Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Men of Science

I am a fundamental, born again Christian. I believe the Bible completely, and have no doubts as it its veracity.

I also am a science buff. I believe I have a scientific mindset as it comes to the natural world (as my poor bride will attest, when we disagree over a measurable item.)

I believe in science. The scientific method (observation, hypothesis, experimentation, and predictive testing of said hypothesis) is one of the most powerful tools ever devised to eek out knowledge.

I also have seen two reasonable, articulate, rational people look at the same data and, due to presuppositions, come to different conclusions, both of which can be argued from the data.

While society looks at the pronouncements of scientists as gospel, I must humbly point out that it is not as cut a dried as one may think.


Hard fact #1, Science has presuppositions.

That's not an insult. All humans have presuppositions. Science is no different. We assume our senses are reliable, that our memories are correct, and that existence is uniform (i.e. what happened in the past, like the sun rising, should also occur in the future)


Modern science, though, has two philosophic presuppositions that under gird all they do.
They base all of their investigations first in  naturalism and materialism.  Naturalism is the belief that "nature is all there is, and all basic truths are truths of nature, while materialism is the belief that "the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena (including consciousness) are the result of material interactions.  These are the basic underpinnings of modern science.


Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that God exists (I do more than assume, but I digress). If God is real, how could science ever find evidence of His existence? Their primary axioms reject the possibility! What observations could be made that, considering the basic assumptions made, could be interpreted as proof of God?

Their predisposition makes all their observations and conclusions biased.

Hard fact #2, Evidence Doesn't Speak for itself.
Science starts with observation.  Some folks believe that ovservation alone disproves God.  A great example of this is distant starlight. 

We know that some stars are billions of light years away, right?  But how do we know it?  It's not like somebody got a really long tape measure and measured it.

There are two methods of measuring these distances.  First, you can take two readings from different parts in Earth's orbit and use mathematical triangulation (call parallax) to measure distances up to 1,600 light years (using space probe built for the purpose.)

For distances greater than that, they measure the brightness of the light from the stars and infer the distance from the brightness.  While they have tested this method against all near-by stars, and it holds correct, science is making an assumption of the uniform nature of the cosmos.

Once again, we have an assumption, albeit a well-meaning, logically concluded, and rigorously tested assumption that is spoken of as if it were proven fact, despite the fact that we have only observed the universe from our tiny spec.  Our sample size is just too small to know for 100% confidence.  For example, what if there were previously undetected phenomena which dims starlight that can't be detected from the angle in which we view the heavens?

So what is my point in all this?  Well, many state that science has disproved the Bible and has proven God doesn't exist, and that to believe in science means you can't believe in God.  All of that is utter nonsense.

Science doesn't disprove the Bible nor can science even speak to the existent of God.

Science isn't incompatible with faith.  Many of the greatest scientists that ever existed believed in God.  They saw the world as a manifest testimony of the glory of God.  They sought to explain the order and complexity they saw in the handiwork of God.

Don't let the assumptions sway you.

No comments: