Does the Bible say to reject science?

[outhouse]

Is that a difficult concept?

No, but most would claim it is a mythological one.

Factually unsubstantiated.

 

[outhouse]

Yours is valid to you...mine is valid to me

Which is fine and dandy. Keep your faith.


But when you stand it up in public, you don't even have a real debate. You can preach your personal faith and howl to the moon all night long.


But at the end of the day, you cannot prove anything less ancient mythology.

 

[Nietzsche]

What has been observed....that is the question? Adaptation is micro-evolution, not macro evolution. All the evidence I have read is observation of micro-evolution only. It is a giant leap to assume that macro-evolution is even remotely on the same level. You can't point to the evidence for one as if it proves the other....they are poles apart.
The flies remained flies. The fish remained fish. Animals remained animals.
Any supposed "intermediate" species could well have come from the same source as all the rest.....a direct creation with capacity within the "kind" to adapt to changing environments.
.

What is the exact moment where a child becomes an adult? The precise moment a child is no longer a child. Does such a thing exist? No, it doesn't, because growing into adulthood is a process that happens slightly different for all people. You cannot find the exact moment because the change is so gradual & slow, and across humans as a whole so diverse, that such a thing can't exist. There is no point where a boy becomes a man or a girl becomes a woman. Things don't work that way. The differences are too minute.

Now, apply that to a species as a whole. You can see a far, far smaller version of the process of evolution merely by glancing at your family tree. As you follow that line back, you're going to see people who share some of your features, some who don't, some who are kinda like you physically but not quite, so on and so forth. You'll also see people who look nothing like anyone currently alive in your family. But you're still related.

That's what evolution is. A gradual process. You can see quite clearly "leftover" parts in us. We have, for instance, a tailbone. Some children are born with tails. We retain them because we haven't lost them yet. You'll never a find a half-half creature because of that. These are small, tiny changes that build up through eons, and the most successful ones breed more, and thus they get passed down.

I hope this helps.

 

[JayJayDee]

How could you know that all creation had a beginning?

There are indications in the earth's geology. Uranium e.g. turns to lead over time. Since all the uranium has not yet turned to lead, then creation had a beginning. Science can at least confirm that.

Clocks in the Rocks

 

[JayJayDee]

Which is fine and dandy. Keep your faith.

But when you stand it up in public, you don't even have a real debate. You can preach your personal faith and howl to the moon all night long.

You can do the same. As you have provided no real rebuttal to my posts, except to criticise my lack of back up from your teachers, you have no more "concrete" evidence than I do. I think we can all see that. The smoke and mirrors is human conjecture....pure speculation. Micro-evolution does not "prove" what "might" have happened in macro-evolution.

I am not a scientist, but I have read a lot of works that promote evolution. I take a simple grass roots approach. Watching David Attenborough is enough for any non-scientific lay person to do the math. Things that are an incredible stretch of the imagination are rolled off the tongue as if they were established fact. Maybe it's not so much "what" is said as much as how slick the presenter of the rhetoric is? Who would question a man of his calibre in the field of natural science?

Computer animation fills in the gaps.......it looks for all the world like photographic evidence....but the truth is....it's what somebody with a science degree "thinks might have happened". That is science fiction.

All evidence for macro (organic evolution) is based on adaptation (micro-evolution) If you read the actual "evidence" this becomes obvious. The experiments were conducted within species and remained within species. They did not become completely different "kinds".

Mutations rarely make any improvements on the original organism....they are almost always detrimental and cause the mutants to die out.
Yet evolutionist would have us believe that mutations of the beneficial kind happened routinely and improved the organisms that followed to the point of producing all that we see on earth. Seriously!

But at the end of the day, you cannot prove anything less ancient mythology.

Your theoretical science is in the same realm....human imagination, so how can you criticise?

Why do you demand more from my position than you demand for your own?

 

[JayJayDee]

What is the exact moment where a child becomes an adult? The precise moment a child is no longer a child. Does such a thing exist? No, it doesn't, because growing into adulthood is a process that happens slightly different for all people. You cannot find the exact moment because the change is so gradual & slow, and across humans as a whole so diverse, that such a thing can't exist. There is no point where a boy becomes a man or a girl becomes a woman. Things don't work that way. The differences are too minute.

