Well, I think I should introduce some of my beleifs. As most people know, the hottest button to push for an athiest or a christian is the creation button. I personally do not have that button, or at least it does not ellicit a strong reaction from me.
In trying to find a "title" or "classification" for what I beleive I guess the clossest thing is theistic evolution. I see no condratiction between scriptures (the Judeo-Christian in my case) and Science ( evolution and natural selection in this case).
Dobzhansky, a Russian Orthodox, wrote a famous 1973 essay entitled Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution espousing evolutionary creationism:
"I am a creationist and an evolutionist. Evolution is God's, or Nature's, method of creation. Creation is not an event that happened in 4004 BC; it is a process that began some 10 billion years ago and is still under way... Does the evolutionary doctrine clash with religious faith? It does not. It is a blunder to mistake the Holy Scriptures for elementary textbooks of astronomy, geology, biology, and anthropology. Only if symbols are construed to mean what they are not intended to mean can there arise imaginary, insoluble conflicts... the blunder leads to blasphemy: the Creator is accused of systematic deceitfulness."
I think this sums up my views pretty well. I am coming from spending two years in a private Christian college and two years in two different public Universities. I think science is true (at least what hasn't been proven wrong yet) and I love trying to figure out the intricacies of our world. I think we hear a lot about why evolution makes sense, so I will make a small comment on the scriptural basis of what I think.
We can start in Genesis. It is widely thought that there are multiple authors to this first book. There is a stylistic difference between the creation account and the rest of the book. This automatically sets it appart as different. In addition this is written with a poetry style, like a song. Genesis does speak of a 6 day creation, but one must always put a text in context. The context of the begining of Genesis is the first written beleifs of a new, mono-theistic religion. Around that time there was reigonal poly-theistic religions, worshiping a sun god or a water god. This book starts with a radically different idea. It shows an all powerful God who controls water, sun, sky, everything. It is a God that puts mater into order from chaos.
To focus on this as a "literal" story shortchanges the reader from the meaning. The God in Genesis is a creator god, that is fact, but it is a God that is not like what was out there, an all powerful God. This was different for the time, we may take it for granted, but this was radical. Genesis shows a God that knows the intricacies of this world. I could probably go into more detail about what this shows about the character of God, but I shall save that for another time.
The point I am trying to make is that Genesis was written as a religious doccument to a poly-theistic audience. This is not a book about how the world really came to be, but who is behind it. Science excites me, and has many other Christian Scientist(Scientist who are Christian that is, ones that take both serisously, and seperate). The more we find out about the world, the more powerful and detail focused God appears.
I know there are many arguements that can be started, justifying a God in general, but all I am trying to say is that Science does not disprove God, and God does not push out science. These are two different things that can both be true.
Written on Saturday, September 22, 2007 by Nathan
Blog Doubble Header: Game 1 Evolution and God sittining in a tree...
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6 Responses to "Blog Doubble Header: Game 1 Evolution and God sittining in a tree..."
September 22, 2007 at 2:31 PM
Freud wrote a book about Moses, called Moses and Monotheism and links the emergence of Judaism to Akhenaten's monotheistic god, a short lived monotheism in ancient Egypt. And there is a history of similar monotheistic gods in the Zoroastrians and earlier civilizations.
I say that because you bring up the idea that the God of the Jews was a "new" God, a creator God as you say. I think that point can be argued, but I don't want to argue it.
Anyway, I like what you're saying about God and science co-existing but for me it always begs the question, if you can believe in science and believe it to be true how can you believe in God? It seems that there is a lot of talk about the two be separate things but that concept doesn't make sense to me.
Isn't science the pursuit of truth on all levels? And if God is a truth why can't science touch it? If I was forced to define a belief in the supernatural I would have to say I will believe in God when I see it. I know this sounds very doubting Thomas of me, but is it not fair to ask for a little evidence?
Part of me wants to get a little cynical here, so I'll back off. But I'm trying to illustrate the point that in a world that is hard to understand as it is, why should God make things harder to understand?
Well anyway...I don't know if I made a point there, but I meant to.
