Christianity and Science

If humans evolved, they could not have been originally upright. Our sinfulness and selfishness are then due, not to an historical fall, but, rather, to our evolutionary heritage. This undermines the doctrine of original sin, as well as the Reformed notion of Christ's atonement as a payment for human. Dr. Schneider thus favors a universalism where all humans will be saved.

Dr. Waltke asserts, "We have to go with the scientific evidence…if Scripture has a collectivity represented as an individual, that doesn't bother me.”

The Bible, however, flatly contradicts the dubious notion that Adam and Eve were chiefs of a tribe of 10,000 evolved humans. Genesis 2-3 states: “when there was no man (5)…the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature (7)…Then the LORD God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone’(18)…And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman…(22)…The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living” (3:20).

any self-replicating mechanism must exhibit a definable minimal level of complexity, let alone the necessitude of functional, and thus sequence specific DNA and protein molecules. As theoretical biologist Howard Pattee explains in his The Problem of Biological Hierarchy: “There is no evidence that hereditary evolution occurs except in cells which already have…the DNA, the replicating and translating enzymes, and all the control systems and structures necessary to reproduce themselves.” In order to invoke a materialistic pathway which can account for the origin of specified information in DNA, the naturalist must invoke a process that itself depends upon pre-existing sequence specific DNA molecules. Yet, the origin of these molecules is precisely what the thesis seeks to explain.

the formation of the first RNA molecule would have necessitated the prior emergence of smaller constituent molecules, including ribose sugar, phosphate molecules and the four RNA nucleotide bases. But both synthesising and maintaining these essential RNA molecules (particularly ribose) and the nucleotide bases is profoundly problematic to perform under realistic prebiotic conditions.

Theological arguments — by their very nature — cannot be defended as a scientific statement, and thus ought to be given no place in scientific discussions regarding evolution.

There is no consensus among scientists about the exact reasons that an individual develops a heterosexual, bisexual, gay, or lesbian orientation. Although much research has examined the possible genetic, hormonal, developmental, social, and cultural influences on sexual orientation, no findings have emerged that permit scientists to conclude that sexual orientation is determined by any particular factor or factors. Many think that nature and nurture both play complex roles; most people experience little or no sense of choice about their sexual orientation.

As Hagerty reported: “Schneider, who taught theology at Calvin College in Michigan until recently, says it’s time to face facts: There was no Adam and Eve, no serpent, no apple, no fall that toppled man from a state of innocence.”

“Evolution makes it pretty clear that in nature, and in the moral experience of human beings, there never was any such paradise to be lost. So Christians, I think, have a challenge, have a job on their hands to reformulate some of their tradition about human beginnings”

They argue that science is unable to resolve the question of Adam and Eve as a whole, but they write: “All science can say is that there was never a time when only two people existed on the earth: it is silent on whether or not God began a special relationship with a historical couple at some point in the past.”

the data at the crime scene usually can't tell us very much about that intelligence.

the tools of natural science are useless to determine the "I.Q." of the intelligence, the efficiency vs. the emotionalism of the intelligence, or the motive of the intelligence. That data, analyzed by only the tools of natural science, often cannot permit the investigator to construct a theory of why the perpetrator acted. The mental and conscious processes going on in the criminal's mind are outside the scope of the sciences of chemistry and physics. Thus it is obvious that scientific methods can lead to the conclusion that an intelligence did something, even if those same methods cannot tell you who specifically did it, or why they did it.

"the purposes and intentions of God, if there is a god, and the nature of his will, are not possible subjects of a scientific theory or scientific explanation. But that does not imply that there cannot be scientific evidence for or against the intervention of such a non-law-governed cause in the natural order" (p. 190).

Genomes are littered with nonfunctional pseudogenes, faulty duplicates of functional genes that do nothing, while their functional cousins (the word doesn't even need scare quotes) get on with their business in a different part of the same genome.

Once again, creationists might spend some earnest time speculating on why the Creator should bother to litter genomes with untranslated pseudogenes and junk tandem repeat DNA.

recent results are challenging this moniker; indeed, some pseudogenes appear to harbor the potential to regulate their protein-coding cousins. Far from being silent relics, many pseudogenes are transcribed into RNA, some exhibiting a tissue-specific pattern of activation. Pseudogene transcripts can be processed into short interfering RNAs that regulate coding genes through the RNAi pathway. In another remarkable discovery, it has been shown that pseudogenes are capable of regulating tumor suppressors and oncogenes by acting as microRNA decoys.

In broad statistical terms, Ecklund’s results are unsurprising: Scientists tend as a group to be less religious (however that term might be construed) than the general population. About 64 percent of the respondents described themselves as atheists or agnostics, as against only about 6 percent of the general public. “Looked at the other way around,” Ecklund writes, “only about 9 percent of scientists say they have no doubt that God exists, compared to well over 60 percent of the general public.” As far as religious practice is concerned, “about 18 percent of scientists attend religious services at least once a month or more, compared to about 46 percent of those in the general population.”However, the views of many scientists turn out to be less rigidly doctrinaire and hostile to religious belief than the raw statistics might suggest:After four years of research, at least one thing became clear: Much of what we believe about the faith lives of elite scientists is wrong. The “insurmountable hostility” between science and religion is a caricature, a thought-cliché, perhaps useful as a satire on groupthink, but hardly representative of reality.

only 15 percent of scientists hold firmly to the “conflict paradigm” — believing there is “no hope for achieving a common ground of dialogue between scientists and religious believers.” Meanwhile, a significant minority of the respondents, 36 percent, acknowledged holding at least some sort of belief in God. These ranged from “I believe in a higher power, but it is not God” (8 percent) to “I believe in God sometimes” (5 percent) to “I have some doubts, but I believe in God” (14 percent) to “I have no doubts about God’s existence” (9 percent).

