science & theology, part 1 resend

Here's the email I sent before, without the digital sig.

Since things have gotten so quiet, I thought I might post something
from my new trainride project, a weblog
(http://www.billdozier.net/drupal/node/20):

Science and theology are not rival points of view. We need not choose
between a worldview that sees science complete in itself and theology
as irrelevant and one that resists the encroachment of science into
realms where theology alone should speak. Science and theology are
complementary activities that are similar in many ways:

Comparison of science and theology (from Bube):
                                  Science Theology
Definition Human interpretation of sense Human interpretation of
the Bible.
                                data about nature.

Object of study The natural realm: The Bible:
                                God's physical creation. God's verbal revelation.

Methodology The scientific method: Hermeneutics:
                                 an orderly procedure for an orderly procedure for discovering
                                 discovering truth about nature. truth in the Bible.

Depends on Rationality, knowability and Coherence, intelligibility
and
                                reality of creation. reliability of revelation.

Goal Physical laws that are nonspecific Specific knowledge about
God's
                                expressions of God's rationality, nature and relationship with us.
                                power and love.

The Bible teaches that God's nature is revealed in His creation (Rom
1:20). What does that mean? Most obviously, it shows his power. His
creativity is visible through the diversity and beauty of creation.
Next, we can see his sense of order and rationality. All of these
things are pretty obvious, but there is more. We can learn that the
Creator of our world cares about us by how perfectly our environment
fits our needs.* We might also deduce that He wants us to know about
Him because He made a world that reflects his nature. A disorderly,
irrational universe would really tell us nothing about where it came
from.

How could we do science if an irrational creator produced the physical
universe? What would even be the point? If an experiment performed
identically in LA on Friday and Tokyo on Tuesday gave different
results, why bother going to the lab at all? Belief in the capricious
gods of paganism, the impersonal god of pantheism, the nihilistic
philosophies of modernism or the relativistic thinking of today's
post-modernism would not have produced the scientific method; it
depends axiomatically on the existence of a reasoning, rational God.
        • God, being rational, responds to the same situation in the same
manner almost all the time; we can deduce rules (which we then call
"physical laws") about how He will act. The comparatively rare
exceptions to His regularity we call miracles.

Consider gravity. Aristotle believed that an object fell to the earth
because it was seeking its natural place (i.e., the center of the
Earth). Newton replaced that thinking with a predictive theory that
works much better for our modern technological purposes, but there was
a grain of truth in the teleology of Aristotle's point of view: the
implied presence of a rational will. But it is not the "will" of the
falling object, but of God. We observe what we call "gravity" due to
the action of the will of God. We could rephrase Newton:
        • It is God's will that objects attract each other with a force that
is proportional to the product of their masses and decreases with the
square of their distance of separation.

  Suppose God were irrational. There would be no obvious connection
between cause and effect. Aristotle, then, would be all we have and the
result would be chaos. Science would be impossible: experiments could
not be repeated and theories could not be deduced.

  Today, we can understand some physical processes enough to predict
their outcomes and thus gain a slim understanding of a facet of God's
nature. It is amazing that this does not lead to a sense of wonder.
Instead, the typical response is to take the commonplace for granted
and either deny or ignore God's role in it. This leads to two similar,
erroneous pictures of God:
        • God of the Gaps: God is only involved in things we of which we have
no understanding. When you hear someone talking about God "intervening"
to do something, you're hearing this. I think that most non-believing
scientists see this as the Christian mindset (they are all too often
correct!). They think that belief in God is a device we invoke to
provide answers to questions that have no answers (Why am I here? What
happens after I die? Where did all of this come from?).
        • The Divine Watchmaker (deism): He winds up the universe and steps
out of the picture. This is not a view very many people consciously
hold today. It seems to me that the god of the Deists was serving as a
placeholder for a naturalistic solution to the origins question; it's
not surprising that deism is not as popular today as it was in, say,
the 18th Century.

  A Christian context also presupposes a universe that is objectively
real. Unless we know for certain that our consciousness is real and our
perceptions of the world are reliable, science (and for that matter,
everything else) serves no purpose.

But how do we know for certain that we exist? How do we know that what
we experience is real? We need reliable communication from someone
whose knowledge is not limited to this world to validate our perception
of reality. But what would this Messenger look like? How would we
recognize him? This Messenger must certainly do more than just assert
his credentials.

Jesus Christ is really our only viable candidate. Either his
Incarnation, miraculous life and resurrection proved He is all we need
to justify our belief in an objective reality or we have no ultimate
assurance of our existence.

By proving that He came from beyond the limits of our space and time,
Jesus both validated our sense perceptions of reality and exposed that
they are incomplete. Think of the moment in The Matrix when Neo awakens
and finds himself naked and attached to a machine. When the limits of
our perception of reality are exposed, either our perceptions are
validated or the sleeper awakens and the dream evaporates.
        • By proving his dominion over our reality, He proved that He is God.
        • By proving that God cares about what happens in a reality by which
He is not bound, He validated our world's objective existence and its
value.

Coming in part 2: the neglected doctrine of providence.

*The fine-tuning of Creation to be hospitable to life on Earth is
commonly referred to as the "Anthropic Principle." Reasonable folks can
differ as to whether this is significant or not.

Bill Dozier
Minister of Silly Guitar Sounds

---
"Whatever sport you're playing, when you score, you gotta dance." -- 
Robbie