Time: Helping Christians Reconcile God With Science

[Zguy28]

What happened in those 4-5 years?

Despite what people say about, the quality of dialog in the Tailgate is far above normal standards.

I've learned a lot about these topics, and yes, even from you.

[Corcaigh]

I wonder if ES could show the collective restraint just to let that one go by?

Offer vet min + incentives?

[zoony]

Offer vet min + incentives?

you're worth more than that

As for the OP, I've always been a believer in both God and Science. It doesn't sit well with many on either side...

However, I strongly feel that this is the position of most Americans, and most in the West. How else do you explain dominance of Science from Western (Christian) nations?

In other words, I think the people who only believe in one or the other are the exception, by far. Just so happens we get a lot of extremes in the Tailgate

[Corcaigh]

I've learned a lot about these topics, and yes, even from you.

I'll take that as a compliment of sorts. :evilg:

[PeterMP]

First the earth is 6,000 years old. Its been 4,000 years since the flood. And second dinosaurs were just big lizards that grew before the flood. Before the flood the earth was made the way God intended it too. People and animals lived longer. Adam was 930 years old when he died. The interesting thing is that reptiles never stop growing. So let a lizard grow for 900 years old and what do you have, a dinosaur. And the only reason they are never mentioned in the Bible or history is that the word dinosaur wasn't invented until around the Civil War. They were called dragons at the time. Two of them are described in Job 40, Leviathan (probably a T-rex) and Behemoth (probably a Brontosaurus). Another interesting not is that in the Catholic Bible, I think, there are two extra chapters in Daniel and I believe that in chapter 13 there is a story about how Daniel killed a dragon/dinosaur. The king came to Daniel and told him about how they found a "living god". Daniel then asks to prove that it isn't. Daniel mixed fat, hair, and salt and clogged the digestional tract and the dragon/dinosaur burst asunder.

I will make one point:

http://www.usccb.org/nab/bible/

http://www.usccb.org/nab/bible/#daniel

http://www.usccb.org/nab/bible/daniel/daniel14.htm

"22

He put them to death, and handed Bel over to Daniel, who destroyed it and its temple. 23 There was a great dragon which the Babylonians worshiped."

http://www.usccb.org/nab/bible/#job

http://www.usccb.org/nab/bible/job/job40.htm

"Then will I too acknowledge that your own right hand can save you.

15 1 See, besides you I made Behemoth, that feeds on grass like an ox. 16 Behold the strength in his loins, and his vigor in the sinews of his belly."

You should consider the sources of ALL of your information, not just the contents of the Catholic Bible.

[PeterMP]

I wonder if ES could show the collective restraint just to let that one go by?

Too late, but I feel like I was at least pretty restrained.

[Zguy28]

Too late, but I feel like I was at least pretty restrained.

Remarkably restrained. Predicto hasn't responded yet though. :hysterical:

[techboy]

Only the simple minded decide that if there's something they cannot explain or do not have the answer to at this very moment, it must be "god".

This is a strawman. There are plenty of positive arguments for the existence of God that do not rely on "God of the Gaps". Dr. Collins' website is more about reconciliation of the Bible and science, and less about positive arguments for the existence of God, but I didn't see any "God of the gaps" there either.

I then went to college and took an Ancient History course. When that course showed me how stories in the Bible were stolen from other more ancient religions, that was it the flood gates opened and I realized that everything I was taught was just bunk.

Either you misunderstood or your professor was flat wrong.

The second is possible I guess, since you're a little older than me, which would put you in college in the late 80s. If this professor was older at the time, he might have been trained when paralellism was still taken seriously in scholarship.

It has, however, been rejected by scholarship for decades now, for a number of reasons.

As Peter noted, I have already posted on the alleged borrowing in Genesis, which represents the bulk of the Old Testament borrowing allegations. There's precisely one case there where scholars see some prior influence (the Flood), and even there they deny literary borrowing (or "copying"), seeing instead an older shared tradition, which in many ways argues for the Flood.

The other place parallelism was at one time popular in scholarship, is for the New Testament and the life of Jesus (also known as the "Jesus Myth Hypothesis"), and that is even more roundly rejected as nonsense.

The "Jesus Myth" Hypothesis: What do the experts have to say?

The simple fact is that pretty much anyone who has done any reading at all in the field of Jesus history knows that virtually no serious scholar in the field argues that Jesus was not an historical person. No one. Not the atheists, not the skeptics, not the Christians. No one.

It's not even an area of dispute, in a field where virtually everything is disputed by somebody.

For some of the reasons for this, try this log of a academic listserv discussing the historical Jesus. Consider, for instance, this answer by John Dominic Crossan (his Wiki page)

If I understand what Earl Doherty is arguing, Neil, it is that Jesus of Nazareth never existed as an historical person, or, at least that historians, like myself, presume that he did and act on that fatally flawed presumption.

I am not sure, as I said earlier, that one can persuade people that Jesus did exist as long as they are ready to explain the entire phenomenon of historical Jesus and earliest Christianity either as an evil trick or a holy parable. I had a friend in Ireland who did not believe that Americans had landed on the moon but that they had created the entire thing to bolster their cold-war image against the communists. I got nowhere with him. So I am not at all certain that I can prove that the historical Jesus existed against such an hypothesis and probably, to be honest, I am not even interested in trying.

