Evolution, Science and God

Science as a Religion?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

I just finished reading a book called Evolution by Donald Prothero, a paleontologist.  The book’s main purpose is to chronicle the fossil evidence for the evolution of animal life.  Prothero, as an expert in this field, seems to do a reasonable job of this throughout the book, although every tenth sentence seems to be a dress down of creationist, religious fundamentalism (back to that point at the end).  Still, he is extremely knowledgeable about fossil evidence, no doubt.

One thing that bothered me about the end of the book, however, is Prothero’s wholehearted and devoted worship of science.  I can almost imagine him bowing at an altar, it’s so overdone.  Read on to see why.

At the very beginning of his volume, he gave me hope that he understood the limits of science when he explained, “Science helps us understand the natural world and the way it works, but it does not deal with the supernatural, and it does not make statements of what ought to be, as do morals and ethics. . . . When science tries to proscribe morals or ethics, it falters.”  Sounds good.

But then we fast-forward to the conclusion, literally the last 2 pages, where he quotes three of his favorite science prophets.  First we hear from the Prophet Michael Shermer, who testifies, “Darwin matters because evolution matters.  Evolution matters because science matters.  Science matters because it is the preeminent story of our age, an epic saga about who we are, where we came from, and where we are going.”  Science, it seems, is an epic saga.

Next Prothero quotes from the Gospel of the Prophet Carl Sagan: “The universe is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be.  Our contemplations of the cosmos stir us.  There’s a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation as if a distant memory of falling from a great height.  We know we are approaching the grandest of mysteries.”  Tingling in the spine?

And finally, a reading from the Book of Darwin, speaking on his theory of evolution.  “There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one.”  Evolution is full of grandeur.

After having heard from the Holy Trinity, I almost expected Prothero to burst into a hymn of science thanksgiving.  What place does all of this have in a book about fossils?  When all is said and done, Prothero is not just trying to teach about fossils; no, he is all about recruiting us to his religion, the religion of science.  After all, religions tell us who we are, where we came from, and where we are going.  This, according to Prophet Shermer, is what science does for us.

For Prothero, it seems that science is the answer to every question worth asking.  After 358 pages of berating religious fundamentalists, it turns out he is one, too.

Evangelism

Steve Harvey Introduces Jesus

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

This post is definitely off the beaten path for us, but I was forwarded a video link by a friend of mine recently, and when I watched it, it really moved me.  I don’t get moved very easily (just ask my wife), so I figured this video might be worth sharing with my TQA audience.

All you need to know before watching the video is that Steve Harvey is a famous comedian and actor.  Why he decided to include this material at the end of one of his comedy routines, I don’t know, but it seems very sincere as you’ll see in the video.  Take a look.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvCd_ANIKys

General Apologetics, Philosophy

Are You Refuting Yourself?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

One of the most common mistakes in thinking I have seen in discussions on the blog is the making of self-refuting statements.  According to philosopher J. P. Moreland, a self-refuting statement is a statement which “refers to itself and fails to satisfy its own criteria of rational acceptability or truthfulness.”  An example would be the following:

“No English sentence is longer than three words.”

Obviously this is an English sentence which is longer than three words, so the very statement itself fails to meet its own criteria.  Here is another example that Moreland offers:

“There are no truths.”

The person making this statement obviously thinks that this statement is a truth, so once again the statement fails to meet its own criteria.

Moreland concludes, “They refer to themselves and they falsify themselves. Self-refuting statements are necessarily false; that is, they cannot possibly be true.”  Here are some additional examples of self-refuting statements:

“I do not exist.” The problem here is that a person must exist to make the statement that they do not exist.

“Anyone who is biased should not be trusted.” Isn’t the person who is making this statement biased himself?

“Only science gives us true knowledge.” How do you know that statement is true?  It isn’t a statement of science.

“All truth is relative.” Is that truth relative?

“There are no absolutes.” Is that statement absolutely true?

“It’s true for you, but not for me.” Is that statement only true for you or is it true for everyone?

“You should be skeptical of everything.” Should we be skeptical of that statement?

“You can’t know anything about God.” Do you know that God is unknowable?

“You ought not judge.” Isn’t that a judgment?

“You should be tolerant.” Aren’t you being intolerant of me?

It is amazing to see how many times these kinds of statements are made.  One tip-off that a self-refuting statement my be on the way is if a person uses the words all, every, or no.  These words indicate that the statement is going to be a universal categorical statement, meaning that it will encompass all of its class.  Sometimes these words are implied in the statement without being explicitly included, so you’ll have to be watchful.

A person making one of these self-refuting statements can correct the situation by changing all or every to some.  For example, instead of saying, “All truth is relative,” a person could say, “Some truth is relative.”  The drawback is that the statement is now weaker and has less force, but at least it is not self-contradictory any more.  Better to make a weaker statement than a statement that flatly contradicts itself.

Evolution, Intelligent Design, Science and God

What is Historical Science and Who Cares?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

A recurring misunderstanding I have seen in the intelligent design (ID) debate is the ignorance that many on the anti-ID side have of historical science.  So, what is historical science and how is it different from the sciences which study currently operating phenomena?

