Yeah, you can construct that sentence, but is it a meaningful one? Any time God arranges an event, that’s miraculous, even if similar events would happen on their own. God intervening to change what would have happened without divine intervention is a miracle.
Again, what does that even mean?
So according to you, people who hold to some kind of theistic evolution disagree with the theory of evolution?
As always, it is a matter of semantics.
The scientific definition of Evolution does not reference a God.
So, one might say that anyone that says God guides evolution down to each mutation, is somehow opposed to Evolution. That would be a uselessly general description.
One does not say that a person opposes the theory of the Water Cycle just because he or she
says God controls evaporation and condensation down to the last water molecule, right?
The irony here is that I.D. proponents are very often QUICK to oppose principles of Evolutionary processes … and yet they insist that the science of Evolution is so AMAZING, we will eventually be
able to use evolutionary science to prove God’s miraculous design exists (i.e., proving that God
exists).
The limits of science are that it cannot demonstrate God’s design in an absolute way. But any
Christian who believes God uses Evolutionary principles as part of the creation of life on Earth, is
certainly not OPPOSING Evolutionary science.
One might. Does anyone think that’s what happens? Do you? If so, what does saying that God controls the water cycle add to our knowledge? Would the water cycle be any different if God weren’t controlling each molecule?
To be fair, those are often different cdesign proponentsists; it’s a big tent.
But, again, what could that possibly mean?
No… the water cycle exists because of physical constants that came to be the way they are because of random chance working in a multiverse with infinite (or high enough) number of universes such that atleast one ended with a water cycle and life.
Scientists know this because they got divine revelation from the spagheti monster.
I don’t really see why that is the case.
If some highly advanced extraterrestrial civilization had created the conditions on earth that allowed life to arise and evolve, I see no reason in principle that we could not eventually find evidence for this.
Why should it be different if a god was involved?
What would the evidence look like in your opinion.
I don’t know. Since we have not found any such evidence yet, it would probably require some brilliant scientists working on it to find it. I’m not one of those.
OTOH, here are some guys who think they have found such evidence, and ID Creationists were very excited by this paper. In fact, they still often cite it.
Problem is, the paper is a pile of nonsense.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0019103513000791
So, is it a statement of faith that evidence could be found “in principle”?
What principle are you talking about?
Is it some kind of unknown law of science?
By definition, as soon as you start looking for DIVINE or SUPER-NATURAL evidence of design, you
are designing a scientific protocol that can’t be executed.
How do you make God an independent variable? How do you get him to follow the
lab procedure protocol? How do you find a room, or box, or a set of molecules that
God will NOT intercede as God?
This is the EPISTEMOLOGICAL problem of trying to prove divine design.
On the other hand, for most Theists, their faith comes with the ASSUMPTION that God designed
the Universe, the Earth, and all the life on the Earth. There is no need for proof (which is pretty
cool - - since there cannot be proof).
So, I.D. proponents insist that Evolution proves God… AND simultaneously insist that Evolutionary
processes are not consistent with life as we find it.
While Evolutionary proponents who are Christians rely on the idea that God did what he wanted
with all Earth’s living things … and they look for the amazing things that God’s use of evolutionary processes have achieved over hundreds of millions of years! [i.e., Design … but no PROOF of it].
No.
The principle that the scientific method can be used to find things and answer questions.
No.
That wouldn’t be sufficient.
It would have to be a principle that the scientific method can be used to find every thing and every answer.
That’s the only way you could make the claim you did “on principle”.
By those standards, we cannot use the scientific method to investigate the behaviour of humans or organisms whose behaviour cannot be strictly determined by investigators beforehand.
It’s difficult to predict the behaviour of human beings in many cases. That’s why economics is not a hard science and economists find it difficult to make consistent predictions.
No. Because non-miraculous, non-divine causation CAN have independent variables controlled.
The problem with God’s presence is how do you control for it? How do you make an experiment
where God is NOT at work? How do you even know he is present? You can’t. And this is why
the alchemists eventually lost their credibility. Natural “chemists” could more reliably create their
wonders, while the Alchemists were still praying for God to intervene in the laboratory!
That makes assumptions about what kind of claims about God are being investigated. If the claim is “God is everywhere and nothing happens without him”, then I agree that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to investigate that claim.
However, if the claim is “God responds to intercessory prayers”, then that is a claim that could quite easily be tested by the scientific method. In fact, it has been.
I also think you underestimate the ingenuity that scientists can often bring to the question of how to investigate particular claims. If I understand the history correctly, when Einstein proposed the EPR paradox as a refutation of quantum mechanics, he meant it as a thought experiment that could not actually be performed, and that it was only thru the (supposedly) absurd conclusion that QM demanded of the experiment that he thought it succeeded. But then John Bell figured out an experiment could test the hypothesis, and the experimental physicists eventually figured out a way to actually perform Bell’s experiment.
I just don’t think theoretical concerns are sufficient to define limits to the purview of science.
I am attaching two papers on the subjects. The facts are as follows -
There are several methodological and conceptual challenges involved in these studies, The papers cited suggest that these issues make studying the effects of IP through the scientific method is difficult.
Abstract of one of the papers -
Among the many recent attempts to demonstrate the medical benefits of religious activity, the methodologically strongest seem to be studies of the effects of distant intercessory prayer (IP). In these studies, patients are randomly assigned to receive standard care or standard care plus the prayers or “healing intentions” of distant intercessors. Most of the scientific community has dismissed such research, but cavalier rejection of studies of IP is unwise, because IP studies appear to conform to the standards of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and, as such, would have a significant advantage over observational investigations of associations between religious variables and health outcomes. As we demonstrate, however, studies of IP fail to meet the standards of RCTs in several critical respects. They fail to adequately measure and control exposure to prayer from others, which is likely to exceed IP and to vary widely from subject to subject, and whose magnitude is unknown. This supplemental prayer so greatly attenuates the differences between the treatment and control groups that sample sizes are too large to justify studies of IP. Further, IP studies generally do not specify the outcome variables, raising problems of multiple comparisons and Type 1 errors. Finally, these studies claim findings incompatible with current views of the physical universe and consciousness. Unless these problems are solved, studies of IP should not be conducted
.
So are you under the impression that every other scientific question can be studied with perfect ease?
Or are you trying to argue that these scientific studies of prayer that have been conducted demonstrate that scientific studies of prayer cannot be conducted. If so, you’ll have to explain your reasoning for me.
No I just accept the fact that the scientific method is a good tool for studying some problems… of limited use in others (for example in predicting macro economic changes), and useless in others (for example in disproving Gods existence, proving naturalism etc).