It was, however, that hypothesis taken not as a settled conclusion, but as a simple question that was behind the first pages of BofC when I mentioned Josephus and Tacitus. I do not think that either of them checked out Jewish or Roman archival materials about Jesus. I think they were expressing the general public knowledge that "everyone" had about this weird group called Christians and their weird founder called Christ. The existence, not just of Christian materials, but of those other non-Christian sources, is enough to convince me that we are dealing with an historical individual. Furthermore, in all the many ways that opponents criticized earliest Christianity, nobody ever suggested that it was all made up. That in general, is quite enough for me.

There was one other point where I think Earl Doherty simply misstated what I did. In BofC, after the initial sections on materials and methods (1-235), I spent about equal time in Galilee (237-406) , or at least to the north, and in Jerusalem with pre-Pauline materials (407-573). I agree that if we had a totally different and irreconcilable vision/program between Paul and Q (just to take an example), it would require some very good explaining. Part of what I was doing, for example, in talking about the Common Meal Tradition was showing how even such utterly distinct eucharistic scenarios as Didache 9-10 and I Cor 11-12 have rather fascinating common elements behind and between them. It is a very different thing, in summary, for Paul to say that he is not interested in the historical Jesus (Jesus in the flesh) than to say that "no Galilee and no historical Jesus lie behind Paul."

Paragraph 3 is especially telling, I think.

One more passage by Crossan:

I am not certain, Neil, that I have much to add to my previous post. I do not claim "ideological immunity" against the possibility that the historical Jesus never existed. That such a person existed is an historical conclusion for me, and neither a dogmatic postulate nor a theological presupposition. My very general arguments are: (1) that existence is given in Christian, pagan, and Jewish sources; (2) it is never negated by even the most hostile critics of early Christianity (Jesus is a **** and a fool but never a myth or a fiction!); (3) there are no historical parallels that I know of from that time and period that help me understand such a total creation. There is, however, a fourth point that I touched on in BofC 403-406. It is crucially important for me that Jesus sent out companions and told them to do exactly what he was doing (not in his name, but as part of the Kingdom of God). The most basic continuity that I see between Jesus and those companions was, as I put it, not in mnemonics, but in mimetics. In other words, they were imitating his lifestyle and not just remembering his words. I find that emphasized in the Q Gospel’s indictment of those who talk, but do not do, and in the Didache’s emphasis on the ways (tropoi) of the Lord (not just words/logoi). When, therefore, I look at a phrase such as "blessed are the destitute," and am quite willing to argue that it comes from the historical Jesus, I am always at least as sure that it represents the accurate summary of an attitude as the accurate recall of a saying. For analogy: If Gandhi had developed a large movement after his death of people who are living in non-violent resistance to oppression, and one of them cited an aphorism of Gandhi, namely "if you do not stand on a small bug, why would you stand on a Big Bug," I would be more secure on the continuity in lifestyle than in memory and could work on that as basis.

That about sums it up, and again, this not seriously disputed by just about anybody. Michael Grant (here's his Wikipedia page) was an eminent classical historian, and in his Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels writes on page 199-200:

"...if we apply to the New Testament, as we should, the same sort of criteria as we should apply to other ancient writings containing historical material, we can no more reject Jesus' existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned...To sum up, modern critical methods fail to support the Christ-myth theory. It has 'again and again been answered and annihilated by first-rank scholars'. In recent years 'no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non-historicity of Jesus' -- or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary.

The "Jesus Myth" Hypothesis: What do the experts have to say about mythological development of Jesus in general?

Jesus is a popular target for "parallelism" on Mr. Internet. The ones I hear most commonly are Mithras and Horus, so let's look at those. Then we'll cover Osiris and others, and then parallelism in general.

Just a preface here... most of this stuff floating around the internet is based on work by Francis Cumont (or nobody at all), and has been since discarded by more modern research, which has determined that most of the parallels are bogus, and where they do exist, generally they would have to be the other way around (Mithraism borrowing from Christianity) due to the dating. The following quotes are from an interview Lee Strobel does with Dr. Edwin Yamuachi, a foremost expert in this field, who among his extensive qualifications, was a participant at the Second Mythraic Mysteries Congress in Tehran in 1975. Quotes are from Strobel's The Case for the Real Jesus. All quote Dr. Yamauchi directly.

Here's what happened at the Congress:

The Congress produced two volumes of papers. A scholar named Richard Gordon from England and others concluded that Cumont's theory was not supported by the evidence and, in fact, Cumont's interpretations have now been analyzed and rejected on all major points. Contrary to what Cumont believed. even though Mithras was a Persian god who was attested to as early as the fourteenth century B.C., we have almost no evidence of Mithraism in the sense of a mystery religion in the West until very late-too late to have influenced the beginnings of Christianity. (page 168)

More quotes from Dr. Yamauchi on the problems with the idea that Mithraism influenced Christianity:

The first public recognition of Mithras in Rome was the state visit of Tiridates, the king of Armenia, in AD 66.. It's said that he addressed Nero by saying, 'And I have come to thee, my god, to worship thee as I do Mithras.' There is also a reference earlier to some pirates in Cilicia who were worshipers of Mithras, but, this is NOT the same as Mithraism as a mystery religion. (page 169)

Mithraism as a mystery religion cannot be attested before anout AD 90, which is about the time we seee a Mithraic motif in a poem by Statius. No mithraea [or Mithraic temples] have been found at Pompeii, which was destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. The earliest Mithraic inscription in the West is a statue of a prefect under the emperor Trajan in AD 101. It's now in the British Museum. (page 169)

The earliest mithraea are dated to the early second century. There are a handful of inscriptions that date to the early second century, but the vast majority of texts are dated to AD 140. Most of what we have as evidence of Mithraism comes in the second, third, and fourth centuries AD. That's basically what's wrong with the theories about Mithraism influencing the beginnings of Christianity (page 169)

Gordon dates the estanblishment of the Mithraic mysteries to the reign of Hadrian, which was AD 117-138, or Antoninus Pius, which would be from 138 to 161. (page 169)

Specifically, Gordon said, 'It is therefore reasonable to argue that Western Mithraism did not exist until the mid-second century, at least in a developed sense (page 169)

Editor's note: Dr. Gordon is a senior fellow at the University of East Anglia.

