Thinking
Christianly
about
Science
Dr. Ard Louis
Department of Physics
University of Oxford
www.cis.org.uk
www.faraday-institute.org
www.cpgrad.org.uk
Cross-cultural, broad-brush talk
Words
Customs
Traditions
Behaviour
Beliefs
Values
Assumptions
• Christian sub-culture(s)
• Scientific sub-cultures
• culture is often “caught”
not “taught”
Biological self-assembly
QuickTime™ and a
YUV420 codec decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
http://www.npn.jst.go.jp/ Keiichi Namba, Osaka
• Biological systems self-assemble (they make themselves)
• Can we understand?
• Can we emulate? (Nanotechnology)
Virus self-assembly
viruses
• Self-assembled from identical subunits (capsomers).
• Characteristic number T.
• Capsid T: 12 pentamers, 10(T - 1) hexamers.
3/12/2016
Self-assembly of “computer viruses”
Computer viruses?
Monte-Carlo simulations: stochastic optimisation
http://www-thphys.physics.ox.ac.uk/user/IainJohnson/
Self-assembly with legos?
Christian reaction: Fear?
Science has proven:
There is no God
Science and faith?
Big, fun! questions:
Is there a God? Is there more to life than this?
How do I obtain reliable knowledge about the world?
Some Christian and Islamic writers seem unwilling to examine deeply held beliefs,
presumably because they are afraid that this kind of thing is bad news for faith. Well, maybe
it is -- for intellectually deficient and half-baked ideas. But it doesn’t need to be like this.
There are intellectually robust forms of faith -- the kind of thing we find in writers such as
Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, and C.S. Lewis. They weren’t afraid to think about
their faith, and ask hard questions about its evidential basis, its internal consistency, or the
adequacy of its theories
Alister McGrath in Finding Dawkins’ God, Blackwell (2004)
OUTLINE
• What does the Bible say about the
natural world?
• Thinking about science and certainty
• The Origins debate ...
The Bible
• B] The Bible, as originally given, is the
inspired, inerrant and infallible word of
God. Christians must therefore submit
to its supreme authority and sufficiency,
both individually and corporately, in
every matter of belief and conduct.
• South East Gospel Partnership DB
Biblical or cultural?
Interpreting the Bible
•
•
•
•
What kind of language?
What kind of literature?
What kind of audience?
What kind of context?
•The antidote to bad interpretation is not no
interpretation, but good interpretation, based on
common sense guidelines
•G. Fee and D. Stuart, “How to Read the Bible for All It Is Worth”,
Zondervan (1993), p17
God reveals himself through nature
• Romans 1:18
18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven
against all the godlessness and wickedness of men
who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since
what may be known about God is plain to them,
because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since
the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his
eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly
seen, being understood from what has been made,
so that men are without excuse.
God reveals himself through nature
• Psalm 19:
1 The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies
proclaim the work of his hands.
2 Day after day they pour forth speech; night after
night they display knowledge.
God reveals himself through nature
• Psalm 8:
3 When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
4 what is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?
Milky way: 100 Billion stars
Universe: 100 Billion galaxies
"he also made the stars" .. Gen 1:16
God reveals himself through nature
Thinking Christianly about the
natural world....
• Wonder and Worship
• Fearfully and wonderfully made ...
“The
work of a scientist in this project, particularly a scientist who has
the joy of also being a Christian, is a work of discovery which can also
be a form of worship. As a scientist, one of the most exhilarating
experiences is to learn something….that no human has understood
before.
To have a chance to see the glory of creation, the intricacy of it, the
beauty of it, is really an experience not to be matched. Scientists who
do not have a personal faith in God also undoubtedly experience the
Francis Collins
Director, National Human
Genome Research
Institute, USA
exhilaration of discovery. But to have that joy of discovery, mixed
together with the joy of worship, is truly a powerful moment for a
Christian who is also a scientist”
See also his book “The Language of God” (2006)
God reveals himself through nature
• Austrian Alps
“It was a beautiful afternoon and suddenly the remarkable beauty of creation
around me was so overwhelming, I felt, ‘I cannot resist this another moment’.”
-- Francis Collins on his conversion.
God created and sustains the world
• “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” Gen 1:1
• “All things were made by him, and without him ws not anything made
that was made” John 1:3
• “For by him [Christ] all things were created … and in him all things hold
together” Col 1:16,17
• “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory … sustaining all things by his
powerful word” Heb 1:3
• “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and
power, for you created all things and by your will they existed and were
created”, Rev 4:11
Biblical language of creation
•
•
•
He makes springs pour water into ravines; it flows between the
mountains; the wild donkeys quench their thirst Psalm 104: 10,11
(praising God’s creation)
"Do you hunt the prey for the lioness and satisfy the hunger of the lions
when they crouch in their dens or lie in wait in a thicket? Who provides
food for the raven when its young cry out to God and wander about for
lack of food? Job 38:39-41
For behold, he who forms the mountains and creates (bara’) the wind,
and declares to man what is his thought, who makes the morning
darkness, and treads on the heights of the earth—the Lord, the God of
hosts, is his name! Amos 4:13
• “Natural” processes are described both as divine and non-divine
actions
• 2 perspectives on the same natural world
‘Science’ studies the
“Customs of the Creator”
• If God were to stop “sustaining all things” the world would stop
existing
•
Donald MacKay, The Clockwork Image, IVP
• “An act of God is so marvelous that only the daily doing takes off
the admiration”
•
John Donne (Eighty Sermons, #22 published in 1640)
• “Miracles” are not God “intervening in the laws of nature”: they
are God working in less customary ways
Interpreting the Bible
•
•
•
•
What kind of language?