I don't think we are talking about something that happens over a period of months. Puberty becomes obvious in both males and females quite rapidly. "Slow and gradual" in organic evolution still has genetic roadblocks that fail to support the whole idea.

I have no problem with micro-evolution. Adaptation is an amazing ability programmed into the DNA of all species....but to take that to a degree that is at odds with true science, is a bit much.

Now, apply that to a species as a whole. You can see a far, far smaller version of the process of evolution merely by glancing at your family tree. As you follow that line back, you're going to see people who share some of your features, some who don't, some who are kinda like you physically but not quite, so on and so forth. You'll also see people who look nothing like anyone currently alive in your family. But you're still related.

That is the point....you are still "related". The Genesis "kinds" remain within their "kind". Adaptations do not take them beyond that. One "kind" does not become another "kind" because genetics will not allow it go beyond the natural barriers that the Creator put in place.

That's what evolution is. A gradual process. You can see quite clearly "leftover" parts in us. We have, for instance, a tailbone. Some children are born with tails. We retain them because we haven't lost them yet. You'll never a find a half-half creature because of that. These are small, tiny changes that build up through eons, and the most successful ones breed more, and thus they get passed down.

I hope this helps.

Thank you for your input, but I have considered the evidence very carefully. I am not convinced. How can I be when the real evidence is right in front of my nose? I see through the jargon that attempts to make supposition appear to be fact.

The children "born with tails" are mutations. Is the mutations beneficial? I can show you children born with two heads and a variety of other defects. What does that prove?

Freaks of nature happen for a variety of reasons....most of which are environmental. Mutations prove nothing except that the DNA gets muddled at times for some reason. (the Bible explains the reason) Genetic inheritance brings with it a variety of problems. Very few are beneficial. The ones that are, are not often physical but intellectual. Gifts in abilities in the arts or literature for example. Even savants can have pockets of genius in maths, music or art. Yet they are often intellectually disabled in other ways.

My faith in a Creator remains intact.

 

[Nietzsche]

I don't think we are talking about something that happens over a period of months. Puberty becomes obvious in both males and females quite rapidly. "Slow and gradual" in organic evolution still has genetic roadblocks that fail to support the whole idea.

It's an analogy, not a direct comparison.

I have no problem with micro-evolution. Adaptation is an amazing ability programmed into the DNA of all species....but to take that to a degree that is at odds with true science, is a bit much.

'Macro'-evolution is just stacked 'micro'-evolution.

That is the point....you are still "related". The Genesis "kinds" remain within their "kind". Adaptations do not take them beyond that. One "kind does not become another "kind" because genetics will not allow it go beyond the natural barriers that the Creator put in place.

But evolution isn't about one thing immediately becoming another. It's about one thing eventually becoming so different it can no longer mate with their precursors. And then that one has its own subset which also becomes so different it can no longer mate with their precursors, so on and so on ad-infinitum. This is how you get from fish-thing to frog-thing. These are not 'leaps', they're painfully slow crawls.

Look up "ring species" to see a small-scale version of the "too different to mate with others" thing.

Thank you for your input, but I have considered the evidence very carefully. I am not convinced. How can I be when the real evidence is right in front of my nose? I see through the jargon that attempts to make supposition appear to be fact.

What jargon?

The children "born with tail" are mutations. Is the mutations beneficial? I can show you children born with two heads and a variety of other defects. What does that prove?

An adaptation is just a successful/non-hindering mutation that is passed down the species. As for what it proves, it shows our ancestry. We no longer have actual tails. We do have some of the remaining parts from when we did. When the more ancient parts are expressed, it's called an Atavism. Two-headed children and such are wholly different kinds of mutations.

Freaks of nature happen for a variety of reasons....most of which are environmental. Mutations prove nothing except that the DNA gets muddled at times for some reason. (the Bible explains the reason) Genetic inheritance brings with it a variety of problems. Very few are beneficial. The ones that are, are not often physical but intellectual. Gifts in abilities in the arts or literature for example. Even savants can have pockets of genius in maths, music or art. Yet they are often intellectually disabled in other ways.

Those are extreme forms of mutation. Everyone is, technically speaking, a mutant. Because the slight differences in ones' features are genes being expressed slightly differently. Evolution is the sum-total of those different expressions based on who or what is able to reproduce the most. That's why smaller populations tend to evolve more noticeably. The changes can be spread through the entirety of the population, it doesn't get "watered down" as quickly.

