Always be prepared to mystify and stupify

A chapter from a seminar booklet: “Always be prepared to give an Answer” St James Seminar (which St James, is unknown).

If this is how Anglican Christians are equipped for discussion with people in the world, then no wonder the 10 year plan of Peter Jensen is, at year 5, less than half baked (an article in a recent Sydney Morning Herald revealed that in the five years Anglican numbers had risen by 5,500 against a 10 year goal of 10% of Sydney in ‘bible believing [and there, I take it, not Anglican] churches. Now, let it be said. Any increase in Christian numbers is welcome. I just wonder how many more could be in that number if the Sydney Anglicans were attentive to all the scriptures, rather than seemingly disdainful of parts of them?).

I say this because, as you will find below, we have in the chapter quoted a mix of half-truths, distortions, illogicality, and misunderstanding, dressed up as ‘the fact’s, ma’am, nothing but the facts’. Selling facts and delivering wind is the predictable result.

The chapter is quoted below. Following are comments against selected sections.

THE CHAPTER

5. Hasn’t Science Disproved Christianity?

Notes: Key issue for readers of Dawkins, The God Delusion
Well answered by A. McGrath, The Dawkins Delusion

Recommended book: K. Birkett, Unnatural Enemies

Key idea: no necessary conflict between science and Christianity.
Science attempts to explain the “How?” but cannot explain the Why? or Who?

As you begin, acknowledge that in the past Christians have created an unnecessary divorce between science and Christianity, often based on a misreading of the Scriptures – e.g. Nicholas Copernicus (16th century) proposed a heliocentric solar system – rejected because of misreading of Ps 19:6.

This approach is perpetuated by some Christians – e.g. Creation Science movement – Nowhere in the bible does it say that Noah’s flood is the explanation for geological strata

“Two Books approach” – Galileo (citing Cardinal Baronius, 1598) “The Bible was written to show us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.”

The earliest scientists were believers in God. The whole scientific endeavour got off the ground because people believed that God had made an ordered world, which operated according to his laws.

Science rests on the empirical method – developing and testing theories against observable results. It assumes a uniformity of cause and effect – every time I throw an apple up, it will come back down.

The limits of science
Epistemological
cannot answer ‘why?’ questions
cannot speak about ‘singularities’

Distinguish between science-as-method and science-as-philosophy. As a method, science relies on the predictability of natural laws and forces in the world. Science-as-philosophy turns this into a ‘closed system’. Everything that happens in the universe can (and must) be explained in terms of natural events.

Science cannot ‘disprove’ or ‘prove’ Christianity, because it cannot speak about non-observed, non-repeatable events. (e.g. the first supernova…). For example, focus on the resurrection of Jesus. The results of science tell us that people don’t rise from the dead … But if Jesus resurrection was a singularity . . .

THE COMMENTS

“Recommended book: K. Birkett, Unnatural Enemies”

1. This book is good as far as it goes, but it just doesn’t go far enough. It fails as a critique of naturalism, it fails as a history of science (the author, who is a PhD in the history of science, doesn’t mention either Milne-Edwards or Edward Blyth (see "The Darwin Papers", "Darwin and the search for an evolutionary mechanism", by Noel Weeks, "Variation and Natural Selection" or "Darwin's illegitimate brainchild" and Blyth’s papers themselves are available here. Note, I don’t vouch for these sites, necessarily, just that they have content on Blyth) who were important pre-cursors of Darwin’s ideas).

2. Birkett also fails to deal with the Godless source of Darwin’s ideas and the religious tendentiousness of his whole project.

3. As the Chaser would say (ABC-TV satire): Book road test: FAIL

“Key idea: no necessary conflict between science and Christianity.
Science attempts to explain the “How?” but cannot explain the Why? or Who?”

4. No, no, no. There is absolutely no conflict between science and Christianity; just like there is no conflict between bicycle repair and Christianity. This answer starts to give the farm away right at the start! The first distinction that must be drawn is between science and scientific discourse stolen by religious naturalism. Now, that’s where the conflict is; and it is a religious conflict: between naturalism and Christianity, just like between Christianity and Islam, Hinduism and Voodoo. Check out "Philosophical Naturalism and the Age of the Earth" and Norman Geisler's article in JETS "Beware of Philosophy: A warning to biblical scholars"

5. It is meaningless to mention that science cannot explain the ‘who’ because the premise of naturalism (which is what the question is really about) is that there is no ‘who’ Perhaps they don’t teach this at Moore College!

6. In fact, science (natural science as we know it today) sets out to understand how the physical world works. It is done following the instruction of Genesis 1 for us to ‘subdue’ the earth: to know, understand and manage/master/care for it. The genesian source of the impulse to question is ironic as it is indeed the explanation as to why people investigate to understand the world answering the ‘why?’ along the causal system.

“As you begin, acknowledge that in the past Christians have created an unnecessary divorce between science and Christianity, often based on a misreading of the Scriptures – e.g. Nicholas Copernicus (16th century) proposed a heliocentric solar system – rejected because of misreading of Ps 19:6.”

7. The problems in the past between science and Christianity have been because the ‘science’ was pagan. The debate between the Roman curia and early astronomers rested not primarily on the Bible, but on the acceptance of Aristotelianism. Pagan philosophy wanted a ‘perfect’ world that they explained as a geocentric solar system with all the heavenly bodies in circular orbits on the faces of so many spheres. This of course was not workable, so they kept adding circles to get to the elliptical orbits seen.

