Ben, to avid excessive length I'm going to go with Internet-style quoting and terse responses. I hope you'll understand.

But I'm delighted to see you still here; it's tough to shadow-box alone, in the dark.

BW> You said yourself, much earlier in this thread, that the Christian God, unlike the Muslim God, was constrained to act rationally.

True, but just today I indicated that I believe God constrains Himself; there is nothing higher than He. Neener. ;-)

BW> But logic is also different from morality: I can't even concieve of a universe that ignores logic.

Ah, you academics; in the commercial world by the time I've read my morning email I've believe six illogical things before breakfast. Just takes practice.

BH> He is constrained to do only that which is logically possible.

Blessed agreement.

BW> 1) The laws of logic, like 'A = A', and logic's cousin, mathematics.
BW> 2) Rationality, which is behavior by thinking beings that lines up with some optimal goal.

Aha. By "rationality", *I* meant a property of the universe that made logic applicable to the perceivable world.

BW> 3) The 'laws' of physics, which describe how our universe runs.

I'll come back to that.

BW> 4) And I think I have used the word "consistent" to describe the fact that the universe's laws seem to stay the same. I believe you use "rational" to mean the same. Is that right?

Not quite - I mean a correspondence between the models our brains create and the observable world. It's entirely possible to create worlds within our brains that do not correspond to logic - see the works of Lewis Carroll, for example. Non-Euclidean geometry was that way, until application was found for it, IIRC. But if the universe lacked the basic property I've called "rationality", then we could create logically consistent models that didn't correspond to anything we observe.

BW> No, I don't think we need God to do agriculture. He seems to have set the Earth up to run without his direct intervention, just like He set the planets to run in their orbits. Just because He *can* interfere when he wants to (as in the case of Elijah) doesn't mean he has to interfere every year.

Ah, but He tells us repeatedly that He does.

BW> I'll take that your intended meaning as "unless the laws of physics extended into the past", as your meaning is lost on me otherwise.

My problem with "the laws of physics" is that they've changed since Einstein described them, which was a huge change from when Newton described them, which was a huge change from Archimedes,... So i wanted to use a phrase that didn't rely on human discovery. If you want to call that "consistency" then fair enough, but to me something can be either internally or externally consistent, or both, so I avoid that term so my paragraphs are...consistent. :-)

BW> You keep asserting that the only way the laws of physics will have been constant is if God keeps them constant, but you've never told me why.

Yes, actually I have. Don't the laws of physics have to be independent of the world they describe? If not, then they describe themselves - and you fall into infinite recursion. The whole idea of "discovery" implies that they're independent of *us* - otherwise it would be "invention", right? But you've said these laws don't change over time - only our understanding of them does. Are they unchanging because that's inherent in them (which is to say there are limits to our ability to use science), or because Something makes them so? In the latter case, the limits of science are God Himself. In the former, science is limited becauuuuuuse...?

BW> You just say it, and trust that I'll believe it.

guf-FAW!!!! Oh, my young friend, that's a good one; now my ribs ache.

BW> On the subject of creation and the Flood, though, God could have done a lot for us if he said "and in the year xxxx, God changed the laws of physics."

It's only recently that "in the year of King So-and-so" became shortened, and only because people don't want to say "in the year of Our Lord" (the King of Kings, after all). Prior to that, it was by reference to the age of some famous person who was known to have lived X years prior to today. Hence why the Bible says "Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters came on the earth" in Genesis 7:6.

As an aside at this point, lots of people disbelieve the Bible because it's got descriptions that defy "the laws of physics". They assert that they know how long humans live, and that's that. I say this assumes a lot about consistency.

But back to your point, it's interesting that most of the miracles I can recall offhand have dates associated with them, by way of at least the lifetime of a person if not their exact age.

BW> Because with the current ones, there's not a snowball's chance in hell that the Earth is only 6,000 years old.

Hey, just remember if I start asking obnoxious questions about worldwide ice ages, *you* started it. :-)

BW> And given all the Biblical stuff that we'd expect to see that's missing, and all the evolutionary stuff we find (like that humans have one chromosome that looks exactly like two chimpanzee chromosomes stuck together), it looks an awful lot like God *wanted* us to believe in evolution and an old earth.

Or, at least, *someone* did. (Not going further to avoid stepping too much on Rolley's battlefield turf.)

BW> Is it easier to believe God is trying to deceive us, or that Genesis is not a literal historical/scientific document?

Hey, I never met a false dichotomy I couldn't like. The third possibility is that we're insufficiently interested in resolving this problem - unlike, for example, the wave/particle duality.

BW> Have you ever worked in the physical sciences?

Yup, brief stint as a research chemist until I read that report about professions linked to leukemia. Used to basically wash our hands in benzene, until they replaced it with toluene...

BW> As you progress into the physical sciences, the fields become more 'solid'.

I'll be charitable and assume this is an unintentional pun.

BW> Medical research is pretty hard to verify,

My blushes, Watson; double-blind studies are quite replicable. There's this little outfit called "the FDA", not far from where Gina works; look sometime at what they make medical device manufacturers go through.

BW> and there's rarely the system of accountability that there is in mathematics, physics, or chemistry.

Other than, say, malpractice suits?

BW> I doubt that you've been lied to in equal proportion by evolutionists.. but then, if you've made up your mind that the Earth was made 6000 years ago, you may disagree with me on what constitutes a 'lie'.

Oh, come come come - a lie is any statement known by the teller to be false but presented as true to foster the teller's personal welfare. And you almost certainly know that entire books have been written describing hoaxes used to promote evolution. At least do me the courtesy, my friend, of acknowledging that I don't impute inherent moral superiority to only one side because they support my position.

BW> Scientific journalists 'lie' all the time, distorting the truth through ignorance or to sell more papers.

But thankfully, actual scientists rarely lie - unless it's about something like cold fusion, or Nebraska Man or something like that. Humph.

BW> I don't mean to be condescending, but most of them don't have the scientific background or the critical thinking skills to evaluate their own claims, and so discussion is usually pointless. I say this from experience.

