Evidence for God from Science

Matthew 18:15 ESV

If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. ...

1over137 wrote:Matthew 18:15 ESV

If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. ...

When I first posted here I was treated to enough hostility, condescension and arrogance, not least from jac, that I felt I should
ask if I am in the wrong place and thus unwelcome.

Others said to stay, and I found a way to come to terms with one of those who seemed hostile, and have avoided the other two.

In this thread, I raised a question, legitimate if uncomfortable, concerning the value of theology / logic / philosophy if it leads
(as it appears to have, with jac) , inevitably to a conclusion so absurd as yec. Theology may support it, but logic and science
show a massive problem with theology-or the source material- if theology does lead to yec. I think it does not, but of what use is such study to one who goes with it, completely off the rails?

Its not an attack on anyone for me to ask this, nor on theology or logic or philosophy, regardless of how thoroughly my question is misrepresented.


I like the quote you posted, for all that it is an echo of Jac references to me inwhich he so uncharitably and
dismissively refers to me not even in third person but as "an atheist",outside the circle of those worthy of a name even,
and as one whose content is only that of a mocker. It reads as contempt and bigotry.

The angry response to a "brother" who observed the same as I the arrogance and condescension from Jac, the denial
of any truth to it suggests I will fare worse adding to it the observation of apparent bigotry.

One here commented to me that I too display arrogance, and I dont deny it. Its a fault, I wish to improve myself.

Its too bad that my question led to name calling ( K, Im not trying to start fires) ( "an unbeliever" was not cool either)
matters of character being tossed about.

At this point I dont much suppose anyone would care to actually address it, less still look at how they treat a stranger
in their midst, least of all question themselves.

But thats just how it looks from this side of the cultural divide.

(1/137 you've been straight up and supportive of my presence, no fault of any sort is
suggested by my comments here)

1. I was never condescending to you, Audie, your claims to the contrary. I told you that your position entailed that the Bible was in error. You disagreed and started howling about condescension and me telling you what you believed. Your claim was nothing more than a bald, and wrong, assertion.

2. You've repeatedly misrepresented me, and this is just the latest example. Here, you say that, for me at least, logic and philosophy must lead to YEC. And yet I have explicitly said that neither logic nor philosophy has anything to say on the matter whatsoever. Further, I've said that logic and philosophy cannot even answer the question as to whether or not the universe came into existence a finite time ago or if it is eternal. Such questions, I have said, are theological and philosophical. And yet you CONTINUE to say that for me logic and philosophy leads "inevitably" to YEC. For someone who complains about condescension, you sure don't seem to pay any attention to the actual positions of those whom you are disagreeing with. And THAT is the real condescension.

3. To take exception to me referring to you by your non-Christian status is disingenuous at best. The fact is, you are not a Christian. There's nothing offensive in that statement whatsoever. You don't claim to be a Christian and I deny that. You yourself claim that you are not a Christian. As such, my comments to my fellow Christians on the way we treat one another (hence, my statement about "inter-family squabbles") have absolutely nothing to do with you. For you to inject yourself into that shows, again, a huge degree of disrespect for the positions as they actually stand. You are quite free to disagree with, or even mock, any position you choose, whether it is YEC or OEC or TE or whatever. I don't take the least offense at any of that. And your comments ought to be considered. But they have, or ought to have, a different weight than those of us who claim Christ. And this is a broader problem I have with the modern atheistic culture. To claim, as many on your side of the fence do (whether you do this beyond this one instance or not is neither here nor there) that YOUR views--as an admitted atheist--ought to be normative for those INSIDE the Church takes a degree of hubris I cannot even begin to fathom. I would NEVER go to a member of another religion and tell them how they ought to interpret their texts or what they ought to do or not do or believe within the contexts of their own religions. And yet the Christian church gets such treatment all the time. And THAT is why I make the comments I do with respect to how my fellow Christians have responded to the OEC/YEC debate in this particular thread, insofar as it was raised by you, a non-Christian. That changes the way the question ought to be approached, and it certainly changes the way we ought to treat each other.

And THAT is how it looks on THIS side of the cultural divide. So you say you don't want to come across as offensive or divisive? Then take my words above as something for your consideration. And to you I would say the same thing I said to squibble. If you have a problem with me, then take it to me via a PM. If you choose to reduce yourself to a public character attack, then you are forcing that conversation to be had in public. And perhaps if you take something to me in private I'll actually be able to learn something at least in terms of how I'm presenting myself. But the way you have chosen to handle this has been to your shame, not mine. And that is a shame for all of us, because I would very much like to know how, where possible, I can be a better communicator.

In closing, I have no hard feelings to you or squibble. I just wish the both of you would keep public issues public and private issues private and stop thinking you can divine personal intentions based on text off an internet page. There's no grace, no charity, in that kind of assumption on your part.