Philosopher of science Stephen Meyer lists four criteria of historical sciences that differentiate them from non-historical sciences in his book Signature in the Cell .  Take particular notice of the fact that these same four criteria apply to portions of evolutionary science as well as ID.

A Distinctive Historical Objective

Meyer explains that historical sciences ask certain kinds of questions like, “What happened?” or “What caused this event or that natural feature to arise?”  Non-historical sciences tend to ask questions like, “How does nature normally operate or function?” or “What causes this general phenomenon to occur?”  According to Meyer, “Those who postulate the past activity of an intelligent designer do so as an answer, or a partial answer, to distinctively historical questions.”

A Distinctive Form of Inference

Meyer describes the kinds of inferences that historical sciences usually make.  “Unlike many non-historical disciplines, which typically infer generalizations or laws from particular facts (induction), historical sciences employ abductive logic to infer a past event from a present fact or clue.”  The paleontologist Stephen Gould once said that the historical scientist infers “history from its results.”  ID, in particular, infers a “past unobservable cause (in this case, an instance of creative mental action or agency) from present facts or clues in the natural world, such as the specified information in DNA, the irreducible complexity of of certain biological systems, and the fine tuning of the laws and constants of physics.”

A Distinctive Type of Explanations

“Historical sciences usually offer causal explanations of particular events, not lawlike descriptions or theories describing how certain kinds of phenomena – such as condensation or nuclear fission – generally occur.”  With respect to ID, “Theories of design invoke the act or acts of an agent  and conceptualize those acts as causal events, albeit ones involving mental rather than purely physical entities.”  Further, “Advocates of design postulate past causal events . . . to explain the origin of present evidence or clues, just as proponents of chemical evolutionary theories do.”

Use of the Method of Multiple Competing Hypotheses

“Historical scientists do not mainly test hypotheses by assessing the accuracy of the predictions they make under controlled laboratory conditions.  Using the method of multiple competing hypotheses, historical scientists test hypotheses by comparing their explanatory power against that of their competitors.” In other words, historical scientists posit several explanations of the cause of an event in the past, and they then evaluate which of the several explanations best explains all the available evidence.  In the case of ID, the explanation of an intelligent mind best explains the presence of complex specified information in biological structures.

Any science which tries to explain singular or rarely occurring events of the past is a historical science.  Sciences which are trying to explain currently recurring or repeating phenomena are non-historical.  A failure to understand this distinction is a failure to grasp how science works.  Without historical science, any attempts at explaining the history of the evolution of life could not be done, which is why I find it so ironic that evolutionists attack ID on the grounds that it is historical.  They are sawing off the very limb that supports them.

General Apologetics

Want to See Short Christian Apologetics Videos?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

I came across an interesting apologetics ministry at the National Conference on Christian Apologetics a couple weeks ago.  It’s called The One Minute Apologist and the idea behind the ministry is to record short videos (usually a couple minutes) that tackle important apologetic issues.

There are videos that deal with topics like Islam, the resurrection, intelligent design, and evidence for the existence of God.  If you are interested in seeing these kinds of short videos, give the site a try.  Below is a sample video featuring an interview with William Lane Craig:

Church History, Polls

How Did Early Christians Know What to Believe?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In the early centuries of Christianity, believers were mostly without complete written copies of the New Testament as we know it today.  They may have possessed portions of it, but most Christians were taught doctrine orally.  In order to focus on and remember what was important, the early church composed several creeds.

Creeds are simple summaries of central doctrines that are easy to memorize.  According to Benjamin Galan in Creeds and Heresies Then and Now , the early Christian creeds served three purposes:

Explanation of the faith. Creeds are basic, memorable statements of belief.

Training of believers. Creeds help believers understand who they are, what they believe, and how they should act as Christians.  They are like posts that delimit the boundaries of what it means to be , to believe, and live as Christians.

Identification and correction of false teachings. Even in the first century A.D., false teachers abounded – teachers who claimed to follow Jesus but who promoted a message about Jesus that differed radically from the historical accounts proclaimed by apostolic eyewitnesses.  Early Christian creeds helped believers to distinguish the truth about Jesus from the alternative perspectives presented by false teachers.

Many Christian churches today still recite creeds composed by the early church, although churches in denominations such as the Southern Baptist Convention do not.  Whether creeds are recited during church services or not, it is important for all Christians to understand what the early creeds said, because we are inheritors of the contents of those creeds.  If we fail to know what the creeds said, we fail to understand our history as a church.

What does your church do?  Do you recite any creeds during your services?

Intelligent Design, Philosophy

How Can We Tell the Difference Between Real Science and Pseudo-Science?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

One of the most common charges that intelligent design (ID) opponents hurl at ID theorists is that ID is not real science.  They will say that a real scientific theory must be testable against the empirical world, must make predictions, must be falsifiable, must be explanatory by reference to natural law, and so forth.  They point to ID and say that it doesn’t meet all of these criteria, and therefore ID must not be science.

