Quote Originally Posted by MMI View Post
OK, I know I said I'd shut up, but during a quiet moment at work, I was checking the news and browsed through to this blog :http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/wondermon...oes-crea.shtml
I'd heard of this, and find it fascinating, in a bizarre way. Undoubtedly the Creationists will disagree with his conclusions, though.

Science cannot prove that God doesn’t exist, or that God may have once put in place all known physical laws and processes that shaped the universe and everything in it.

Science cannot challenge faith, which by its very nature, does not require evidence (many scientists are religious people who see no contradiction between their faith and work and many people of faith see no contradiction with what science can explain).

But science does require evidence, and this evidence allows us to explain, with increasing accuracy, how the world around us works.
This is basically what I've been saying, too. Faith does not belong in the science classroom, and science does not belong in the religion classroom. Those scientists who DO retain their faith manage to separate it from their scientific work, and vice versa. They also, almost universally, accept the modern cosmology of the Big Bang and evolution of species. Their faith does not rely on accepting the Bible as literal truth.


That is what I was trying to get over to Thorne. To challenge the truth of religion, one has to deal with it on its own terms, otherwise religion will respond to any argument by saying, Your criticism might make sense in human/natural terms, but God is beyond and is not bound by any such limitations.
You make the assumption that religion has truth. But there is no scientific basis for making that assumption.So which religion is it that has truth? They can't ALL have it, since so many of them contradict one another. And since we are all human and natural, with no discernible connection to an hypothesized supernatural world, we can only deal with the natural. By your own definition God is beyond our ability to understand.

However, modern believers do seem to be feeling the pressure and have responded to scientific theories with theories of their own. Intelligent Design is one such theory, and, with regard to evolution, they have formulated something called Creation Science
The problem with both of these is that they begin with the inviolate law that God exists. Not that he might exist, and not as an assumption, but as a basic premise of their "science". And that immediately takes them out of the realm of acceptable science. "Creation Science" is even worse, in that they declare, without evidence or proof, that the Bible is the inerrant word of God and they distort and warp their "science" to agree with that assertion. In other words, they are masturbating to make themselves feel better and claiming it's "science".

Matt Walker's blog discusses an attempt by Prof Paul Senter of Fayette State University NC - is that near you, Thorne?
Yes, it's about an hour up the road from me. I'm not familiar with it, though.

to challenge creation science on its own terms, and it read pretty convincingly to me. However, you do have to take notice of Oliver Elphick's posts in response to the blog and the comments posted afterwards, which very clearly and stridently - not to say, defiantly - defends the religious position.
Yes, there are some interesting comments there. And there are some problems with his comments. He says, for example, "Yes, I think the earth is near the centre of the universe. There is nothing in science to contradict that." He's wrong. Most notably, the Earth revolves around the Sun, not the other way around, so right away that puts us off center about 93 million miles. Second, the whole Solar system revolves around the galaxy, about 27,000 light years away. To place the Earth at the center of the Universe would entail everything revolving around US. Rather unscientific, that.

He then says, "It doesn't matter how many people assert evolution; if they are wrong their opinions need to be rejected. The mechanisms for it do not exist. It is not a convincing story." The first part is right enough. If they are wrong then their opinions are worthless. But he's wrong about the mechanisms. Evolution is a fact, about as close to an absolute truth as it is possible to get in science. The mechanisms are complex, to be sure, and not fully understood even now. Darwin proposed basically one, survival of the fittest. We now know that's not exactly right. There are other mechanisms at work, and some which we may not have found yet. But regardless of HOW it works, the evidence is overwhelming that evolution does occur.

When speaking of the different accounts of Genesis, he claims, "No. There is an account from God's point of view (Genesis 1:1-2:4) and there is an account from Adam's point of view. They complement each other, they do not conflict." It's my understanding that this is a post-hoc rationalization by a theologian to "explain" the differences. There is nothing, so far as I can tell, in either account that supports this. Hell, Adam wasn't even created until the sixth day! How could he have a "point of view" of what happened before that?

There is so much else wrong there. He claims the Bible is historically accurate, yet we know that it is not. He claims that the age of the Earth can be calculated from the genealogies written down by Moses, but we have no historical evidence that Moses even existed. He makes claims about the divinity of Jesus based on theological, not historical, grounds. There ARE no historical, contemporary accounts of Jesus outside of the Bible, despite the claim that tens of thousands knew him and witnessed his miracles. If there WAS a Jesus son of Joseph around at that time, he almost certainly was NOT as described in the Bible. Those accounts were all written well after his presumed death, and probably not by eyewitnesses to his life.

Which is beside the point. As theological doctrine, the Bible is tolerable. But it's not science! And that is where the conflicts arise.