Comment on Believing the Disproven – An Adventure in Science by pauluc.
Sean Pitman: Also, Kuhn did seem to modify his postmodernist views of science over time. Kuhn did actually believe in absolute truths and a reality that exists outside of the mind. Kuhn actually objected to purely relativistic arguments and insisted in “The Road Since Structure” that the world had an objective existence. Kuhn even argued that scientific exploration is bound by the nature of that world. I would argue that same – that there are indeed subjective biases that should be recognized and efforts should be made to overcome these biases, but that it is actually possible for the honest seeker for truth to discover and learn, even on an individual basis, more about the world that exists outside of the mind regardless of the personal or collective biases that may also exist.
I have no objections to any of these ideas. I am curious though have you read “The road since structure” or are you citing as metadata from some other sources? I suspect the latter and happily admit I have not read the road since structure yet but the in structures of scientific revolutions, there is a 1969 postscript with a section on “revolutions and relativism” which does address to some extent what you saying.
The boundaries of science are the physical structure of our world. I practice science as defined by methodological naturalism which is of course bound by the physical structure of the universe. I of course believe in one external reality defined by that structure but within that physical reality there is an organic living structure that is a human brain. Adaptive and self aware and asking is there anything more. Our western society is fast moving to the position that the insight and mental life of this brain has constructed certain views of reality and a understanding of supernatural and transcendent events that give meaning and comfort against the uncertainty of life and inevitability of death within carbon based life. Can we ever know if this model of the supernatural as a construct of the human brain is true or not? That there is anything beyond the natural and its elaboration within the constructs of the human brain? I do not believe that the methodology of science can ever lead us to the position of knowing anything of a transcendent reality and we are left with the choice; Nietzsche’s “the will to power” or the way of the mystic who experienced the transcendent and reality of an encounter with God.
You of course think that there is an omnipotent supernatural God external to our brain and our societal constructs that is active in our lives and can be detected by physical measurement. Moves the atoms about in a real way. physically changes our brain which is the playground of a real devil and the spirit of God. A God that responds to our petitions in tangible and physical ways altering the course of history. Appears as ethereal beings among us, spirits, demons and forces of darkness incarnate and real. Except of course they cannot indulge in sex even when incarnate as a man. Responsible for our health, our sickness and our death. The mystics and our forefathers saw all these things as empirically real although it is unclear from the text if they really considered them as physically verifiable by scientific process. They were and are of course detected by our vision and our physical senses. According to your reality all of these things are and will be verified by the methods and instruments of science.
I am happy for you to accept all these things but I think you are not really self aware if you think these are things of science and can be verified by empirical evidence tested by experiment and documented for open scrutiny.
Our differences in understanding of science are small compared to our assumptions about the nature of inspiration and the way God intervenes in human life and history. We wont get on to your understanding of the Bible post the application of historical-critical methods or EG White post Walter Rea and Ronald Numbers. As you well know I accept by faith that God was incarnate in Jesus Christ and that is the communication we have with the supernatural; the tangible link between human existence and the eternal. It is a faith position only justified by the consequences and the attendant spiritual life of discipleship. For me that is enough.
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pauluc Also Commented
Believing the Disproven – An Adventure in Science
Sean
It seems we have descended once again into the impasse of unedifying conflict mired as it is over understanding of dogmatic literalism.
I apologize if I have offended in mounting a defence of Christian faith and belief that is independent of science and impiricism. I can do nothing better than to pray that you will not in fact follow your supposed trajectory into non-Christianity. And I should go back to doing something useful that is more faithful to the Christian tradition that asks us to bring the Grace of Christ and his Kingdom politics into our daily lives and the life of others
Grace
Believing the Disproven – An Adventure in Science
@Sean Pitman:
And yet, yet for all that you would reject what you proclaim as the richness of Christianity if life is not literally 6000 years old. It somehow gives the lie to all other non-empirical claims you may make about Christianity being anything but baggage to be thrown away when you have a concrete contradicting fact.
The time I have wasted on this site is because of this claim about empirical reality and the worthlessness of Christianity without empirical and scientific support. I am just amazed that a person educated in Adventism and supposedly scientifically aware should have so dramatically missed the point of the good news of the Incarnation of God as a rich faith tradition that gives meaning and illuminates all of life and our ethical and moral behaviour.
Believing the Disproven – An Adventure in Science
Sean Pitman: Are you trying to compare a belief in Jesus, His life, death, and literal resurrection, to a child’s belief in Santa Claus?
No I am suggesting that you show no more maturity in your Christian belief that is fragilely dependent on the reality of a 6000 year life history than a child who may imagine Christmas is synonymous with and totally dependent on a literal Santa Claus. In doing so you are suggesting the history of Christianity with its richness and deep thought can be condensed into one verifiable fact.
Recent Comments by pauluc
Avondale College Arguing in Favor of Darwinian Evolution?
Bob Helm: With that said, I find your views to be spiritually dangerous and often scientifically weak. I detect a lot of smoke in your posts, but very little light. I hope you will continue to ponder these issues and try to have an open mind.
You are most welcome to your opinion and I know you would like nothing better than that anyone who takes Christianity and the Bible seriously but not literally to just go away. It is much better not to know of any possible problems with one current views. It very hard to get to the science when we cannot even agree on what is science. What passes as science on this site is so completely dismissive of its methodological basis and history and is entrained in a specific supernatural world view that allows arbitrary acceptance of any observation as miraculous. I think Roger’s paper may well be relevant to Adventist that believe that Christianity has and must respond to a careful study of physical reality by reconsidering its interpretations of the word of the Lord, but as Sean has indicated you are exception to that characterization. I still do not really understand why you should be interested at all in any science. It seems a bit messy to worry about facts. It really seems an unnecessary bother to argue whether the precambrian/cambrian boundary or the upper cenzoic (is that really what you meant?) as the evidence of a divine intervention.
Dont worry I do have an open mind which is why I still peruse this site to see how more knowledgable fundamentalist Adventists think. I wont worry you further.
Avondale College Arguing in Favor of Darwinian Evolution?
Sean Pitman: So, you do see the need for a police force and a military to maintain civil society, but somehow Christians should not provide what is an otherwise necessary part of that civil society? I’m with Abraham Lincoln on this one when he noted the inconsistency of such a position – like Orthodox Jews paying others to turn their lights on for them on Sabbath
On that logic you should not have any issue with working on Sabbath in any profession serving 24/7. Be that computer support, utilities firefighters. Those giving up those jobs because of inability to have sabbath observance were all deluded. They as Christians should be prepared to “provide what is otherwise a necessary part of civil society”
You cant have it both ways. You cant because of a moral postion claim that Adventists should have exception from working on Sabbath and at the same time deny me the right to consider immoral some occupations that may be very utilitarian in a world full of selfishness and the human acts of evil that comes from that.
Lets for a moment step back from lala land. Where are we and where did we come from on this thread?
1] You posted a rehash of all your usual arguments in response to an article about the more mainstream Adventist positions that may impact the way Adventism reacts to conventional science. All very straight forward.
2] The contention was that Adventism has accepted process for the orgin and evolution of the inanimate world. The birth and death of galaxys and stars and planets in black holes supernova and impacts of spiralling planets. This is where it gets really strange.
3] You contend that Adventism has always accepted the conclusions of that process but then expand on your view of the process which involves a little bit of order and natural law but large amounts of magic. God waited a few billions years until the interstellar material generated by the big band condensed into planets onto which God created life mature and complete. This included Heaven the place of his throne-room which he populated with physical being angels which it is implied have both mass and composition and metabolism.
4] When it was suggested that the same processes and natural law resulted in life on this planet this was claimed inconceivable and would never be done by any process involving life and death. Instead the life we see now is in reality designed to live for ever and has be chemically changed because it is deprived of a particular form of nutrient from a tree that existed on the Earth some 6000 years ago.
5] The inconguity of practicing medicine by the principles of process of natural law and the technology resulting from both the processes of the innanimate and the animate world rather than accepting the much more important process of divine intervention seems to be completely obsure.
6] When someone says that the process of life and death that gave us the physical substance of our universe is also the basis of the creation of life here he must be animal hating sadistic psychopath who cannot belieive in a God of love and grace and is lying when he says that non-violence characterizes the children of the heavenly father for one must always recognize that peace and freedom are only obtained over the bodies of 1/3 of the angels of heaven and the eternal physical and violent struggle against those who would practice violence.
I really cannot understand you Sean. Your ways are way beyond me. I am just sorry that Bob seems to be drawn into your twighlight zone.
Grace
Avondale College Arguing in Favor of Darwinian Evolution?
@Sean Pitman: sorry but your curious amalgam of magic and biology is not really comprehensible to me as a biologist or as a Christian . it. is neither logical or biologically feasible
Avondale College Arguing in Favor of Darwinian Evolution?
Sean Pitman: However, according to the Bible and Ellen White, before the Fall God specifically directed nature so that all sentient life was protected in a manner that there was no suffering or death. By eating from the “Tree of Life” God provided constant renewal and regeneration that worked against what would otherwise be inevitable entropic changes, decay, and death. It was by deliberately stepping away from the true Source of eternal life that mankind stepped away from God and into the full workings of mindless natural law alone – which does in fact inevitably lead to suffering and death.
And this interpretation is precisely why you need a theodicy. Where is the justice in killing all for the sake of the sins of one woman+man? It makes no sense logically. If they were conditionally immortal because of eating of the tree of life then did all the animals in all the world congregate around this tree like beasts around a water hole on the serengeti. how exactly do you as you are wont to do translate the account into a literal reality. And which beast had to come and eat. Or was it symbolic? Oh now that’s a thought.
Avondale College Arguing in Favor of Darwinian Evolution?
Sean Pitman: Come on now. Even I can imagine limitations to reproduction or the turnover of sentient carbon-based life. Surely you can at least imagine something similar? I know God can since such a world is described in the Bible and in the writings of Ellen White. Think about it…
Of course I have. This is not simply about reproduction. That is trivial. This is about metabolic process. Show me a carbon based life form that does not grow or metabolize anything and I will show you an organism in stasis as a spore “living” millions of year in amber. That is; effectively dead.
Real life cannot exist without metabolic process in a carbon based world and God has sanctified all this by a process of making good out of evil from the death of one comes life for others. Just as in the biological world so in the spiritual. By his death we have life. Just as God sanctified the practice of sacrifice of appeasement practiced by most cultures for thousands of years before and showed that in the Judeo-Christian tradition these same acts of sacrifice were emblematic of a monotheistic God that would become incarnate and bring life from death. So also he took the preceding accounts of creation derived as they were of the mesopotamian valley and recast it as an account of the monotheistic God who is above all but comes and dwells among us to become one of us. Participating in our life and death but showing us the importance of the transcendent life of the spirit that supercedes carbon based life and its inherent death. It is no fairy tale of 6 impossible things before breakfast. It is not pie in the sky by and by. It is rooted in a real world and it is about the transcendence of love and grace that is acted out in a real physical world by the incarnate God and us as we follow as His disciples.
That is the message I get from the images and visions of the Canon and EG White. But of course I read it for the message that it conveys not as a scientific text. That is where we fundamentally differ.