All involved here have a great chance for improvement. Thinking about what could be communicated better and how, whether one was overreacting or not, whether one was humble enought or not.

No more personal comments in this thread, please.

Peace.

---

Now, when Jac was quicker with his post than I with mine, I will say:

Speak via pm. Explain yourselves there, privately.
(Maybe you will do great friends, afterwards.).

This is the last time I will address you in any way.

Look at your point #2.

Re read what I said. Then how you represent it.

You are going beyond misrepresenting- as you are so falsely claiming of me-and deep into the realm
of damn lie.

I read no further.

1over137 wrote:All involved here have a great chance for improvement. Thinking about what could be communicated better and how, whether one was overreacting or not, whether one was humble enought or not.

No more personal comments in this thread, please.

Peace.

---

Now, when Jac was quicker with his post than I with mine, I will say:

Speak via pm. Explain yourselves there, privately.
(Maybe you will do great friends, afterwards.).

And you quicker than I with mine. Delete it if you wish, I do not
take it back

Going back to Audie's comments (which I realize she's ignoring, but for the sake of the rest of the board), I've said repeatedly that philosophy cannot yield YEC or OEC or anything else. My reasoning starts with the question of what philosophy is, and on my view, philosophy is the study of the nature of things. When you ask, "What makes x to be x" you are asking the basic philosophical question. So you can say, "What makes philosophy to be philosophy" or "what makes science to be science" or other such things. More traditional philosophical questions might be "What makes time time to be time?" or "What makes a human person to be a human person?" Depending on the level you are studying things, you get different kinds of questions still. So I might ask, "What makes being what it is?" and then you are doing metaphysics. You might ask, "What makes knowledge what it is?" and then you are doing epistemology. You might ask "What makes communication what it is?" and then you are doing linguistics. You might ask, "What makes understanding what it is?" and then you are doing hermeneutics.

Now, some schools of thought would say, for instance, that when we talk about the nature of thins, we are really talking about nothing at all. If you adopt the Cartesian idea that what makes a human a human is an immaterial substance called a "soul" that drives a thing called a "body" around, you end up saying that "knowledge" is a particular representation of external reality that your mind creates (so you see the movement from metaphysics to epistemology). But on that idea of knowledge, called representational epistemology, because it is impossible to get outside of your own mind to compare the picture in your mind to reality itself, then it is meaningless to talk about reality itself. As such, you end up with a position called nominalism (the idea that words are just names for ideas and don't necessarily correspond to any extra mental reality). And that idea is at the base of modern analytical philosophy. An opposing idea to nominalism is called realism, which has its own metaphysical commitments.

So we come to a question like, "Has the universe always existed?" The only way for this to be a philosophical question would be to say that the nature of a "universe" or "physical reality" is such that it cannot have always existed. Some, most notably and recently William Lane Craig, have tried to argue on this very level that the nature of a universe is such that it could not have always existed, which is to say, that a universe that has always existed ultimately entails self-contradictions. I won't repeat his arguments here. The basic approach is to say that such a universe would constitute an actual infinity and that such infinities cannot really exist. But I come from a school of thought that says that is incorrect, that a universe that has always existed does NOT constitute an actual infinity. And so Craig's arguments fail. For those who want some details on that, either start a thread or read Summa Contra Gentiles I.13.

On the other hand, I also argue that philosophical arguments in favor of a universe that has always existed fail, too. In short, "the nature of the universe" is not the kind of thing that we can know by its nature whether or not it has always existed. And that, in turn, is because philosophy ultimately deals with what MUST be (not merely with what can be). The problem is that, so far as we can tell, there is nothing self-contradictory in an eternal universe and there is nothing self-contradictory in a universe that came into and will go out of existence. As such, a universe is of such a nature that it can be either way. And plenty of things in the universe are that way. A human being can be white or black or red or any range of colors. There's nothing in their nature that says that they must be this or that. So you don't know what color any particular human is unless you look at them. So the question of a person's skin color is not a philosophical question. As such, I say that this particular universe's age is not a philosophical question for the same reason.

So how do we know if it came into existence at all, and if so, how long ago that happened?

There are only two possible answers: general and special revelation. We know general revelation by science. We know special revelation by Scripture. The former is science, the latter is theology. So science and theology both speak to the question. Regarding the former, the science strongly warrants the claim that the universe came into existence a finite time ago (I say in agreement with theology). It also strongly warrants the claim that it came into existence about fourteen billion years ago (I say in disagreement with theology). Regarding the latter, it strongly warrants the claim that the universe came into existence a finite time ago (I say in agreement with science). It also strongly warrants the claim that the universe came into existence less than a few tens of thousands of years ago (I say in disagreement with science). The question, then, is what we do when science and theology disagree. That is a whole other discussion, but I suggest that, at its core, that is a theological, and not philosophical or scientific, discussion.

