SCIENCE tells us the that our universe cannot sustain itself, that it’s dependent on something outside of itself, and that our universe had a beginning.
We are seeing not a battle between God and science, but a discovery of God in science.
The German physicist Max Born, who pioneered quantum mechanics, said: “Those who say that the study of science makes a man an atheist must be rather silly people.’’
Einstein said the world was like a well-constructed crossword puzzle. “You can suggest any number of words, but only one will fit all the facts,’’ he said.
Science can’t “observe’’ God. But we can all observe a universe that yields evidence of either God’s handiwork, or an amazing accident.
The evidence has to point one way or the other. And scientific discoveries of this past century clearly show that our universe is no accident, that there is an intelligent designer behind it all.
Albert Camus said death was philosophy’s only problem. One of atheism’s great failings is that it cannot offer any comfort in the face of death.
David the Psalmist said we could not hide from God. Ever. Anywhere. We either faced him in this life or the next—one way or the other.
Bryan Patterson's Faithworks 
I am unsure about coming to the conclusion that there *is* an intelligent designer behind the universe, but I think it is clear that the universe is part of something beyond our comprehension and we can consider that it *could* have been intelligently designed to some degree.
I agree about science being a discovery of God, I think that is a healthy way to look at it.
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I do agree with the first paragraph, which is quite undogmatic.
And I believe, that right or wrong, science being a discovery of God is truly a healthy attitude.
Thumbs up, jasonjshaw!
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“SCIENCE tells us the that our universe cannot sustain itself, that it’s dependent on something outside of itself, and that our universe had a beginning.”
Can you cite the paper that does that ?
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Why?
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The “Why” is addressed to slesser in response to “been trying to understand this for years now, there has to be a middle ground between god and science.”
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Beat me to the punch, Bubba.
Newton, among others, makes it quite clear that ‘the universe’ CAN’T had have had “a beginning”.
The ‘Big Bang’ (no, not an Amazonian orgy) is simply an event at which we CHOOSE to start counting ‘time’ and out place in it.
Next thing you know they’ll be telling us our calendars insist the world is only a couple of years old.
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Might not even have been a big bang – could have been more like a “big chill”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120820110918.htm
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In Principia Newton stated, “The most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion on an intelligent and powerful Being.”
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I didn’t know Newton was a cosmologist. Which “textbook” are you plucking this stuff from.
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I’m not going to do your homework for you.
But as a starter… Newton, according to his biographers, spent more time on theology than on science; indeed, he wrote about 1.3 million words on biblical subjects. Some of his theories were what you might call unothodox.
And in one biography it is pointed out that as a member of the Anglican church, Newton attended services and participated in special projects, such as paying for the distribution of Bibles among the poor, and serving on a commission to build fifty new churches in the London area. Yet Newton seldom made public pronouncements regarding his theology.
If not a traditional sort of Christian, Newton certainly believed in God.
Newton himself said: “I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by those who were inspired. I study the Bible daily”.
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Wow that’s great he was also a alchemist, an occultist and we could probably talk about which football team he followed
Absolutely none of which is relevant to a discussion on cosmology.
So what was the name of that textbook again ?
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Oh well….
“Newton, according to his biographers, spent more time on theology than on science;”
…….so do I! 🙂
We all have our weaknesses.
And we all wax lyrical sometimes, and then get over it by the light of day.
In that spirit, when you cite a quote, do please give us the context. eg:-……. “he invoked God as a special physical cause to keep the planets in orbits. He warned against using the law of gravity to view the universe as a mere machine, like a great clock. He said: This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent Being.”
……..which view, more recently, has been PROVEN to be incorrect.
ALL of Newton’s ‘theological’ concepts sprang from the unfounded (social) assumption that ‘god’ exists, and were reinforced by the threat of being denounced as a heretic ~ and punished accordingly ~ unless he toed the party line. So he tried to reconcile the party line with what his scientific investigations into the nature of things revealed. —->
….”When I wrote my treatise about our Systeme I had an eye upon such Principles as might work with considering men for the beliefe of a Deity and nothing can rejoyce me more then to find it usefull for that purpose.”
And every one of his ‘arguments’ relied on a ‘god of the gaps’…..eg “Newton saw God as the masterful creator whose existence could not be denied in the face of the grandeur of all creation.”
