Over on www.kcfs.org, there is a thread with a link to Hans Kung's reflections on science and religion.
In it, he states that he has a "reasonable trust" in God, but does not expect rational certainty. This is the fact about the world we live in. We can look at the beauty, the complexity, the overwelming abundance of living things around us, and be certain that God exists. Scientific proof, however, eludes us. This is not because God may not be real. Instead, it says something profound about the nature, uses, and limits of science.
Because of the very nature of science, only natural process can be detected and studied. As a result, when God uses natural processes, then God is "invisible." This does not mean that God does not exisit - only that his hand is hidden from "scientific" view.
ID is an attempt to detect his fingerprints by identifying things in nature that could not have occurred by any natural process. The problem with this approach is that it is an argument from ignorance - at the end of the day, a successful ID argument only demonstrates that we don't know how something was done - we still can't say that God "did it" (although we may find it REASONABLE to think that he did).
This means that we are still required to live by faith. A reasonable faith, yes; but one that has been scientifically demonstrated to be true? God could have, but did not, make it so.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Greg-
What do you mean by the part I highlighted below?
"This means that we are still required to live by faith. A reasonable faith, yes; but one that has been scientifically demonstrated to be true? God could have, but did not, make it so."
How do you think God could have made it possible for us to scientifically demonstrate his existence?
Well, we could have DNA that is distinct from all other creatures. The sun and universe could revolve around the earth. There could be no fossils - in short, the world could look just like you would expect from Genesis. I agree that you may not be able to prove God with a purely natural process, but that plus revelation that called it exactly as it is BEFORE we had the tools to go looking would be a pretty good case, don't you think?
Given your view of faith, Mr Myers, its looks to me like scientists live by a faith of their own.
In fact, for many it seems to be elevated to the status of a religion.
What was called in the old days "idolatry".
My experience of the kind of meant when I speak of science (I have faith in the repeatablity of this experiemnt) is very different from the faith I have in God.
It is no idolatry to explore the world that God made, and it is no piety to pretend that we can't know real things about nature.
Post a Comment