But given all that, it should be clear that we are at this point far beyond philosophy. If philosophy only addresses what must be true (absolute necessity rather than necessity by supposition, to use Aquinas' language), and if we cannot say that the universe must be either finite or eternal, then still less can philosophy that the universe must be either fourteen billion years old or else a few tens of thousands of years old. Therefore, positions on those questions are derived from philosophy but from theology and science (in that order, I argue, and THAT for philosophical reasons). And therefore errors in those positions have no bearing on whether philosophy is helpful or even correct, anymore than a faulty roof means a house's foundation is cracked. Perhaps the roof is faulty because the foundation is cracked, but you can't go backwards. That is bad logic.

And THAT is why YEC or OEC or TE or whatever has no bearing on whether or not philosophy is a useful project. But against ALL that, and I think this is what squibble was actually trying to say, if philosophy turns out NOT to be a useful project at all, then YEC or OEC or TE or whatever turn out to be groundless positions, anyway and are actually devoid of all meaning. In fact, if philosophy is useless, then so are the very terms atheism and theism and all related issues! The reasoning is one directional, from philosophy TO creationism. You can't go backwards. But because you can't go backwards, you can't say that your view on creationism is a philosophical question. To do that is to fail to understand what philosophy is, which, in turn, is to be a bad philosopher.

@Audie, I was joking about fire starting. Don't take me so serious.
You guys (Squib and Jac) are so awfully serious here.

As for the philosophy issue, if you take up philosophy, you quickly see that it forms the basis for a heck of a lot of other fields of rational enquiry.
It doesn't mean that these different fields aren't to be valued in their own right.

There have been much words said here, a lot very confusing, such that I can't easily follow.
Good luck to others reading.

To give my 2 cents before I jump out and not return to this conversation.

I think Audie was right in one sense, associating religious perspectives with philosophy.
But then how she stated it seemed to be oversimplifying matters, especially when she considers herself a non-philosopher (while philosophising ).
Jac and I made a response within Audie's train of thought.
Then Squib pointed out that, "well, philosophy undergirds both science and theology."

I really don't see that anything is wrong there.
Except with the extreme tones taken on almost instantly.

I don't really care to discuss this particular topic.
But, geez. Maybe the last page or so of posts should just be removed.
Lighten up people.

They started it . . . I'm the one whose character was assaulted, was mocked, and thrown under the bus . . .

I'M SO HURT. I CANNOT STOP CRYING. I NEED FL TO COME HERE AND HOLD ME AND TELL ME THAT IT WILL BE ALRIGHT!

Jac,

I could have handled this privately and for that I apologise. We all make mistakes. I will say and this is no excuse but I am crook at the moment so I have been generally very cranky, usually I try not let that get the better of me publicly but I think it has influenced me. In retrospect the best course of action was to say nothing.

I will admit I seemingly came out guns blazing in my first post as I read it now, but my initial post was not meant to be taken in that light.

K is also correct about my views.

The bottom line for me on any creation position is that it is shrouded by scientific, theological and philosophical questions. The philosophical in some ways direct but also predominantly indirect / second order. I see the second order being perhaps how we approach the endeavour, interpret the evidence and so on if you will. And to make this very clear, I have always seen the second order as distinct since it is about the endeavour/methods not the endeavour/method itself. I am full well aware that philosophy in general sits as a second order discipline.

The direct questions however entails ultimate reality questions one in particular being is there a creator. To me, this is fundamental to even justify creation and is fundamentally philosophical at the core. I accept that this is also potentiality theological. Other questions are is there design in nature / is the physical world actually created. At this point in time science itself given its dogmatic commitment to naturalism strictly speaking really remains neutral on this. Although the evidence it produces I believe points to a creator. In the strictest sense we cannot in principle claim that creation is true as a direct scientific claim.

Specifics like the age of the universe is primarily a scientific question to me. Science has the right tools over any other field in order to directly determine the truth of this.

I look at the creation issue from the big picture, if a non-believer were to challenge me on my OEC position the first line is to justify that there is evidence for a creator and creation. This I argue is philosophical and we could say theological, however also employs support from scientific evidence which we could infer from as such using various reasoning methods one of which is abduction.

I would say that when discussing YEC or OEC between other Christians it is scientific and theological, on that I agree with you since it is internal to Christianity, in reality it should remain that way.

However this thread doesn't just have Christians in it so that changes the game from my perspective and this is why I have most definitely come from a holistic view in this case. If we were all Christians I wouldn't have said a thing.
To me It would not be the complete truth saying to a non believer it's just theological and scientific it really doesn't help our cause in the slightest and leaves many non believers switched off to the point of dismissal since generally from their perspective they know science doesn't make creation claims in principle, outright reject creation and often from experience outright reject theology. It might help you to understand I came from an atheist/agnostic upbringing to then becoming a Christian late in life.