But for all of his ‘theology’ and bible-study he still failed to accept the actual ‘teachings’ of the ‘word of god’, and far from being “not a traditional sort of Christian”, he was NO SORT of christian at all ~ in fact outright anti-christian :- (quote) ‘In Newton’s eyes, worshipping Christ as God was idolatry, to him the fundamental sin’. (unquote)
So much for Newton’s spending “more time on theology than on science; indeed, he wrote about 1.3 million words on biblical subjects.”
But, at the end of the day, what he ‘believed’ accounts for no more than what anyone else ‘believes’.
What his scientific work shows, though, (and has been confirmed by ongoing scientific discovery) is that matter cannot be ‘created’ (from nothing) and it cannot be ‘uncreated’ (become ‘nothing’).
So (Big) Bang! goes Genesis ~ and with it the rest of ‘Creation’.
…..and, since there’s no other divine reference, ‘god’.
??…or is THAT a ‘god-of-the-gaps’ argument too? 😆
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Any good school science textbook will tell you that. You should read one.
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been trying to understand this for years now, there has to be a middle ground between god and science
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I’d as why to that one too ?
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Get your neurons to spit out some electrochemicals and give you the answer. It may take a few goes, like the Magic Black Ball.
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Yeah I guess i could do that. I could even just talk to a spot on the ceiling for a while and see what happens.
But wouldn’t it be much simpler just to ask ?
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The middle ground is that both religion and science are attempts to understand existence. You could compare them with the two sides of our brains. One understands through intuition and creativity, while the other understands through analysis and logic. In order to see the whole picture, you need to draw connections from each side.
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Tried that when I was about 3yo.
‘Analysis and logic’ caused me to ‘understand’ that ‘god’ and ‘science’ are mutually-exclusive concepts.
However, I never was able to ‘logically’ ‘understand’ why people pray hopefully to the god of their (mucho-multi) choice, but RELY on science and it’s universal applications.
ie. Why do tens of thousands of christian sects alone compete and conflict about the god-thing, yet ALL of them rely upon and ‘understand’ the ‘logic’ of IT.
……..and how to send silly emails at half the speed of light.
…….or when they have a universally- ‘understood’ toothache they go to a dentist (of any political/religious/racial shading) rather than a witchdoctor, shaman, or priest,pastor or tooth-fairy.
Perhaps if they’d had access to any of the umpteen (and freely downloadable) language-tranlation programs available online the Tower of Babble (sic) might be standing today.
Instead, they depended on a nasty-natured, jealous and sadistic god who liked to make trouble wherever there was none:-
“5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
……….and look around you at the consequences.
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I would have to disagree about God and science being mutually exclusive. God can be looked at as a personification of the greater forces that act upon us. Prayer is a form of meditation with an intention of bringing focus to being open to gain understanding.
The conflict of understandings of God are essentially cultural differences. Every idea of God is based on understandings of how things seem to work according to the understanding of the folklore at the heart of each group. Unfortunately, some people take their understandings to heart as if they are an ultimate truth, and that’s where conflict arises. Pride of belief.
Another issue is that it seems to be human nature to jump to conclusions about something being true if it is steeped in truth. I’ve seen descriptions of people expressing passionate remarks towards an actor in response to the actions of the character they play on a television show, as if the actor is actually the character.
As someone who has explored Christianity without believing Jesus as saviour, I can attest that the concepts presented by way of Jesus and his followers have a lot of truth to them. The story of Jesus himself, if taken absolutely literally, is a bit of a stretch. Because the concepts presented have much truth, people connect the story to those truths and conclude that the story must be true.
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Congrats Jason on well thought out submissions. 🙂
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Just doing my best to bring connection between those who have erected walls. We’re all in this together.
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Hey Jason,
To me there’s a vast difference between science and magic. Respecting of course Arthur C Clarke’s views.
Science seeks to understand the universe, religion claims to already understand the universe.
Science seeks an answer to the question “why is that so”. Religion knows the answer “Because God willed it so”
They are fundamentally different paradigms.
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Sorry Jason: doesn’t wash.
