RE: [asa] Two questions...

Bill said:
"I believe it is possible, and actually likely that all science, no matter how mature, is false."

Bill- do you recognize the advanced state of health care we have now, compared to 100 years or more ago? If so, why is it? How is it that we have cures and more efficient surgeries than ever before? Isn't it all due to modern science, which you said is false? If false, how did our society advance so technically in the last 100, esp. last 50, years?

Do you think that because some things are fuzzy or unknown (such as how life arose), that ALL science is in the same way fuzzy and subject to change, such as how to build transistors and control them in a CPU?

If science is false, then how is it able to get us to pack over 2 billion transistors into a computer chip? See this for scientific progress impacting real life- because it is real:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count

Yes- it takes scientists to figure out how to do this- determining which elements in the periodic table to use and how to combine them.

...Bernie

-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Powers [mailto:wjp@swcp.com]
Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2009 7:05 PM
To: Dehler, Bernie
Cc: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: RE: [asa] Two questions...

Bernie:

Where to begin? It is apparent that our understanding of science and
faith are vastly different. But where to begin?

You are apparently persuaded that science as presently configured is a
reliable method for determining the truth. Actually, I think you
believe that it is more than merely reliable, but I'll leave it at that.

Whereas, I believe that science is an attempt at establishing objective
practices for adjudicating contrary claims. I believe it is possible,
and actually likely that all science, no matter how mature, is false.
The history of science surely would support that claim. But even should
science reach some asymptotic end point, all natural phenomena
coherently explained by beautiful, simple deductive models, I believe it
could all be false.

Being false is quite easy. So I'm not sticking my neck out very far.
But I think the problem is more fundamental than that. Our confidence
in the derivatives of science is built, it seems to me, on two things:
coherence with our empirical data and internal coherence. Crudely, we
can liken it to our confidence that we live in a three dimensional
spatial world. Our experience of this world is at most two dimensional,
and often one dimensional. It is by the unity of these disparate
experiences that we construct a three dimensional space. This unity
appears to us as coherent, say in walking around a chair.

The coherence of QM in being able to predict and explain a vast array of
seemingly disparate phenomena is surely persuasive and gives us
confidence that something must be very right about it.

We ought to ask ourselves how right does it have to be? How many
vastly different constructions and conceptions, even empirically
different data would be possible? The answer to
that question has something to do with what we think science is about. Is
science's aim to know the truth? What truth? The truth that relates some
antecedent conditions with some consequent? Must it be true in all its
various aspects, including theoretical entities, and otherwise false?

A while back I was reading some philosphy of Schrodinger and I had
occasion to ask myself something that I'd never asked myself before: do I
believe in electrons? For my 30 years of life as a physicist I have been
working with and around electrons. To my surprise I answered no. Permit
me to clarify what I mean.

There is an interesting book titled Representing Electrons: A Biographical
Approach to Theoretical Entities by Arabatzis in which he studies in
detail when the electron was discovered. Yes, this is a trick question.
Did the Bohr model speak of electrons? This is a tricky question for
anyone who has tried to track these things down. What is an electron is
constantly changing, and is still changing. How can we be certain we are
talking about the same entity? His suggestion is to think of an electron
having a biography, just like a person. While a person's biography
changes over time, we still have some sense, some accepted practice for
establishing that it is the same person we are speaking of.

This book was interesting for me because I've been studying how we "see"
invisible entities, not merely electrons and quarks, but God. It's a
little like Wittgenstein's duck-rabbit, or Hanson's Patterns of Discovery.
Something that wasn't there suddenly is there, and we can only see the
rabbit and not the duck. The data remains unchanged. It's our seeing
that's changed. Or is it? Does the data change too? Whenever we
describe and event, we must already have in mind an explanation for the
event.

So I think electrons are a powerful tool and if I understand being at all,
and I'm not certain (after Kant and Heidegger) that I do, I think there is
some-thing like an electron. But do I think any theory of an electron has
reality about the throat? That, to me, seems patently absurd. How can an
idea, an idea that admittedly is for the most part a mathematical
variable, contain what it is to BE and electron. Absurd! Indeed, why
stop at electrons? Can any of our ideas of reality really be expected
to express what it is to be real? Is it surprising how simple a
mathematical entity an electron is, or is this merely what human
mathematics requires?