Galaxies are thought to develop by the gravitational attraction between and merger of smaller 'sub-galaxies', a process that standard cosmological ideas suggest should be ongoing. But new data from a team of scientists from Liverpool John Moores University directly challenges this idea, suggesting that the growth of some of the most massive objects stopped 7 billion years ago when the Universe was half its present age.

How galaxies form and then evolve is still a major unanswered question in astronomy.

conventional simulations of the evolution of the Universe predict that BCGs should have at least tripled in size over that time.

: “We have discovered a distant galaxy that began forming stars just 200 million years after the Big Bang. This challenges theories of how soon galaxies formed and evolved in the first years of the Universe.

the first galaxies have been around for a lot longer than previously thought.”

The new books on physics promise "a state-of-the-art tour of cutting-edge science that is changing the way we see our world," as the jacket blurb for The Hidden Reality puts it. But they are just recycling the once-startling propositions of Car­ter, Everett, Wheeler, Barrow, Tipler—and Nietzsche and Borges, for that matter.

These ideas, in fact, are just scientized versions of stoner thought experiments: What if our whole world is just a grain of dirt in the pocket of a giant? And there is a whole universe inside one grain of dirt in our pockets? What if our world is really just an experiment created by evil machines? And so on. Physicists' fantasies about parallel and virtual realms are not just stale. Increasingly they strike me as escapist and irresponsible.

Physics (along with biology) is STILL the primary deliverer of awe to our lives. This is the THE PRIMARY religious function that physics took over from all religions and churches centuries ago. It opens up minds and emotions whenever we visit its knowledge edges seriously.

it has been clearly demonstrated that the backward wiring of the mammalian eye actually confers a distinct advantage by dramatically increasing the flow of oxygen to the eye.

Do we really wish to substitute the exuberantly imaginative, even whimsical designer of our actual universe for a cosmic neat freak?

Gould even provides a small opening when he concedes that the sesamoid thumb is “quite workable” and “does its job.” Indeed, when he finally witnessed a panda firsthand, he “was amazed by their dexterity and wondered how the scion of a stock adapted for running could use its hands so adroitly.” By Gould’s account, the panda’s thumb makes a fine peeler for bamboo, the panda’s principal food, and investigation may demonstrate that it is actually superior to an opposable thumb for such work.

that’s like saying the vast majority of astrologers are in agreement with the fact that astrology works.

The theory is that consciousness, in some way we don’t totally understand, survives bodily death. Now, that’s well-constructed. It’s not totally framed up in scientific terms but it’s an important theory because it contradicts the prevailing materialistic explanation of consciousness, which is pretty much nonexistent because consciousness is something we’re grabbing at. So to say that consciousness in some way we don’t understand seems to survive bodily death, I don’t know why that violates some sacred creed of science.

If we’re going to play the expert game, it’s too easy. That’s one of the things that I get into in the book. Almost for any position whatsoever, no matter how far out it is, you will find somebody with a PhD. or an MD that is willing to defend that position. But that’s not the way science works. I mean, you can find scientists who deny climate change. You can find scientists who deny evolution. You can find scientists…

Standing up for science excites some intellectuals the way beautiful actresses arouse Warren Beatty, or career liberals boil the blood of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. It's visceral. The thinker of this ilk looks in the mirror and sees Galileo bravely muttering "Eppure si muove!" ("And yet, it moves!") while Vatican guards drag him away. Sometimes the hero in the reflection is Voltaire sticking it to the clerics, or Darwin triumphing against both Church and Church-going wife. A brave champion of beleaguered science in the modern age of pseudoscience, this Ayn Rand protagonist sarcastically derides the benighted irrationalists and glows with a self-anointed superiority. Who wouldn't want to feel that sense of power and rightness?

a chasm has opened up between two groups that might loosely be distinguished as "philosophers of science" and "science warriors." Philosophers of science, often operating under the aegis of Thomas Kuhn, recognize that science is a diverse, social enterprise that has changed over time, developed different methodologies in different subsciences, and often advanced by taking putative pseudoscience seriously, as in debunking cold fusion. The science warriors, by contrast, often write as if our science of the moment is isomorphic with knowledge of an objective world-in-itself—Kant be damned!—and any form of inquiry that doesn't fit the writer's criteria of proper science must be banished as "bunk."

It is, in principle, possible that an empirical observation could confirm intelligent design—i.e., that magic moment when the ultimate UFO lands with representatives of the intergalactic society that planted early life here, and we accept their evidence that they did it. The point is not that this is remotely likely. It's that the possibility is not irrational, just as provocative science fiction is not irrational.