My faith in a Creator remains intact.

Why do you assume the two are incompatible?

 

[Vishvavajra]

Does the Bible actually give orders for believers not to trust in science? It would seem from these verses that the Bible speaks out against science, "man's wisdom", the "world's wisdom". Does the Bible seek to make believers willfully ignorant to reason and logic? If this is not the case, how do Christians understand these verse, and others like them?

Well, science as we understand it didn't exist yet, so that's obviously not what they were talking about. On the other hand, it is very easy for people to read those bits and come away with the impression that Christian teachings are anti-intellectual. The question is whether they were really meant that way. Actually, I think not, at least in their original intent, although they have often been taken that way.

To draw a comparison, there are a lot of statements in Zen literature that can be read in a similarly anti-intellectual way, although that's not really their intent. Early Christianity was a mystical tradition with a lot of similarities, actually, one of which is the assumption that the truth of reality is not what people think it is, and that the concepts that people habitually base their worldview on are not actually useful for salvation, which defies discursive thought. That doesn't mean that earthly knowledge isn't useful as earthly things go, but simply that mysteries like salvation and resurrection aren't subjects that can be understood in terms of conventional thinking.

There's also probably some not-so-subtle polemic against priestly scribes, Pharisees, and other rival groups mixed in there. Early Christians were the most "Zen" of the 1st century Jewish sects, in the sense that they regarded each person as a temple and priesthood unto themselves who were not bound by the letter of the Law but rather fulfilled the spirit of the Law by being liberated from sin through their existence in Christ. In that way they set themselves apart from the more conservative priesthood as well as the Pharisees, who were progressive but still tried to find a way to accommodate the Law to contemporary life and formed the basis for modern Rabbinic Judaism.

 

[outhouse]

Why do you demand more from my position than you demand for your own?

No my position is fact.

Your position is mythology

 

[outhouse]

All evidence for macro (organic evolution) is based on adaptation (micro-evolution) If you read the actual "evidence" this becomes obvious.

Your factually in error, and your twisting evidence and using imagination to come to that conclusion.

Micro evolution is often used out of context by creationist, exactly how your perverting the context. Micro evolution is factually evolution, and not based on adaptation.

Your so lost here its really sad that you refuse facts. DNA and fossils are the factual evidence you seem not to understand.


There is no debate here. Evolution is as fact as gravity. And facts cannot compete with fanaticism.

 

[JustCallMeNick]

Wrong........... a particular person. Get this idea of a badge that can be worn by some, and not by others...... out of your head.

Again, science, as a method for obtaining knowledge of the natural world, exists as a discipline separately from the actions of individuals. Them's just the facts. The fact that some people do science poorly (in terms of methodology), or use scientific knowledge for nefarious ends, is independent of the validity of the scientific method.

Then I feel sure that you will not try to tell what science has achieved.

I would only use that verbage with the understanding that "science" is not a person - what we mean when we talk about scientific achievements (and there are legion) are discoveries and inventions and so on, made by people correctly using scientific methodology.

People achieve...... science is simply knowledge then.

More precisely, science is a WAY of knowing.

I don't attack the word 'science',

Well perhaps you didn't intend to, but your words certainly came across that way.

I attack the way that it is used to convince people that something is true.

But again, that is precisely what science is FOR. Science is a way of knowing what is true about the natural world. If it didn't do that it wouldn't be good for anything.

So you see why I'm a little confused when you claim you're not attacking science - but then proceed to attack science.

Rubbish.......... It was proved to be bulldust because of the massive recruitment disasters that Graphology selected........ = knowledge. Keep it simple, that way it can be grasped miore easily.

But again...that IS science. If your hypothesis is that graphology will accurately predict job performance, you put that to the test by recruiting people who do well on graphology measures, and see how well they actually do on the job. If there is no correlation between graphology result and job performance, your hypothesis is falsified. Sounds like that, in a nutshell, is exactly what happened. Again - that sequence of events IS science in action.

Look..... you seem not to understand that the word 'science' as it is used by many people should be a heading for research, development, testing..... etc etc and like lots of other words, such as, say, 'law' it is not necessarily correct, not necessarily good........

It's ironic that you have such an obviously poor understanding of science, yet you're somehow criticizing me for not understanding it.

