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Science is God's friend, not atheism's lapdog
Personal comments, and quotes, are posted in response to the March 24, 2012, pep rally of atheists who enjoy thinking they follow science on a one-way street to godlessness.
Leading with links to scientists and other scholars, I license myself, much less
credentialed, to then throw darts at seemingly unanswered questions that separate
unbelief from belief.
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The Language of God by Francis S. Collins, Head of Human Genome Project, former Director, NIH. Excerpts, pp 66-67:
“The existence of the Big Bang begs the question of what came before that, and who or what was responsible. It certainly demonstrates the limits of science as no other phenomenon has done. The consequences of Big Bang theory for theology are profound. For faith traditions that describe the universe as having been created by God from nothingness (ex nihilo), this is an electrifying outcome. ….caused more than a few agnostic scientists to sound downright theological. ….Astrophysicist Robert Jastrow wrote….’Now we see how the astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the origin of the world. The details differ, but the essential elements and the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same: the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy.’ ….The Big Bang cries out for a divine explanation. It forces the conclusion that nature had a defined beginning. I cannot see how nature created itself. Only a supernatural force that is outside of space and time could have done that.”
FROM THE BLOGOSPHERE
BioLogos, Science and Faith Coexisting Peacefully
Alister McGrath: The Big Questin
The Veritas Forum: The Language of God (video)
Reasonable faith (videos)
Bethinking 2/6: John Lennox on Stephen Hawking's "The Grand Design"
Does Science Argue for or against God?
5 BIG QUESTIONS still stump science, The Washington Post 2/11/14, page E2
Thank you Washington Post for publishing this antidote to atheists’ GOD OF THE GAPS canard claiming scientific advances are God’s inevitable rendezvous with claustrophobia. Thank you for replacing their ignorance-is-bliss version of the gap with an exponentially fuller appreciation of its magnitude.
I lack belief in the atheist all natural—i.e., non-supernatural--options:
(1) The universe, including any necessary elements, naturally and without cause created itself out of nothing. Or…
(2) The universe, and any necessary elements, naturally existed without beginning. ( Wholly unobservable.) Or....
(3) Equally unproved alternatives to the logically inclusive options (1) and (2).
GAP SPECULATIONS: VERSION I
God's creation of the universe was not a fast breaking slam dunk with no opposition on the court. Without opposition, a perfectly good God would have created a perfectly good universe of perfectly good worlds populated by perfectly good people universally in harmony with Himself. But God’s perfect goodness is opposed by the unfathomable power of "cosmic nature." Almost as unfathomable as His own.
In a "natural" state, the universe would be nothing.
Things we call natural in the broadest sense—all that we experience with our senses and scientific instruments—are unnatural, or supernatural, because they are something from nothing, violating what would be the "natural" state.
The supernatural is sufficiently powerful to claim victories over the "natural," such as creation of the universe and the life and resurrection of Jesus Christ, but the powerful pull of the "natural" is not yet vanquished nor denied its own corrupting victories.
The pull of the "natural"—its rebellion against the unnatural (supernatural)—finds expression in sin and disasters, manmade and otherwise, events and conditions we may blame on Satan.
The supernatural vs. "natural" conflict may be the source of, or synonymous with, other bi-polarities: God vs. Satan, creation vs. void, light vs dark, good vs. bad, love vs. hate. Life vs. death?
GAP SPECULATIONS: VERSION II
God created the evolution of atheists and loves them as much as He loves us who already embrace that love appreciating the awesomeness of it.
Atheists cannot take all the responsibility for their doubting Thomas response to God. I believe doubt and division were baked into the cake before there were space or time. My speculation is that God was an immaterial cognitive force outside of space and time, but He was not alone in that description. I call the other cognitive force "cosmic nature" because I don't know what else to call it, and it seems natural to me that the immaterial status quo would naturally be incapable of, and naturally resistant to, anything else. But here we are, in a material reality. Because? God didn't like the status quo of eternity past and used the mysterious and awesome power He had to create a universe large enough to beat the odds against grateful cognition. The odds were great because He was opposed by the almost as formidable anti-creative force of "cosmic nature." To the oppositional participation of the anti-creative force (Satan?) I attribute most of the negatives we experience, including, natural disasters, illness, injury, malice, mistakes, blasphemy, mosquitoes, etc. In our frame, most of us perceive the duration of this "evidence" challenging God's omnipotence as endless fore and aft. But in God's frame, from His creation of time until His ultimate defeat of the anti-creative force and to eternity beyond, the moment of challenge to His omnipotence may be likened to the twinkling of an eye, to page A1 in an encyclopedia....
GODVSNOGOD CONVERSATION
Godvsnogod conversation is still so short of scientific evidence or proof of anything, it negates relevance to scientific method. BURDENS OF PROOF have no rightful place in the conversation except in reply to foolhardy claims of proof.
Atheist handbooks define CLAIMS of proof as recognizable noises escaping the lips of theists; a disease unique to theists, atheists being immunized by word play like LACK OF BELIEF and manipulated definitions of themselves and EVIDENCE.