But is that true?  Are there really criteria that define whether something is science or not science?  Well, if you ask philosophers of science (the academic experts on this question), they will tell you that no such criteria exists.  Every attempt at formulating an ironclad set of criteria has ended up accidentally excluding what scientists consider to be legitimate scientific fields.  There is no set of agreed upon criteria for separating science from pseudo-science; it just doesn’t exist among philosophers of science.

According to philosopher of science Stephen Meyer, leading philosophers of science such as Larry Laudan, Philip Quinn, and Philip Kitcher have argued that the question of whether something is science or non-science is both “intractable and uninteresting.”  Meyer explains that “they and most other philosophers of science have increasingly realized that the real issue is not whether a theory is ‘scientific’ according to some abstract definition, but whether a theory is true, or supported by the evidence.”

That is the key.  Theories should not be rejected or accepted with definitions of what is or is not science, but with the evidence that supports the theory.  This concept seems so simple and obvious, but the attempt at demarcating between science and non-science is a favorite technique of ID opponents.  By calling ID non-scientific, opponents never have to look at the evidence.  How convenient!  Call it pseudo-science and move on, without ever stopping to examine the evidence or evaluate the arguments offered by ID proponents.

Meyer quotes one philosopher of science, Martin Eger, who concludes, “Demarcation arguments have collapsed.  Philosophers of science don’t hold them anymore.  They may still enjoy acceptance in the popular world, but that’s a different world.”  Indeed it is.

For further reading on this issue, see this article by Stephen Meyer.

Abortion, Gay Marriage, Marriage, Morality, Religion

Have You Signed the Manhattan Declaration Yet?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Almost one year ago, I wrote a short blog post asking our readers to sign a document called the Manhattan Declaration.  Why am I back again asking you to sign?  Because we need more of you to participate.

So far, the declaration has gathered 476,000 signatures – impressive, but not enough.  We should easily be able to get over 1 million signatures on this document – after all, if you are a Christian, or a person who believes in the sanctity of life, the sanctity of marriage, and the sanctity of religious liberty, then you should have no problem signing this document.

What does the declaration say about these issues?  Well, you can read it for yourself in full, or you can read a few excerpts from it below.

First of all, why these three principles instead of a myriad other possibilities?

Because the sanctity of human life, the dignity of marriage as a union of husband and wife, and the freedom of conscience and religion are foundational principles of justice and the common good, we are compelled by our Christian faith to speak and act in their defense. In this declaration we affirm: 1) the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of every human being as a creature fashioned in the very image of God, possessing inherent rights of equal dignity and life; 2) marriage as a conjugal union of man and woman, ordained by God from the creation, and historically understood by believers and non-believers alike, to be the most basic institution in society and; 3) religious liberty, which is grounded in the character of God, the example of Christ, and the inherent freedom and dignity of human beings created in the divine image.

To repeat, these are foundational issues.  Without life, without traditional marriage, and without religious liberty, our civilization crumbles.

About life, the declaration has this to say:

A truly prophetic Christian witness will insistently call on those who have been entrusted with temporal power to fulfill the first responsibility of government: to protect the weak and vulnerable against violent attack, and to do so with no favoritism, partiality, or discrimination. The Bible enjoins us to defend those who cannot defend themselves, to speak for those who cannot themselves speak. And so we defend and speak for the unborn, the disabled, and the dependent. What the Bible and the light of reason make clear, we must make clear. We must be willing to defend, even at risk and cost to ourselves and our institutions, the lives of our brothers and sisters at every stage of development and in every condition.

About marriage, the declaration has this to say:

And so it is out of love (not “animus”) and prudent concern for the common good (not “prejudice”), that we pledge to labor ceaselessly to preserve the legal definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman and to rebuild the marriage culture. How could we, as Christians, do otherwise? The Bible teaches us that marriage is a central part of God’s creation covenant. Indeed, the union of husband and wife mirrors the bond between Christ and his church. And so just as Christ was willing, out of love, to give Himself up for the church in a complete sacrifice, we are willing, lovingly, to make whatever sacrifices are required of us for the sake of the inestimable treasure that is marriage.

About religious liberty, the declaration has this to say:

The struggle for religious liberty across the centuries has been long and arduous, but it is not a novel idea or recent development. The nature of religious liberty is grounded in the character of God Himself, the God who is most fully known in the life and work of Jesus Christ. Determined to follow Jesus faithfully in life and death, the early Christians appealed to the manner in which the Incarnation had taken place: “Did God send Christ, as some suppose, as a tyrant brandishing fear and terror? Not so, but in gentleness and meekness…, for compulsion is no attribute of God” (Epistle to Diognetus 7.3-4). Thus the right to religious freedom has its foundation in the example of Christ Himself and in the very dignity of the human person created in the image of God—a dignity, as our founders proclaimed, inherent in every human, and knowable by all in the exercise of right reason.

Will you join us in signing this declaration?  Will you make your voice heard on these issues?  Please make your way to the Manhattan Declaration website and become a signatory to this important document.

A Christian Apologetics Blog