[_ Old Earth _] God vs. science: Can religion stand up to the test?

[Lewis]

Editor's note: The following is a summary of this week's Time magazine cover story.

(Time.com)external link -- It's a debate that long predates Darwin, but the anti-religion position is being promoted with increasing insistence by scientists angered by intelligent design and excited, perhaps intoxicated, by their disciplines' increasing ability to map, quantify and change the nature of human experience.

Brain imaging illustrates -- in color -- the physical seat of the will and the passions, challenging the religious concept of a soul independent of glands and gristle. Brain chemists track imbalances that could account for the ecstatic states of visionary saints or, some suggest, of Jesus.

Catholicism's Christoph Cardinal Schönborn has dubbed the most fervent of faith-challenging scientists followers of "scientism" or "evolutionism," since they hope science, beyond being a measure, can replace religion as a worldview and a touchstone.

It is not an epithet that fits everyone wielding a test tube. But a growing proportion of the profession is experiencing what one major researcher calls "unprecedented outrage" at perceived insults to research and rationality, ranging from the alleged influence of the Christian right on Bush administration science policy, to the fanatic faith of the 9/11 terrorists, to intelligent design's ongoing claims. Some are radicalized enough to publicly pick an ancient scab -- the idea that science and religion, far from being complementary responses to the unknown, are at utter odds.

Finding a spokesman for this side of the question was not hard, since Richard Dawkins, perhaps its foremost polemicist, has just come out with "The God Delusion" (Houghton Mifflin), the rare volume whose position is so clear it forgoes a subtitle.

The five-week New York Times best seller (now at No. 8) attacks faith philosophically and historically as well as scientifically, but leans heavily on Darwinian theory, which was Dawkins' expertise as a young scientist and more recently as an explicator of evolutionary psychology.

Dawkins and his peers have a swarm of articulate theological opponents, of course. But the most ardent of these don't really care very much about science, and an argument in which one party stands immovable on Scripture and the other immobile on the periodic table doesn't get anyone very far.

Most Americans occupy the middle ground: We want it all. We want to cheer on science's strides and still humble ourselves on the Sabbath. We want access to both MRIs and miracles. We want debates about issues like stem cells without conceding that the positions are so intrinsically inimical as to make discussion fruitless.

Informed conciliators have recently become more vocal, and foremost among them is Francis Collins. Collins' devotion to genetics is, if possible, greater than Dawkins'.

Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute since 1993, he headed a multinational 2,400-scientist team that co-mapped the 3 billion biochemical letters of our genetic blueprint, a milestone that then-President Bill Clinton honored in a 2000 White House ceremony, comparing the genome chart to Meriwether Lewis' map of his fateful continental exploration. Collins continues to lead his institute in studying the genome and mining it for medical breakthroughs.

He is also a forthright Christian who converted from atheism at age 27 and now finds time to advise young evangelical scientists on how to declare their faith in science's largely agnostic upper reaches.

His summer best seller, "The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief" (Free Press), laid out some of the arguments he brought to bear in the 90-minute debate Time arranged between Dawkins and Collins in our offices at the Time & Life Building on September 30. Some excerpts from their spirited exchange are featured in this week's Time cover story.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/11/05/cover.story/index.html

 

[blunthitta4life]

Well I guess we'll have to see whether or not Christianity is replaced/extinct or Jesus walks the Earth.

 

[Lewis]

Man those people' just won't stop. They make me sick sometimes and very angry.

 

[blunthitta4life]

Look there are bible beaters and die hard athiests who both push too hard. However, recently there has been a backlash against conservative christians who can't come to terms w/evolution and other various science issues. Granted, stem cell research is controversial, but as long as fetuses are being discarded through abortion, then they might as well be used for research.

 

[peace4all]

Man those people' just won't stop. They make me sick sometimes and very angry.

As I agree that the "other" sides people won't stop either.


Solve both problems?

you wan't to pray in school, go to a Christian school. wan't to learn intelligent design? go to a christian school. Disagree with gay marriage, Don't get married. Don't like abortions? Don't have one! Disagree with stem cell research? you don't get the benefits from it. Disagree with the word of god? Don't go to church. You think the bible is wrong? Don't read it..

