Are Science and God Compatible?

[Frank Creed]

Modern science has expanded our view of 'what-is'. Black holes may well link us to other universes, and super-intelligent life forms could live there. Clusters of Universes seem to be like ever expanding and contracting lung-sacs (the Big Bounce is replacing the Big Bang). Quantum theory has discovered at least 11 different dimensions like height, width, and length: a spiritual plane and eternity (outside of linear time), are scientific possibilities. The universe may be alive, and even capable of thought (Google quantum computing). If the laws of physic were different by just a little bit in our carbon and oxygen rich universe, life would be impossible. We know the universe to be finite and any finite thing needs a source other than itself: so where has all this come from? What is all this machinery doing?

Flash to morality and the philosophical study of meaning. Sartre compared a human to a point on an X-Y axis. He said any point is meaningless without an infinite reference point. If there is no God, pushing an elderly person in front of a bus is equal to helping them across the street; in the end it's just mass, energy, and motion. Freely-given love, the greatest possible good, would have no meaning. What if the universe exists to generate freely-given love? (If you know anyone grieving the loss of an animal's love, please ask me for my Animal Heaven, a brief story of quantum theory and C.S. Lewis theory from The Great Divorce.)

If not an infinite-personal creator, from whence came this grand construction?

frankcreed.com

[torainfor]

One of mine
www.compellingtruth.org/faith-vs-science.html

[newburydave]

Frank;

From an historical viewpoint without God, specifically the Judaeo/Christian God, science as we know it is impossible.

All classical paganism / heathenism insisted that chaos not logos ruled the natural world. Hence the classical Celtic belief in shape shifting and the total mutability of even the earth. It is not a random artifact that St. Patrick's Lorica asserts the "solidness of earth and the stability of rock" as part of the defense and strength of the Christian soul in Christ.

My background in atheistic philosophy taught me that nothing was sure or solid (sounds like classical paganism doesn't it).

The idea of consistent physical laws which are immutable throughout the created universe is a uniquely Judeao Christian concept. All non J/C metaphysical systems depended on the whimsical will of the "gods" with no underlying principles which humans could understand.

The Logical Positivists (Bertrand Russell and his scurolous crew) of the 19th to early 20th century proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that morality beyond rank evolutionary / law of the jungle stuff was impossible without God. I guess that's why they all reveled in such godless immorality in their personal lives. (at one time in my career I was one of their disciples, rather like a med student sympathetically "experiencing" all the diseases he is learning about I imagine.)

So in answer to your question I'd say that without God, specifically our God and Logos (the Christ), there is no science as we know it, there is only magic and sorcery (the mutability of the natural world is the metaphysical foundation upon which Magic rests. Magic is only possible if nature is mutable by the exercise of human will.)

Far from God and Science being "compatible" I'd say that God is essential for science to exist. It is 'Sine Deus Non' ; without God nothing.

I say this from my background of studies in Classical and ancient Pagan studies.

Write on Bro

SGD
dave

[Kessie]

I answered this back on the list. Yes, because somebody'd better be driving this multi-dimensional universe.

[lexkx]

I concur with Kessie. For people to think that God lives in the little box that they put Him in, rather than being the Creator of all science in the first place, is just silly. How, dear Lord, are we to answer people who want so desperately to vent their rebellion against You that they cannot hear when we pray and You answer?

[newburydave]

Ultimately it all comes down to Power not Persuasion. The weapons of our warfare are not "of this Earth of this flesh" but they are "Mighty" (powerful) through/in God's action to pull down strongholds, cast down imaginations and everything that exalts itself against the knowledge of God." (Dave's free translation)

We need to pray down so much divine conviction and light on them that they can't keep their eyes closed any longer.

Worked for me when I was in self chosen darkness.

SGD
dave

[Bainespal]

Feb 20, 2013 16:24:02 GMT -5 Frank Creed said:

If there is no God, pushing an elderly person in front of a bus is equal to helping them across the street; in the end it's just mass, energy, and motion.