Unless “The story of Jesus himself, if taken absolutely literally, is a bit of a stretch.” it’s just the patchy story of another deluded jew with a messiah-fetish wandering around the countryside making a nuisance of himself.
….and NONE of the basic concepts are “a bit of a stretch”: they’re absurdities in any circumstance other than a pre-assumed but undemonstrated existence of a ‘god’.
From virgin births through faith moving mountains and resurrection of the dead to walking on water is to a “stretch” what a supernova is to a candle.
There just isn’t any wriggle-space.
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Have you looked at the concepts metaphorically?
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More accurately:-
Science seeks to understand the universe, religion claims to have ‘created’ the universe ~ but still doesn’t pretend understand it.
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Dabbles, have you dead ‘The Christan Agnostic’ by Dr. Leslie Weatherhead, first published 1965? He supports most of your arguments, including the historical reporting about Jesus. Says it could not have been the same man who on the cross said ‘Forgive tbem Father for they know not what they do, as said ‘Depart from me ye cursed into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels because I was anhungered and ye gave me no meat.’
He says ‘Not for much longer will the world put up with the lies, the superstitions and tbe distortions with which the essentially simple message of Chhrist has been overlaid.’
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Sorry about the typos – miniature keyboard!
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Hi Strewth,
Gee the Leslie Weatherhead book has been sitting on my shelves for many many years now. I’ve recommended The Christian Agnostic to lots of folk over the years; and actually I originally bought it as a present for my father, and he found it very interesting alnd helpful.
Weatherhead was extraordinarily ahead of his time. I guess he would have fitted the mould of modern liberal Christianity very well. One of the best pieces of advice I got from him, was that when you are faced with some religious or spiritual puzzle wherein you just cant follow or believe, just drop the matter into a mental drawer that is marked “Awaiting further light.”. That drawer for me is, I have to admit, just about bursting at the seams.
cheers, Rian.
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Why would you assume god talks in metaphors?
I see no indication of it; god issues instructions: from forbidding the eating of the ‘fruit’ through to specifying the heaven-bound in Revelation.
What lesson can there be in a metaphorical crucifixion? (or is that ‘crucifiction’?)
In fact, most of the proposed metaphors are reinforced by other edicts.
eg. “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed you can move mountains: AND NOTHING WILL BE DENIED YOU.”
….and in fact “the size of a mustard seed” is much more specific than a metaphorical (and relative/subjective) ‘small’ or ‘tiny’.
If you were to be asked exactly how much faith it takes to move a mountain, how would YOU describe the amount?
‘ a mustard-seed-size amount’ is both precise and succinct; both non-metaphorical qualities..
Perhaps later we can discuss the metaphorical aspects of The Creation ? 😉
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I meant to look at the understanding of the idea of God and the concepts connecting to the idea of God as metaphors. Such as the idea of the Holy Trinity – Father, Son, Holy Spirit – or in general terms, having a love and respect for the outward environment (Father), having love and respect toward other humans (Son), having self respect come upon you (Holy Spirit).
Religious elements can be connected to logical ideas. Where do you think these ideas came from in the first place? Not from thin air. But from experiences of life.
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God talks in metaphors? Maybe, maybe not. People receive messages that they can understand, but which are foreign to others. I receive messages from some good and wise source, but I wouldn’t know if it’s delivered by God or an angel, one of his servants. I only know it comes from God.
The fruit is of course a metaphor – how could you think otherwise? In fact you’re leading us on, laughing up your sleeve, I suspect.
Jesus used parables to teach – in effect, metaphors. Perhaps he used the crucifixion similarly? A metaphor for something else?
(“If you have faith the size of a mustard seed you can move mountains: AND NOTHING WILL BE DENIED YOU.”) If you have even such a small amount of faith, you will have in your mind the rider “Not my will but Thine.” It is true that you can then move mountains of despair, of negativity, of hate, etc.
(‘ a mustard-seed-size amount’ is both precise and succinct; both non-metaphorical qualities..) How can they not be metaphorical when one describes an object and the other an attribute?
I guess you have lots of fun on this site, Dabs!