What kind of literature?
What kind of audience?
What kind of context?
• All truth is God’s truth, so, properly
interpreted, science and the Bible
cannot contradict
Bible is not a science textbook
•
The whole point of scripture is to bring us to
a knowledge of Christ --- and having come to
know him (and all that this implies), we
should come to a halt and not expect to
learn more. Scripture provides us with
spectacles through which we may view the
world as God’s creation and self-expression;
it does not, and was never intended, to
provide us with an infallible repository of
astronomical and medical information.
John Calvin
1509-1564
The Bible...
• The Bible:
• God created the world
• Nature attests to God’s qualities (Rom 1, Psalms)
• God sustains the universe
• Biblical language of Divine action (God sent the rain)
• Bible is not a science textbook, but ...
• world has a beginning
• stars, sun, and moon are not Gods etc...
OUTLINE
• What does the Bible say about the
natural world?
• Thinking about science and certainty
• The Origins debate ...
Science/Religion and the
conflict metaphor?
“Science and religion cannot be reconciled ...
Religion has failed, and its failures should be
exposed. Science, with its currently
successful pursuit of universal competence
… should be acknowledged the king”
--Prof Peter Atkins, Oxford U, in 1995
Science/Religion and the
conflict metaphor?
“I don’t know any historian of science, of any
religious persuasion or none, who would hold
to the theory that conflict is the name of the
game between science and religion, it simply
isn’t true.”
--Prof Colin Russell, Open University, UK
Science/Religion and the
conflict metaphor?
• Pervasive myth (Emperor has no clothes?)
• Scientists are about as religious as the
general population (e.g. Oxford Physics)
• e.g. Galileo example far more complex
• Really about Aristotle/Greek cosmology
• “Galilieo Connection”, Prof Charles Hummel, IVP
(1986)
Christian origins of science
• Science has deeply Christian roots.
•
•
•
•
Uniformity
Rationality
Intelligibility
See e.g. books by Stanley Jaki; R. Hooykaas; e.g.
China
• Royal Society, the word’s first scientific society.
Founded in London July 15, 1662, many were
Puritans
Founders of Royal Society
• “This most beautiful
system of the sun,
planets and comets
could only proceed
from the counsel
and dominion of an
intelligent being.”
• Sir Isaac Newton
Founders of Royal Society
• Wrote “The Wisdom of God
Manifested in Works of
Creation”, governor of the
“Corporation for the Spread
of the Gospel of Jesus Christ
in New England
• Sir Robert Boyle(1627-1691)
Mechanism v.s. Meaning
• Conflating mechanism and meaning is origin
of most confusion
why is the water boiling?
Nothing Buttery
humans are collections of chemicals:
enough P for 2000 matches
enough Cl to disinfect
a swimming pool
enough Fe for 1 nail
enough fat to make
10 bars of soap
Nothing Buttery
humans are collections of chemicals:
enough P for 2000 matches
enough Cl to disinfect
a swimming pool
enough Fe for 1 nail
enough fat to make
10 bars of soap
Nothing Buttery
humans are collections of chemicals:
enough P for 2000 matches
enough Cl to disinfect
a swimming pool
enough Fe for 1 nail
enough fat to make
0.1 bars of soap
Scientism
“The cosmos is all there is or ever
was or ever will be”
Carl Sagan, Cornell U
“The most important questions in life are
not susceptible to solution by the
scientific method”
Bill Newsome, Stanford U.
Limits of Science?
• Science is a great and glorious enterprise
- the most successful, I argue, that human
beings have ever engaged in. To reproach
it for its inability to answer all the
questions we should like to put to it is no
more sensible than to reproach a railway
locomotive for not flying or, in general,
not performing any other operation for
which it was not designed.
-- Sir Peter Medawar, The Limits of Science,
(Oxford University Press, Oxford (1987))
God of the gaps?
•
•
that couldn’t have happened by “natural means” --> God into the gap
“When we come to the scientifically unknown, our correct policy is not to rejoice because
we have found God; it is to become better scientists”
•
Prof. Charles Coulson, Oxford U
Newton and the planets
• “This most beautiful
system of the sun,
planets and comets
could only proceed
from the counsel
and dominion of an
intelligent being.”
