Re: Signs of Scientism

Are eclipses miraculous? What about Huricane Katrina or 911? Where these interventions?
 
 David: What do you mean by "interventions?" Was God sovereign over these events? Yes. Does that raise questions about theodicy and free will? Sure, but we (at least I think most folks in the ASA) don't abandon belief in God's sovereignty because of those problems. I think most of us would also agree that God sometimes accomplishes His will in time and space in ways that transcend the physical laws He has established for time and space, which we call "miraculous."

So, we see Intelligent Design all around us but ID somehow believes that some of these events can actually be scientifically detected. But as I have shown such inferences are first of all negative inferences and secondly, highly susceptible to false positives, making the ID approach useless. How does God transcend the physical laws? And how does this make something miraculous? How do we distinguish such supernatural miracles from a quantum uncertainty come true?

David: I also think most of us would agree that because something is "miraculous" doesn't mean we aren't humanly capable of perceiving that it has occurred. Whether God acted miraculously in the development of life on Earth, and whether we can distinguish such miraculous activity in natural history from the working of God's will through natural processes and physical laws, is the open question I'm trying to better understand.
 
Yes, it's simple to us Christians to accept God's interaction with His creation. But the suggestion that such interactions can be scientifically detected require a bit more work as far as I am concerned.
 
 David: What do you make of the resurrection of Christ, Pim? Did Christ really rise from the dead? Was it a "natural" event or was it "miraculous?" If it was miraculous, is there any rational basis for believing it happened?

I was not there to witness it, I was not there to research it so I am not sure if the resurrection from the dead really happened. Could it have been a deep coma? Could it have been a near death experience? It's hard to tell lacking the evidence. So what do I accept as a scientist and what do I accept as a Christian? The two are very different. In the end it does not really matter though since the meaning of Christ's resurrection is far more important than the proven veracity of such an event.

What do you make of the day the earth stood still?
 
Joshua 10:11–13 reads: ‘And it came to pass, as they fled from before Israel, and were in the going down to Beth-horon, that the Lord cast down great stones from heaven upon them unto Azekah, and they died...Then spake Joshua to the Lord in the day when the Lord delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and He said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon. And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher?2 So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day.’

Or the sundial in
Received on Mon Jan 16 23:26:35 2006