Sure. Ever been steamrollered by a scientist who used his credentials and experience to override your data?

BW> By all means, keep up a healthy skepticism!

Heh - the FDA keeps changing what they define as "healthy"; now moderate caffeine intake is *good* for you. (Insert editorial "Hallelujah!" here.)

BW> Out of curiosity, have you applied that skepticism to the movie Expelled? I've read quite a bit suggesting that Stein stretched the truth a ways there.

Sure - all those presented as the victims of a madchine that quashes dissent are people who clearly stand to benefit from a public hue and cry. As a scientific thinker, I try to disregard the spin and dispassionately investigate the claims. Even so, Stein's movie fits with anecdotal evidence of my friends and also my own experience of irrational prejudice among scientists against anyone who breaks with orthodoxy.

BW> Finally (sorry, Gina, for the length!) - no, I don't believe science comes between me and God. He created the universe, gave us the ability to reason and a whole world of things to explore! It's an adventure, really. And I don't think logic should conflict with God.. if it does, "you're doing it wrong".

Fantastic!! Only one problem: evolution, when properly understood, leads us inexorably to the hopelessness of Richard Dawkins. That is in fact what originally caused my existential crisis - the knowledge that per evolution, our progress as a species is statistical, not individual, and that even the idea of progress is illusory. We're all just dancing to our DNA, but the music is a funeral dirge attended by whichever species will take over at our demise.

Versus, say, every individual being an absolutely precious creation whose life is lovingly observed to the point of each lost hair being a noteworthy event, and whose death is precious due to the reunion.

From the left brain, Ben, evolution makes sense up to a point. (I've shown you that point.) From the right brain, it leads to depression and suicide unless non-evolutionary ideas - usually Biblical ones - are woven in. Only creationism, with all its inconsistencies, manages to satisfy both lobes. Or as someone better known for their wit (and therefore able to say this without any hint of a put-down) might conclude, "If you have half a mind to believe in evolution - well, that's sufficient."

Thanks for another thoughtful reply, LQ.

On logic: I think of it like morality: it's not alive nor superior to God, yet it exists either apart from God or as part of His nature. I say "either" because while some people's theology may require that these exists as part of God's nature (so that He is not beholden to them), there is no Scriptural or.. logical.. reason why this should be so. /shrug. You said yourself, much earlier in this thread, that the Christian God, unlike the Muslim God, was constrained to act rationally. Probably just a slip of the tongue - err, finger - so I'm not accusing you of being inconsistent.

But logic is also different from morality: I can't even concieve of a universe that ignores logic. So, I'm going to go with it being "extranatural".. existing apart from God, but not above him.. If that makes sense. It's not something I lose sleep over, and I'm not stuck on declaring God's supreme power over eeeeeverything, even abstract ideas like "an object is what it is", when I can't conceive of a logical contradiction becoming reality. Put another way, even God can't make a rock so big that He can't move it - because this is a nonsense statement. He is constrained to do only that which is logically possible.

But whatever. I'm going to re-check to make sure we're arguing about the same thing here.

Ok, there's several different things:
1) The laws of logic, like 'A = A', and logic's cousin, mathematics.
2) Rationality, which is behavior by thinking beings that lines up with some optimal goal.
3) The 'laws' of physics, which describe how our universe runs.
4) And I think I have used the word "consistent" to describe the fact that the universe's laws seem to stay the same. I believe you use "rational" to mean the same. Is that right?

So, most of the time we've been arguing about #3/4 (why the universe runs consistently), although lately we've also started arguing about whether God upholds #1 (logic) .

No, I don't think we need God to do agriculture. He seems to have set the Earth up to run without his direct intervention, just like He set the planets to run in their orbits. Just because He *can* interfere when he wants to (as in the case of Elijah) doesn't mean he has to interfere every year.

Buuuuttt.. I doubt we'll agree on that. And there's no way for either of us to prove our views, so.. /shrug.

Okay, on to the next point: You said that "On the heating and cooling of magma, performing that experiment *today* doesn't tell me anything about what happened *in the past* unless rationality and logic are extended into the past, before our lifetimes."
-- So far, sorta good. I'll take that your intended meaning as "unless the laws of physics extended into the past", as your meaning is lost on me otherwise.
Then, you said "The only way this is possible is if rationality and logic are themselves independent of the natural world we're investigating – i.e., they're “super-natural”, or else that some other supernatural entity is ensuring that logic and rationality always apply to nature."
-- !!! Now, this is completely lost on me. You keep asserting that the only way the laws of physics will have been constant is if God keeps them constant, but you've never told me why. You just say it, and trust that I'll believe it. I will say, though, that if the laws of physics changed in the past, we could see it - by looking at old rocks, old stars, old light.. etc.
But even so - supposing I interpret your comment as simply asking why the laws of physics stay constant.. we don't know, really. There are all sorts of possibilities, but no reason to believe that they require an outside Keeper. I don't give your position any more credence simply because you have an answer to the question, as you can't give me evidence that supports or denies your claim (the Bible is pretty quiet on this subject, and science too).
On the subject of creation and the Flood, though, God could have done a lot for us if he said "and in the year xxxx, God changed the laws of physics." Because with the current ones, there's not a snowball's chance in hell that the Earth is only 6,000 years old. And given all the Biblical stuff that we'd expect to see that's missing, and all the evolutionary stuff we find (like that humans have one chromosome that looks exactly like two chimpanzee chromosomes stuck together), it looks an awful lot like God *wanted* us to believe in evolution and an old earth.
There are not just a few ways that the universe looks old - there is light coming from starts millions of lightyears away, radiometric dating, thermodynamic examples like the magma/limestone (and a hundred other thermodynamic cases), the genetic diversity across the human species (far greater than you'd find from 2 people who lived a few thousand years ago), the nested hierarchy of all life in a pattern of common descent, plate tectonics.. the list goes on and on. Nearly every field of physical science has overwhelming evidence for an old Earth and universe.. So if God changed the rules of physics a few thousand years ago, he did it quite deliberately and knowing what it would look like. Is it easier to believe God is trying to deceive us, or that Genesis is not a literal historical/scientific document?