8. A similar thing was a problem in zoology. The later Aristotelians thought that ‘species’ were unchanging and then they blended that with God’s created “kinds”. So we had the silly dogma that species (a human idea) were unchanging (a pagan idea) and so the Bible got tossed when it was noticed that species do change! Today the church repeats its mistakes, accepting pagan views of the world and retrofitting them into the Bible (I refer to the attempt to meld the naturalism of evolution with Genesis 1)

“This approach is perpetuated by some Christians – e.g. Creation Science movement – Nowhere in the bible does it say that Noah’s flood is the explanation for geological strata”

9. Well, naturally this is a highly contestable, and I would suggest, ignorant, statement. The ‘creation science’ movement starts from the premise that God has spoken truth, meaningful in our world whenever he has spoken (Meaningful in a total manner; if only some of his statements are meaningful in our world, we set out on a journey of ‘pick and choose’, a journey that is fraught with disaster and is more likely to lead away from God than to him. It is the separation of ‘meaningfulnesses’ that marks the fork in the road between the ‘biblical realist’ and the neo-Platonist in biblical interpretation). The naturalist bent in science starts from the premise that “if there is a God, he has not spoken, but there is probably no God anyway, so let’s forget about such a being”.

10. So here we go, agreeing with the naturalist premise to try to argue against the logical conclusion of that premise: that’s on a highway to hell, my friend!

11. The end of the silliness is the dismissal of the logical conclusion of the geological history of earth in a biblical framework because the bible (sic) doesn’t say that Noah’s flood explains geological strata. It doesn’t need to, just like it doesn’t need to explain the physiology of Christ’s resurrection to establish its credibility!

12. A quick read of the description of Noah’s flood would show that it was accompanied by tremendous geological catastrophe. And then, it doesn’t take much to figure that if a flood drops sediment all over the world, then sedimentary strata all over the world, full of fossils of dead things (noting that fossils do not form in the normal course of events, dead things decay and disperse) is consistent with Noah’s flood. The statement is juvenescent smugness making an obvious straw man that falls over its own naivety.

“ “Two Books approach” – Galileo (citing Cardinal Baronius, 1598) “The Bible was written to show us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.” “

13. Danger upon danger! So there are two books are there? To adapt the previous paragraph. “Nowhere in the bible does it say that” there are two books which we are to use to understand the revelation of God”. It is very clear that God’s creation (not a book, note) points to God. (Ro 1:20: For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.). But this does not make the creation a second revelation by which we are able to interpret the propositional revelation in the scripture.

14. The very notion of two books fails at every point. And it fails because the ideas that are derived from the ‘book of nature’ are not the facts of creation, itself, but ideas about those facts, ideas conveyed within the context of religious naturalism. How can that form an interpretive grid for Holy Writ? Again the Anglicans teach and promote heresy.

15. God’s word is truth, and Paul reminds us of its value in teaching. We are never told to glance at the ‘creation’ to pick up ideas about God’s revelation.

“The earliest scientists were believers in God. The whole scientific endeavour got off the ground because people believed that God had made an ordered world, which operated according to his laws.”
16. A silly statement. Better to say that modern (natural) science flowered in the community of scholars who were convinced that God created in 6 days about 6000 years ago. The link between early modern science and belief in quick recent creation has been well documented by Peter Harrison in “The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science”.
17. One reason one could apply to this connection is that their belief provided a robust epistemology and ontology that enabled their curiosity to break away from the pagan bounds they had inherited from Classical Greece.

“Science rests on the empirical method – developing and testing theories against observable results. It assumes a uniformity of cause and effect – every time I throw an apple up, it will come back down.”

18. Wrong. Science rests on testing guesses made because of the failure of previous guesses to explain things. There is no ‘scientific’ method, per se, at the macro level. It is a micro method of observing, repeating and then drawing conclusions against the hypothesis being tested. If the test points to failure, then another guess emerges. Of course, the length one can go in guessing is constrained by one’s religious commitment: either to naturalism (and that punches against evidence when the evidence points away from it) or to (Christian) theism.

“The limits of science
Epistemological
cannot answer ‘why?’ questions
cannot speak about ‘singularities’

Distinguish between science-as-method and science-as-philosophy. As a method, science relies on the predictability of natural laws and forces in the world. Science-as-philosophy turns this into a ‘closed system’. Everything that happens in the universe can (and must) be explained in terms of natural events.”

19. At last, some real help. But it’s not ‘science-as-philosophy’; its naturalism-as-religion. That should be singled out.

“Science cannot ‘disprove’ or ‘prove’ Christianity, because it cannot speak about non-observed, non-repeatable events. (e.g. the first supernova…). For example, focus on the resurrection of Jesus. The results of science tell us that people don’t rise from the dead … But if Jesus resurrection was a singularity . . .”

20. And, finally, the comedy. If the resurrection, a singularity, is outside the purview of science, then so is creation, anther ‘singularity’; or unique and unrepeatable event.

TAILPIECE

Where does this all ‘hit the road’ so to speak? The same booklet from which the above quote is taken has a chapter on the subject of suffering. Of course that chapter says that the world is not as God created it; but on the basis of the quote above; how would they know? They deny the facticity of the only part of the Bible that would tell them that the creation (whatever that is, in their concept) was once ‘very good’ and is now fallen! So where the Bible touches the real world, they must have it that the endless suffering of evolution and/or a long age earth was part of God’s very good. The fossil record tells us that if this is very good, it is identical with the very bad (the last enemy) which God vanquishes in Christ!