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by webolife » Thu Oct 18, 2018 10:21 am
All right, I'm willing to try revive this thread, which has a very promising beginning, and collection of cogent questions and suggestions by Brigit Bara, and others.
This is about the nature of both science and religion, but let us focus on the nature of science for a moment. By various definitions, including that quoted, expounded, and questioned by Brigit, science is an exploration of material causes and effects, and limits itself to that material pursuit. There is nothing inherently illogical about this limitation. We are impelled by science to make claims, then to give evidence for those claims, and reason [impeccably] as to the connections between the evidence and claims. Further we are impelled to show how our claims are better supported by the evidence than objections to our claims. This is the basis for scientific discourse. It is possible to be scientific without experimentation, but it is impossible to advance science without a constant pursuit of more data, via observation and repeated experiment, which can only be accomplished in the material realm, supposedly. As soon as immaterial causes or effects are introduced into the discourse, it is allegedly no longer scientific, therefore the boundary of science has been reached. But what if "reality" cannot be defined only by material causes and effects? Can we observe or produce evidence for immaterial causes or effects? Is it possible for a person employing all the tools of science to arrive at a conclusion that something immaterial exists in the "real" universe? Is it possible for those conclusions to be reproduced or verified by other scientists? Is it possible to avoid endless re-definitions of "material", "immaterial" and "real" in the pursuit of understanding the answers to these questions?
I think so, and have expounded on this elsewhere, but here's a simple outlook that resolves this issue for me:
Two different [impeccably logical] scientists can look at the same evidenciary set and arrive at disparate conclusions. This is possible because, whether or not they are aware of it, each is guided by an initial set of beliefs [scientists prefer the term "assumptions" -- eg. materialism, determinism, or perhaps deism or theism] which predetermines the conclusions they reach. How can this happen? The inevitable gaps in knowledge due to the finite evidenciary set require us to "glue" the rest of the data together in the most "reasonable" way we know, very much akin to reconstructions of ancient human skulls. And also as in that analogy, we "reason", according to our initial and inescapable belief set toward a conclusion about what the evidences mean. Beyond that much conjecture occurs, but this is still generally considered to be "scientific" discourse.
A comparison of the two previous paragraphs reveals that the limitations of science are not so well defined after all. Scientists begin with an initial faith base, guided through the myriad of evidences, and driven toward a satisfactory conclusion, whether or not they reach that in their lifetime. On occasion an honest scientist is compelled by her/his research to alter initial beliefs, but this is rarer than most like to admit. The bottom line is that there is no clear separation between scientific and religious pursuits, and those who object or disagree with this often do so with a great zeal that can only be described as religious.
Now for the thread question: Neither the BB nor SS cosmologies are biblical. According to the scripture, at a point in time [Gen 1:1 -- the beginning] God created the heavens and earth by speaking. Elsewhere [eg. Col 1:21] we are informed that God continues to hold the universe together. Neither of these biblical premises fits the BB or the SS cosmologies. Now one can try to find similarities, eg. BB and Gen 1:1 both point to an initial event. Something described as initial formlessness then becomes transformed into an orderly cosmos. SS and Col 1:21 both point to consistency in the regulation of the universe through natural law. Beyond these generalities one is hard pressed to find agreement between other main tenets of scripture, BB or SS. If God started the universe, it could have proceeded from that point in either the BB or SS paradigm, or something else. Biblically speaking, nature is supernatural... the biblical God both started and maintains the universe. No fact or evidence from science can deny this claim. And despite the perception that the universe is infinite, physical laws only make sense in the context of finite objects and actions. So our actual experience of nature and science compels us to treat the cosmos as finite. Ridiculing the cosmos or God, as prominent atheists love to do, only points to their/our own lack of understanding. "The fool says in his heart..."
Truth extends beyond the border of self-limiting science. Free discourse among opposing viewpoints draws the open-minded away from the darkness of inevitable bias and nearer to the light of universal reality.