Have you ever worked in the physical sciences? If not, it's a shame. See http://xkcd.com/435/ As you progress into the physical sciences, the fields become more 'solid'. Medical research is pretty hard to verify, and there's rarely the system of accountability that there is in mathematics, physics, or chemistry. I don't think that your experience with medical research necessarily extrapolates into other fields - in the other fields we can check each other's work (and do), heck in mathematics this doesn't even require any equipment, just some thinking.

No, I'm not surprised that you've been lied to by creationists. I doubt that you've been lied to in equal proportion by evolutionists.. but then, if you've made up your mind that the Earth was made 6000 years ago, you may disagree with me on what constitutes a 'lie'. Scientific journalists 'lie' all the time, distorting the truth through ignorance or to sell more papers. I hope the newspapers/magazines are not what you're going on here.
But at the least, having read extensive arguments from both sides, I feel quite comfortable saying that most publishing creationists are either deliberately misinterpreting their evolutionist foes, or they're just stupid or ignorant. I don't mean to be condescending, but most of them don't have the scientific background or the critical thinking skills to evaluate their own claims, and so discussion is usually pointless. I say this from experience.

By all means, keep up a healthy skepticism! Out of curiosity, have you applied that skepticism to the movie Expelled? I've read quite a bit suggesting that Stein stretched the truth a ways there.

Finally (sorry, Gina, for the length!) - no, I don't believe science comes between me and God. He created the universe, gave us the ability to reason and a whole world of things to explore! It's an adventure, really. And I don't think logic should conflict with God.. if it does, "you're doing it wrong".

Ben, I expect to have limited-to-no Internet access for the next several weeks, so I've taken the time to give you plenty to think about. And in that vein, I feel compelled to thank you for being unfailingly polite during this discussion; I'm glad we can disagree about this (and many other things!) yet still remain friends. And I'm delighted that you're not taking each of my points directly to the TalkOrigins fanatics; this is probably the first time I've been able to discuss/argue/probe this issue with only a single person, and that's quite refreshing. My apologies that sometimes Rolley or Jason or someone else feels compelled to jump into the ring, but you must admit that without them – particularly Rolley – this would easily become far too serious. (Wish I could insert some ASCII art of Groucho Marx glasses-and-mustache here, but I want the whole comment to go through and not get Roomba'ed.) If I'm absent too long for your taste, perhaps one of them can fill in for me.

I lost you when I said that rationality and logic could be made into gods. (I said “in effect,” but I'll address your objection.) Recall that Jesus said no one can serve two masters, and that one of those masters was God, and another was money. Money has no personality (although if I don't add “But mine *does* talk to me – it says 'Buh-bye!!'”, Rolley certainly will). Throughout the Old Testament we see civilizations worshiping “gods” that are clearly Freudian projections of human personality onto inanimate objects or even ideas. Hence the phrase “the living God” - in contrast to non-living “gods”.

So, a “god” is anything that is endowed by people with supernatural attributes, and given more respect and obedience than it deserves. In the case of rationality and logic, many people treat them as if they exist independently of God, rather than depending on Him. (Some even go so far as to make God obedient to them.) They are worshipped (in the derivational sense of “worth-ship”) when people placed their trust in them, rather than trusting God Who upholds them by His power. I believe that our universe is rational and logical not “just because,” but rather because God has made it so and keeps it that way. God could at any time choose to make it not so (and C.S. Lewis argues something like this in his book “Miracles”), but His love for us compels Him to maintain it, thereby making science – the investigation of our universe on the basis of rationality and logic – possible.

One other point on this issue - **many** of us say that logic is a person, on the basis of the Greek language used in John 1, which is (starting in verse 1) “en arche in ho logos” - “In the beginning was the Word”, where “Word” in Greek is intended to imply much more than our English word can convey, but pondering “a unit that makes conversation possible” is a good place to start, especially if you cross-reference Genesis 3:9. The Word – logic, rationality, communication, emotion, everything that makes society possible – clothed Himself in flesh and made a temporary dwelling among us. (When someone is the very embodiment of logic, they're quite unlikely to lose an argument with the most brilliant of theologians – even at only twelve years old.)

Your next point, about not needing God to be able to do agriculture, is quite important. Elijah prayed, and it didn't rain for *a very long time*. Crops in the Middle East fail when there's no rain, bringing famine. When Elijah prayed again and the rain returned, ending the famine. And that's merely one example. It helps explain why the Jews were so hostile toward Ba'al, who was a “god” of the harvest; ignorant people got confused as to who made eating and drinking possible. (I silently reflect on this almost every time I “say grace” before a meal.) And while I'm on that point, it's interesting that Beelzebub, “Lord of the Flies”, is directly insulting to Ba'al because it means Ba'al brings not life and abundance, but death and decay (since offerings to Ba'al of fruit and grain would decay, attracting flies). That makes Ba'al a “type” of Satan, who promises abundant life but actually brings death and decay (just as in Genesis 3) when we follow him and sacrifice to him.

On the heating and cooling of magma, performing that experiment *today* doesn't tell me anything about what happened *in the past* unless rationality and logic are extended into the past, before our lifetimes. The only way this is possible is if rationality and logic are themselves independent of the natural world we're investigating – i.e., they're “super-natural”, or else that some other supernatural entity is ensuring that logic and rationality always apply to nature. This brings us right back to the question of whether or not rationality is a “god” in which people are expected to place their trust.

Speaking of trust, I do have deep-seated issues with respect to scientists. As a young child I placed all my faith in the ability of scientists to cure the evils that befall humanity. So when they told me that there was a creature named Brontosaurus, I believed them – along with the descriptions of how it spent its time mostly in water, walked ponderously, etc. It's now hard to trust those scientists, since almost everything I learned back then (even being tested on it in school) has been proven to be wrong. Similarly with the “fact” that the Earth is 3 billion years old – a “fact” considered to be very well established at the time. Even if those scientists were and are completely trustworthy (and Piltdown Man, Nebraska Man and the rest indicate that this is not always the case), their “facts” are subject to change at any time. Science is an enterprise that proceeds in fits and starts, and anyone who completely trusts its pronouncements is deluding themselves. This is especially true for theories that aren't even 200 years old yet.

