From what little I understand about religion (I'll admit to not being very knowledgeable in that aspect), God supposedly exists in a plane beyond space and time as we understand them.
Therefore, while sources like the Bible may claim that God created the world in a matter of days, evolution still cannot be thrown out of the window completely.
From the first statement that God exists beyond time and space as we understand them, wouldn't it be possible for the 'days' mentioned to have been in 'His time', as the Bible often repeats?
Therefore, what was recorded as a matter of days might have actually been a matter of millenia, and God might have created complex life through evolution. For him it might have been a few days, but on our plane of existence, it probably was several millenia.
Auto, you are not alone in thinking this. Actually, 80% of the world's Christians belong to denominations whose doctrines embrace science and formally recognize that the Theory of Evolution is the best explanation for the diversity of life on the planet. Most of the mainstream denominations are in this category. They usually have an official social statement about science and faith.
As a person who has studied science up to at least undergraduate level, and who has also done reading beyond the course syllabus, I have to say that if anything, learning science has in fact created more reason for people to believe in a divine being, a Creator.
This is what happened to me. Majoring in Physics somehow cemented in my faith in a Creator, but not by displacing science. But I am not alone either. Up until the 1700s, the major contributor to scientific knowledge were clerics in the Catholic Church.
To quote the late author Michael Crichton in one of his books, "Saying that random elements and compounds can assemble themselves into complex organisms for you by lightning striking them is like saying a tornado can hit a junkyard and assemble you a Boeing 747."
The late Michael Crichton was a very imaginative and entertaining writer, but in this particular regard (that you quoted) he is a hack. There is more of "the stupid" in that 747 junkyard analogy than most other people can fit in one sentence. I don't know what happened to Chrichton in his old age, but he became a real crackpot in his old age.
Given any one of the fields biology, microbiology, paleontolology, biogeography, and genetics alone, the evidence for evolution as the cause for the diversity of life is significantly greater than just about any other scientific theory we know. As for the origin of the first life forms, although the field is speculative, there are so many mechanism being observed now for the formation of self-replicating organic molecules from non-organic substrates that there is little doubt about whether that is possible or not.
Science is a study of what can be observed and quantified. If it is only one of either, then it is not under science, probably (ghosts, for instance; observable but not quantifiable). But since science cannot answer questions pertaining to the very basis of the origin of life, it could be reasoned that perhaps a Creator is out there, after all.
Except there is nothing that says these questions won't be answered by science. Progress on that front is proceeding as expected. That there are things in the natural world that science has not yet explained is no indication that science won't. There is nothing so far in the study of self-replication organic molecules that suggest that it will defy scientific investigation. Unlike ghosts, everything we have seen so far looks like it will be quantifiable, verifiable, and reproducible.
That's just my take on how science and religion can exist in parallel
In fact, I'm glad that you actually took the trouble to read through my post in its entirety This, I believe, is where the theologians and scientists could actually reach a compromise most easily, since both of their fields will be of equal importance (a skilled workman can't work without his tools, can he now?)
Science does not seek to prove or disprove the existence of anything supernatural. Only when claims are made about how the natural world is affected does science have anything to say. Science is mute on the subject of the supernatural, in other words.
Oh, so other Christians have accepted Science as it is? That is indeed a blessing
Yes, as I said, some 80% of all Christianity finds science to be compatible with their doctrines. These would be the RCC, the UCC, the Presbyterians, the Methodists. the Episcopalians, the ELCA Lutherans, and the Nazarenes. One of the things these denominations share is that they feel it is heretical to insist on a literal interpretation of the Bible for all passages. They don't feel that the Bible is without error, either, especially when it concerns phenomenon in the natural world. This is nothing new, and it dates back to 400 AD with St. Augustine, actually.
Absolutely, a divine being does not displace science; more like as we understand science, we understand the mechanism of Creation itself, which complements theological studies of the Creator
Its not really a compromise as such. Scientists simply go about their work characterizing the natural world. They don't do this in response or in opposition to what various religions might say about the natural world.
Whereas mainstream Christian theologians regard the Bible as inspired and authoritative on matters of faith and salvation, but not for matters of the natural world. This doesn't mean Genesis is unimportant, but rather it means that Genesis establishes some very important fundamental aspects of the relationships between God, man, and God's Creation.