I hope that clears up things. Just take it for what it is in general rather then trying to split hairs and terms.

I will leave it at this point and keep out of any discussion until I am in a better frame if mind.

God Bless.

Also, in Squib's defense (although I don't necessarily think any is needed)...

Though he might not see it.
He attends a Christian group. Mostly YECs..
Squib's always telling me what they said, and not understanding what all the fuss is over re: creation.

They keep hammering him and saying he doesn't believe in the same Gospel.
Trying to get him to take him to Ken Ham sessions.
Causing a bit of turmoil in good 'ol Squib. It'll probably lead to him just leaving the group.

Perhaps also a bit of pent up frustration against YECers.
BUT, I'm just an outsider observing. I don't attend the same group.

Kurieuo wrote:Also, in Squib's defense (although I don't necessarily think any is needed)...

Though he might not see it.
He attends a Christian group. Mostly YECs..
Squib's always telling me what they said, and not understanding what all the fuss is over re: creation.

They keep hammering him and saying he doesn't believe in the same Gospel.
Trying to get him to take him to Ken Ham sessions.
Causing a bit of turmoil in good 'ol Squib. It'll probably lead to him just leaving the group.

Perhaps also a bit of pent up frustration against YECers.
BUT, I'm just an outsider observing. I don't attend the same group.

LOL, I love my brothers but they sure can be frustrating on the YEC front.

And yes you're right K, I really don't see what all the fuss is....

I wouldn't leave the group because of that however. They are an amazing bunch, who theologically on many other fronts I deeply respect, despite our creation views.

Some really exemplify Christ so deeply, and as such set a fine example there and that to me is what is most important and what I look to primarily.

I still have a long journey ahead of me.

Squible wrote:

Kurieuo wrote:Also, in Squib's defense (although I don't necessarily think any is needed)...

Though he might not see it.
He attends a Christian group. Mostly YECs..
Squib's always telling me what they said, and not understanding what all the fuss is over re: creation.

They keep hammering him and saying he doesn't believe in the same Gospel.
Trying to get him to take him to Ken Ham sessions.
Causing a bit of turmoil in good 'ol Squib. It'll probably lead to him just leaving the group.

Perhaps also a bit of pent up frustration against YECers.
BUT, I'm just an outsider observing. I don't attend the same group.

LOL, I love my brothers but they sure can be frustrating on the YEC front.

And yes you're right K, I really don't see what all the fuss is....

I wouldn't leave the group because of that however. They are an amazing bunch, who theologically on many other fronts I deeply respect, despite our creation views.

Some really exemplify Christ so deeply, and as such set a fine example there and that to me is what is most important and what I look to primarily.

I still have a long journey ahead of me.

Come on Squib.
Don't go soft now. I mean how amazing can YECs be? (sorry Jac, I can't help myself...)
It's good that its not as serious as I thought.

Jac3510 wrote:Now, I don't know what has you so frustrated. My initial statement to Audie was in defense of your position--namely, that philosophy does not necessarily lead to YEC. Audie, then, can emphatically reject and even mock my position (and, I'll note, rather than offering at least a defense of my sincerity you and others joined in with that mockery--good show, siding with unbelievers against your brother in Christ), but she cannot use her rejection of my position (YEC) to condemn our common interests--philosophical reasoning and scriptural interpretation--much less your position itself (OEC).

Not that I was to start something, but just wanting to add comment on the part in bold.
I know tensions were high, but did feel it was a little unfair on Audie and those (Squib and myself?) that you had in mind.
Although, I will add, that we're not without fault so it was brought on in a way.

Still, Audie is a member here. Although off to a rough start I'm sure she otherwise has good intentions.
I doubt her non-Christianness had anything to do with any comments here regarding YEC.
No more than mine or Squib's own comments had to do with siding against a brother in Christ.

In fact, I have some serious spiritual issues with YEC as a Christian.
My main issue is that it destroys and puts people off coming to a knowledge of God.
I see it time and time again that push-button issue is creation with non-Christians.
If YEC is untrue, as I strongly believe it is, then Scripture would have us cast it down.
For it is something that I see sets itself up against the knowledge of God. (2 Cor 10:5)

This is something that I can't ignore.
YEC is an important battlefront to tackle for the sake of non-Christians who are stumbling on it in their journey to God.
As horrible as this statement sounds, I seriously see YEC as a tool that Satan uses today to stop people dead in their tracks coming to a knowledge of God.

So it is not so much that we're (or I'm) siding with non-Christians
(and I'd much prefer to see Audie as a person rather than an Atheist or non-Christian -- we don't know what the future or God even has install for her),
but that we are sadly at a serious schism when it comes to young Earth beliefs.