So I'm skeptical toward science and scientists, trying my best to maintain a *healthy* skepticism, just as I do when we're told that the food they thought was bad for us is now actually good for us. (I should insert a note here about how caffeine is alternately evil and wonderful, depending on who funds the study, just for Gina's sake.) That skepticism was indeed deepened when I was a chemical researcher, and a medical researcher, while still in college; in the late 1970s there was a huge scandal over the fact that as much as 25% of medical research was fraudulent. That's research that people rely upon for their lives, please note. But driven by the need for grant money, even the most noble scientist can feel sorely tempted, so we shouldn't be surprised that many fall.

I note that you're not particularly surprised, and I wouldn't expect you would be, by me being lied to by creationists. I'll simply note that it was in roughly the same proportion that I've been lied to by evolutionists and other scientists.

My point about Scripture was that it, too, can be investigated with (golly!) rationality and logic. That requires coming at the data with an attitude of willingness to reject one's firmly held beliefs. I believe this is a healthy attitude both in theology and in science, and that evolution has made this more difficult for scientists. The bias is so strong that (as Ben Stein's movie showed) any contradictory data or contrasting theories must be crushed mercilessly.

Finally (and yes, dearest G, I've been worried about length), God's investment into maintaining rationality and logic in our universe makes science a useful endeavor instead of a futile one. So I don't believe that constancy is a necessary property of the universe, but I *do* believe that it is a reliable one – because the One who makes it reliable is Himself reliable. I do not want science to become (per 2 Corinthians 10:5) a pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, but I believe evolution has caused this to be so, leading people to put their trust in people and ideas like rationality instead of in the Word that made all things – including logic itself. I am able to worship God for **everything** I see – including my own brain's ability to understand the world around me, however dimly. Are you able to do this, Ben my friend, or does science come between you and God, even a little? I personally want absolutely no barriers whatsoever between me and Him, especially not the pride and feeling of self-sufficiency that materialistic science nurtures in my breast. Perhaps you're a stronger man than I am, and better able to resist that temptation. But perhaps not.

Joomla, Roomba: random vacuuming patterns. Something like the way a black hole travels, I suppose.

And poor Gina; of all the people whose words *could* have been dropped, but instead, the **poets** get it...

I'm so sorry, Rolley! First Kathryn's poem goes spastic, now this. Good grief.

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A goodly portion of my post STILL got pac-manned.

For those in our midst who are into repeatability experiments (yes, I see that hand), try this for a cheap thrill: Type an asterisk, space, left-pointing arrow, equal-sign, right double-quotation mark, comma, space, then some words; then post it, and see what happens.

And just when I thought I could dispense forever with my TypePad imprecations. I’m strongly inclined to speak my mind by typing &#@!*&, but I’m afraid it might crash the server farm --- or worse ( http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0912/0912.5480.pdf ).

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Here it is (but unfortunately the “effect” is gone. Moral: careful with special character strings).

* d the limits, which I do around here quite regularly, as LeeQuod is quick to point out. So let’s just say what’s passed is prologue, and move on. Altogether now…

“What’s passed is prologue, and move on.”

Well Donne! I couldn’t do better myself – (unless I tried).

--

(Sorry everyone. As our dear friend Ben noted, it was time for a comic intermission of sorts, what with LeeQuod and me ganging up on him).

Okay, enough rest. Back to the contest. And beware the dukes of Haggard!

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Well, confound. You’ll never know what it dings for. Joomla only accepts 50 characters in that fortune-cookie-sized Subject box, and it just so happens there are exactly 50 characters in my word string. And being the notorious stickler for convention that I am, I had to stop, even though I wasn’t Donne. (Speaking of whom, you’ll recall *he* never finished *his* phrase, either, and even misspelled thee last word).

Not to worry, though. There’s plenty of room here in the Comments box for all the characters you could possibly want, and a few you might not want (present company included).

“””””
`O|O`
(=m=) Me in my youth, as captured by Gary Larson.

See what I mean?

So where was I? If, as they say, “YOU ARE HERE => *

Fighting "two at once", both you and Rolley. Whew, you guys wear me out.

Heh, reading your first paragraph, I'm like, "ok.. ok.. ok.. Wait, what? 'gods'?!?"
No, neither logic or rationality are 'gods' just because they exist apart from humans. (Although.. rationality, I think, requires a mind, or creatures working towards some goals. "Logic" refers to a set of ideas and the language for describing them.)
'Gods' are supernatural *persons*, with personalities. I don't know anyone who say that logic is a person.

Actually, we don't *know* that the speed of light is constant. We've never seen it deviate (and there are myriad ways to tell), but there are still obscure exceptions that we haven't tested yet (or, it could have changed less than measurements could detect).

Your next argument, on apples and agriculture.. Wait, what? What does developing agriculture have to do with needing a God? Is that the only reason He came, so that we would have apple pies more abundantly? My point being, the agriculture and theology have nothing to do with each other. The Bible does not teach us when to sow seed or how to construct a computer, and science doesn't tell us why we're here, if there's a God, or what happens after we die.

On scientific arguments: If it helped, we could certainly keep our discussion to a simple bit of science, like the bit about the heat given off by cooling magma or limestone formation. These are both very easy things to test; you could set up the experiments yourself if you were so inclined (get some bit of cooled magma. Heat it up to melting. Drop it in water, see how much water evaporates and how much the rest is heated up. Do the math.). Likewise, you can get estimates of the amount of fossil-limestone deposits or igneous rocks from geological surveys, which presumably would not be biased by dogma. The surveys should be reasonably accurate; geologists have poked a lot of holes in the ground looking for oil/coal/minerals, and they know how to tell limestone from shale.

But let's talk about your trust issues with science. How/when were you lied to? I seem to remember you saying you'd worked in medical research, I think?

Yes, science still has much left to learn. More in some areas than others, of course. I don't have any trouble trusting the reasoning/evidence where they're solidly researched and fleshed out.
Are you really a skeptic? On the topic of repeatibility/laws, we had two questions: Why do the laws of physics seem to be staying relatively constant (ie, why are experiments repeatable)? And is such constancy a necessary property of the universe?
Scientists' answers are "They may or may not have been constant, we don't know if constancy is necessary, but on both counts we're looking into it." Your answer is "God keeps the laws constant" (and no answer to the second question, afaict).

Which person(s) is showing a more questioning or skeptical attitude? Not to seem critical, but while the scientists are probing into the why/how, devising experiments to test their ideas, and revising their ideas with the feedback they get... your view is not probe-able/testable and is held on faith. It's not a skeptical position.


I agree with you about taking Scripture at face value - if you take it at face value, it becomes sometimes confusing, sometimes contradictory.

And last, but not least, I've not been collaborating with anyone else in this debate, aside from running a few posts by my wife to check for clarity. I don't think I've been to TalkOrigins since we started this debate, either, and I'm certainly not posting for advice anywhere. A lot of this debate is old hat to me, as I researched it extensively a few years back. But, I still appreciate the conversation we're having.

The "dash infants against a stone thing" Lee could be taken as the prayer of a human. In fact the writing style implies this.

C.S. Lewis pointed out when looking at that Psalm that the proper lesson is to remember that when you do wrong to someone you have also done wrong to their spirit. In this case the rapacious Babylonian soldiery had left a horrible mark on a Jew who had witnessed it.

Or to put it in modern terms was Simon Wiesenthal a pleasant person? Honestly he never gave that impression to me. However I always knew why he was unpleasant and so do you; that someone had done something to him.

In the same way when you read that Psalm you can interpret that as a glimpse into the mind of someone. And can remember what you are doing to them when you do injustice. And you can remember it for your own(nasty tasting but necessary) edification, as we have all done injustice to someone.

So, Ben, if rationality and logic do not require God to exist, and they retain their existence even when there are no humans around (so that the supposed age of the dinosaurs was rational in that we can correctly reason about it), then rationality and logic are supernatural entities – not dependent on nature, but superior to it. They pre-existed us, and would presumably continue to exist if humans became extinct. They are, in effect, gods – right? Worthy of worship and obedience and all that; prettymuch what scientists do all day. Or if that's wrong, then what property of nature sustains them? Why should we believe that they are constant, anymore than we should believe that the speed of light is constant? (Whoops, maybe the “c” in “E=mc^2” isn't so constant after all, hmmm?)

Watching apples fall over and over permits you to develop a workable science of agriculture, eh? One that operates on the basis of discoverable laws, entirely independent of the actions of any supposed sky God, to quote Richard Dawkins? If so, then why (as they effectively said at the Tower of Babel) would any of us need a Savior?

You keep trying to get me to look at data, and follow a line of reasoning applied to it. I don't have sufficient background in all the various sciences (geology, astrophysics, botany and so on) to understand the data myself without fulltime study – and I gather that most geologists don't understand botany all that well anyway. So you're asking me to trust the work and conclusions of scientists. But I have huge trust issues, having personally been lied to and misled (intentionally and unintentionally) by many scientists, both noble and ignoble, on both sides of the creation/evolution debate. A plague o' both their houses; I have no reason to trust any human's data or reasoning unless it conforms with something more trustworthy.

And, you're asking me to do all this in an entirely rational manner – to shut off the right side of my brain and go at this half-witted. If evolution leads us to the conclusion that some races are more favored than others, and this is used to justify a century of discrimination against African Americans, then so be it – science is a messy enterprise. (One big difference between the Christian church and the scientific enterprise is that Christians try to make reparation for their historic failings. Has the American Association for the Advancement of Science ever contributed to the NAACP, or had Jesse Jackson as a keynote speaker?) Well, sorry – I refuse to unhesitatingly agree with any enterprise that justifies racism, or forced sterilization of “imbeciles”, and then refuses to identify their core beliefs as the source of the problem.

In addition, you yourself have admitted that scientific knowledge has huge gaps needing to be filled. So you want me to have confidence in something that is clearly full of holes. When I point out that repeated observation of an event doesn't imply that that event has always been so or always will be so without some kind of supernormal enforcement, you deny it and insist the burden of proof is on my shoulders. You don't realize that you've met the ultimate skeptic, whose skepticism has been developed at the very feet of the people you want me to trust.

Ben, I believe the way I do because I trust God, not men. I have investigated Christianity with the same skeptical eye, having also been burned by churchmen repeatedly. Instead of taking verses about infants' heads being dashed against stones at face value, I've sought out all possible meanings – including the one that stresses “*your*”, as would be the case of an Israelite parent whose child had been killed in this manner by conquerors; check it out with Jason. I take this approach to all data – that there can be many interpretations of it, and I should not be part of a rush to judgment, while even so having a need to make quick decisions. The Resurrection satisfies both my brain and my heart with its trustworthiness, and lets me be the complete human being I want to be. After Jesus rose, the chief priests and elders created the story that the disciples stole the body of Jesus. That makes rational sense, fitting with the existing body of scientific knowledge – except for all the data, and for the stirring of the heart.

So if you want me to take evolutionary science seriously at all, you'd better deal with the foundations first. And you'd better deal with both the rational and the emotional aspects of the issue.

Oh, and as to you fighting two at once, I haven't been collaborating in this debate with anyone else. Have you not been consulting other people? No discussions with friends, and no postings to TalkOrigins or elsewhere for advice? Besides, if you go into O'Malley's Bar and yell “Ireland stinks!”, you might want to take some responsibility for the result.

To Rolley:

Yes, you understand my position correctly, that I reconcile Christianity and ToE/geology/etc by interpreting Genesis differently (and a few other passages, as well).

