So I've heard that my last post seems a little bleak.
I have to say that this is pretty much how it ... Sorry for repeating the bleak part.
The "On the other hand?"
The experience of billions of people is that they experience patterns, events, feelings, circumstances that cannot be explained by viewing their life as simply a series of natural causes and effects. From answers to prayer, to physical healing, to synchronicities too amazing to be coincidence, the reports of the overwhelming majority of people is that there is some extra dimension to their life - some spiritual component that is required to make sense of their experience.
I don't doubt this. I experience it myself. I am, however, coming to recognize that, however it is explained, this is not what we have traditionally thought of as 'supernatural" experiences. I am not saying that they don't exist, and by calling them natural I am not trying to rule out the activities of God or what we think of as spiritual forces - I am simply suggesting that whatever these things are, they operate withing the natural world.
Why do I think this? Partially because of the evidence science provides, that natural causation is not violated. Before you insist that this is the case, consider that the world of the Bible is not supernatural - God is portrayed as potent in the natural world - Spirit, yes, but not without the means to impact this world.
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Any room for faith?!
"Science" has not explained the origin of the universe, (and they don't know what "big bang" really was, although the laws of physics...as currently formulated...bread down at the point), has not explained the origin of life, mind, or reason itself for that matter.
Of course, you BELIEVE that it will, but you don't KNOW.
I notice that you are over at KCFS claiming that scientists are on the verge of creating life based on some computer designs.
This completely misrepresents that science can do, but I would add that if life ever is created it will certainly be done by a highly complex intelligently directed process.
Great is thy faith!
Koba, the point is that whatever it is that happened, it is not the way it is laid out in Genesis 1. Given that fact, we ought to interpret the Bible in light of what we know (through science) about the world. For example, we lo longer buy geocentrism, though the Bible obviously does. We adapt how we read the Bible to what we learn about the world.
And before you settle into "even artificial life would be designed (by humans)," argument - once they figure out how to do it, finding the right "natural" conditions won't be hard, and you'll be on to your next gap.
Interpret the bible in light of what we know?
At one time the mainstream view was that the universe was eternal, or oscillating. Now the mainstream view is that the universe had a beginning, although that is now weakening with the "no boundaries" proposal and a return to "eternal recurrece".
So the point is NOT what you claim but the point is that your own faith is that you have all the answers, or in principle soon will.
You know no such thing, and that you DO know.
By the way, you are a board member of Kansas Citizens for Science aren't you?
You realize that their decaying forum is a front for the promotion of atheistic philosophies don't you?
I don't see any evidence that you are promting either science or "true" interpretaton.
Rather, you are promoting a materialist faith that science will solve, or in principle with solve, all our problems.
Koba,
I don't suppose you go to a doctor when you are sick, or spend any time looking at photos of the universe. After all, these things are the product of science.
Of course we know in part, and will learn more, but not all, of what there is to know.
But we do know that the earth is more than 6,000 years old, and that humans are related to all life. We know that the Bible reflects the cosmology of the hearers of the stories (for example, folks though the earth was fixed, and the sun moved across the sky in Joshua's time).
I am not saying it is "all or nothing." Not all science and no faith, not all faith and ignore the science. Science is a tool by which we can learn about the natural world. I never said, and do not believe that science will solve all of our problems.
But neither will a literalist view of the bible, ignorant of the discoveries of science concerning the natural world solve all of our problems.
I am not opposed to faith - I am opposed to faith that insists on pitting truth about the natural world against faith in God, and then insisting that we have to believe things that are manifestly untrue in order to be 'real" Christians.
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