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There is no Faith vs. Science


leoxiii

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4) God does not want to make Himself too apparent (because of love, free will, etc) and therefore performs only miracles for class A problems.

Too

For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. Matthew 12:40

Apparent

Jesus said, Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto him, Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days.

Jesus saith unto her, Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?

Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid. And Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me.

And I knew that thou hearest me always: but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me.

And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth.

And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go. John 11:39-44

Can You See?

But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. 2 Corinthians 4:3-4

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4) God does not want to make Himself too apparent (because of love, free will, etc) and therefore performs only miracles for class A problems.

I think 4) is logically self defeating. If God has the objective to make Himself not too visible during miracles, then He is forced to perform miracles which have alternative explanations.

Actually Viole, I'm going to demonstrate how your own argument is composed of self-defeating logic.

1) Having alternative explanations is the perfect basis for free will. Is it not? If God created us with free will and wanted us to use our free will to honor and acknowledge him and listen to what he has to say then miracles that lack alternative explanations would be counter-productive.

2) If obedience through faith is a vital part of producing love (i.e. God's love, not human love) then a situation where faith cannot manifest itself would also be counter-productive.

Many people think that in order to believe then they need to see the evidence, and that God is unjust to make any demands concerning faith, but what if God implanted within us an internal testimony of the truth that we are free to use or discard as an exercise of free will?

Choosing to believe that the universe exploded out of nothing rather than believe in a creator is an act of free will.

Choosing to believe that life somehow was generated by accident despite the fact that it is as close to an impossibility as you can come, is also an act of free will.

Choosing to believe that life coming from non-life despite the fact that biogenesis is an observable, repeatable and testable law whereas abiogenesis is none of those, is also an act of free will.

Choosing to believe that the entire universe was unzipped from something smaller than an pin-head despite the incredible problems involved with that idea is also an act of free will.

People use their free will to believe the most ridiculous things and mistakenly call it "science". It is exactly what the Bible predicted would happen:

"Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles."

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I hope you indulge me if I get skeptical when a Book that proclaims a certain truth asks us to suspect wise people. It always leaves this after taste of "don't think too much about what I am saying", somehow.

For the record, Paul (in Romans) was not telling us to question wise people. Rather, he was telling us to suspect those who claim to be wise (or have an outward show of wisdom), but who in reality are foolish.

Wisdom is good (see Proverbs 9). However, there are some forms of foolishness which have the false appearance of wisdom, to this I think you would agree.

Edited by AlexanderJ
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Yes of course, although I believe that the best way to uncover foolishness is to use rational arguments. Maybe I am a bit extreme, but I have the habit to not believe anyone, by default, not even myself, lol. Telling me that I am not really wise because I am exchanging the glory of the immortal God with something else is not very useful. Why should it convince me? My muslim neighbour tells me the same things. I definetely need more before I renounce my alleged wisdom.

Rational Human Argumentation is all very well to a certain point, but it is only Human, therefore it is often flawed and erroneous. Often (and I quote the Bible) what is "...the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness. 1 Corinthians 3:19" Aristotle and his writings bear testament to this (i.e. Massive objects fall at greater speeds than less massive ones ect...).

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The wisdom of God is always preferable to that of man (IMO, of course).

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Yes, I am a human being (at least I think so :biggrin2:). I believe that the Bible was written by men under the inspiration of God - it is "God-Breathed". Why do I believe this? There are many reasons. The primary one for me is that it adresses the problems of life, death, and existence in a way that (IMO) no man ever could on his own.

God's wisdom is usually rational to us. Usually. However, there will be inconsistencies because of the dichotomy between the physical and spiritual (eternal) world. God's wisdom transcends our own. In those cases (when I don't understand), I will trust God and wait for the patience to hold on until that day when "I shall see...face to face, and I shall know, even as I also am known..."

Edited by AlexanderJ
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And it is true that we have no clue how life started from non life. But this is not a sufficient condition to stop working on it assuming naturalism. We lacked clue about a lot of things in the past and If we stopped at "God did it, forget any other alternative" we would still be living in cold caves without tablet computers and the time to speculate about these issues.

Actually, that is not true. At the time your ancestors were a bunch naked savages living in squalor, the Jewish people who beleived in God had a far more sophisticated and complex society. They were far cleaner, far more technologically advanced than their godless counterparts.

In fact, this silly canard about how religion is an impediment to science and progress is demonstrably false. There is much abuot modern science, including the scientific method that came from scientists who were Christians. Their faith did nothing to inhibit science. Galileo who was a Christian proved the heliocentric model of the solar system. He was persecuted by the political arm (not the religious arm) of the church who held to the geocentric model which preceded Christianity was ortingally the view of the pagans. Other scientists like Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, Francis Bacon, the Royal Society of London (Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle) Christians all advanced science quite nicely and Christianity was not a hinderance at all. They did view science as being opposed to the existence of God or the spiritual realm. The naturalism of sicence does not rule out the existence of God at all, despite the small minded claims of materialists. They viewed science as means understanding the scope of God's creation. It is the small-minded and narrow-minded atheists and anti-theists in the scientific community that hi-jacked science to be used as tool to promote atheism that have created the false dichotomy between scientific inquiry and a belief in the existence of God.

So while you claim that view God as the author of life and all that exists would have kept us in the stone age, the history of the scientific community demonstrates that your claim is patently false and demonstrates that you have a lot of blow, but no substance when put to the test.

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Yes, I am a human being (at least I think so :biggrin2:). I believe that the Bible was written by men under the inspiration of God - it is "God-Breathed". Why do I believe this? There are many reasons. The primary one for me is that it adresses the problems of life, death, and existence in a way that (IMO) no man ever could on his own.

God's wisdom is usually rational to us. Usually. However, there will be inconsistencies because of the dichotomy between the physical and spiritual (eternal) world. God's wisdom transcends our own. In those cases (when I don't understand), I will trust God and wait for the patience to hold on until that day when "I shall see...face to face, and I shall know, even as I also am known..."

Yes, but you also use some sort of rational thought when you say that the God hypothesys has the strongest explanatory power for you. How do you know that this conclusion is not affected by your human cognitive imperfection?

I believe that God has given man rational thought so that man, in his turn, may use it to yield all of his faculties to God's guidance. Do I know that this conclusion (my choice to believe in the Bible as God's Word) is not affected by my "human cognitive imperfection"? No, I do not. That's where faith comes in. Even though I do not know that I am choosing the right thing, I believe nonetheless.

Of course, if we do not want to fall into general skepticism, we have to rely on our cognitive faculties, somehow. If we didn't, everything would be self defeating.

I agree.

It just happens that my rational conclusions are different from yours. But to say that mine are not necessarily correct because they are human, can be equally used against your conclusions.

I agree.

And...Just because someone does not believe as I do, I cannot conclude that they are willfully rejecting the truth (they may or may not be). However, I believe that every Mortal, in due time, will be given enough knowledge to make the choice. Some, knowing God, will reject Him nonetheless (...when they knew God, they glorified him not as God...), and some, knowing God, will choose Him (...to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name). In the end, there will be two groups of people in the universe,(and here I quote a famous Christian authour) those who say to God "Thy will be done", and those to whom God says "Thy will be done". All who will end in either Heaven or Hell, will have chosen it for themselves.

So, what else is left, other than empirical evidence we can all agree upon, ... Maybe? ;)

Ciao

- viole

I would say that all that is left is faith.

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And it is true that we have no clue how life started from non life. But this is not a sufficient condition to stop working on it assuming naturalism. We lacked clue about a lot of things in the past and If we stopped at "God did it, forget any other alternative" we would still be living in cold caves without tablet computers and the time to speculate about these issues.

Actually, that is not true. At the time your ancestors were a bunch naked savages living in squalor, the Jewish people who beleived in God had a far more sophisticated and complex society. They were far cleaner, far more technologically advanced than their godless counterparts.