Whatever textbooks say, overexposure to atheists’ blog commentary proves EVIDENCE—or not-- is in the eyes of atheist beholders, varying to support arguments.
Atheists use language like “some evidence” and “evidence to suggest,” but not when it's more convenient to opine evidence is no evidence at all if it doesn’t prove everything (i.e., no such thing as evidence of incremental or suggestive worth).
What is evidence when an atheist thinks cosmology is irrelevant to godvsnogod and the theist thinks it’s first in relevance? Atheists solicit evidence predestined to be irrelevant on arrival. If existence, material reality, and cognition are not credible as incremental or suggestive evidence for the existence of God, it’s only because atheists don’t want them to be.
In court, acquittal would be an atheist’s definition of ZERO EVIDENCE to indict, meaning unsuccessful prosecutors should always be sued for malpractice.
“CANNOT PROVE A NEGATIVE” is the half truth repeated endlessly as a cloud of propaganda to obscure the whole truth: Science proves nothing about the existence/nonexistence of God. But anybody who wants to has the free will to prove it to themselves.
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God who loved the inheritors of a cosmic speck of dust entered into it as vulnerable flesh knowing and accepting the excruciating pain commensurate with our needs for forgiving grace.
Issues I grapple with
EVOLUTION
Encouraged by a renowned scientist, a Christian who loves the God of the Bible, I believe the Creator created evolution--its prolonged unfolding shaped by the supernatural vs. "natural" conflict described above. Regardless of transient flaws imposed by the resistant force of "nature," which abhors everything but nothing, I have no doubt that God is the Creator.
Which came first: the chicken or the egg? | Live Science
To begin with, I have to deal with a logical list limited to two options: (1) The physical universe (including black holes, curved spaces, energy, matter, whatever) has existed without beginning, or (2) Nothing became something. Two of the world's most accomplished contemporary scientists, quoted elsewhere, regard the Big Bang as equivalent to option (2). Scientifically or otherwise, any burden of proof should be on those who assert there is no God in either option.
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FREE WILL SPECULATION
Romans 8:28-39 is often cited in discussions on God’s predestination of believers. However, the Bible has multiple verses about free will, including Proverbs 16:9: The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps. http://www.openbible.info/topics/free_will
Free will, predestination, and God’s omniscient foreknowledge: predestination is not a tenet of my tradition, and I find it difficult to reconcile the other two. Here is my speculation: It is God’s free will to give us free will, enabled by God’s election to know history (or most of it?) as it unfolds. But God is not surprised by unfolding history. When your life here is done, there will have been nothing in it that was not included in a universe of possibilities all known exhaustively and intimately by God from the beginning. It may seem that this “free will” speculation, by denying His foreknowledge of history, diminishes God’s omniscience. But suppose God loaded all his earth knowledge into two computers before discarding one.
(1) The predestination computer contained everything historical and everything destined to be history.
(2) The free will computer mirrors, as history or future possibilities, the contents of the first computer. But this computer also contains all the possibilities that never became history and never will.
If the foreknown history (predestination) computer was at capacity, the free will computer, without historical foreknowledge, would have to be larger by an order of magnitude we cannot imagine.
I apologize for minimal qualification to creatively speculate this “tension” away or conjecture on the mind of God. I pray that He be amused, not annoyed. (Isaiah 55:8-9)
ETERNITY
God created eternal humanity with the free will to choose from two options:
1. Believe in God, love Him, love your neighbor, count your blessings and thank Him, accept the forgiving grace His Son purchased so dearly and the promise of eternal life with Him.
2. Reject #1 and be eternally separated from the eternal God who, quite logically, would have no reason or desire to be accompanied in that eternity by unrepentant sin and nonacceptance.
The choice should be a no-brainer, but out of love for those lacking sufficient imagination of option 2, did He allow an image of “burning in hell" to take hold?
INFALLIBILITY VS. DISCERNMENT
God inspired the biblical writers with divine truths meant for us and eternity, but He did not erase their humanity, did not erase their human imperfections and the limitations of contemporary knowledge. Bible study should be about discerning these truths, not about indiscriminately loading every word of ancient text onto a pedestal of timeless infallibility.
He or she who created us for mutual love is not a hide-and-seek God. If God’s inspiration cannot be found in biblical language without much interpretation, then it’s not there. When biblical language inspires us to repetitious familiarity, that is evidence of divinely inspired truth.
The Bible is holy because it is God’s vessel for carrying divine truths consistent with his perfect knowledge of everything. His is not the only cargo in the shared vessel, and to impute his perfection to the rest dilutes His. His perfect knowledge of ongoing science and literal history has yet to be spoken by His mouth to perfect stenographers.
Genesis’ signature contribution to human history was the insight that God created. The history of human learning about creation, God’s creation of the will and capacity to learn about His creation, science, infer God never intended Genesis’ rich imagination, about how and when, to dictate what can be learned and believed about it.
The Holy Bible: multiple versions
YouTube Winners
and many others via YouTube autoplay
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