• Sir Isaac Newton
Newton and the planets
18th century Orrery from a
London coffee house, used to
show the perfection of the
orbits, which reflect God’s
perfection
Leibnitz objects
“For, as Leibniz objected,
if God had to remedy the
defects of his creation, this
was surely to demean his
craftmanship”
•John Hedley Brooke, Science
and Religion, CUP 1991, p147
Immediatism: Leibniz objects
•“And I hold, that when God
works miracles, he does not do it
in order to supply the wants of
nature, but those of grace.
Whoever thinks otherwise, must
needs have a very mean notion of
the wisdom and power of God”
Laplace and Napoleon
• Mécanique Céleste
(1799-1825)
• Napoleon: Why
have you not
mentioned the
creator?
• "Je n'avais pas
besoin de cette
hypothèse-là.”
Chaos and the planets
• Our understanding of the Solar System has been
revolutionized over the past decade by the finding that the
orbits of the planets are inherently chaotic. In extreme cases,
chaotic motions can change the relative positions of the planets
around stars, and even eject a planet from a system.
• The role of chaotic resonances in the Solar System, N.
Murray and M. Holman, Nature 410, 773-779 (12 April 2001)
Populism and Paley
• God only present through interventions?
• God present in the whole thing?
- (providence - sustains all things ... Col 1:15)
Natural laws -- customs of the creator
Miracles -- God working in un-customary ways
• always for a theological purpose
Arguments from science:
• Unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics
• Fine-tuning in cosmology
Unreasonable effectiveness of
mathematics
Quantum Mechanics + Relativity = Antimatter
Schrödinger equation (Quantum Mechanics)
+
Energy-Momentum (Special Relativity)
=
Dirac Equation (1928)
Electrons
Positrons (antimatter) discovered 1932
See also: “The applicability of mathematics as a philosophical problem”, Mark Steiner HUP (1998);
E. Wigner
"The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences," in Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics, vol. 13,
No. I (February 1960)
Science and Beauty
A Scientist does not study
nature because it is useful; he
studies it because he delights in
it, and he delights in it because
it is beautiful. If nature were not
beautiful, it would not be worth
knowing, and if nature were not
worth knowing, life would not be
worth living.
Henri Poincaré 1854 – 1912
Fine Tuning and the
Anthropic Principle
• “The universe is the way it is, because we are here”
– Prof. Stephen Hawking, Cambridge U
• If the [fine structure constant] were changed by 1%,
the sun would immediately explode
-- Prof. Max Tegmark, U. Penn
• “Just Six Numbers” by Sir Martin Rees
We are made of Stardust
He
C via a resonance
• Sir Fred Hoyle,
Cambridge U
• “A common sense
interpretation of the
facts suggests that a
superintellect has
monkeyed with
physics .. and biology”
• His atheism was
“deeply shaken”
Fine Tuning and the
Anthropic Principle
• Fine tuning is not a proof of God, but seems
more consistent with theism than atheism
• Note the difference with “God of the gaps”
• We seem to have three choices'... We can dismiss it as
happenstance, we can acclaim it as the workings of providence,
or (my preference) we can conjecture that our universe is a
specially favoured domain in a still vaster multiverse.’ If this
multiverse contained every possible set of laws and conditions,
then the existence of our own world with its particular
characteristics would be inevitable.”
• Sir Martin Rees (just 6 numbers) --
• John Leslie firing squad argument
Tapestry arguments and inference
to the best explanation
The Golemization of Relativity, David Mermin,
Physics Today 49, p11 April 1996
Science is a tapestry
-- you can pick at a few strings, but that
doesn’t break the whole cloth
Why do I believe in Jesus Christ?
tapestry argument:
If we are to understand the nature of reality, we have only two possible starting
points: either the brute fact of the physical world or the brute fact of a divine will
and purpose behind that physical world
. Religion in Dialogue, (1995).
John Polkinghorne, Serious Talk: Science and
I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risennot only because I see it, but because by it, I see everything else.
C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory,Harper Collins, San Francisco (2001).
Witnessing to scientists
• To first order just like everyone else
• To second order, more likely to be interested in
apologetic arguments
• Worldview issues are key here --
• Often open to idealism (e.g. Ard’s career talk)
Summary of first part
• What does the Bible say?
•
•
•
•
Good interpretation is key:
God created and sustains the world
God reveals himself through nature (Natural Theology)
Not a science text book, but …
• Thinking about science and apologetics = mainly philosophy/world
view issues:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Conflict metaphor for history
Mechanism and meaning
Nothing buttery
Scientism and the limits of science
God of the gaps and miracles
Unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics
Fine-tuning and anthropic principle
Tapestry arguments and inference to the best explanation
History of life on earth
• Does where we come from determine who we are
and how we should live?
OUTLINE
•Origin of life?
•Defining words: Evolution
•Modern themes in evolutionary theory
•Christian approaches to biological complexity
•YECS
•Progressive creation (concordism)
•Theistic evolution (biologos)
•Intelligent Design (ID)
•Interpretation of Genesis 1-3
History of life on earth
earth forms from
accretion disk
Grandeur of God?