Science is a model maker and no more, hopefully a good model maker. God
has endowed us with the ability to make good models for the good of our
neighbor. That an indifferent logical construct like mathematics should
serve this purpose (and who is to say what else) is a miracle, for the
confidence that it might is young indeed, supported by a Christian view of
God.

I do not, however, hold your confidence that God has endowed us with the
capability of discovering "true" (meaning God-like) theories, whatever
that might look like. Reason has great value, but not ultimate and
unrestrained value. Reason demands reasons, evidence, proof that
satisfies. As such, it can at best engender a conditioned faith, not the
faith that God gives, nor desires. It engenders man's faith, but not
God's.

Well, duty calls elsewhere. Nice talking to you about things I've thought
little about for some time.

bill powers
White, SD

  On
Wed, 11 Feb 2009, Dehler, Bernie wrote:

> Bill said:
> "For this reason my non-concordist YEC position is not troubling so much for me. What troubles me is how it troubles others, and how in a day where science has replaced philosophy and theology as the arbiters of what is reasonable and true, they shall faire."
>
> Personally, I feel that if people want to be in the truth, they have to put truth above all else- including love and devotion to God. This is because it may be true there is no God, and one would never discover that, if true, unless they were willing to subject it to the truth.
>
> God says in Isaiah "Come, let us reason together." Therefore, we should never fear that reason will displace faith. And if it does, it is not a faith worth having. God gave us brains, and I think he's proud of us when we use it. I think He would be upset with us if we didn't use the full capacity of our brains, and that includes looking and analyzing the world with the best available science.
>
> The key in considering science is also determining what is true or not, because some ignorant/misguided people report something as science which really isn't. Some science includes solid facts, and some is really vague- hypotheses subject to re-formulation. We will never know the difference unless we look into it for ourselves. Sometimes we have to trust scientists- but only after first discerning their integrity (I'd trust Francis Collins over Richard Dawkins, for example).
>
> I don't know what a "non-concordist YEC" is. Does that mean that one says they interpret the Bible literally yet know it conflicts with science and can't ever be reconciled with science? (For example, thinking the earth is made before the sun because the Bible literally says that, even though cosmological evolution says that obviously the Sun was formed before the earth?) If that's the case, I think the mind has been compromised, and it is the worst form of superstition. Science is very good at demolishing superstition. The younger generation won't put up with that. That kind of faith will only survey in a cult (a small gathering of believers who think they alone have the real truth... my prophesy for the future of YEC'ism, if it isn't already there).
>
> ...Bernie
> -----Original Message-----
> From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On Behalf Of wjp
> Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2009 6:09 PM
> To: Douglas Hayworth
> Cc: "" D.F.Siemens@ame8.swcp.com; Jr.""; mrb22667@kansas.net; asa@calvin.edu
> Subject: Re: [asa] Two questions...
>
> Doug:
>
> I think this non-concordist YEC position is closest to mine.
> I have always been uncomfortable with Ross' (RTB) position, sort
> of like a science-groupie. And although most of my
> evangelical friends are close to a concordist YEC position, I have
> always attempted to point out the weakness, and sometimes naivete, of
> some of their arguments. It should be noted, however, that some who
> are very serious about this task are significantly sophisticated
> (e.g., John Baumgardner).
>
> However, my concerns have always been more theological (I'm not wholly
> comfortable with that word), let's say Christological, than with any
> form of concordism.
>
> I am persuaded that Christian faith must always remain in tension with
> the world. Hence, any fully successful concordism might represent an
> attempt to tear down the wall of faith. On the other hand, the occurrence
> of certain historical events are necessary (but not sufficient) for
> Christian faith, as such it is evidential, and subject to attack on those
> grounds. For this reason I am likewise uncomfortable with any form of
> Bultmannian groundless Christianity. Scripture is all we've got.
>
> Like most practitioners of science, I began as a realist. In the twenty or
> so years that I've been studying the philosophy of science, I have increasingly
> adopted the "received" view, the anti-realist or instrumentalist views of
> the vast majority of philosophers, finding Heidegger's the most complex, and
> perhaps compelling.
>
> For this reason my non-concordist YEC position is not troubling so much for me.
> What troubles me is how it troubles others, and how in a day where science has
> replaced philosophy and theology as the arbiters of what is reasonable and true,
> they shall faire.
>
> bill powers
> White, SD
>
>
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Received on Thu Feb 12 12:22:06 2009