Further, most of the parallels aren't even true! For example, Mithras was not born of a virgin. He sprang out of solid rock! Dr. Yamauchi again:

He [Mithras] was born out of a rock. Yes, the rock birth is commonly depicted in Mithraic beliefs. Mithras emerges fully grown and naked except for a Phrygian cap, and he's holding a dagger and torch. In some variations, flames shoot out from the rock, or he's holding a globe in his hands. (page 171)

Also, Mithras wasn't ressurected (more on the uniqueness of this story later, by the way, and not just about Mithras). Actually, there's no record of Mithras dying at all!

We don't know anything about the death of Mithras. We have a lot of monuments, but we have almost no textual evidence, because this was a secret religion. But I know of no supposed references to a death and resurrection. Indeed, Richard Gordon declared in his book "Image and Value in the Greco-Roman World" that there is "no death of Mithras"-and thus, there cannot be a resurrection. (page 172)

The December 25 parallel is often claimed, but the Christian church didn't adopt that date until the 4th century, so that's not a parallel with the Bible either.

I'll stop the detail here, because I have a lot to still cover, but I think that's sufficient to demonstrate that there is absolutely no evidence that Christianity borrowed from Mithraism, and if anything, Mithraism may well have borrowed from Christianity!

Now, though, I'd like to bump up a level, and talk about how and why scholars have rejected the notion that there is any pagan mythological "copycat" influence on the Christian story (hopefully, this will also put to rest whatever "parallels" I skipped).

The following is from T.N.D. Mettinger's book, The Riddle of Ressurection: "Dying and Rising Gods" in the Ancient Near East.

First, Mettinger's assessment of the current state of scholarship, from Chapter 1.2.1: Where Do We Stand? The Task of the Present Work (This quote is from page 40):

As a result of the many decades of research since de Vaux (1933), "it has become commonplace to assume that the category of Mediterranean 'dying and rising' gods has been exploded... (I)t is now held that the majority of the gods so denoted appear to have died but not returned; there is death but no rebirth or ressurection." These words of J.Z. Smith aptly summarise the present state of research. (56)

Mettinger spends a lot of time in this chapter discussing this: the current consensus of scholars is that there are no "dying and rising" gods that predate Christ, and that, in fact, many of the references came after Christ, and are in fact more likely either cases of pagans borrowing from Christians, and not the other way around, or, as in the case of the Church moving Jesus' birthday to Dec. 25, an attempt by early Christians to attract followers of various pagan beliefs.

Now, I want to be totally fair here: although Mettinger shows the current state of scholarship, he then goes on to say that he is one of the few that disagree, and the book is an attempt to make his case that there are in fact a few "dying and rising" gods that pre-date Christianity. He makes a fairly good argument, too, for the gods Melqart, Adonis, Osiris, and Dumuzi. Most scholars disagree with him, but it's a fair argument. Note please, that nowhere in this list is Mithras, by the way.

Before the "Christ mythers" declare victory, though, along with the fact that he is in the extreme minority on this issue, there is also this quote from page 221, in the Epilogue (the bold emphasis is mine, the italics are his):

(1)The figures we have studied are deities. In the case of Jesus, we are confronted with a human (for whom divinity was claimed by himself and by his followers). For the disciples and for Paul, the resurrection of Jesus was a one-time, historical event that took place at one specific point in the earth's topography. The empty tomb was seen as a historical datum. (4)

(2) The dying and rising gods were closely related to the seasonal cycle. Their death and return were seen as reflected in the changes of plant life. The death and ressurection of Jesus is a one-time event, not repeated, and unrelated to seasonal changes.

(3) The death of Jesus is presented in the sources as vicarious suffering, as an act of atonement for sins. The myth of Dumuzi has an arrangement with bilocation and substitution, but there is no evidence for the death of the dying and rising gods as vicarious suffering for sins.

There is, as far as I am aware, no prima facie evidence that the death and resurrection of Jesus is a mythological construct, drawing on the myths and rites of the dying and rising gods of the surrounding world. While studied with profit against the background of Jewish resurrection belief, the faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus retains its unique character in the history of religions. The riddle remains.

So, to sum up:

1) The vast majority of scholars reject the idea of pre-Christian "dying and rising gods" at all.

2) Mettinger, who while in the minority, makes a pretty good case that there are a few, also firmly concludes that there is no evidence that the Jewish Jesus was a myth based on other stories. Jesus is unique.