•humans -- last 2 seconds of 24 hr day
•not unlike astronomy: the heavens declare the
Glory of God - Psalm 19
•What is man that you are mindful of him?
Psalm 8
Late Heavy Bombardement
4-3.8 Billion years
Brutal: some impacts probably
vaporized the sea.
Any life wiped out
First fossils?
• First chemical evidence for fossilized life -- 3.8 to 3.5
Billion years ago
• -- evidence is C12 enrichment
• -- Hopanes from cyanobacteria (microbes
responsible for generating Oxygen) found 2.5 Billion
year old shale
Origin of life
Cambrian Explosion
what happened here?
Origin of life?
Origin of life
• The problem of the origin of life has much in common with a
well-constructed detective story. There is no shortage of clues
pointing to the way in which the crime, the contamination of the
pristine environment of the early earth, was committed. On the
contrary, there are far too many clues and far too many
suspects. It would be hard to find two investigators who agree
on even the broad outline of events.
• Leslie Orgel (1998)
Aside: Defining Evolution
•
Evolution as Natural History
•the earth is old (+/- 4.5 Billion years)
•more complex life forms followed from simpler life forms
•
Evolution as a mechanism for the emergence of biological
complexity
•generated by mutations and natural selection
(note: most Christians agree that God created this mechanism)
• Evolution as a “big picture” worldview (scientism)
George Gaylord Simpson:
"Man is the result of a purposeless and materialistic process that did not have
him in mind. He was not planned. He is a state of matter, a form of life, a sort
of animal, and a species of the Order Primates, akin nearly or remotely to all
of life and indeed to all that is material."
or Richard Dawkins:
"Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”
Language: Random or stochastic?
• Random mutations and natural selection...
• Stochastic (Monte Carlo) optimisation
• e.g. used to price your stock portfolio .....
Lego blocks or clay?
• Evo-Devo Lego Blocks:
•
•
•
•
•
pax6
sonic-hedgehog
shaven-baby
tinman
Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science
of Evo Devo and the Making of the Animal
Kingdom. S.B. Carroll (Blackwell Science 2005)
Why so few genes?
Mycoplasma genitalium (483)
(300 minimum?)
Drosophila Melanogaster
(13,500)
E.coli (5416)
C. elegans (19,500) & P.
pacificus (29,000)
S. cerevisiae (5800)
H. sapiens (22,000)
Why so few genes?
We share 15% of our genes with E. coli
“
“
25% “ “ “
“ yeast
“
“
50% “ “ “
“ flies
“
“
70% “ “ “
“ frogs
“
“
98% “ “ “
“ chimps
what makes us different?
Gene language
Why are there so few genes?
complexity comes from the
interactions
gene networks
systems biology
transcriptional network for yeast:
Saccharomyces cerevisiae
Gene language
[Genes] swarm in huge colonies,
safe inside gigantic lumbering
robots, sealed off from the
outside world, communicating
with it by tortuous indirect
routes, manipulating it by
remote control. They are in you
and me; they created us, body
and mind; and their
preservation is the ultimate
rationale for our existence.
Richard Dawkins -The Selfish Gene (1976)
[Genes] are trapped in huge colonies,
locked inside highly intelligent
beings, moulded by the outside
world, communicating with it by
complex processes, through which,
blindly, as if by magic, function
emerges. They are in you and me; we
are the system that allows their code
to be read; and their preservation is
totally dependent on the joy that we
experience in reproducing ourselves.
We are the ultimate rationale for their
existence.
Denis Noble -The Music of Life: Biology Beyond the
Genome (OUP 2006)
Contingency v.s.``deep structures’’: Re-run
the tape of evolution?
“Wind back the tape of life to the early days of the Burgess Shale; let it play
again from an identical starting point, and the chance becomes vanishingly
small that anything like human intelligence would grace the replay.” In
evolution, there is no direction, no progression. Humanity is dethroned from its
exalted view of its own importance
S.J. Gould: “Wonderful Life”; (W.W. Norton 1989)
When you examine the tapestry of evolution you see the same patterns emerging
over and over again. Gould's idea of rerunning the tape of life is not hypothetical;
it's happening all around us. And the result is well known to biologists —
evolutionary convergence. When convergence is the rule, you can rerun the tape
of life as often as you like and the outcome will be much the same. Convergence
means that life is not only predictable at a basic level; it also has a direction.
Simon Conway Morris “Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely
Universe”; (CUP, 2003)
Convergent Evolution?
"For the harmony of the world is made manifest in
Form and Number, and the heart and soul and all
poetry of Natural Philosophy are embodied in the
concept of mathematical beauty." (On Growth and
Form, 1917.)
Convergent evolution in mechanical design of lamnid sharks and
tunas
Jeanine M. Donley, et al. Nature 429, 61-65 (6 May 2004)
Convergent Evolution
North America:
Placental Sabre-toothed cat
South America”
Marsupial Sabre-toothed cat
Convergent Evolution
compound eye
camera eye
Convergent Evolution?