Here are my thoughts on your line of thinking:
On (1), Few of us take the Bible at face value. It's a rare American Christian who really believes that "it is harder for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven than a camel to pass through the eye of a needle". Likewise, the stories of Abraham being willing to sacrifice Isaac, or the psalmist rejoicing at the thought of dashing an enemy's child against a rock, or commandments on managing the sale of one's daughter as a sexual slave/wife to another man.. all of these, if taken at face value, are utterly repulsive to us today.

(2) and (3) look fine to me.

Hmm. In this discussion, I feel that at best I can hope to convince you and Lee that evolution and an old Earth are Biblically tolerable. While I believe the science is overwhelmingly conclusive on these points, and that the Genesis story in no way agrees with what we find in nature's historical record, I find it difficult to argue the science here. This is because we only skim the surface of any aspect of the science, which makes it hard to make a conclusive case one way or the other. /sigh. Superficial analyses don't do much for either side... which is why I'd like to get enough into the details to show you that you have a real riddle on your hands. But it may be that your mind(s) are unchangeable, and that you'll just fall back to "I trust God to make it work somehow".

This isn't helped by the bad science education many face-value-ists have; if I had a nickel for every time I heard "the second law of Thermodynamics contradicts evolution", I'd be able to pay off my student loans.

I'm not sure you can change my mind, either (although you're taking the best possible tack for it, I think). I've seen the data, and there seem to be only two valid interpretations: evolution and an old Earth, or God has actively engineered an Earth that looks old.

.. I see LQ's latest reply. Good timing, friend.

So, LQ first: I'm of the mind that rationality and logic do not need God to exist (you've yet to give me a reason to believe otherwise). Most mathematics follows from logic, so we don't need God to know that 2+2=4.

You say, "In the absence of a rational God upholding rationality, ... all our discoveries today about the past have no meaning." Really? I don't think so. Regardless of the existence of a rational God, watching apples fall from trees over and over tells us what they'll probably do next time, too. It's not just data, it's useful observations that teaches us the smart way to grow crops, raise livestock, build machinery, and eventually, the mechanics of civilization.

You say that creationism, ID, Hindu beliefs and evolution are just different interpretations of the same data. But this isn't true, really. Only science (evolution/geology/astronomy/etc) is willing to deal with all of the physical data. In particular, Young-earth creationism ignores 99% of the data, but most laypeople are ignorant enough of the data supporting an old-earth that it *looks* like just different interpretations of data. You might as well say that the theory that federal saboteurs blew up the Twin Towers is an alternate valid "interpretation" to the theory that it was brought down by terrorists in airplanes.

I started to write up a hypothetical detective story to show how scientists go through the data, looking at all the possible interpretations of the data and testing them, but it got a little long. To me, it seems overly simplistic to say that you even *can* just call it a difference of interpretation, as there are scores of ways that we can compare and test the Noachian/Genesis stories versus old Earth/evolution ideas. Many of these are quite detailed and rigorous.. but I think even the simplistic ones are enough to toss creation scientists back into confusion. Such as.. when looking at sedimentary rocks that were supposedly laid down in the Flood, we also find solidified magma in and on top of these layers. If we take a conservative estimate of how much magma there is and at what temperature it melts, we find that in cooling, the lava would have released enough energy to boil off the oceans.

You also get similar (or often, larger) amounts of heat released from forming the kilometers-thick deposits of limestone we find, or looking at all the meteor impacts we find over the planet. How do you deal with meteor craters that cut through the sedimentary rocks that should have been laid down in the flood, but also shows hundreds of millions of years of erosion?

Out of curiosity, why do you say that evolution looks good on the surface but is nonsense underneath? I mean, 99% of research biologists believe in it, including the Christian ones, and I think they probably understand evolution better than you or I.


With respect to laws of nature appearing ex nihilo and sticking around, scientists have long been working on why this is so. The LHC is supposed to help us understand the nature of mass, there has been discussion on whether physical constants are really "constant" or not, and even experiments that put (tentative) upper bounds on how much the speed of light has changed since the universe was born. And much, much more! For the sake of brevity, I won't go into all of it. But yes, scientists are researching these areas.

Sidenote: In this conversation, I've tried to consistently use "law" to mean repeatability, since repeatability/rationality is what we're discussing. It's not breaking a "law" of nature to go further/faster than we have before and see something different happening, nor is it really relevant here, I think.

The Chinese characters website and evolution have a major difference between the two of them: when you dig deeper and look at the details, evolution holds up, but a Chinese-Genesis connection does not. I don't mean to sound cocky or like I'm just blowing hot air, which is why I keep offering to dig deeper with you on one of these areas. Ah, well.

(Last time I did this, Ben had jumped from his corner just moments before. We'll see if he was saved by the bell this time...)

No answer for 5 full days? Looks like the poet laureate's jab was effective.

This is historic, folks. This is Homer hitting the Hydra, Shakespeare cleaning Grendel's clock, St. Columba rebuking the Loch Ness monster, Milton personally kicking Satan from heaven. This is "Rocky" personally taking out Boris, Natasha, Fearless Leader and Mr. Big while I, Bullwinkle, am still searching for a hat trick.

Gotta watch out for them poets, man! Those hands should be registered as deadly weapons.

And even if I'm wrong, and this is just an extended intermission, we can pray this Holy Week that Christians can still put one in the (Ben) W column. "Come, Just As You Are", but don't stay that way; be transformed.

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Ben, if I’m not mistaken, in your thinking you reconcile Christianity and ToE by finding fault in the way we creationists interpret the Bible, right? I’d be interested in your thoughts to this line of thinking:

1) If we take the Bible at face value, it’s clear Christ Himself made the creation story relevant by implicitly declaring the literal account of the creation story reliable.

2) If Christ knew better and misled us, He’s a liar and a deceiver.

3) On the other hand, if He somehow did not know better, then either He or the Father is a liar and a deceiver, because Christ said He (Christ) spoke only such things that the Father told Him to (John 8:28, 12:49, 14:10).