It might sound strange, but a friend of mine is a Lutheran Pastor who is also a PhD in theoretical physics. His dissertation was on the first few milliseconds of The Big Bang. Yet he will look you in the eye and tell you that God is the author of Creation. However, he will not insist that Genesis is the exact description of God's process.
I will tell you the same thing if you ask me.
Noted evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould described this dual point of view as Non Overlapping Magisterium. What he meant was that science and the Bible are talking about two very different things, therefore they are not incompatible.
Self-replication is fine; it's the self-assembly that I find the late Crichton's argument somewhat valid for
No, this is still a bogus analogy. It makes as much sense as me saying
"That complex organisms arose out of inorganic natural processes is as probable as the house I live in suddenly coming into existence from the interaction of dirt, water, and seeds from trees."The problem with this analogy is that it postulates a single event that suddenly brings about great compexity through self-organization and self-assembly. In the case of evolution or my house, neither of these concepts play a role in building complexity nor does anyone claim they do (except for Creationists who erect bogus straw man arguments for evolution that they can easily refute).
With regards to how more questions will be answered in the future, I agree 100% with you. The gaps in our knowledge might be closing, but I believe that the gaps shall also remain open somewhat; maybe just a crack
Yes, the slope is asymptotic, but will never reach zero. I am the first to defend the awesome epistemology and success of science but not one to think it will be the path to universal truth. Science doesn't claim that either.
Also I agree with your statement that, "it appears that God is asymptotically shrinking towards zero over time."
Yes, but my statement was a defense against the notion of the God of the Gaps. It is not a God that I subscribe to, and it is not the basis for the compatibility that Christians find with science.
God will always have a place in the human life; this is for certain. People believe in Him, I believe, because they need to have a security blanket, if you will.
They will need a belief that there exists a supreme form of impartial justice for the evil to be judged, that there exists a force that will watch over their loved ones when they aren't able to do so themselves, and many others. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but in my humble opinion, people believe in God due to fear.
Be it fear of injustice, fear of loss, or whatever else, they believe in a Creator due to some form of fear.
And since no amount of knowledge can totally eliminate fear, it can be logically concluded that no matter how advanced we get in science, God will still be here to stay in the human psyche, even if it is infinitely close to zero
It may be a small amount of faith, but it is definitely still around
Here, I feel compelled to share a quote from the Doraemon manga by Fujiko F. Fujio:
"Science has enriched human life, but has diminished human beliefs."
The quote referred to how more and more people seem to lack belief or faith nowadays, simply because the things they once believed in weren't scientific.
Seems to go well with God's presence being asymptotically reduced to zero, isn't it?
I do have to say that science makes it very easy to be an Atheist. Not because of anything overt that science does against faith, but because it eliminates the fear of things unknown that might drive people towards faith.
Fear might be a driving force for people towards religion, but it is a bad foundation for sustaining faith. In fact, any faith that relies on God making the universe a safe place for oneself is a faith that is doomed to failure. The oldest book in the Bible, The Book of Job, makes that pretty clear and it was written thousands of years ago.
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And it is a pleasure to meet someone who I can discuss all this with, so thank you. I look forward to exchanging more thoughts with you
Also, it seems to me, because it undercuts all empirical arguments for religious beliefs.
Indeed, but the comparison seems to me at best idle, and potentially misleading. Surely any attempt to establish a conclusion outside of mathematics falls short of "proof" by mathematical standards: that is to say, no such attempt can be a deductively valid inference from axioms and definitions. (I don't think that there can even be any axioms properly so called in the empirical sciences; can there?) But I don't think that any reasonable person understands the word "proof" to imply such a standard where questions having empirical content are concerned. Further, if we did apply mathematical standards to scientific proofs, we could not coherently find the latter to be "weak"; rather, we would have to pronounce them to be simply worthless. In mathematics, if one's attempted proof of a theorem is not deductively sound, there's no consolation prize: it is not a "weak" proof but simply a failed attempt at a proof. In empirical questions, proofs are not "weak" by mathematical standards, but are strong or weak by entirely different standards of proof.
O RLY? Sounds like a questionable inductive leap to me. :tongue:
