Comment on Ted Wilson: No Room for Evolution as Truth in Adventist Schools by pauluc.
If I understand correctly you are arguing that “empirical evidence” is equivalent to “physical evidence” those things you can appreciate with your own bodily senses. This seems apparent from the your statements and suggests you have a very pathological or forensic view on what is evidence as well as a readiness to accept hearsay without testing.
” You forget that the faith of disciples of Jesus, as well as James (the brother of Christ) and Paul, were significantly affected by the empirical demonstration of the Resurrection of Jesus. They cited the empirical evidence of the empty tomb constantly as a primary basis for their faith and a very good reason why others should take on faith in Jesus as their Risen Lord as well.”
In other words any physical evidence is evidence of a miraculous event. An empty tomb becomes the evidence for a miracle. No discussion of the alternative hypotheses of why the tomb was empty. They give no physical evidence that the alternative hypothesis that someone stole the body away was tested empirically. No they simply proclamied that an apparition that could walk through walls was the evidence of the bodily resurrection.
Futher, although most people would presume the term empirical evidence denotes an a posteriori approach your presumption that the fact that the accounts appear in the religious text is evidence that it was exactly as recounted. An a priori approach to knowledge not based on empiricism. Do you think that scientific in any way?
” Why do you think the Bible writers consistently cite so much empirical evidence for their claims if such evidence has no necessary part to play in establishing a reliable faith?”
So no reliable faith can exist except it is based on physical evidence and by extension is scientifically tested?
“However, generally speaking, the Holy Spirit does not spoon feed doctrinal knowledge regarding the credibility of the Bible’s origin or claims, the history of Jesus on this planet, the reality of the Virgin Birth or the Resurrection of Jesus, or the literal 6-day creation week. These doctrinal concepts are not discovered through emotional feelings or gestalts. They are discovered with the use of the intellectual mind based on the weight of empirical evidence as various claims are tested against that evidence.”
All doctrine and all of religion then in your mind seems to be based on physical evidence. Is that true?
Then the vocalization by someone that Jesus rose from the dead becomes the physical evidence that this is true. That Jesus was born of a virgin becomes evidenced by the physical evidence that there was a proclaimer rather than the verifiable direct observation of an intact hymen at the onset of labour. The physical evidence that the earth actually exists and the physical observation that there is a written text dating from the the 12-14th century BC becomes the physical evidence of a 6 day creation.
This is not what most people would consider empirical evidence in any sort of scientific sense.
Along with this view of religion as verifed by physical evidence, you seem to have a definition of science as largely the documentation of physical evidence. You talk of falsifiability but you are unwilling to actually test this and accept any piece of physical evidence to support your apriori view. This is the corruption of the accepted definition of science;
The Wiki definition used in discussing empirical evidence on which of course science is based is;
“In science, empirical evidence is required for a hypothesis to gain acceptance in the scientific community. Normally, this validation is achieved by the scientific method of hypothesis commitment, experimental design, peer review, adversarial review, reproduction of results, conference presentation and journal publication. This requires rigorous communication of hypothesis (usually expressed in mathematics), experimental constraints and controls (expressed necessarily in terms of standard experimental apparatus), and a common understanding of measurement.”
The discussion would be much more useful if you replace every instance of “empirical evidence” by “physical sensory experience” of “physical evidence as perceived by the bodily senses” and scientific evidence as “agreed understanding based on hypothesis, experimental testing and peer reviewed publication”.
If you did that it would be apparent that my contention that you actually accept many things by faith as all Christians do and your claim to physical evidence is not equivalent to experimentally tested verified information based on “agreed understanding based on hypothesis, experimental testing and peer reviewed publication”. It would make it apparent that your claim that your religion is based solidly and solely on science seems somewhat vacuous.
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pauluc Also Commented
Ted Wilson: No Room for Evolution as Truth in Adventist Schools
@Gene Fortner:
I am sure that is not how you have pursued your work as an engineer. In science there is never an end to discussion. It is always an iterative process and there is always another question and a new idea. Usually in science we start by saying what are our definitions and framework and what is the historical antecedents and understanding.
You might define Evolution is a doctrine rather than a theory or hypothesis but unless you start from the same position as everyone else there is absolutely no chance that your ideas, meritorious though they may be, will every get any traction. As I have indicated before this is a very idiosyncratic definition of evolution. You are arguing against abiogenesis and conflating that with an argument against evolution. It really is not helpful.
Ted Wilson: No Room for Evolution as Truth in Adventist Schools
Sean Pitman: What she said is that true scientific discoveries would never contradict a true understanding of Scripture. She highlighted this point by explaining that science and Scripture “shed light on each other.”
indeed and why should not an understanding of evolution shed light on the reading of Genesis as most non-fundamentalist Chrsitians today suggest?
Ted Wilson: No Room for Evolution as Truth in Adventist Schools
@Sean Pitman:
I will as soon as you publish it as science in the scientific literature.
And now we go back to the unfairness of the scientific literature that does not publish magic,
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.
