Christian Biography: Scientists and Science Philosophers

[cslewislover]

(as if evolution could actually CREATE life! evolution is not a process that starts life)...
And yes, tone it down. We have brains just like you...and we find your view and data unconvincing...
Besides that, are you so prejudiced that you think a professor ought to be fired for his personal beliefs? Did you not see all the refereed journal articles he had published? Those are scientific journals, not ones that deal with belief.

No, Evolution can not create life. No Evolution can not create universes No evolution can not create Solar Systems, Evolution only explains one specific thing, to be against it so much, you might as well be up against the Laws of Physics that Newton discovered, You can not see gravity! Is it real?

Also I have never seen your brain, lets assume that it exists

No I do not think he should of been fired based on a kind of discrimination, but according to the Wikipedia article there were other reasons.(like being unable to obtain funding for one thing...do you know how important funding is for research projects?)

Anyway, try actually looking at the source I cite rather than skimming past it in a Hurry, have some patience and you may well see something without your bias.(we all have one)

I AM prejudiced.... Against prejudicial prejudice

Right . . . the wikipedia article. Lol. I've seen it, and there's more to it than that. His academic record speaks for itself, and he got plenty of funding.

Why should I spend so much time on your source? You don't want to do it for mine (LOL). I might be a lot less biased than you think - you don't even know . . . It's having a view, though, a world view. I see our solar system, and the area around it, as ridiculously fine-tuned for life. And I totally wonder why you think, if the universe is indeed empty, that it negates a creator? There is no logical connection there, in my thinking. I don't think you saw what I wrote in another thread what I wrote about this to you. I totally disagree with you. God obviously uses a certain level of evolution to do his work, to have life continue. But life itself doesn't start from nothing. If you can't explain how life itself started, then it doesn't mean much.

If you want to discuss evolution and/or intelligent design, can you post on one of these threads please (or make a new one)? (I know that in one of these you posted, but no one responded more to you yet):

http://discussions.godandscience.org/vi ... 360#p83360

http://discussions.godandscience.org/vi ... &start=285

http://discussions.godandscience.org/vi ... =6&t=34091

[cslewislover]

I've posted from this book above already, but I wanted to add one more! This essay, from A Faith and Culture Devotional (Zondervan 2008, pp 279-281), is written by Kelly Monroe Kullberg.


Blaise Pascal: Genius, Mind, and Heart

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) was born in France and raised in Paris. He was three when his mother died, but he was raised by a loving and capable father, Etienne Pascal, himself a student in mathematics, ancient languages, and poetry.

At the age of eleven, Blaise wrote a short treatise on the sounds of vibrating bodies, and at twelve he discovered geometric theorems without having yet studied geometry. He was then allowed to study Euclid and to sit in the monastery and listen to some of the greatest mathematicians and scientists in Europe.

Still a boy, Pascal developed a mechanical calculator to help his father calculate taxes. He advanced the study of fluids and the concepts of pressure and vacuum. At age sixteen he advanced research in projective geometry, and as an adult he developed probability theory which influenced the fields of social science and modern economics.

He wrote powerfully in defense of scientific method while at the same time opposing the nascent rationalism of Rene Descartes. Pascal humbly stated in Pensees, “Reason's last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it.” Therefore, on the basis of reason, he was open to the supernatural or that which was revealed from beyond the realms of nature and logic alone. He burned with questions about God and eternity.

Describing Pascal, British sociologist Os Guinness wrote in The Call, “Mathematical genius, inventor, grandfather of the computer and modern risk theory, renaissance thinker well versed in physics, philosophy, and theology . . . among the most elegant prose stylists in the French language, Pascal is one of the supreme human thinkers of all time and author of a great masterpiece of Western literature—Pensees.”

But, according to Guinness, “Almost no one in Pascal's day and still too few in ours know of the experience that kept these achievements in perspective and lay at the core of his brief, intense, pain-filled, flame burst of life. On the evening of Monday, November 23, 1654, he was thirty-one years old and just experienced a close brush with death in a carriage driving accident. That night he had a profound encounter with God that changed the course of his life.

“Pascal's experience lasted from 10:30 p.m. until 12:30 a.m. It is often called his 'second conversion.' to distinguish it from his first, more formal conversion at Rouen when he was twenty-four. What he went through strained and finally shattered the capacities of his language: fire. But the experience was so precious and decisive to him that he sewed the parchment record of it into the lining of his doublet [coat] and wore it next to his heart . . . It was only found by his sister, who felt the odd bump it formed, after his death in 1662 at the age of thirty-nine. The opening half of his 'Memorial' reads:

Fire
God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob,
Not of philosophers and scholars.
Certainty, certainty, heartfelt, joy, peace.
God of Jesus Christ.
God of Jesus Christ.
My God and Your God.
Your God shall be my God.
The world forgotten, and everything except God.
He can only be found by the ways taught in the Gospels.
Greatness of the human soul.
O righteous father, the world had not known thee,
But I have known thee.
Joy, Joy, Joy, tears of joy.

Guinness continues, “Most of us cannot begin to understand Pascal's mathematical accomplishments, and we would not wish to experience the pain and suffering of his short life. But what lit and fanned into a blaze the deep potential of his character and gifts is something open to us all — the call of God.”