It goes both ways.. Both sides need to leave eachother be.

 

[LittleNipper]

As I agree that the "other" sides people won't stop either.


Solve both problems?

you wan't to pray in school, go to a Christian school. wan't to learn intelligent design? go to a christian school. Disagree with gay marriage, Don't get married. Don't like abortions? Don't have one! Disagree with stem cell research? you don't get the benefits from it. Disagree with the word of god? Don't go to church. You think the bible is wrong? Don't read it..

It goes both ways.. Both sides need to leave eachother be.

The very same should be said of evolution. Want to learn ONLY evolution and not be exposed to any other scientific considerations, then attend a private atheist institution. If you do not wish to see other students praying or hear any reference with concern for the logic or reasoning for a CREATOR, then once again go attend some school for atheists. Want an abortion because you hate babies or feel confused, go to a state that allows it and pay for it yourself. Want research with concern to stem cells, use those that happen from miscarriages and are the result of accidents. Disagree with the GOD's Word---you should know exactly what you disagree with-----so you need to read what you question. If you want to have a sexual relationship with the same sex, have one, but don't call it marriage, if that relationship has no rational possibility of begetting offspring in any way shape or form.... Just my take on the issues.

 

[jwu]

The very same should be said of evolution. Want to learn ONLY evolution and not be exposed to any other scientific considerations, then attend a private atheist institution.

What scientific considerations has creationism to offer?

 

[LittleNipper]

What scientific considerations has creationism to offer?

Well, what of the results regarding football teams and those stroke patients are achieving with hyperbaric chambers. It all stems from the notion that before the FLOOD men lived longer and grew bigger coupled with the Canopy Theory and amber oxygen bubbles and the size of dinosaur nostrils. The conclusion is that the oxygen levels were once likely 30 percent higher and the air pressure was greater, the oceans much smaller and the land surface smoother. The increase in pressurized oxygen and low solar radiation absorbtion made for far more healthier individuals and larger animal & plant growth.

So people are already beginning to apply Creationist research and their scientific logic....

 

[jwu]

You got it backwards.

Creationism proposes that in the past there were hyperbaric conditions on earth in order to explain away problems (and this fails at that too, as what it has to explain is way beyond the capabilities of hyperbaric effects).

Hyperbaric chambers are not a discovery of creation science, but creationism makes use of a previously known effect.


Sorry, that doesn't count.

If you disagree, then show me the actual research papers. Show me any result of creation science which today is commercially applied, i.e. which companies are willing to invest money into. And no, developments by scientists who happen to be creationists don't count, i want actual results of applied creation science.

 

[LittleNipper]

You got it backwards.

Creationism proposes that in the past there were hyperbaric conditions on earth in order to explain away problems (and this fails at that too, as what it has to explain is way beyond the capabilities of hyperbaric effects).

Hyperbaric chambers are not a discovery of creation science, but creationism makes use of a previously known effect.


Sorry, that doesn't count.

If you disagree, then show me the actual research papers. Show me any result of creation science which today is commercially applied, i.e. which companies are willing to invest money into. And no, developments by scientists who happen to be creationists don't count, i want actual results of applied creation science.

Provide actual results of applied evolutionary science. THere are none. Applied science rests on filling a need and not on a theory of origins.

 

[jwu]

- predictions about how species behave when they are introduced into a new environment
- development of new drugs
- genetic algorithms are used to design many things, such as plane wings
- control of parasites
- bioinformatics
- optimizing fishing yields
- sex allocation theory, e.g. used to save species from extinction
- phylogenetic analysis
- ribotyping


List of references from talkorigins:

1. Arnold, Frances H. 2001. Combinatorial and computational challenges for biocatalyst design. Nature 409: 253-257.
2. Barbrook, Adrian C., Christopher J. Howe, Norman Blake, and Peter Robinson, 1998. The phylogeny of The Canterbury Tales. Nature 394: 839.
3. Benner, Steven A. 2001. Natural progression. Nature 409: 459.
4. Branca, Malorye. 2002. Sorting the microbes from the trees. Bio-IT Bulletin, Apr. 07. http://www.bio-itworld.com/news/040702_report186.html
5. Bull, J. J. and H. A. Wichman. 2001. Applied evolution. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 32: 183-217.
6. Cherry, J. R., and A. L. Fidantsef. 2003. Directed evolution of industrial enzymes: an update. Current Opinion in Biotechnology 14: 438-443.
7. Conover, D. O. and S. B. Munch. 2002. Sustaining fisheries yields over evolutionary time scales. Science 297: 94-96. See also pp. 31-32.
8. Cummings, C. A. and D. A. Relman. 2002. Microbial forensics-- "cross-examining pathogens". Science 296: 1976-1979.
9. Dunn, M., A. Terrill, G. Reesink, R. A. Foley and S. C. Levinson. 2005. Structural phylogenetics and the reconstruction of ancient language history. Science 309: 2072-2075. See also: Gray, Russell. 2005. Pushing the time barrier in the quest for language roots. Science 309: 2007-2008.
10. Eisen, J. and M. Wu. 2002. Phylogenetic analysis and gene functional predictions: Phylogenomics in action. Theoretical Population Biology 61: 481-487.
11. Futuyma, D. J. 1995. The uses of evolutionary biology. Science 267: 41-42.
12. Galvani, Alison P. 2003. Epidemiology meets evolutionary ecology. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 18(3): 132-139.
13. Gaschen, B. et al.. 2002. Diversity considerations in HIV-1 vaccine selection. Science 296: 2354-2360.
14. Howe, Christopher J. et al. 2001. Manuscript evolution. Trends in Genetics 17: 147-152.
15. Marczyk, Adam. 2004. Genetic algorithms and evolutionary computation. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/genalg/genalg.html
16. Nesse, Randolph M. and George C. Williams. 1994. Why We Get Sick. New York: Times Books.
17. Relman, David A. 1999. The search for unrecognized pathogens. Science 284: 1308-1310.
18. Searls, D., 2003. Pharmacophylogenomics: Genes, evolution and drug targets. Nature Reviews Drug Discovery 2: 613-623. http://www.nature.com/nature/view/030731.html
19. Sutherland, William J., 2002. Science, sex and the kakapo. Nature 419: 265-266.
20. Taylor, Sean V., Peter Kast, and Donald Hilvert. 2001. Investigating and engineering enzymes by genetic selection. Angewandte Chemie International Edition 40: 3310-3335.
21. Vogel, Gretchen. 1998. HIV strain analysis debuts in murder trial. Science 282: 851-852.



Now - with your red herring addressed - please provide a list of applications of creation science.

Regarding hyperbaric chambers again...these have been in use since 1662 (!), and they were frequently used for medical purposes for almost 200 years. This long predates any "creation science", a term coined by Henry Morris in the 1960ies, as well as any water canopy concepts.

 

[Guest]

To LittleNipper

LittleNipper:
You are right, there are no actual result of applied evolutionary science. I found it so interesting that I decided to take a look into it and what I found caused me to not need to look further. I started with the claim that evolutionary science is applied in the control of parasites and for optimizing fisheries. Thank God for the scientists He has saved because they have the knowledge to research and understand and explain, in simple terms, to the rest of us whom evolutionary "scientists" would like to deceive with technical talk.

Anyway, there is an article at: http://www.trueorigin.org/bactera01.asp that explains how bacterial resistance to antibiotics is NOT an example of applied evolutionary science. I then found another article entitled "Fishy Evidence" which explains how there is NO evolutionary science being applied in optimizing fishing yields.

Evolution has so many problems, its a wonder any sensible person, Christian or not, still endorses it. I recently engaged in a long conversation with an atheist who could not refute even one biblical truth NOR could she defend one single teaching (lie) of evolution.

At the site of Heavenly Manna (http://www.HeavenlyManna.net), there is a list of the amazing SCIENTIFIC facts contained in the Bible, as well as a section dedicated to answering accusations against the infallibility of the Scriptures. I've not heard anyone refute them!