•
•
Enormous number of examples ... from proteins to vision up to societies to
intelligence.
Are rational conscious beings an inevitable outcome? “
The principal aim of this book has been to show that the constraints of evolution and the
ubiquity of convergence make the emergence of something like ourselves a nearinevitability. SCM, “Life’s Solution”, (CUP 2005) pp328
Christian approaches to emergence
of biological complexity
•
•
Origins: does where we come from determine who we are and how we
should then live?
Christian approaches:
•
Young Earth Creation Science
• Earth is about 10,000 years old
• Genesis 1,2 are historical in the modern sense
• mainly in the last 50 years
•
Progressive Creationism
• Earth is old
• Complexity came about through miracles
• Varied views on exegesis of Genesis
•
Theistic Evolution
• Earth is old
• Complexity came about through normal processes of God
• Genesis 1,2 are theological (framework view --prose poem)
•
Intelligent Design
• All the above views are strictly ‘creationists’ and believe in intelligent design
• Capital ID is a more recent movement, could be YECS, PE, or TE.
The Bible and creation
• The Bible:
• God created the world
• Nature attests to God’s qualities (Rom 1, Psalms)
• God sustains the universe
• Biblical language of Divine action (God sent the rain)
• Bible is not a science textbook
• world has a beginning
• stars, sun, and moon are not Gods etc...
YECS
•GOOD
•
•
•
•
Motivated by desire to uphold scripture
easiest to rationalise with Genesis
great at popularisations
Good understanding of the dangers of evolutionism
•LESS GOOD
•
characterised by heated rhetoric and false dichotomies:
But can't we be Christian evolutionists, they say. Yes, no doubt it is possible to be a Christian and an evolutionist. Likewise,
one can be a Christian thief, or a Christian adulterer, or a Christian liar! Christians can be inconsistent and illogical about many
things, but that doesn't make them right.
-- HM Morris, 1980, King of Creation, pp.83-84
•
•
•
•
Reinforces conflict metaphor
Often fast and lose with quotes and science
Disconnected from scientific community and tapestry arguments
very hard to reconcile with science (Avaroism?)
• http://www.answersingenesis.org/
• http://www.icr.org/
• Ken Ham, Henry Morris, Duane Gish, Jonathan Safrati
Advice from Augustine
• It is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a
Christian, while presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture,
taking nonsense. We should take all means to prevent such an
embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance
in a Christian and laugh it to scorn .... If they find a Christian
mistaken in a field which they themselves know well, and hear
him maintain his foolish opinions about the Scriptures, how then
are they going to believe those Scriptures in matters concerning
the resurrection of the dead
• St. Augustine
Advice from Augustine
In matters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision, we find in
the Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in very
different ways without prejudice to the faith we have received. In
such cases, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our
stand on one side that, if further progress in the search for truth
justly undermines our position, we too fall with it. We should not
battle for our own interpretation but for the teaching of Holy
Scripture. We should not wish to conform the meaning of Holy
Scripture to our interpretation, but our interpretation to the meaning
of Holy Scripture.
Progressive Creationism/Concordism
•GOOD
• Motivated by desire to harmonise scripture with science
• often accepts most of Natural History
• easier to rationalise with scripture than TE
• a “middle way”?
•LESS GOOD
• No one clear scheme -• doesn’t solve some thorny questions (like death before fall)
• Not always as easy to reconcile with science
• http://www.reasons.org/
• Hugh Ross, Norman Geissler
Theistic Evolution/Biologos
•GOOD
• Motivated by desire to harmonise scripture with science
• easier to rationalise with science
• dominant view among professional scientists and theologians
•LESS GOOD
• More difficult to harmonise with scripture
• doesn’t solve some pressing questions (like death before fall)
• Sometimes misses the dangers of “evolutionism”
•
•
http://www.cis.org.uk
http://www.asa3.org
• Francis Collins, Denis Alexander, B.B. Warfield, Henri Blocher
What kind of literature?
•
•
•
Genesis 1-2:3
Phrases that occur 10 times:
• 10 times “God said” (3 for
mankind, 7 for other creatures)
• 10 times creative commands (3 x
“let there be” for heavenly
creatures, 7 x “let” for world
below)
• 10 x To make
• 10 x According to their kind
Phrases that occur 7 times (heptads)
• “and it was so”
• “and God saw that it was good”
•
•
•
•
Genesis 1-2:3
Phrases that occur 3 times
• God blessed
• God created
• God created men and women
Other numerical patterns:
• Intro 1:1-2 contains 21 words
(3 x 7) and conclusion (2: 1-3)
contains 35 words (5 X 7)
• Earth is mentioned 21 times
and “God” 35 times
-- see e.g. H. Blocher “In the
Beginning”, p 33 or E. Lucas
“Can We Believe Genesis Today”
, p 97
What kind of literature?