The point about Jesus' essential Judaism is key to the current scholarly rejection of the myth hypothesis. As Dr. William Lane Craig writes in Reply to Evan Fales: On the Empty Tomb of Jesus:

Now from D. F. Strauss through Rudolf Bultmann the role of myth in the shaping of the gospels was a question of lively debate in New Testament scholarship. But with the advent of the so–called "Third Quest" of the historical Jesus and what one author has called "the Jewish reclamation of Jesus,"{1} that is, the rediscovery of the Jewishness of Jesus, scholars have come to appreciate that the proper context for understanding Jesus and the gospels is first–century Palestinian Judaism, not pagan mythology. A most informative article on the demise of myth as a useful interpretive category for the gospels is Craig Evans's "Life–of–Jesus Research and the Eclipse of Mythology," in which he chronicles and accounts for the "major shift" away from mythology as a relevant factor in gospel interpretation.{2}

Given that Jesus and the gospels find their natural home in first century, Palestinian Judaism, recourse to pagan mythology to explain them has become otiose. Hence, we find James Dunn, called upon to write the article on "Myth" for the Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, questioning even the need for such an entry in the dictionary: "Myth is a term of at best doubtful relevance to the study of Jesus and the Gospels…The fact that 'myth' even appears here as a subject related to the study of Jesus and the Gospels can be attributed almost entirely to the use of the term by two NT scholars"–Strauss and Bultmann.{3} In lamenting that most commentators have no "knowledge of–or at least, they certainly ignore–the tools that modern anthropology has provided for the analysis of myths and myth construction," Fales tacitly recognizes that his views in gospel interpretation would be rejected by the vast majority of NT critics (and not, therefore, simply by "fundamentalists!"). What he does not appreciate is that the construal of the gospels in terms of myth has been tried and found wanting by NT scholarship.

(Editor's note: I had to look it up. "Otiose" means useless. )

Further, there just isn't enough time between the events and the writings for the kind of legendary development necessary for a myth-based story.

From Contemporary Scholarship and the Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ by Dr. William Lane Craig:

First, the resurrection appearances. Undoubtedly the major impetus for the reassessment of the appearance tradition was the demonstration by Joachim Jeremias that in 1 Corinthians 15: 3-5 Paul is quoting an old Christian formula which he received and in turn passed on to his converts According to Galatians 1:18 Paul was in Jerusalem three years after his conversion on a fact-finding mission, during which he conferred with Peter and James over a two week period, and he probably received the formula at this time, if not before. Since Paul was converted in AD 33, this means that the list of witnesses goes back to within the first five years after Jesus' death. Thus, it is idle to dismiss these appearances as legendary. We can try to explain them away as hallucinations if we wish, but we cannot deny they occurred. Paul's information makes it certain that on separate occasions various individuals and groups saw Jesus alive from the dead. According to Norman Perrin, the late NT critic of the University of Chicago: "The more we study the tradition with regard to the appearances, the firmer the rock begins to appear upon which they are based." This conclusion is virtually indisputable.

At the same time that biblical scholarship has come to a new appreciation of the historical credibility of Paul's information, however, it must be admitted that skepticism concerning the appearance traditions in the gospels persists. This lingering skepticism seems to me to be entirely unjustified. It is based on a presuppositional antipathy toward the physicalism of the gospel appearance stories. But the traditions underlying those appearance stories may well be as reliable as Paul's. For in order for these stories to be in the main legendary, a very considerable length of time must be available for the evolution and development of the traditions until the historical elements have been supplanted by unhistorical. This factor is typically neglected in New Testament scholarship, as A. N. Sherwin-White points out in Roman Law and Roman Society tn the New Testament. Professor Sherwin-White is not a theologian; he is an eminent historian of Roman and Greek times, roughly contemporaneous with the NT. According to Professor Sherwin-White, the sources for Roman history are usually biased and removed at least one or two generations or even centuries from the events they record. Yet, he says, historians reconstruct with confidence what really happened. He chastises NT critics for not realizing what invaluable sources they have in the gospels. The writings of Herodotus furnish a test case for the rate of legendary accumulation, and the tests show that even two generations is too short a time span to allow legendary tendencies to wipe out the hard core of historical facts. When Professor Sherwin-White turns to the gospels, he states for these to be legends, the rate of legendary accumulation would have to be 'unbelievable'; more generations are needed. All NT scholars agree that the gospels were written down and circulated within the first generation, during the lifetime of the eyewitnesses. Indeed, a significant new movement of biblical scholarship argues persuasively that some of the gospels were written by the AD 50's. This places them as early as Paul's letter to the Corinthians and, given their equal reliance upon prior tradition, they ought therefore to be accorded the same weight of historical credibility accorded Paul. It is instructive to note in this connection that no apocryphal gospel appeared during the first century. These did not arise until after the generation of eyewitnesses had died off. These are better candidates for the office of 'legendary fiction' than the canonical gospels. There simply was insufficient time for significant accrual of legend by the time of the gospels' composition. Thus, I find current criticism's skepticism with regard to the appearance traditions in the gospels to be unwarranted. The new appreciation of the historical value of Paul's information needs to be accompanied by a reassessment of the gospel traditions as well.

Ultimately, though, I think the biggest stumbling block to the idea that the stories of Jesus were "borrowed" from anywhere is that it is a historical fact that the disciples and early Christians really believed that they had encountered the risen Jesus.

Consider this passage from Resurrection Research from 1975 to the Present: What are Critical Scholars Saying, by Dr. Gary Habermas. Keep in mind that this is a survey of critical scholars.

I like to quote this section:

Bart Ehrman explains that, “Historians, of course, have no difficulty whatsoever speaking about the belief in Jesus’ resurrection, since this is a matter of public record. For it is a historical fact that some of Jesus’ followers came to believe that he had been raised from the dead soon after his execution.” This early belief in the resurrection is the historical origination of Christianity.[91]

As we have mentioned throughout, there are certainly disagreements about the nature of the experiences. But it is still crucial that the nearly unanimous consent[92] of critical scholars is that, in some sense, the early followers of Jesus thought that they had seen the risen Jesus.

