(January 13, 2010 at 11:10 am)theVOID Wrote: Oh come on, we both know that the only time progress was ever made in science is when the explanation "god did it" was ignored in favour of digging deeper - setting aside the claims of the bible and the mindset it's based upon in favour of a new methodology for evaluating truth claims, the scientific method.
Your use of the word “progress” presupposes we have the same standard/definition for evaluating this statement. I doubt we do.
Many of the giants in science were Bible believing Christians who practiced science in that light and made much progress. So I would have to disagree with your statement even if we agreed on a standard/definition for the word “progress”. I do not see any reason why the Bible must be ignored to have progress in science.
So the scientific method is the new method for evaluating all truth claims? That seems to be what you are saying. So how does the scientific method evaluate the following truth claims?
“The scientific method is an appropriate method for measuring truth claims.”
“Any statement is either true or false.”
I hope you now see that the scientific method is not quite as powerful that you seem to claim it to be. It is limited in what it can do.
(January 13, 2010 at 11:10 am)theVOID Wrote: It has already achieved more for our species in a few hundred years than religious insight ever achieved.
I don’t see how the things that science has achieved for mankind can ever come close to the salvation for millions through Christianity.
(January 13, 2010 at 11:10 am)theVOID Wrote: God can be used to explain anything, but it is more of an intellectual blank cheque cashed with the bank of ignorance - It offers you absolutely zero understanding, testability or predictability, three things that are absolutely essential in order to speak of a truth claim with any level of certainty.
Straw man. I never have taken the position that God should be used to explain everything. Nor have I taken the position that science is bad or not useful or anything like this. My position is, however, that the scientific method is not more authoritative than the Word of God, the Bible.
(January 13, 2010 at 11:10 am)theVOID Wrote: Assuming the explanation is not materialistic of course, and thus far there is absolutely no reason to assume the existence of undetermined supernatural influence on the creation of the universe
Merely your opinion within your own world view.
I also wonder how the scientific method is used to evaluate the truth statement?
“Thus far there is absolutely no reason to assume the existence of undetermined supernatural influence on the creation of the universe.”
(January 13, 2010 at 11:10 am)theVOID Wrote: - it will get you absolutely nowhere towards understanding what happened, why or how and thus no further from the point you were at when you had no supernatural explanations. It's all just another case of the carte blanche.
Look at it from your own world view. If God created the universe and everything therein, then the mere statement “God created the universe” if taken as true gives you more understanding of what happened than any materialistic hypothesis ever could. Your statement, therefore, is merely showing your own bias.
(January 13, 2010 at 11:10 am)theVOID Wrote: The internal language of the brain in which all of these abstracts are realised is a process of mechanism, the logical interaction of neurons and pathways in the brain to represent information. To say that we can understand without logic is nonsense as it is logic than allows the brain (or any system) to function in the first place.
I was referring to the laws of logic not the type you describe here.
(January 13, 2010 at 11:10 am)theVOID Wrote: And you interpret it from a literal biblical point of view, so claiming that the approach is the problem without offering a reason for why it is flawed or any evidence to support your statement gets you absolutely nowhere towards verifying the truth of your claims.
I do interpret it from a literal biblical point of view.
Here are some reasons for why I think your process is flawed.
Looking at things from a non-believer’s point of view:
You seem to hold to an atheistic/materialistic/evolutionary world view. It does not seem to me that such an atheistic/materialistic/evolutionary world view can support anything other than relativistic truth since it seems that truth, morals, logic are accounted for in such a world view as being solely due to the genetics of a person and the electrical impulses in a person’s mind (possibly as a result of other causes, such as environmental ones). If this is the case, from your world view how can you say that any other person’s view or interpretation of evidence is any more accurate than yours? Wouldn’t it just mean that they have merely different electrical impulses in the brain that are no better or worse than yours? Furthermore, it would seem to follow from this that interpretations and conclusions made in the scientific method would be subject to this same relativism. This, in turn, seems to lead to the conclusion that an atheistic/materialistic/evolutionary world view cannot account for any truth claims in any objective sense, even given the scientific method. Without being able to account for any truth claims in any objective sense, I do not see how the claims of this world view relative to origins is anything more than a shot in the dark.
On the other hand, a world view starting with God as the creator of the universe who has revealed to us who He is through His creation and His Word, the Bible, we can know the truth objectively. In this world view, God is truth and if He says He created the universe and it was done in six days and in such an order, and the whole world was flooded, it must be the truth. If it is not, we have no hope for knowing anything. Furthermore, since we are His creatures created to be able to perceive God in His creation and His Word, we can understand all of this as objective truth and recognize the physical results in the world for what it is.
