There’s a fundamental problem in philosophy called the Münchhausen trilemma. Anyone who’ve spent some times wrestling with this will realize that there can be no such thing as a final explanation that does not itself cry out for one. God solves nothing.
When you go to your typical “you have to show” argument I know you are being arbitrary. With all the respect that is due Rum. You do not define the requirements of science. Do you remember the term hypocritical you liked to use in your arguments?
At their core, YEC and ID both depend on an Omphalos argument; a Designer that can do anything, make it look like anything else, and (oh by the way) might have done it last Thursday. I don’t mean that as a criticism of faith, but rather the point where questions of faith stumble on science.
You are stumbling as most ID critics do and that is to create a straw man vs dealing directly with the argument. Lack of definition does not lead directly to there is no limitation. The definition is limited by empirical observation.
We know the designer is limited to the materials of the universe and their characteristics.
The problem is Bill constantly “forgets” every time he has something explained to him and comes back two posts later making the same claim. Then people need to explain the same thing again and again and again. Bill needs to work on his memory.
How does your disembodied mind using magic to create life fit into that category?
I rest my case.
You and I both agree that God created everything. But you think this is a logically entailed conclusion.
But this is no more true than the argument that says the Teleological Proof of God is a good proof!!!
We agree on the most important issue. God created the universe.
You use the word proof a lot. Proof’s, however always contain assumptions. I agree we cannot prove Gods existence with assumption free logic as even with Aquinas type logic we need to embrace assumptions. I do believe we can come to a logical conclusion of Gods existence based on empirical evidence and inductive reasoning. This to me is the same thing as faith. Not blind faith but faith.
Seek and ye shall find.
From the perspectives of both science and scripture, is not the answer a resounding YES?
Science involves extending our senses by instrumentation, quantifying by measurement, and extrapolating from empirical results. This is 180 degrees contrary to the theme of Job 11:7-9, which is well in keeping with the rest of the Bible:
Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?
It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know?
The measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea.
For me, I think so yes, though there are certainly similarities.
I came to faith in God through my parents. They “gave” me a faith. My parents also gave me some scientific claims about the world (the Earth is round, etc.) that frankly I’ve just assumed ever since. There have been tests of my faith in God, and I have also tested some of the knowledge about the physical world I’ve inherited. Sometimes I find that what I’ve inherited is maybe not entirely correct. As someone who teaches introductory physics to science majors, I know people are notorious for having misconceptions about basic physics that we experience every day. I have also had to take the faith in God I inherited from my parents and tweak it and make it my own based on my own experiences and study.
So how is faith in God and faith in a scientific claim different? Well, for one, I can test the scientific claims repeatedly and other people can independently test them too. They make sense of how the world works in a way that is independent of the person doing the observing (i.e. objective). We can also often (especially in the sciences I work in) actually quantify the “faith” we should have as an uncertainty. One measurement gives me very little “faith”. 10 measurements of the same things makes me think there is something going on. 10 independent measurements with 10 replications each makes me think this is the real deal.
I just simply can’t do that with faith in God. God is not available “at my leisure” and I don’t control him so I can’t build in that “control and repeat” that I can in my science. My interaction with God is largely (though maybe not universally) subjective, i.e. my experience is mine alone and somebody else’s experience of the same “thing” will be different. So I can’t just take it on somebody else’s word either. It doesn’t mean faith in God is less true for me, in fact that subjective experience can be quite strong, but it is different than running an experiment in the lab.
It’s also interesting to note that scientists quite often don’t have a lot of faith in individual experiments. I often thought I saw some cool new feature in the data in grad school, and the first thing my advisor would say “it’s probably an artifact, do it again and see if you get the same result”. It was only after we had repeated it and considering all the other possible explanations (60 Hz line noise, etc.), that we would start getting excited. We would then try to measure the same thing in a different way to get a more independent measurement. Finally we’d go to the task of quantifying the effect and it’s level of uncertainty. That’s just how science works. Religious faith works differently.
You make a good argument that I appreciate very much. Coming to faith in science and coming to faith and God have differences in the method. I would argue that the basic mechanics are the same. Through positive information gathered your faith strengthens through repeatable experiment in the case of science and through felling of connection, the power of scripture and the wonderment of the universe in the case of God.
Bill, I don’t see how anyone other than God could possibly know that. But since we can’t ask God, if you can cite in the ID literature where this is clearly stated, I will be happy to amend my statement.
It’s not the topic here, but any sort of Fine-Tuning arguments pretty much have to be God. I’m pretty sure that Fine-Tuning arguments can be found in the ID literature.
And that’s OK.
Its not a big point I am making but after the Big Bang the degrees of freedom were defined by the current laws of physics and the properties of matter.
Part 1 of your quote appears to sharply contradict Part 2 of your quote.
Please explain why you think you can say both parts without contradicting yourself!
Do you understand the difference between inductive reasoning based on empirical evidence and proof?
Ahhhh… so the problem is your use of the word “logical”. I would prefer you use the phrase “REASONABLE CONCLUSION”.
I think Theism (most varieties!) can be reasonably held. But you go beyond this: you think ID demonstrates (aka “logically entails”) God’s presence or activity. It cannot because I.D. , by Behe’s own admission, is only INDUCTIVE.
Clarification: I wrote about using designed experiments to show causal relationships above, which is not necessarily the same thing as proof. As @Jordan mentioned, normally we need replication of experiments to rule out errors. If the evidence is statistical (can I say inductive?) we might have proof without understanding the cause.
You seem to think deductive reasoning is always superior to inductive reasoning and it is not. Deductive reasoning requires assumptions. It is only good as the assumptions it makes.
Per stanford:
An inductive logic is a logic of evidential support
.