This conclusion does not rest on the critical consensus itself, but on the reasons for the consensus, such as those pointed out above. A variety of paths converge here, including Paul's eyewitness comments regarding his own experience (1 Cor. 9:1; 15:8), the pre-Pauline appearance report in 1 Corinthians 15:3-7, probably dating from the 30s, Paul's second Jerusalem meeting with the major apostles to ascertain the nature of the Gospel (Gal. 2:1-10), and Paul's knowledge of the other apostles' teachings about Jesus' appearances (1 Cor. 15:9-15, especially 15:11). Further, the early Acts confessions, the conversion of James, the brother of Jesus, the transformed lives that centered on the resurrection, the later Gospel accounts, and, most scholars would agree, the empty tomb. This case is built entirely on critically-ascertained texts, and confirmed by many critical principles such as eyewitness testimony, early reports, multiple attestation, discontinuity, embarrassment, enemy declarations, and coherence.[93]

Please keep in mind that Dr. Ehrman is not a Christian. He is a skeptic.

Not only is it an historical certainty (insofar that we can be certain of anything, historically) that Jesus existed, it is also an historical fact that the earliest Christians really believed that they had encountered the risen Jesus, which makes the myth theory ridiculous on its face.

It doesn't matter how many apparent parallels there are, if the early Christians were reporting what they thought actualy happened.

There was a thread a while back talking about all the "eerie similarities" between Kennedy and Lincoln. Did anyone come away with the conclusion that Kennedy must have been a myth, based on the stories of Lincoln?

No? That's why the community of scholars has roundly rejected parallelism. No "wholesale cribbing" here.

[techboy]

Out of curiosity techboy is the following statement true or false:

"Higher dimensions, existance of life after death, and the basis for the existance of God (Higher Power) all are being openly proposed in these scientific fields."

I don't know. I don't know the context of that statement. Where did you find that?

I won't disagree with you in terms of using the best information at this time to understand the universe, including the exsistance of God, but then I think people advancing such arguments need to be VERY CAREFUL about the basis of their arguments (i.e. philosophical vs. scientific) and the degree of certainity in a philosophical argument vs. a solid scientific finding.

I agree to a point, but you shouldn't sell philosophy and the value of its conclusions short. Science, for example, doesn't work at all without philosophy as an underpinning.

I will point out at Collins' website that fine tuning is presented under the questions about science section.

I have to admit, I was a little surprised as well, but I don't think that site is about proving God so much as it is about supporting the idea that God and science are compatible.

On the other hand, as we have discussed before, a different Dr. Collins, Robin Collins, is the foremost promoter of the argument from fine tuning today, and he argues that ID is not science at all, but metascience, a position I totally agree with.

Here's an excerpt for those that might not have seen it (emphasis is the author's):

Instead of treating the hypothesis of an intelligent designer as part of science, what I propose is that we treat the hypothesis of design, particularly design by God, as not itself a part of science, but an hypothesis that could potentially influence the practice of science. I call such an hypothesis a metascientific hypothesis. Such an hypothesis can influence science by affecting how we think the world is likely to be structured. Taking seriously the possibility of design opens science up to investigate, instead of simply dismissing, various hypotheses about the nature of the physical world that postulate "designlike" patterns at a fundamental level. Hypotheses falling in this category include those advocating biocentric laws and higher-level patterns of teleology in evolution, such as explored by Teilhard Chardan, Rupert Sheldrake, Simon Conway Morris, and others. I thus applaud the kind of work being engaged in by some of supporters of ID at the Seattle based Biologic Institute in which they look for design-like patterns in nature that seemingly cannot be explained by neo-Darwinian evolution. Although such patterns themselves are purely naturalistic, one would probably not look for and discover such patterns (given that they exist) if one rejected any sort of design hypothesis. In contrast, those who subscribe to a purely naturalistic view of the world favor hypotheses that minimize the appearance of design.

Treating the world as if it were designed has already been productive in physics. Since the scientific revolution, physics has implicitly assumed that underlying physical reality has a beautiful and elegant mathematical design. As Morris Kline, the famous historian of mathematics, has observed: "From the time of the Pythagoreans, practically all asserted that nature was designed mathematically." Historically, starting with Galileo and Kepler, this has been what has grounded the search for an underlying elegant mathematical order in nature, though today such an order is largely taken for granted apart from any theistic basis. Indeed, as Banish Hoffman, one of Albert Einstein's main biographers, notes, "When judging a scientific theory, his own or another's, he asked himself whether he would have made the universe in this way had he been God." This shows that in doing science, Einstein treated the world as if it were created by God, even though he did not believe in God.

And honestly, at first glance it looks like that's the approach Francis Collins' website is taking, too.

I will point out it isn't impossible that at some point in time in the future that fine tuning will go from a philosophical issue to an area of real scientific study.

It's an area of real scientific study now. There's a pretty broad consensus (I've cited on this before, and can do so again if someone would like me to) that the universe is fine-tuned for life.

Where it gets into philosophy is why this is so. I'm not sure that will ever change, but I suppose it might.

This is a professor who teaches science from a biblical perspective. Take him for what he is, but he does bring up some very valid points

Some will be disturbed that you quote "Dr. Dino" like he's some kind of authority.

Personally, I'm just horrified that you have the gall to publicly proclaim yourself a Christian while sporting a sig that calls for the assassination of your President.

However, I strongly feel that this is the position of most Americans, and most in the West. How else do you explain dominance of Science from Western (Christian) nations?

A pretty strong case can be made that monotheism leads to scientific advancement. I once read an argument to that effect by a Catholic priest and historian, though I can't find the link now. The upshot of it, though, is that science requires an orderly, predicatable universe, which atheism (or to a lesser extent, polytheism) doesn't require (or even predict), but which monotheism allows.

You can see a bit of it in the excerpt above by Dr. (Robin) Collins where he talks about the effect acting as if there is a designer has had on Physics.

[Koala]

As a christian' date=' my big problem with other christians is interpreting the bible word for word as fact.

God may have written it orginially or whatever, but its been edited, reworked, and rewritten/respoken by man since its been known. It can't still be the originial version, fallacies of man logically prove that wrong.[/quote']

Well put. As a Muslim, I see the same fallacies, and Muslims have the "benefit" of having only 1 existing copy of the Quran. For example, it says God created the Earth in 6 days, or arabic word, "ayamin." However, in other parts of the Quran, it mentions that days have various spans: for examples angels 'ascend to their lord in a day the span of which is 50,000 years.' Or, another quote, 'day for your Lord is a 1000 years of what you count.' Anyway, bottom line is obviously 'day' has many meanings in arabic as used in Quran, and I suspect that 'day' may have many meanings in hebrew or ancient latin (or whatever language Jesus spoke in).

Religion must be taken on Faith. If you believe in Christianity, then you believe Faith is the most important thing. And Faith must be taken on blind belief, at some point. If science ever could prove the Bible right or wrong, then people wouldnt be believing on Faith, they'd be believing the manifest truth -- not quite the same test as the test of faith. God will never allow science to prove the Bible 100% correct, or else Faith becomes a moot point

[boofMcboof]

I agree to a point, but you shouldn't sell philosophy and the value of its conclusions short. Science, for example, doesn't work at all without philosophy as an underpinning.

If you believe that, you need to brush up on Quantum Mechanics and Eastern Philosophy/Mysticism.

Oops. Nevermind read your post wrong.

[Corcaigh]

A pretty strong case can be made that monotheism leads to scientific advancement. I once read an argument to that effect by a Catholic priest and historian, though I can't find the link now. The upshot of it, though, is that science requires an orderly, predicatable universe, which atheism (or to a lesser extent, polytheism) doesn't require (or even predict), but which monotheism allows.

That seems like a stretch. Any civilization with sufficient resources has produced great scientific advances. The 'ancient' Chinese, Egyptians, Greeks and in modern times even the godless communist Russians produced a lot of breakthroughs in advanced physics, to take just one field.

And while modern Western civilization is characterized as monotheistic, there's the often quoted stat of 85% of the National Academy of Sciences being atheist/agnostic. Whatever the number it seems that the only factor for science and knowledge to thrive is for society being able to pay the bills.

Personally, it doesn't take a belief in a god for an orderly, predictable, universe; if the universe wasn't orderly we'd not be here to ask the question, so that's kind of a given.

[Predicto]

Remarkably restrained. Predicto hasn't responded yet though. :hysterical:

Wait, what?

I'm the picture of restraint at all times.

[PeterMP]

I don't know. I don't know the context of that statement. Where did you find that?

It came from Johnny's post, in which you seemed to be responding to my reply to his post:

http://www.extremeskins.com/showpost.php?p=6392340&postcount=36

I agree to a point, but you shouldn't sell philosophy and the value of its conclusions short. Science, for example, doesn't work at all without philosophy as an underpinning.

That's true, but there are lot of issues addressed through philosophy that are never resolved and/or are wrongly believed to mostly resolved that are then later shown not to be likely

I have to admit, I was a little surprised as well, but I don't think that site is about proving God so much as it is about supporting the idea that God and science are compatible.

I think you are right, BUT how many Christians will go to the site and see the fine tuning as a scientific (not philosophical) vindication that they are right, and run to tell others.

On the other hand, as we have discussed before, a different Dr. Collins, Robin Collins, is the foremost promoter of the argument from fine tuning today, and he argues that ID is not science at all, but metascience, a position I totally agree with.

Here's an excerpt for those that might not have seen it (emphasis is the author's):

"Notice that Wilson here concedes that proving the design hypothesis is not categorically unscientific—if it were his statement would be nonsense."

It was a rhetorical question that was meant to be nonsense.

Ehh, The whole Biologic Institue is set up to display ID as a science not something else (even something in between science and religion), and scientists have (and will continue to be) drawn to systems that appear to show unexplained order/complexity.

It's an area of real scientific study now. There's a pretty broad consensus (I've cited on this before, and can do so again if someone would like me to) that the universe is fine-tuned for life.

Where it gets into philosophy is why this is so. I'm not sure that will ever change, but I suppose it might.

Fine tuning at its minimal isn't science because it isn't experimental in nature (or even really simulation based). It makes assumptions (what values of gravity would give you life) that currently aren't testable or even realistically modelable. Even on the Francis Collins web site it pretends we could change the value of JUST gravity, and then get a different and predictable result as to the formation of the Universe (there is no real consideration given to even how fundamental forces like that interact, which I think it is interesting because interactions are where people appreciated the ability of biolgocial systems to produce complex systems) yet alone the ability for life to exist in such a system.