Pascal had entrusted his life to Christ even before his epiphany of fire, his “second conversion” yielding “certainty.” Bill Tsamis of the C.S. Lewis Society wrote, “Transcending the idea of reason alone, the great philosopher recognized that God had purposed a degree of ambiguity in His creation in order that He might discover the faithfulness of the heart, rather than the certitude of the mind.” Pascal wrote in his journal Pensees, “Acknowledge the truth of religion in its very obscurity . . . for it is not true that everything reveals God, and it is not true that everything conceals God. But it is true at once that He hides from those who tempt Him and He reveals Himself to those who seek Him.”


Os Guinness quotes from The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life (Nelson, 1998).

[Gabrielman]

"Yet, in spite of Christianity's having provided the fertile stimulus for the development of science, students in the Western world--whether in the elementary, secondary, or university classrooms--are regularly deprived by instructors and textbooks from learning and knowing about Christianity's connection to science.

Not only do they omit it from the class room, they actually go out of their way to teach against it. I remember several times in High School where they tried to teach that the scientists were not even Christians. They tried to say that Sir Issac Newton was gay and that he was working against the Church at the time to disprove the Christian "myth" as it were. Any way, they tried to say that he was not a believer and that he was trying to disprove geocentric ideas and the "flat earth" idea to prove that there was no God. Needless to say that was not Newton's motive. Also they said that Louis Pasteur's experiments disproving spontaneous generation were to disprove the Churches ideas about how God created life. My teachers actually went out of their way to say these things. There were times in the science text books where they repeatedly attacked Christianity and Christians, belittling them and calling our faith a myth. Did any other religion pop up? No. They even taught evolution as a fact, with proofs. Thankfully I had one teacher who was an agnostic who would not do such things, and even went so far as to point out the flaws in evolution. I actually used many of the articles on the main site for our weekly science articles we had to do, and she loved them! (Unfortunately she passed away the year I graduated, she was there for my graduation, but that summer she overdosed on drugs and died, I only hope that she found Christ in that time.).

[Kristoffer]

calling our faith a myth.

What is wrong with myths exactly?

[cslewislover]

calling our faith a myth.

What is wrong with myths exactly?

I don't know of anyone who puts their life (present or future) on the line for a myth. If our faith is based on myth, then we're all just silly, to say the least.

[Kristoffer]

Well silly is better than dangerous.

[cslewislover]

Well silly is better than dangerous.

I don't understand your response, so I think you did not understand my post. Will you please respectfully give some thought to what is being written? I thought you liked Christ and were attending church. If so, are you just wasting your time believing in a myth?


Here's a prayer I came across, of Soren Kierkegaard's. He was not a scientist but a philosopher, but I wanted to post this anyhow. I'm not implying anything about Kristoffer by posting it.

"O my God, how often have I [not] rejoiced, given thanks, been unspeakably grateful in discovering how wondrously events have been ordered; that I would do something and only later I would fully understand that the course of events was significant and just. But at times also I have had to say with overflowing joy: 'My God, Thy wisdom disposes--in making use of my stupidity.' I do not fail to act with considered judgment, but I still do some stupid or imprudent things, and I am at the point of losing courage, thinking that now even everything is lost, and then afterward I understand that exactly this stupidity Thou has turned into infinite wisdom. Infinite love!"

From: The Prayers of Kierkegaard (p 73), Perry LeFevre (Univ of Chicago Press, 1956).

[Kristoffer]

Oh yes, Sí¸ren Kierkegaard

But wasn't that guy existentialist?

[Canuckster1127]

Kierkegaard was defined by others as existentialist after he died. He had elements in his thinking and philosophy that have come to be included under the very broad definition of existentialism, but Kierkegaard was a lot more than that. He's one of my personal favorites too.

[cslewislover]

Oh yes, Sí¸ren Kierkegaard

But wasn't that guy existentialist?

Kristoffer, I've really gotten to the point where I just don't know why it would be good to respond to you at all. You increasingly make short answers that do not answer anything I ask, after either insulting someone or something or our faith. Do you want conversation at all, or do you just want to just shoot of your little flash opinions, like graffiti? Is there some reason why you want to be here, besides insult us? If it keeps going on like this, I'm not sure that you'll be around that much longer; I'm not sure that it would be fruitful for everyone involved.

[coldblood]

Science should not be based on observations; but only upon the Bible's teachings. Men should never believe what they see with their own eyes, if what they see disagrees with the Bible. Scientists should never publish explanations, theories, or ideas for others to read if they can be construed in any way to disagree with the Bible.




--

If wisdom without love is foolishness,
Does that mean foolishness with love is wisdom?

If knowledge without heart is ignorance,
Does that mean ignorance with heart is knowledge?


So easy to post words; so hard to make sense out of them.


.

[smiley]

Science should not be based on observations; but only upon the Bible's teachings. Men should never believe what they see with their own eyes, if what they see disagrees with the Bible. Scientists should never publish explanations, theories, or ideas for others to read if they can be construed in any way to disagree with the Bible.

Ha ha. No.