity Meet, 47.

[7] Ibid., 46.

[8] Ibid., 47.

[9] Ibid., 49.

[10] Ibid., 51.

[11] Ibid., 52.

[12] Blackwell, Behind the scenes at Galileo’s trial, 4.

[13] It is contended by Blackwell (Behind the scenes at Galileo’s trial, page 6) that the specific memo was fraudulent in some fashion. That it was derived from a letter Galileo received from Cardinal Bellarmini, but altered to make writing Dialogue a clear example of insubordination.

[14] Blackwell, Behind the scenes at Galileo’s trial, 5.

[15] Ronald L. Numbers, Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion, 1st ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), Kindle Location 757–760.

[16] Blackwell, Behind the scenes at Galileo’s trial, 7.

[17] Numbers, Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion, Kindle Location 766.

[18] Ibid., Kindle Location 768–775.

[19] Ibid., Kindle Location 795–843.

[20] In Brahe’s model of the solar system, the earth was still at rest with the sun in motion around the earth, however, all the planets orbited the sun.

[21] Lindberg and Numbers, When Science and Christianity Meet, 57.

[22] Ibid., 45.

[23] Ibid., 58.

[24] Ibid., 54.

[25] Ibid., 59.

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