Not totally divorced from the idea that this universe is a hologram. 
Here’s hoping you become a regular. I’ve sure enjoyed this spirited dialog!! It would be really nice to learn your opinions too.
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No, but neither is the Bible talking about the associative property or quadratic formula. Does the Bible describe meiosis and mitosis? Does it describe the nuclear fusion reactions happening inside stars? No, and that’s perfectly fine. I don’t claim to be doing biology every time I spot a robin in my yard and I don’t pretend to be doing cosmology when I look up in awe at the moon on a clear night.
I think Psalm 19:1 is exactly right, when I look into the heavens I see God’s glory and his handiwork, but we don’t have to read scientific theories or language into the Bible for it to be true and powerful in our lives.
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I like you @terrellclemmons and hope you stay around. You may quote me, and appreciate the respect you are showing, but let me flesh it out a bit more in its own post, so it isn’t misunderstood, and you can link to it. I’d be curious what you think of
However I am not TE or EC. So please don’t apply those terms to me. You can say I am “a Christian that affirms evolutionary science” as “God’s providentially governed way of creating us.”
I have major disagreements with the TE/EC camp, and would not want to be grouped in with them. I am not sure many or any of them take Lewis’s path, so I am not speaking for them on this.
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(Emphasis added.)
“Talks about” does not equate to “doing” a post doc or even a 101.
Interestingly, that does not deny design, but also it does not affirm that design can in any way determined scientifically.
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But with respect to God’s providential M.O. in the events and sets of events in individuals’ lives, can we not legitimately infer design? (I can offer examples. I already have given one, above, from Keller’s book: Welcome to Terrell Clemmons: Questions on Methodological Naturalism - #281 by DaleCutler)
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And the example you quoted:
We can surely infer design from such a situation, but it’s certainly not a rigorous scientific inference, because we cannot say that what worked for the woman would work for all people at all times. In fact, we’re not even sure if it would surely work again every time for the woman. Are you bold enough to guarantee that every person who prays “God, come and find me. After all, you are the Good Shepherd who goes looking for the lost sheep" will find God like the woman did? Since this is not directly attested to in Scripture, I’m not able to affirm that in every case. After all, there are people who have experienced “dark nights of the soul”, not being able to sense the presence of God despite their hardest prayers.
Still, I would allow that from Scripture and the general collective experience of Christians, there are a rough set of principles that could be inferred to explain how God works, and the case above is one example. It is similar to how we can roughly predict on how a human person will behave in a certain situation. But these principles are too imprecise to be called a science. Calling it a science might even be an insult to God, who is not reducible to our simplistic models.
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In a sense, though, or more than that, it speaks to God’s ‘predictable’ M.O., as a Father’s love for his children. So I wouldn’t say that is an insult or reducing in any way. (That is also not to say that everything he gives to his children is easy, but it is always ultimately for their good.)
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My point is that even if we affirm that God loves us, we cannot predict with certainty how that love precisely plays out in our lives. Otherwise, we risk falling into some common theological errors such as the prosperity gospel - “if you do X then God will surely bless you with material goods”.
And your Laura Story song actually does affirm this:
If you are to look at this through a “scientific” lens, as many cynical atheists would, it just doesn’t make sense. Atheists like to accuse Christians of thanking God for his blessings during the good times, but also believing that God is blessing them in disguise during the hard times. To them, this proves that “God blesses us” is a meaningless statement, since it can be applied in any situation. But that’s missing the point, and I’m sure you agree.
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Another favorite:
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I wasn’t talking about the use of physical force. I was talking about laying down epistemological rules regarding design inferences, declaring them to be in principle outside of the realm of science. It’s a fact that many TE/EC leaders have made pronouncements like that.
Obviously they can’t force ID folks to go along, but they use such pronouncements to try to steer evangelicals away from ID, and I’m simply challenging such pronouncements. The average evangelical in the churches, reading a statement by Francis Collins or Darrel Falk of Kathryn Applegate, may assume that, simply because these people have Ph.D.s in a natural science and are evangelicals, they are experts on the epistemology of science, on demarcation questions, etc. But in fact there is nothing in the training of Collins, Falk, Applegate, etc. that prepares them to deal in proper scholarly fashion with such subtle questions.
Anyhow, this isn’t your fight. You’ve said you make no a priori exclusion of design inferences from natural science, so you’re not my target here.
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Absolutely.
“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” Jim Elliot
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That does not really speak to sets of events, though, that God uses in his providence to reveal himself, guide us or encourage us.
I remember liking that essay very much, but it has now been quite a few years since I read it. I will have to look at it again. Is it the one in which he points out the religious character of the evolutionary story, as it is usually presented in popular expositions? Or is that a different Lewis essay?
(FYI: Is Theology Poetry?)
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You are right scripture doesn’t talk about any field of science. It talks about human beings living in community and their beliefs (both of individuals and communities). And it’s clear that the grandeur of nature demands a belief in or worship of God.
This is why Paul makes the claim that people refuse to acknowledge God inspite of “knowing” God… this knowing is not through a scientific investigation, but rather through a revelation by God to human beings (Romans 1:18-21).
What MN does is give many people a way to look at nature without seeing God.
A self imposed blindness if you will. Unfortunately science has never been restricted to scientific claims and has regularly been used to back theological claims of atheism.
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Hi, Dale. Yes, that is the essay I was talking about. I see the stuff I remembered in the section where he mentions H. G. Wells. It is very important to understand that for many modern people, this narrative serves a religious function. In a sense, it is a secular substitute for Genesis and the Biblical vision of the world. Indeed, it was in my teens and early twenties a sort of secular religion for me. I think Lewis was the first person who made me realize that part of the appeal of the narrative was its poetic quality, and its “literary structure,” so to speak. The most successful popular science books of the 1960s and 1970s, e.g., those of Sagan, Jastrow, etc. made very effective use of this poetic and literary aspect of the molecules-to-man tale.
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That’s absurd.
The problem with ID is that it stops with inferences and is therefore pseudoscience. Real science starts with inferences, with the meaty part being the testing of hypotheses. No ID proponent will advance or test an ID hypothesis.
That’s why they are outside the realm of science.
And once again, we have Eddie hiding behind a pseudonym while haughtily and arrogantly judging the credentials of others.
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This thread has exploded beyond my ability to devote enough time too! Although I am really looking forward to diving a bit deeper. Also welcome @terrellclemmons!
MN is, as @dga471 pointed out, one of those hot points between certain segments of Christian thinkers and science. The reasons have been thoroughly explored on this forum. However, one question that I always have is what role MN plays in theological studies. @Eddie and @deuteroKJ, I think, may be really helpful here.
Is not the exegetical and hermeneutical task governed by something like MN? What about systematics? What I mean is, when one engages in the exegetical task, one brings all sorts of tools to the task of understanding the text on its own terms. Yes, in the background for many scholars is the belief that it is the word of God, but when arguments break out about how to properly interpret one passage against another, isn’t the debate something that in principle is decidable without recourse to the supernatural? The supernatural, for most theologians, is a given; yet, theologians don’t, correct me if I’m wrong, resort to a supernatural explanation of the passage they are interpreting. The debate, the scholarship, the work, seems devoted to something very much like a principle of MN. Likewise, for doctrinal debates moving from exegesis/hermeneutics to systematics. Divine design, so to speak, of interpretation and doctrine is something that is a background metaphysical belief to the actual work that linguists and systematicians do in their office with an open book.
Might a look into what a theologian actually does in his office (laboratory) correlate to what a scientist does in his laboratory (office)? What insights for the MN debate arise if we investigate such a comparison? More importantly, where does my analogy break down?
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