Which do you believe? Or is it that you think the Bible itself is in error? Or do you believe some combination of the above?

Wouldn’t you agree Christianity rests on the integrity of the One who claimed to be the Savior of the World? Wouldn’t you agree that part of “who Christ is” is “what Christ said”? If what He said is egregiously misleading or erroneous, or if the Bible is fraught with error, especially of this magnitude, on what basis can Christianity stand? What are the essentials of the faith? How do we know they are true?

I cannot with intellectual honesty reconcile Christianity and ToE. Just how do you do it?

“When a man who is honestly mistaken hears the truth, he will either quit being mistaken, or quit being honest.”

...but Ben's already back on his feet. Apparently it was premature to claim victory.

I'll let SBK answer if we need God to explain why 2+2-4, but I'll note that I'm firmly in the camp that not only do we need Him to explain it now, but also why 2+2=4 was always true and why we should expect it to continue to be true. Without that, we can't claim that repeatable experiments have any meaning - or are even truly repeatable - and so the foundation science crumbles.

In the absence of a rational God upholding rationality for our finite minds from yesterday to today and into tomorrow, all our discoveries today about the past have no meaning. It's just a lot of data. It's only when one applies an (ahem) *interpretation* of that data that evolution can be discussed. And creationism, ID and others (such as the Hindu beliefs about origins) are differing interpretations of the same data. We weren't there. We have to perform forensics, using the scientific data as a basis, but also creating a conjecture to which that data conforms. Yet, there's knowing the guy's guilty, but not having the data that proves it.

Speaking of conjectures, why is it, Ben, that you insist my interpretation of Genesis is *merely* my interpretation, but your interpretation of data supporting evolution is *not* an interpretation, but established *fact*? You appear to insist that I be open-minded about my beliefs, while not being willing to respond in kind.

With respect to laws of nature appearing ex nihilo and being enforced on the universe without policing, yet being consistently obeyed, well, it's interesting that scientific types want to charge full tilt at every other windmill, but are afraid of that one. It brings into question "What does the word 'law' mean in this context?" Apparently, like Humpty Dumpty, it means whatever you choose it to mean. I guess it means that we can expect gravity to continue to work in the future, and that it worked identically the same way throughout the past, but we have no idea why - and no interest whatsoever in figuring out why. Curiouser and curiouser...

The bush *was* burning, but was not consumed - which is why Moses took the time to check it out. Are you saying that Scripture is flat-out wrong on that point, and that Moses made it up?

When God walked on water, and had Peter do the same, that was a new, non-scientific revelation about the natural world. But if you don't believe Moses, you won't believe even if someone rose from the dead.

Evolution claims that humans are a result of random mutations of hominids. If those hominids were not originally sinful, but at some point became so, then it's also possible that there is a branch of our evolutionary tree that includes non-sinful advanced hominids. I believe Richard Dawkins places himself in that category, needing no Savior because sin is merely a social construct. Thoughts?

The Chinese characters website was intended to show several thought-provoking coincidences, not to provide an airtight proof. You're free to pooh-pooh it the same way I pooh-pooh the evidence that the Earth is 4.5bn years old.

Many things, including evolution, look plausible on the surface but are nonsense underneath. That's why I keep harping on the point about unwritten, unenforced "laws".

And I'm sure you'd like to argue about one point such as flood geology, Ben, but you'll never convince me that it's anything other than your interpretation versus mine, unless you can tell me why the data is philosophically meaningful. If there is no God, as Chuck likes to quote from Dostoyevsky, then ***all*** things are permissible. That would include an irrational universe where experiments only work *most* of the time. We're only about 500 years removed from the Middle Ages, y'know, when many people believed in magic - i.e., that irrational forces were not only existent but pragmatically useful.

But you keep wanting me to state that I'll give up my beliefs if you do something. (You haven't signed up for the same gambit on your own behalf.) In the spirit of friendship and sportsmanship (odd, in the context of seeking to knock someone out with one's fists, but oh well), I'll comply: prove to me that scientific laws and a rational universe can exist without God making it all possible, continuously, and I'll seriously entertain evolution as a worldview.

(Incidentally, some people are convinced that not only does Gina exist, but that it is possible to have a *personal* relationship with her. In fact, they claim that she would prefer such a relationship to being viewed as merely a distant, angry schoolmarm. She has provided multiple descriptions of herself, some of which we recorded while hiding in the cleft between keyboard and screen of our laptop. But it's a good thing she doesn't have an only begotten son, since we might not treat him as he'd deserve. In fact, we might even do him great harm...)

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Ouch! What the…?!?

Here I am peacefully cutting z’s, and all of a sudden out of the blue, thwack, Halley’s comet makes contact with the back of my head.

Carl Sagan, somehow I just know you’re behind this.

So sorry to go off-topic again, Gina; I was just wondering if anyone else….

Ouch!

If I had an only begotten son, I could send him -- but I don't, so I guess you all are out of luck.

;-)

Who thinks in first person plural:

(Oh dear oh dear oh dear; Rolley's really gone and done it now. He's deliberately stretched the limits of conformity by showing that justice doesn't always reign at The Point. He's posted more ASCII art, and only made a passing attempt to refer to the topic.

His exercise of freedom could lead many seriously astray.

It could, for example, lead some to conclude "There is no Gina." That, in fact, billions of comments are posted at The Point every day, and only the strongest survive to appear on the site and be visible to others. That furthermore, random typographical changes appear in postings from Point bloggers, resulting in grammar and spelling that is uniformly correct except when an entirely new word is coined and becomes common usage. Or, that bits inside some computer from long, long ago are what we perceive on our screens, and that actually they are the result of computer processes that have been running for decades, giving the appearance of having been designed.

Others may become agnostic toward the question of Gina, preferring to avoid the issue of how all this content gets funded, created and maintained. They may like to come here and read for their own profit, but could avoid providing any worth-ship to anyone. Or maybe they're wounded, having been cruelly edited very early in life, or believe nonsense like "all blogs are fundamentally the same" or "I can comment just as well without joining a blog, thank you!"