September 22, 2007 at 7:57 PM
First, I think I just want to say something about the world--universe--being hard to understand. This idea is strange to me because I think this suggests that there may be some other world/universe to which we may compare our own and, thus, conclude that ours is either more or less difficult to understand than the next. But what other worlds/universes are there? We could say that we create--in some sense of the term--worlds/universes and try to compare the one that we believe is our own to the other ones that we are pretty sure are not our world/universe. Perhaps?
Do we need to differentiate between truth and facts?
Where else are you going to get cynical but here?
And I am still interested in Minott's 'supernatural' rant...
September 22, 2007 at 10:40 PM
I will give you the point from Freud(understanding that I am a psych major and hate him) but the point I think I was trying to make was not, the first mono-theistic, but a minority beleif. It was not popular to beleive in one God. Also I think these ideas are coming out about the same time, so this could be hard to argue priority.
I think science is the pursuit of truth, but that fact is we are limited by observable and testable things. Science can not explain everything. You probably disagree with me, but I think there are things science can't/doesn't want to touch. I may not me making much sense but if science is a discovering of a method I think religion is a discovering of a purpose. This leads to an argument that beleif in anything is a purpose, even science, and that may be so. I don't think I have the answers, but I think there a difference with God.
I understand why you would want to see some evidence for God, but I don't think evidence is possible in the same way evidence is used in science. I dont think I have the answers, because I dont think I fully understand God, but I think there is such a thing and it is more logical to beleive in a God. But this is just my opinion.(I know you will blast me for it)
September 22, 2007 at 10:45 PM
It's not so much a rant, I guess, as it is an observation of language.
Basically, it boils down to the fact that the word 'supernatural' cannot ever be ascribed to anything other than imaginary events, given its own definition. For example, if the story of the Exodus is granted as true, our casual parlance would indicate that the parting of the Red Sea was supernatural, on the grounds that, hey, seas don't naturally part themselves.
But, this ignores the 'bigger picture' nature that A) There is an all-(or incredibly-)powerful God, and B) She can and may intervene in man's interest. This indicates that God parting the Red Sea is firmly within the realm of what is possible and feasible within the universe, and is thus a 'natural occurrence'. This does, of course, require the granting of both the existence of God and her interdiction in the affairs of man, which is, of course, why we're here.
I'd say that this situation is nearly identical to Christianity's conception of 'sacrifice,' which neither corresponds to the actual definition of the word, nor to logic.
September 23, 2007 at 1:37 AM
A men.
I hate hearing people say 'playing God' like it's a bad thing. I mean, isn't that the whole point?
September 25, 2007 at 11:16 AM
Haha, okay I have to address Matt and Minott first.
On the word supernatural I have always thought that. Its like the word synthetic, I know it means a synthesis of stuff, but it has such a connotation that implies to the ignorant mind that it was just made out of thin air. When in fact, plastics and things like that are still natural because they are derived from natural sources. But anyway, you bring up a good point that I just thought of, and this goes along with Matt's going ons about the universe.
I read somewhere that some scientist wanted to change the definition of our "universe" the specific word anyway because of theories like multi-verse and the ideas of what may exist outside our flat/spherical "universe" because really the word universe means all that is. So wouldn't that include all other universes and all the cosmic foam and dimensional brans that you want?
So, if that is the case, just the same with natural vs. supernatural wouldn't the concept of God, real or just a creation of the human psyche be part of our natural "universe"?
I know you claim Nathan that science can't know everything and maybe you're right simple because humans and science may not survive long enough in this universe to learn everything. But just 500 years okay the first telescopes were invented and the furthest out to space we could see was some fuzzy nebula maybe a million light years a way at best. Now we are imaging, still slightly fuzzy, quasars, which are at the end of the known galaxy, 13 billion light years away! And those same nebula that were fuzzy are now in sharp detail and we know how old they are, why they formed, how they formed and what they are formed of.
The sun's still got about five billion years to live (or is it million?) Anyway, that's more time then human beings have had to walk out of the swamp and pick up a telescope to begin with, so I wouldn't put any stoppers on the power of our ability to understand the universe.
And yes, God does provide a purpose, but why is knowledge not a purpose? Why is not figuring out the exact reason why we are here not a purpose?
Like I said in another comment, I'm going to to a larger post on this and some of the other topics Nathan and I discussed so hold tight.
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