6.3 Religion and science debates

Question 1

John Polkinghorne

Answer 1

I believe that God acts in the world, but he is not a show off conjurer who violates the same laws of nature that he made.

Question 1

Genesis 1:1-3

Answer 1

In the beginning, God created the heavens and earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said ‘Let there be light’, and there was light

Question 1

Richard Dawkins

Answer 1

The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.

Question 2

Scientific methodology

Answer 2

1. OBSERVATION (Newton sees an apple fall from a tree)
2. HYPOTHESIS (There might be some force that attracts the smaller object (the apple) to the larger (earth)
3. Experimentation (repeated testing and formulation of a law)

Science uses inductive and deductive reasoning
- No inductive argument can ever be a proof cos we can never be sure we have all the possible observations)
- With deduction the conclusions are right if the premises are right.
Although neither arguments are infallible, most people regard scientific findings as reliable.

Question 3

Religious methodology

Answer 3

Religion is based on belief and faith. TWO APPROACHES on how we can be sure our be sure our beliefs are true.

Question 4

FIDEISTS

Answer 4

• Draw on personal religious experience.
• Do not need empirical evidence for what they believe - all they need is the belief itself.
• To seek the kind of verification (proof) that Aquinas offers in his five ways denies the very point of faith

Question 5

CRITICICAL RATIONALISTS

Answer 5

• Accept that in order to be coherent, belief must pass two tests: they must be rational, they must not go against empirical science.
• uses both inductive and deductive reasoning to support religious belief.

Cosmo & Design argue through observation of the world, we can conclude God is the best explanation for what we see in the universe

Onto uses deductive argument for the existence of God (most philosophers think this fails)

Question 6

Weaknesses of Religious Method

Answer 6

1. It’s results are not repeatable. It is not possible to rerun a religious experience and determine what it was like or whether the experiencer was lying or subject to mass-hysteria.
2. It is possible to induce religious feelings by stimulating parts of the brain, raising possibilities that religious sense is just something the brain does.
3. Intense religious experiences may just be abnormal brain function.

Question 7

Evidence from miracles

Answer 7

Aquinas states miracles are DONE BY DIVINE NATURE and it is never just a coincidence. The cause remains hidden because it is God.

Question 8

Hume on miracles

Answer 8

• A miracle breaks a law of nature
• Brought about by God or some kind of invisible agent
• It happens through God’s will (has a purpose)
  He felt a miracle is a willed act and a transgression of a law of nature. The miracle has a purposeful dimension.
  Hume (a sceptic) has a working definition of a miracle: CAUSED BY GOD BREAKS LAWS OF NATURE VERIFIABLE PURPOSEFUL

Question 9

God of the Gaps

Answer 9

In pre-scientific communities, very little was known scientifically, so God was called upon to explain the gaps in knowledge.
With advances in scientific knowledge, God has been pushed out of most of these gaps.
Scientific development will one day explain all such gaps and will make the idea of God completely redundant.

Question 10

Big Bang Theory

Answer 10

The model for the beginning of the universe that best fits scientific evidence. Everything in the universe was formed off the singularity, an explosion 13.7 billion years ago. We know this explosion is still going on as the universe is expanding.
The universe started with all of its matter concentrated at a single point which was incredibly dense and hot. The theory has nothing to say about where the matter came from or how it came into place.
As the material expanded from the point of the Big Bang, it cooled. Somewhere around 400 million years after the big bang, the first stars started to form. Stars have been evolving since.

Question 11

The Big Bang’s challenge to religious belief

Answer 11

• A Big Bang that happened 13.7 years ago contradicts the bibles description of a six-day creation a few thousand years ago.
• If the Bible could be wrong about creation is it wrong about other things too?
• If we reject the biblical account of creation, should we not also reject other tenants of Christian belief e.g. the trinity?

Question 12

Steady State Theory

Answer 12

An alternative model to the big bang created in the 1950’s. The theory suggested that the universe has always existed (and will always exist) in more or less the state that we see it now, because new matter is continually coming into existence in order to compensate for the death of stars elsewhere.

Question 13

Creationism

Answer 13

SCIENCE UNDERMINES THE GENESIS CREATION STORY IN A NUMBER OF WAYS: 1. The order of creation contradicts the findings of evolutionary science. 2. Animals are created as fully formed species BUT the geological record shows this was not the case.

Creationists reject the scientific method developed for the absolute dating of organic and inorganic things and regard the bible record as complete and accurate in every detail e.g. Adam and Eve are ancestors of the entire human race.

Creation takes a long stand on religious belief. Those who want to believe in some of the Bible’s doctrines must accept the complete authority of the Bible.

Question 14

Arguments against Creationism

Answer 14

• The scientific evidence for evolution seems to be overwhelming
• Creation is six days is really just an association with Shabbat.
• The Biblical flood is a memory of a cataclysmic event in the religion, but the occurrence of any comparable disaster cannot be taken as evidence that there was a worldwide flood caused by God as a punishment for sin.

Question 15

Miracles - scientific viewpoint

Answer 15

A miracle would break scientific laws, therefore it cannot happen. Miracles stem from lack of knowledge. Someone would argue Jesus did not walk on water but submerged stones. A believer may acknowledge some miracles may be explained in this way but others cannot.

Question 16

Spinoza’s general scientific argument against miracles

Answer 16

P1. Miracles are violations of the laws of nature.
P2. Natural laws are immutable, they never change
P3. Immutable laws cannot be violated otherwise there can be no basis for science.
C. Therefore miracles are impossible absurdities.

Question 17

Strengths of scientific position

Answer 17

• Science can use reliable methods to test miracle claims.
• Spinoza’s argument is powerful because it uses the obvious truth that if scientific laws really are violated by miracles then there can be no basis for science.
• Science works by dealing with what is general and repeatable. Miracles are weak evidence by comparison with scientific evidence.
• The God of the Gaps idea gives a convincing explanation where the miracle stories came from.

Question 18

Weaknesses of scientific position

Answer 18

• If miracles do happen, science can’t investigate becuase they are beyond the laws of nature.
• Spinoza’s argument is weak. Science cannot prove natural laws are immutable.
• Scientific understanding of God of the Gaps misses the point of miracles, that they have a purpose. They are demonstration’s of God’s power and love.

Question 19

Evolutionary theory - Charles Darwin

Answer 19

• Darwin proposed that nature ‘selects’ those characteristics of a plant or animal that make it more likely to survive so those characteristics get passed onto succeeding generations.

Dawkins ideas are on the basis of modern biology and explain why there is a huge diversity of species in the world.

Evolution is gradually working through small genetic changes known as recombination - ordered by natural selection.

Question 20

Evolutionary theory’s challenge to traditional Christian thinking

Answer 20

• According to Genesis human beings are the peak of creation. In ET, humans are simply organisms that have emerged over a period of time as a process that started with single cell organisms.
• Humans are just a product of evolution like other animals and have no dominion.
• There is nothing special about human beings beyond superior intelligence.
• There could not have been a single ancestral pair, Adam and Eve, from which we all descend.
• We do not need God to explain the process of evolution - it works through the genes.

Question 21

Dawkins

Answer 21

• Darwinism shows evolution to be a ‘blind’ process that happens purely by the chance process of natural selection. The only watchmaker in nature is physics.
• If the existence of complex organisms require an explanation then so does the existence of God because God has to be more complex than the things he designs.
• For Dawkins, the idea that a personal God communicates with his creation is merely wishful thinking: possibly a comfort to the dying but of no other value.