Could be. Althought I don't think that the godless Romans had a lot of problems to occupy the whole region and finally build some viable roads, aqueducts and sanitation ;)

Ciao

- viole

For the record, the Romans were not, as you put it, "godless". They didn't believe in the God that we Christians believe in (and hold to be the Only God) but they (the Romans) had a whole host of gods. Read their mythology and you will find this to be true.

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Actually, i like it when someone proves me wrong. It happens so seldom....

Glad to be of service. :mgcheerful:

If you tell me that miracles are such that they have other plausible explanations, then I cannot contradict you, althought I am not sure it is common for people to see it that way.

Well, the problem is that the "explanations" don't even have to be plausible. As I pointed out, the idea that chemicals just mixing together and forming life is as far from being plausible as anything can get. The obviuos fact that people would rather cling to something that is practically impossible than something that is much more plausible, albeit undesirable, really stand out as far as this is concerned. It isn't simply the fact that the cell is irreducibly complex, as if that wasn't enough, but it is also the fact that it requires an incredible amount of logic to be in place in order for it to function. How do chemical reactions form logic? Just as the only observable conculsion we can draw is that life comes from life, the only observable conclusion about logic and intelligence is that it comes from logic and intelligence.

The same thing applies to the things that have happened in my life. I have had way too many things happen since becoming a christian that anyone can attribute to coincidence. Plausibly, these things should have happened as much before becoming a Christian as they would have after I became a Christian and they would have happened to atheists too, but all an atheist can do to make these kinds of things "plausible" is to say that I'm delusional or lying or anything like that, because the will to believe is not there. Willpower defeats plausibilty, and as soon as it doesn't say what people want it to say it is thrown out the window.

However, these property of miracles is not general, unless we assume that Jesus resurrection has also other explanations. After all, it seems there was not much concern about the free will of all the people who allegedly observed Jesus coming back from death and ascending to Heaven. So, if God was ready to affect the free will of all these persons, including some skeptical disciples, why don't we have this advantage?

We don't have this advantage because we don't live in a perfect world. In a perfect world, Jesus would simply tell everyone who he was and the testimony in their hearts would be enough to authenticate his claims about himself. In an imperfect world, where people hearts are darkened, miracles were a kind of necesssary evil, even though I don't like to use the word evil. Neither the miraculous deeds nor the miracles themselves were evil, but human nature is evil by default. Jesus would need to do something miraculous enough to make an impact, all the while trying to confine what he did to those who were chosen to inherit life.

Nobody believed that the universe arose from a small volume in the past before Hubble. This comes from objective observation and you can have all the free will in the world, but you are not so free to deny objective reality. Actually, this discovery was more an embarassement for atheists than for theists and it is still used by sophisticated apologists in the form of the various cosmological arguments. Contesting it actually undermines all current intellectual efforts to defend theism.

People have been looking for reasons to reject belief in God for thousands of years. Hubble merely offered them an opportunity to find what they were always looking for. No one who ever looked through Hubble and saw a pin-head sized universe, so how is that considered "objective observation"? All we can observe is that the universe is "stretching out", which by the was is exactly what the Bible says.

And it is true that we have no clue how life started from non life. But this is not a sufficient condition to stop working on it assuming naturalism. We lacked clue about a lot of things in the past and If we stopped at "God did it, forget any other alternative" we would still be living in cold caves without tablet computers and the time to speculate about these issues.

Faith in "God did it" has never stopped science so I don't know how you can come to such a conclusion.

I hope you indulge me if I get skeptical when a Book that proclaims a certain truth asks us to suspect wise people. It always leaves this after taste of "don't think too much about what I am saying", somehow.

Nowhere does the Bible teach us to "suspect wise people", and I think (hope) that you have noticed that I do put a lot of thought in what I am saying.

Being skeptical about the claims made by "wise people" does not necessarily mean that i "suspect" them of anything other than being human.

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