[Bang]

First the earth is 6,000 years old. Its been 4,000 years since the flood. And second dinosaurs were just big lizards that grew before the flood. Before the flood the earth was made the way God intended it too. People and animals lived longer. Adam was 930 years old when he died. The interesting thing is that reptiles never stop growing. So let a lizard grow for 900 years old and what do you have, a dinosaur. And the only reason they are never mentioned in the Bible or history is that the word dinosaur wasn't invented until around the Civil War. They were called dragons at the time. Two of them are described in Job 40, Leviathan (probably a T-rex) and Behemoth (probably a Brontosaurus). Another interesting not is that in the Catholic Bible, I think, there are two extra chapters in Daniel and I believe that in chapter 13 there is a story about how Daniel killed a dragon/dinosaur. The king came to Daniel and told him about how they found a "living god". Daniel then asks to prove that it isn't. Daniel mixed fat, hair, and salt and clogged the digestional tract and the dragon/dinosaur burst asunder.

Sorry, I know this doesn't offer much to the discussion, but damn if it isn't fascinating to see one naturally occurring in the wild like this. He has certainly made a powerful argument against evolution, but I don't think it was the way he intended.

~Bang

[Jumbo]

Sorry, I know this doesn't offer much to the discussion, but damn if it isn't fascinating to see one naturally occurring in the wild like this. He has certainly made a powerful argument against evolution, but I don't think it was the way he intended.

~Bang

Such threads often thoroughly undermine any support for the concept of intelligent design.

Among other things, I don't comment much on certain aspects of the whole fad currently flapping around the "universe being fine-tuned for life" conversations. That very intelligent people actually have certain key pieces of that dialogue, taking it as far as they do and then stopping short, is another reminder to me of the unusual range of human cognitive events.

Can you even begin to grok the amazingness of a creator who spawns a universe being fine-tuned to produce the one single episode of "Turn On." :cool:

[techboy]

And while modern Western civilization is characterized as monotheistic, there's the often quoted stat of 85% of the National Academy of Sciences being atheist/agnostic.

Well sure, now it's like that, but this is only after 2000+ years of absorbing Judeo-Christian values, mores, and standards, so that Richard Dawkins can, with a straight face, simultaneously deny that there is any such thing as objective morality, and at the same time announce that raising a child religious is unequivocally reprehensible child abuse.

Personally, it doesn't take a belief in a god for an orderly, predictable, universe; if the universe wasn't orderly we'd not be here to ask the question, so that's kind of a given.

I personally find that kind of anthropic response just a bit too facile, but that wasn't my point. Unless and until people started believing that the world was orderly and predictable (whether it was or not), advancements could not be made.

If I ever run across the work again, I'll post it so everybody can rip it to shreds.

It came from Johnny's post, in which you seemed to be responding to my reply to his post:

Oh. In that case no, I don't think that is an accurate representation of the state of scientific research today.

That's true, but there are lot of issues addressed through philosophy that are never resolved and/or are wrongly believed to mostly resolved that are then later shown not to be likely

The same could be said for any field of human knowledge, especially science.

"Notice that Wilson here concedes that proving the design hypothesis is not categorically unscientific—if it were his statement would be nonsense."

I had to google that to figure out what you were talking about.

Yes, it would appear that Biologic is more conventional ID, treating it as actual science, but I think it's okay for (Robin) Collins to commend their work and still disagree with their classification.

Collins is quite clear that it isn't science, and it's actually gotten him in rather hot water with a lot of traditional ID folks, like the Discovery Institute.

Fine tuning at its minimal isn't science because it isn't experimental in nature (or even really simulation based). It makes assumptions (what values of gravity would give you life) that currently aren't testable or even realistically modelable.

We've had this discussion before, and I remember your objections, but it would appear from my (admittedly casual) reading of the literature that most of the people working in the field don't agree.

For example, from How bio-friendly is the universe?, an article in the International Journal of Astrobiology 2 (2) : 115–120 (2003) by P C W Davies:

There is now broad agreement among physicists and cosmologists that the universe is in several respects ‘fine-tuned’ for life.

Of course, most of these physicists (Davies, for instance) don't draw the conclusion (either) Collins does, but that's a different issue.

[Corcaigh]

Well sure, now it's like that, but this is only after 2000+ years of absorbing Judeo-Christian values, mores, and standards

And to what to you attribute the ancients' progress?

I personally find that kind of anthropic response just a bit too facile, but that wasn't my point. Unless and until people started believing that the world was orderly and predictable (whether it was or not), advancements could not be made.

By observation, water always flows downhill. Why did it require a supreme single deity for predictability?

[Prosperity]

And to what to you attribute the ancients' progress?

Plato and Aristotle and other ancient philosopher/philosophies, who didn't know lick about Christianity probably contributed as much if not more than Christianity, to Western civilizations values, mores, and standards. But it can't be denied that Christianity has been a big influence, even though I think Greek and Roman traditions were more influential.

[techboy]

And to what to you attribute the ancients' progress?

That's irrelevant to my point, which was that your comment about modern scientists was irrelevant to what I was talking about.

Of course, my comment was a sidetrack too, but it's true.

By observation, water always flows downhill. Why did it require a supreme single deity for predictability?

The world makes sense. It is predictable. There is no reason on atheism for this to be so. Just because water has always flowed downhill in the past doesn't mean that it will always do so in the future. The biologos site quotes Einstein:

The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.

As (Robin) Collins notes, Einstein wasn't a theist, but his work benefited because he acted as if he was.

In any case, I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong, although I do think this feature of the universe is explained better by theism than atheism.

I was just commenting that I found your answer just a little too facile. I believe the atheist has to work a little harder to explain this.

[PeterMP]

We've had this discussion before, and I remember your objections, but it would appear from my (admittedly casual) reading of the literature that most of the people working in the field don't agree.