As far as applied creation science, well, for one thing, the creationist "theory" (as scoffers call it), is seen in a major scientific theory which actually speaks about the origin of not only life, but of ALL things! One of the major laws of Physics states that "Matter can neither be created nor destroyed". They are correct because no one has ever created anything, animate or inanimate, starting with nothing. They conveniently left out one important thing; matter can neither be created nor destroyed BY MAN. Here is the key. Poor scientists, it took them years to "discover" this when it would have been so much simpler to just read it in the Word of the One who DOES create and destroy. The Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes, chapter 3, verse 14 says: "I know that whatsoever God doeth, it shall be forever: nothing can be put to it, nor anything taken from it: and God doeth it, that men should fear before Him."

 

[Jon-Marc]

The question for me is "Can science stand up to the word of God?" Every time someone tries to disprove the Bible using science, all they do is end up proving it to be true. Science cannot disprove the truth.

 

[jwu]

You are right, there are no actual result of applied evolutionary science.

What about the other things which i listed?

Another application is the prediction where exactly specific fossils can be found.

Anyway, there is an article at: http://www.trueorigin.org/bactera01.asp that explains how bacterial resistance to antibiotics is NOT an example of applied evolutionary science.

The link doesn't work...could you sum up its line of reasoning?

I then found another article entitled "Fishy Evidence" which explains how there is NO evolutionary science being applied in optimizing fishing yields.

Source?

Evolution has so many problems, its a wonder any sensible person, Christian or not, still endorses it. I recently engaged in a long conversation with an atheist who could not refute even one biblical truth NOR could she defend one single teaching (lie) of evolution.

Like what? And the claim that the teachings of evolution are lies needs to be supported as well, else you should retract it. What particular thing is taught despite of known to be wrong?

As far as applied creation science, well, for one thing, the creationist "theory" (as scoffers call it), is seen in a major scientific theory which actually speaks about the origin of not only life, but of ALL things!

Evidently you have no idea about science at all..."theory" is actually a very high rank. Creation science isn't anywhere near theory status.
And what are the applications? What is even the theory? What could falsify it?

One of the major laws of Physics states that "Matter can neither be created nor destroyed". They are correct because no one has ever created anything, animate or inanimate, starting with nothing. They conveniently left out one important thing; matter can neither be created nor destroyed BY MAN.

There is no such law. Nuclear weapons and reactors work by exactly that, the destruction of matter, which sets free a lot of energy.
And nuclear particles can condense from energy as well.

There is the first law of thermodynamics, which states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. But that's something entirely different.

Every time someone tries to disprove the Bible using science, all they do is end up proving it to be true.

Please identify which particular strata were laid down by the supposed noachian flood, so we can see if this hypothesis holds any water...

 

[LittleNipper]

It must be understood that even in the realm of science, there is bias, as well as, peer pressure. In the case where there are established theories, which are being held in high regard, the instructors of such rationalizations are not going to move over without a fight. Their authority and logic is being questioned...

 

[jwu]

Their logic is up for review though, and if there are mistakes in it then others gladly shoot it down.

If your position holds water, then it should be possible to present a logically watertight argumentation.

But we're drifting away from my question: What practical applications are there of creation science? You've named hyperbaric chambers, which fell apart as a sample of such upon a closer look. Anything else?

 

[Jon-Marc]

"Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools." Rom. 1:22. Man thinks he is wise and full of knowledge. He also thinks he knows more than God.

 

[jwu]

Man thinks he is wise and full of knowledge. He also thinks he knows more than God.

Who exactly thinks so?

Massive generalizations don't exactly help your point...particularly since "Man" would include you as well. *sigh*

 

[Jon-Marc]

Yes. of course, I include myself. Surprised? You thought I would deny that? I'm not that pious or self-righteous. One thing I've learned in my 60 years is that I know very little. Yes, I have been guilty of questioning God and His methods. I've even been guilty of trying to tell Him how to do things and how I would have done it. However, God is all-knowing, and I'm not.

 

[jwu]

Questioning God and His methods is not the same as thinking that one knows more than God (which makes no sense whatsoever anyway, since God is omniscient and hence knowing more than God is impossible by definition).

One thing I've learned in my 60 years is that I know very little.

Which is also the opinion of very most scientists....