FRAMEWORK VIEW
SHAPED
• Day 1
• The separation of light and
darkness
• Day 2
• The separation of the
waters to form the sky and
the sea
• Day 3
• The separation of the sea
from dry land and creation
of plants
INHABITED
• Day 4
• The creation of the lights
to rule the day and the
night
• Day 5
• The creation of the birds
and fish to fill the sky
and sea
• Day 6
• The creation of the
animals and humans to
fill the land and eat the
plants
Day 7:
The heavens and earth were finished and God rested
What kind of literature?
•
•
Gen2:4-7 -- more patterns:
These are the generations
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
f.
•
of the heavens
and the earth
when they were created
in the day that the Lord God made
the earth
and the heavens.
Chiastic structure (C. John Collins, Genesis 1-4 P&R (2006))
When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had
yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there
was no man to work the ground, and a mist was going up from the land and
was watering the whole face of the ground— then 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.
•
A completely different emphasis!
What kind of literature?
• More like Revelation than like Luke
• But very clear in its teaching e.g.
• God created the world
• Creation is good
• I Tim 4: 1The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith
and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. 2 Such teachings
come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a
hot iron. 3 They forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain
foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who
believe and who know the truth. 4 For everything God created is good, and
nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, 5 because it is
consecrated by the word of God and prayer.
What kind of literature?
• More like Revelation than like Luke?
• But very clear in its teaching e.g.
• God created the world
• Creation is good
• Man is made in God’s image
• Mankind (adam) has fallen into sin
• A promise of redemption (seed of woman)
• MANY! More things
• No problems with perspecuity on doctrine
What kind of literature?
• Is it chronological?
•
"Now what man of intelligence will believe that the first and
the second and the third day … existed without the sun and
moon and stars?”
•
•
Origen 185 - 254: First Principles, 4.3
“On this subject there are three main views. According to the
first, some wish to understand paradise only in a material
way. According to the second, others wish to take it only in a
spiritual way. According to the third, others understand it
both ways, taking some things materially and others
spiritually. If I may briefly mention my own opinion, I prefer
the third”
•
Augustine of Hippo (354-430) De Gen. ad litt VIII, 1. (on the
literal interpretation of Genesis)
Jewish Commentators
• “…the sages agree that the creation of this earth and sky was a
single divine event and not a series of distinct occurrences
spread out over six or seven days
• N.M. Samuelson, “Judaism and the Doctrine of Creation”,
CUP (1994) p115
• “The text does not point to the order of the [acts] of creation
… the text does not by any means teach which things were
created first and which later [it only] wants to teach us what
was the condition of things at the time when heaven and
earth were created, namely, that the earth was without form
and a confused mass”
• Rashi (1040-1105), “Commentary on Genesis”
• Many more examples, e.g. Maimonides (1135-1204) etc…
Writers of “the Fundamentals”
•
•
•
James Orr
1844-1913
One of the original “Fundamentalists”
There is not a word in the Bible to indicate that in its
view death entered the animal world as a
consequence of the Sin of man.
When you say there is the “six days” and the question
whether those days are meant to be measured by the
twenty-four hours of the sun’s revolution around the
earth -- I speak of these things popularly. It is difficult
to see how they should be so measured when the sun
that is to measure them is not introduced until the
fourth day. Do not think that this larger reading of the
days is a new speculation. You find Augustine in early
times declaring that it is hard or altogether impossible
to say what fashion these days are, and Thomas
Aquinas, in the middle ages, leaving the matter an
open question.
What kind of literature?
• Strong internal hints at “elevated prose”, more like Revelation than
like Luke
•
•
•
•
Two separate narratives (tablets)
Numerical patterns
Thematic patterns
A common understanding of church fathers, early Jewish
commentators and early Evangelical leaders.
• Main theological teachings are crystal clear (perspicuity)
• Physical interpretation less so -- there science can take a “servant
role” and help you decide.
• We must be very careful not to import our own cultural biases into
interpretation
Aside:Emergence of Humans?
e.g. at what age is a child spiritually responsible to God?
John Stott on “Homos Divinus”
Advice from C.S. Lewis
When the author of Genesis says that God made man in His own image,
he may have pictured a vaguely corporeal God making man as a child
makes a figure out of plasticine. A modern Christian philosopher may
think of the process lasting from the first creation of matter to the final
appearance on this planet for an organism fit to receive spiritual as well
as biological life. Both mean essentially the same thing. Both are
denying the same thing -- the doctrine that matter by some blind power
inherent in itself has produced spirituality.
(C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock Eerdmans (1970), p 46)
Advice from Billy Graham
"I don't think that there's any conflict at all between science today and
the Scriptures. I think that we have misinterpreted the Scriptures
many times and we've tried to make the Scriptures say things they
weren't meant to say, I think that we have made a mistake by
thinking the Bible is a scientific book. The Bible is not a book of
science. The Bible is a book of Redemption, and of course I accept
the Creation story. I believe that God did create the universe. I
believe that God created man, and whether it came by an
evolutionary process and at a certain point He took this person or
being and made him a living soul or not, does not change the fact
that God did create man. ... whichever way God did it makes no
difference as to what man is and man's relationship to God.”