That's why atheistic arguments about God being evil are self-defeating. If God is really evil, the author of everything bad in human experience, then the only possible way that the atheist could claim to judge God (or "god") is by claiming personally to be the universal standard of morality. Otherwise, how can they claim that genocide, and everything else they blame God for, is really wrong? What if someone else's morality upheld genocide as right and good?

This is the choir here... these debates are dark and distressing outside.

Frank, your OP is great, but I wonder what is the implied relationship between the first and second paragraphs? Are you saying that, in light of the moral need for God -- the impossibility of good without God -- the scientific (or supposedly scientific) notions in the first paragraph are inherently flawed? Or are you defending these postmodernist scientific hypotheses by saying that no matter what wild notions that scientists rightly or wrongly get into their heads, no matter how weird we may discover reality to be, it changes nothing of God's nature, of the impossibility that He could not exist?

[Kessie]

Science deals with the observable universe anyway--while God is obviously everything else we don't know and can't understand. Heck, just reading about antimatter freaks me out. It's like bits of the True Reality.

[newburydave]

To argue from my experience (the existential argument) I was an Engineer (Applied Physics and Science to invent useful manufactured products) and my wife is a Physics teacher. We both live in an intensely "Scientific" world in our intellectual approach to reality.

I met Jesus and He revealed Himself to me as Savior, Creator and Sustainer of not just the natural order but of all life in the created universe. I know Him as the Sovereign Eternal God by experience over the last forty one years of my life. I'm not smart enough to imagine anything as mind blowing as that apparent dichotomy.

My wife has the same testimony.

I was an arch Athiest before I met Jesus. My wife was a total Agnostic. We both came from our deep natural darkness of not even wanting to believe into the Light of His Love and new life.

Is science compatible with God?

I'm living, breathing proof that it is. My proof is pragmatic and evidentiary too. During the last 41 years I've seen objectively veritable signs, wonders and miracles in pursuit of spreading the Gospel and building up our faith in Jesus.

SGD
dave

[Frank Creed]

NewburyDave--
Oppenheimer and Whitehead (Manhattan Project), both agreed that modern science could only have come out of a Biblical cultural mindset where a reasonable Creator created a reasonable universe, which could be apprehended through reason.

[Frank Creed]

Bainespal--
In the second paragraph I just zoom-in on the 'personal' aspect of the observable universe. The Creator must be big enough to explain what-is

[fluke]

Frank, have you read some of the scientific articles on Reasonable Faith?

[almarquardt]

It depends on how you define "science." Is it being defined as "the study of the natural world," or something more along the lines of a belief system?

Lately it seems the latter where scientific theories are defined by consensus opinions, or conclusions based on preconceived notions where all evidence to the contrary of that conclusion is ignored.

Anyone who says science disproves God is like saying The 9th Symphony disproves Beethoven. If someone claims their scientific theories disprove God, I say they're not looking deep enough. As Romans 1:19-21 says (NLT):

They know the truth about God because he has made it obvious to them. For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.

Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him as God or even give him thanks. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. As a result, their minds became dark and confused.

God wants us to study his world - his universe, because by doing so, we will see more of just how wondrous he is. It's like eagerly waiting for the next book of your favorite author. To continually read the author's works is to get to know him/her better. We must be careful, however, and not bring along any preconceived notions as we study.

[This Baron of Mora]

Though I admittedly have not read much of the above I agree with what I have, however I must naturally take this wonderful opertunity to tell people what the word science actually means:

science, from Latin scientia "know", transphered through Old French to Middle English "scire", which means knowledge of any kind, not the selective of just natural science et cetera.

And since were on the subject, if you have ever heard that "fact" that there are a ton of ways to say snow in Eskimo it is false, in the best of all dictionaries there are only two, one for on the ground, one for in the air, the rest of these words are modifications/morphological changes of the same word like goose to geese.

[J Jack]

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

I truly believe that without one you cannot have faith in the other. I believe in science; physics, chemistry, biology, and the rest that I know very little about. Does that mean I cannot believe in God? I would like the substitute God for religion in the quote above, for arguments I'd rather not get into because it'll spark off the debate of the century. I believe that to fully understand or accept one, you must understand and accept the other.