Those of us who believe in a loving, benevolent, merciful and gracious Gina and the reality of the rest of the PFM Host will naturally come into conflict with the agnostics and especially the atheists. We will feel impelled to defend Gina's existence, even though we have never seen her or have any proof other than that we feel her presence. We have no undeniable evidence that each posting is the result of intelligent creative effort, but nonetheless, we believe. Of course, some of us can put together long proofs, but none of them are undeniable. Even so, we are not swayed by the catcalls of those who say that everything we see here is just bits affected by cosmic rays, randomly mutating into sentences over a long period of time. Or they'll try to dredge up old conundrums like "What *really* happened to Friar Thom?" Certainly our referring to many stories of chipmunks and squirrels that blessed us mightily will not mean much, alas.

Is there an experiment we can do to prove Gina's existence to all those skeptics?

Well, one way is to violate the rules and see if a big schoolmarmy ruler comes out of the sky and smacks us. But then, Rolley goes off-topic all the time and doesn't get smacked. We could argue that brilliantly gifted poets have a special relationship with the Editor, but that could let skeptics claim that Gina is clearly unfair and therefore could not exist or isn't worth heeding.

On the other hand, gadfly know-it-alls have historically had fewer recorded revelations of Gina's merited favor than those aforesaid poets. So maybe this will work.

We could try talking smack about another commenter! Let's give it a go: )

x x
(o ) Ben, flat on his back in the ring.


^ ^
O O
( O) A victorious Muhammad aLeeQuod!


(Ah, but what if there is no response from Gina??!? We could claim she has far bigger responsibilities than reacting to our every petty and selfish request for proof of her existence, but that certainly won't convince any doubters. We could point out that Rolley's prayers about TypePad were answered, but they'd quickly respond that Rolley still ain't completely happy so what's the use of offering petitions anyway? Humpf. Maybe William Lane Craig or Peter Kreeft or somebody wicked smart like them has published a cosmological argument for the existence of Gina. The research could take us a while, though. On the plus side, that would give Ben more time for a thoughtful response to the creation/evolution thing. Off to do a lot of Googling...)

Steve, thanks for the discussion. To answer your question, "what is the point" of arguing for a universe that doesn't require God, I guess I'd just say that I've become skeptical of most ontological arguments for God. Most of what they "explain" are equally well explained under materialism, so I consider that fight a draw. I argue here to see if anyone has any new points, and because I enjoy it. (I highly encourage you to search out the materialist rebuttals to these ontological arguments!).

But no, I don't only "know people who see the world as rational and don't need God to explain it", I see it that way myself. Without a good reason why the world *wouldn't* operate by laws, why would we need God to explain it? Do we need God to explain why 2+2=4? Or why I wore tennis shoes this morning? Or why it was a windy day?


LQ, early post: tell me you didn't really just use the "You weren't there, so how do you know it happened?" argument. *None* of us were there, and all we have are the revelations that came a few thousand years ago to the priests of a specific tribe. Interpretation of what they wrote is key here.. and I think it's valid to also look at the physical evidence, to aid in interpretation.

I can understand why you're sympathetic to this argument, though. So long as you trust man 100% to hear from God and interpret His words perfectly, it makes sense. But is man's interpretation consistently correct?

LQ again, your last post:
We're missing each other, somehow. With respect to laws, can you give me a reason why the universe *shouldn't* operate by laws? Why does the universe *need* a God to operate by laws? Couldn't it just.. be that way?

Sorry, your superconductor fails. If the bush was "burning", then it was above the temperature where wood combusts. Heat superconductivity doesn't factor into it.
But really, you know, I was trying to see if anyone would take my challenge about God providing new revelation about the natural world through something other than science. Jason keeps saying that to accept only physical evidence is already a compromised position, and I was trying to give him a chance to show the efficacy of other methods =P.

On "who Christ died for": well, that's easy, then. Apply it to your own argument: whenever proto/humans became sinful, Christ died for them - and we'll use God's definition for "human", whatever that may be. You answered your own question. I'll also note that none of your verses really support that Christ had complete revelation - they're all just vague enough that they can be interpreted a lot of different ways.

I like that you provided a link to how Chinese characters "show" the ancient Chinese knew the Genesis creation story. I've been studying Chinese only a year, but it was easy to spot where they played fast-and-loose with definitions and radicals. It's also easy to look up the older forms of the words, see how they changed, and then note that the interpretation provided doesn't fit with the historical usages. I'm happy to go into this deeper, if you like. =D

But this Chinese character / Genesis story thing is a great example of what I'm talking about! Say you are presented with something that's wrong, but looks good on the surface. Most people won't/can't dig deeper into it, so they accept it at face value. This is how almost all of the "rebuttals" of evolution work - great on the surface, nonsense underneath. It's also true of most Republican vs. Democrat talking points, and atheist talking points about Christians.

And so what if this argument gets shot down as inaccurate? There are plenty more! If you are only looking for confirmation for your beliefs, you'll always find it.

To be honest, I'd love to really get into the nitty-gritty of one of the old vs young Earth or evo vs creation points, and us just discuss it thoroughly until we reach a consensus. Maybe even focus on one of the points we can check ourselves, like whether you can get many fine, distinct layers of sand deposited over short periods. But would there be a point? If we found, through careful debate and experimentation, that there was no way the Flood could account for modern geology, would you give up your position?


Rolley, to be a Christian requires a belief in miracles (of which the Resurrection was the most important). Genesis is a separate thing, as there are also literary and historical reasons to take it non-literally. So, there's no need to connect "throwing out" the literal creation story with throwing out the Resurrection.

On miracles: my belief in science could weaken my belief in miracles, if it showed that miracle "healings" didn't last, or that miracles occurred no more often through prayer as not. Or, it could just be "we're doin it wrong", and God doesn't perform miracles much any more. But I don't think science rules out miracles a priori, it just looks a bit more closely at them.