• - Billy Graham quoted by David Frost
•
Source: Book - Billy Graham: Personal Thoughts of a Public Man (1997, p. 72-74)
Origins and biological
complexity
• Science is fun
• Nature is full of self-assembling things
• Science and Faith - big, fun questions
• Origins … lots to still figure out
History of life on earth
earth forms from
accretion disk
Grandeur of God?
•humans -- last 2 seconds of 24 hr day
•not unlike astronomy: the heavens declare the
Glory of God - Psalm 19
•What is man that you are mindful of him?
Psalm 8
Late Heavy Bombardement
4-3.8 Billion years
Brutal: some impacts probably
vaporized the sea.
Any life wiped out
First fossils?
• First chemical evidence for fossilized life -- 3.8 to 3.5
Billion years ago
• -- evidence is C12 enrichment
• -- Hopanes from cyanobacteria (microbes
responsible for generating Oxygen) found 2.5 Billion
year old shale
Origin of life
Cambrian Explosion
what happened here?
Origin of life?
Origin of life
• The problem of the origin of life has much in common with a
well-constructed detective story. There is no shortage of clues
pointing to the way in which the crime, the contamination of the
pristine environment of the early earth, was committed. On the
contrary, there are far too many clues and far too many
suspects. It would be hard to find two investigators who agree
on even the broad outline of events.
• Leslie Orgel (1998)
Advice from Schaefer
• We must take ample time, and sometimes this will
mean a long time, to consider whether the apparent
clash between science and revelation means that the
theory set forth by science is wrong or whether we
must reconsider what we thought the Bible says.
• Francis Schaefer
Intelligent Design (capitalised)
heterogeneous movement -- will focus on ID centred at Discovery Institute
some key publications and people
•The Mystery of Life’s Origin (1984)
•Charles B. Thaxton, Walter L. Bradley, Roger L. Olsen
•Evolution, a Theory in Crisis (1986)
•Michael Denton
•Darwin on Trial (1991)
•Philip Johnson
•Darwin’s Black Box (1996)
•Michael Behe (CT book of the year)
•Icons of evolution (2000)
•Jonathan Wells
•No Free Lunch (2001)
•William Dembski
What is ID
•
•
Intelligent agency, as an aspect of scientific theory making, has more
explanatory power in accounting for the specified, and sometimes
irreducible complexity of some physical systems, including biological
entities, and/or the existence of the universe as a whole, than the blind
forces of. . . matter.’[1] That is, intelligent design is a better explanation
for entities exhibiting complex specified information (CSI) than are
appeals to the inherent capacities of nature (i.e. chance and/or physical
necessity). ID suggests that the world contains objects that exhaust the
explanatory resources of undirected natural causes, and can only be
adequately explained by recourse to intelligent causation.
(definition from Peter S. Williams)
Irreducible Complexity
Michael Behe (1996)
•Bacterial flagellum, immune system, etc...
are too complex to have evolved
This result is so unambiguous and so significant that it must be ranked as
one of the greatest achievements in the history of science ... The discovery
[of intelligent design] rivals those of Newton and Einstein, Lavoisier and
Schroedinger, Pasteur and Darwin.”
Complex Specified Information
William Dembski
• CSI -- information that could not have come there by
chance alone?
• e.g. when we see a statue v.s. weathered rock
• “Law of the conservation of information”
Intelligent Design
• Philosophical issues:
• Definition of science (demarcation) ?
• Problems, but why not follow the evidence?
• Theological issues:
• when/why does God intervene?
• miracles?
• Newman/Barth critique
ID and Christians
• Major issues is -- why these miracles?
•Miracles occur to serve God’s redemptive purpose
•Origin, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin etc...
“And I hold, that when God works miracles, he does not do it
in order to supply the wants of nature, but those of grace.
Whoever thinks otherwise, must needs have a very mean
notion of the wisdom and power of God” Leibnitz
e.g. what is the Biblical rationale for supernatural action
aiding the creation of the flagellum?
Intelligent Design (capitalised)
•GOOD
• Looking at complex questions in science/philosophy
• counteracting evolutionism
• middle road, broad church?
•LESS GOOD
• Detached from scripture
• doesn’t solve some pressing questions (like death before fall)
• very political
•
http://www.discovery.org
• William Dembski, Michael Behe, Stephen Meyer, Paul Nelson
Summary
• Origins questions are complex
• Immediatism
• Anti-traditionalism
• Populism …..
• Our common enemy is philosophical naturalism
•
•
The Metaphilosophy of Naturalism, Philo 4, 2 (2000)
by Quentin Smith http://www.philoonline.org/library/smith_4_2.htm
•
•
“The justification of most contemporary naturalistic views is defeated by contemporary theist arguments”
“Naturalists passively watched as realist versions of theism, most influenced by Plantinga’s writings, began to
sweep through the philosophical community, until today perhaps one-quarter or one-third of philosophy
professors are theists, with most being orthodox Christians. “
Calvin on using science
•
As far as I am aware, there is no evidence that Galileo had any direct knowledge of Calvin's writings.