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Actually there is; science always gives proof for what God had said before science was advanced enough to discover the truth. One example is how Noah’s flood occurred. The Bible says that the fountains of the deep were opened up. It took science over 4000 years to discover the fact that there are fountains of water in the ocean. A fact that could not be discovered by simple observation unless one has advanced scientific equipment to carry that observation. Want more? Christianity has had prophetic knowledge that too much sugar clogs the brain, is harmful to the human body. This was given around the 1880, some 30 years or more before science was advanced enough to describe what we know as diabetes. The problem is that Christians have often misdunerstood that faith serves only until knowledge is acquired. In fact the Bible encourages us to add knowledge to faith.
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Davinci,
The prophetic knowledge given around the 1880’s wouldn’t be by any chance given by Ellen G. White now, would it?
You know when you first appeared on the blog here a few years back, I asked you if you were ‘Seventh Day Adventist’ and you flatly denied it. And yet you certainly seem to be an Adventist to me.
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Seventh Day Adventists are some of the most admirable people I know. Like all sects and faiths, however, it has individuals of varying degrees of understanding.
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It’s a pity that they have such a vendetta against the Catholic Church, and I should know as they harrassed us no end, like no other. And I guess they must believe that God will reward them for it…..but I wonder?
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Resorting to name-calling Monica? 🙂
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Ah davinci,
And yet, and yet, if there are truly these ‘fountains of the deep’, that could cover all the earth, then why is it that the ocean appears to remain much the same level all the time???? I must confess that I’m not a scientist, so perhaps Dabbles or one of the experts round here would elaborate on these fountains?
since the Bible is such a fount of information, would you care to list for us several pieces of (specifically) scientific knowledge that our specialists will discover and prove to be true over the next few years and that have been staring us in the face from the Scriptures all this time?
So far, I’ve not heard that the four corners of the earth have been uncovered as yet. Please tell us about some others. Or are they only identified after the event????
Rian.
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“Name calling?”
LOL Dabs,
I guess you forget the name I called him a few years back. 😉
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1……..????? “The evidence has to point one way or the other.”
That depends entirely on the question asked. ‘Evidence’ alone has
no point or purpose.
….or direction.
2………..”And scientific discoveries of this past century clearly show that our universe is no accident, that there is an intelligent designer behind it all.
While the first clause is accurate ~ in that ALL scientific discoveries show and depend upon ~ the consequences of ’cause and effect’, the second clause is both untrue and an absolute non sequitur.
Before ‘science’ could postulate an ‘intelligent designer’ of any ilk it would have to demonstrate the CAUSE for any such ID.
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But Dabs, a scientist often thinks “What if …?”, tests the hypothesis, and may, or may not, make a ground breaking discovery. Scientists do still wonder, about many things.
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Dom,
surely it is apparent that there is very little difference between the faith of atheists and theists over the vast majority of everyday things. It’s just that the theist has an extraordinary and extra amount of faith imposed on him, when he considers the demands of the god he has adopted.
The atheist on the other hand doesnt feel that he is in any danger to his soul if he experiences any doubts about his philosophy. So faith for what it’s worth is much much simpler for him than it is for the theist. The atheist doesnt feel the need to examine his conscience over his faith.
Rian.
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There is one in 1 chance in a million trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion that there is life elsewhere in the universe. Some scientist, in an attempt to explain the fine tuning that produced life on Earth is that there are billions of parallel universes. The reason needed for the parallel universes is that scientist cannot find in this universe the same unique variables that created us here on Earth. They need to throw in a few billion more universes to lower the probability. Many scientists see this as a cop out.
I find it harder to believe in a billion alternative universes with their own laws, than to believe in God.I just don’t have a faith as strong as some atheists.
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http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2011/07/-ignoring-one-trillion-galaxies-in-the-observable-universe-astrophysicists-use-mathematical-logic-to.html
Astronomers estimate that there are 100 billion galaxies in the universe. If you want to extrapolate those numbers, that means there are around 50,000,000,000,000,000,000 (50 quintillion) potentially habitable planets in the universe.
I don’t think lack of faith is really your issue, seems more a lack of common sense.
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The facts of the being of (both Loving and diabolical) mystical personalities in this life is rather one more paradox, in a life with lots of seemingly contradictory facts/Truths.
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Your figures seem strange. If there are 50 quintillion habitable planets then this galaxy would have 500,000,000 habitable planet. They have only found one in this galaxy.
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