For example, from How bio-friendly is the universe?, an article in the International Journal of Astrobiology 2 (2) : 115–120 (2003) by P C W Davies:

Of course, most of these physicists (Davies, for instance) don't draw the conclusion (either) Collins does, but that's a different issue.

They don't agree that the Universe is fine tuned, or they don't agree that fine tuning isn't a science because it doesn't have an experimental basis?

The linked article deals with specific case of transmission of life through space, but I will make a few points from the paper:

"Here I offer some speculations that may cast light on a novel category C solution to biogenesis, viewed as a problem in information theory."

"If quantum mechanics belongs to a set of measure zero in the space of theories, then life may turn out to be a truly singular phenomenon."

As to the point it being science or not (from wiki):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle#The_Anthropic_Cosmological_Principle

""Many 'anthropic principles' are simply confused. Some, especially those drawing inspiration from Brandon Carter's seminal papers, are sound, but... they are too weak to do any real scientific work. In particular, I argue that existing methodology does not permit any observational consequences to be derived from contemporary cosmological theories, though these theories quite plainly can be and are being tested empirically by astronomers. What is needed to bridge this methodological gap is a more adequate formulation of how observation selection effects are to be taken into account.""

—Anthropic Bias, Introduction.,"

We have a hypothesis:

"The Universe is fine tuned for life."

A number of people (scientist) that work in the related fields believe that hypothesis is true, but that doesn't make it a science (in fact by definition it makes it an opinion). To be science, there has to have been a test of the hypothesis in an attempt to falisify it.

No such thing has been done.

Even IF that was done, there are issues with respect to the number of universes. Until there is a better understanding of things that affect the number of universes (e.g. string theory and what happens after a big crunch), we have no idea of knowing.

[techboy]

Peter, you appear to be confusing the concepts of the anthropic principle and fine tuning.

Fine tuning is the scientific observation that the universe appears by all measures to be insanely tightly set to support life.

The anthropic principles in their various forms are one way of attempting to explain this phenomenon, basically observing what Corcaigh did, that if it wasn't that way, we wouldn't be here to know it. Along with the criticisms you level, I think the most telling one is Leslie's firing squad analogy, mentioned on the biologos website.

As such, all of your criticisms of the anthropic principle (and for that matter, of Davies' proposed solutions) are off point.

They are probably not scientific, and the same goes for the multiverse theory (at least for now), Davies' proposal, the argument from fine tuning as proposed by the two Collins, and any number of other proposed solutions.

That does not, however, mean that the consensus of fine tuning itself (leaving aside potential explanations) referenced by Davies is not scientific. That is certainly testable and falsifiable.

[Corcaigh]

Fine tuning is the scientific observation that the universe appears by all measures to be insanely tightly set to support life.

Fine tuning is the scientific observation that the life in the Universe as we understand it is only viable if the physical constants have a certain very narrow range of values.

"tightly set" is you projecting :evilg:

[PeterMP]

Peter, you appear to be confusing the concepts of the anthropic principle and fine tuning.

Fine tuning is the scientific observation that the universe appears by all measures to be insanely tightly set to support life.

The anthropic principles in their various forms are one way of attempting to explain this phenomenon, basically observing what Corcaigh did, that if it wasn't that way, we wouldn't be here to know it. Along with the criticisms you level, I think the most telling one is Leslie's firing squad analogy, mentioned on the biologos website.

As such, all of your criticisms of the anthropic principle (and for that matter, of Davies' proposed solutions) are off point.

They are probably not scientific, and the same goes for the multiverse theory (at least for now), Davies' proposal, the argument from fine tuning as proposed by the two Collins, and any number of other proposed solutions.

That does not, however, mean that the consensus of fine tuning itself (leaving aside potential explanations) referenced by Davies is not scientific. That is certainly testable and falsifiable.

What do you mean by "scientific observation"?

What I quoted is from the anthropic principle wiki page, but a selection effect is the a statistical issue arising from sampling issues and directly impacts the idea that the Universe is fine tuned. In this case the REAL sample size is 1, our universe. We can reasonably conclude things about other nearby universes in terms of a graph of all possible universes for all possible combinations of the relevant contants (i.e. some universe out there will exist with all of the contants the same as ours, but their gravity will 0.9999X our G. That Universe will be a short distance from ours on such a graph). Realistically though, the set of unique universes is likely to be infinite. We don't really know much about most of them, and we can't because we have a poor understanding of how the relevant constants are associated (we are still searching for a unifying theory for classical and quantum mechanics so can't say anything about the interactions of terms from those two fields with any certainity).

In addition, for ones we can say something about in the short term in terms of life starting (I'll agree with the biologos web site here), such as those with a large gravity as compared to the initial "bang", we can't say anything long term. If all of those subsequently go through another bang, which results in another set of physical laws (or at least another gravity), then to delcare them "non-life giving" is a statisical error. You've completely over-represented your space of nonlife giving (I would also actually ask, how do you determine that life isn't possible post-crunch even in the absence of another bang?)

Are you saying you can point me to an experiment that would indicate that some combination of allowed cosmological constants DO NOT allow for life (vs. somebodys opinion)?

Science is already starting to push back on that idea where people are trying to actually address what happens in different universes at some sort of level:

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0809/0809.1647v4.pdf

http://arxiv1.library.cornell.edu/abs/0807.3697v1

http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=PRVDAQ000074000003035006000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=yes

http://authors.library.caltech.edu/8444/

[ddub52]

i never understood this manufactured assertion that science and religion contradict each other.

qft