Re: Signs of Scientism

Rich,

It seems to me also that the faith in the person of Jesus Christ itself is something more rich than what we may be speaking of when we commonly speak of "faith", for it appears that a good content of what appears to be Biblical faith is involved in obedience, something rather different from intellectual assent to any proposition.

Pete Cook
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Rich Blinne
  To: David Opderbeck
  Cc: Dawsonzhu@aol.com ; gregoryarago@yahoo.ca ; kbmill@ksu.edu ; asa@calvin.edu
  Sent: Monday, January 16, 2006 1:01 PM
  Subject: Re: Signs of Scientism

  On 1/16/06, David Opderbeck <dopderbeck@gmail.com> wrote:

    I'm pretty sure, though, that the phrase "origin of life" has a different meaning as Ken is using it. Say, for example, that we could somehow confirm that organic molecules developed throughout the universe through "natural" processes and arrived on the proto-Earth through comet impacts. My guess is that would be the kind of solution to the origin of life question Keith mentions (assuming that neo-Darwinism really accounts for the development of life from those organic molecules). But that wouldn't cause me to throw away my Bible (though it would cause me to once again reexamine the first couple chapters of Genesis) because it wouldn't address the question of ultimate causation.

  Exactly. If we look at the case of Psalm 139, the following question arises. If science has the ability to describe the descent of humans (without modification) does it negate that God knit David in the womb? Of course not. If that is not an issue, why would descent with modification be one? And what if science disovered a natural mechanism for abiogenesis whould that mean that God did not create life? Please note that God is free to use first causes as in the case of the virgin birth, but He is also free to use second causes and still be God and still be sovereign over all creation and over all time (not just the time period described in Genesis 1). Please note the asymmetry here. Discovering first causes would show that God exists, but discovering second causes does not disprove it. Thus, both Dr. Millers are correct in saying that science that believes in descent with modification is not necessarily incompatible with religion in general or the Bible in particular.

  As for the faith question, saying theistic proofs negate faith is to equivocate on the word faith. Believe in God's existence (or any other Biblical doctrine) is not the complete sense of a Biblical faith. It is merely the faith of demons (James 2:19), being necessary but nowhere near sufficient. Our faith is in the person of Jesus Christ and not merely in a set of propositions.
Received on Sun Jan 22 22:35:33 2006