Nevertheless his understanding of the nature of the language used by the Bible when referring to the
natural world is the same as Calvin's as the following quotations from the Letter to the Grand Duchess
Christina show.
•
B1. These propositions set down by the Holy Ghost were set down in that manner by the sacred scribes
in order to accommodate them to the capacities of the common people, who are rude and unlearned. (p.
181)
•
B2. It is necessary for the Bible, in order to be accommodated to the understanding of every man, to
speak many things which appear to differ from the absolute truth so far as the bare meaning of the words is
concerned. (p. 182)
•
B3. For that reason it appears that nothing physical which sense-experience sets before our eyes, or
which necessary demonstrations prove to us, ought to be called in question (much less condemned) upon
the testimony of biblical passages which may have some different meaning beneath their words. (p. 182f)
•
B4. ...having arrived at any certainties in physics, we ought to utilize these as the most appropriate aids in
the true exposition of the Bible and in the investigation of those meanings which are necessarily contained
therein, for these must be concordant with demonstrated truths. (p. 183)
•
The first two quotations express the same 'accommodation' understanding of biblical language as Calvin
adopted. The third recognises that, as a result of this, the literal sense of the biblical text may sometimes
be at variance with the scientific understanding of the natural phenomenon described. In the final quotation
Galileo makes the point made by Prof. McKay that one reason why biblical interpreters should take
scientific knowledge into account is that it will help them to recognise when the biblical writers are using the
language of appearance or cultural idioms, and so help them avoid the kind of misinterpretation made by
those who condemned Galileo.
http://www.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/cis/lucas/lecture.html
le
• 1: Isis. 2000 Jun;91(2):283-304.
B. B. Warfield (1851-1921). A biblical inerrantist as evolutionist.
• Livingstone DN, Noll MA.
• School of Geosciences, Queen's University of Belfast, Northern Ireland.
•
The theological doctrine of biblical inerrancy is the intellectual basis for modern creation
science. Yet Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield of Princeton Theological Seminary, the theologian
who more than any other defined modern biblical inerrancy, was throughout his life open to the
possibility of evolution and at some points an advocate of the theory. Throughout a long career
Warfield published a number of major papers on these subjects, including studies of Darwin's
religious life, on the theological importance of the age of humanity (none) and the unity of the
human species (much), and on Calvin's understanding of creation as proto-evolutionary. He
also was an engaged reviewer of many of his era's important books by scientists, theologians,
and historians who wrote on scientific research in relation to traditional Christianity. Exploration
of Warfield's writing on science generally and evolution in particular retrieves for historical
consideration an important defender of mediating positions in the supposed war between
science and religion.
James Orr
• One of the original “Fundamentalists”
• There is not a word in the Bible to indicate that in its view death
entered the animal world as a consequence of the Sin of man.
• When you say there is the “six days” and the question whether
those days are meant to be measured by the twenty-four hours
of the sun’s revolution around the earth -- I speak of these things
popularly. It is difficult to see how they should be so measured
when the sun that is to measure them is not introduced until the
fourth day. Do not think that this larger reading of the days is a
new speculation. You find Augustine in early times declaring
that it is hard or altogether impossible to say what fashion these
days are, and Thomas Aquinas, in the middle ages, leaving the
matter an open question.
C.S. Lewis
When the author of Genesis says that God made man in His own image, he may have pictured a
vaguely corporeal God making man as a child makes a figure out of plasticine. A modern
Christian philosopher may think of the process lasting from the first creation of matter to the final
appearance on this planet for an organism fit to receive spiritual as well as biological life. Both
mean essentially the same thing. Both are denying the same thing -- the doctrine that matter by
some blind power inherent in itself has produced spirituality.......
Does this mean that Christians on different levels of general education conceal radically different
beliefs under an identical form of worlds? Certainly not. For waht they agree on is the
substance, and what they differ about is the shadow. When one imagines his God seated in a
local heaven above a flat earth, where another sees God and creation in terms of Professor
[Albert North] Whitehead’s philosoph[loosely, process theology], this difference touches precisely
what does not matter.
(C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock Eerdmans (1970), p 46)
Westminster Theological Seminary
http://www.wts.edu/news/creation.html
The Westminster Confession's doctrine of the clarity of Scripture (1:7) goes
hand in hand with its inspiration, infallibility, and authority. Yet it implies that
not all parts of the Scriptures are equally clear or full. Here we must follow
Calvin's great motto that where God makes an end of teaching, we should
make an end of trying to be wise.(11) With Augustine and E. J. Young, the
revered teacher of our senior faculty members, we recognize that the
exegetical question of the length of the days of Genesis 1 may be an issue
which cannot be, and therefore is not intended by God to be, answered in
dogmatic terms. To insist that it must comes dangerously close to
demanding from God revelation which he has not been pleased to bestow
upon us, and responding to a threat to the biblical world view with weapons
that are not crafted from the words which have proceeded out of the mouth
of God.