Let me explain it to you one more time: science is a methodology for obtaining knowledge about the world. That's what it is, ok? Literally look at any introductory science textbook.

Now, what a person DOES with knowledge obtained scientifically is a different question. If an evil genius uses science (meaning, again, uses the scientific METHOD) to make an instant death ray to murder millions of people, that isn't "science's fault." It's the evil genius' fault.

Do you change your brand of toothpaste because an advert tells you that it was developed at the cutting edge of science? See........ loads of people get duped when these claims are found to be lies.

Then that is the advertiser's fault! Why are you blaming "science" for the fact that a company lies about its product to make it sound better than it is? You know how you would determine that a company's product is crap even when they say it's great? SCIENCE.

 

[Bunyip]

There are indications in the earth's geology. Uranium e.g. turns to lead over time. Since all the uranium has not yet turned to lead, then creation had a beginning. Science can at least confirm that.

Clocks in the Rocks

Sorry, no. That doesn't work. Uranium, like all elements is still being formed. You are assuming that all of the universe's uranium was created at the beginning of time.

 

[oldbadger]

Then that is the advertiser's fault! Why are you blaming "science" for the fact that a company lies about its product to make it sound better than it is? You know how you would determine that a company's product is crap even when they say it's great? SCIENCE.

I have read your whole post, and I feel that we would have to just 'divide' over many of your points.
But to save from huge posts, let me show you how much I mistrust the word 'science', as it is used today by companies, media, organisations etc.
Have you ever heard of 'TRUTH PILLS'?

The media grasps the word, using it as an attention seeker and seller. It has learned that it's customers are more likely to believe in its reports if it uses.

Companies use it to convince prospective customers to buy........

As for organisations........ well........ here is an example......
Since retirement from my work (2009) as a teacher/trainer, I have worked part-time 'mornings only' for a friend's cleaning company as a carpet cleaner. (Much better than boring gymnasiums).
So I got to know the competition's carpet cleaners (cafe society for you).
A couple of years ago, a competitor friend walked into our cafe and chucked an ID card, badge and booklet on the table in front of me. He said, 'Well, can you beat that for bullsh-t?'
His company had joined an Institute of cleaning science. Now that is all very good, because I now know just how much depth there is to removing stains from materials. But my friend's company had paid a few thousand quid to this institute and thus it gained the right to use logos on its stationary, could attend a seminar occasionally, and could nominate a few employees for membership, who can now put letters after their names etc. Fred Blogs M.I.N.Sc. etc etc
And its reps (this outfit is huge) can refer to that Science institute membership.
That might not convince you, but the world bites on Truth Pills
That's the problem. The word Science is used in too much bullsh-t........... an automatic 'Truth Pill'.

An archaeologist finds a bone that questions a bible story. 'Science exposes bible lies!'
etc............

And............ if every person working in fields of discovery, investigation, detection, etc was to be called a scientist...... well? And although you have covered this point, the question begs, 'Who could legitimately call themselves a scientist?'

 

[It's Ya Girl Jesus' Wife]

God can destroy our science. That is all. We should trust God, not science.

 

[It's Ya Girl Jesus' Wife]

No. It is fact. And it will always be fact. YOU factually evolved from primate ancestor's and its not up for debate.

Its only up for denial that equates to fanaticism, if you so choose to go down that road.

Sorry brother reality is that evolution is fact.

STOP IT. Don't be trying to take people to Hell with you. Love ya. JESUS IS LORD. ACCEPT HIM.

 

[kepha31]

No, the Bible is not against science.
In principle, the Bible favors the use of science for the common good, such as radiation therapy to treat cancer.
In principle, the Bible opposes the abuse of science, such as the use of nuclear weapons.
Yet both are under the category of nuclear science, one moral and the other immoral.

Faith and science: "Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth."37 "Consequently, methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God. The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God in spite of himself, for it is God, the conserver of all things, who made them what they are."38 (CCC 159)

There are three different kinds of "sciences." The difference between them is the degree of abstraction that is involved. The mind might just focus on the physical by experimental observation. This science is called physics or natural science (this is what the modern mind knows as "science"). He can also move toward a higher degree of abstraction dealing with quantity and number which can be distinguished apart from the material things. This is called mathematics. The highest abstraction is when the mind deals with being or reality itself as being. This is called metaphysics...

..."Theology, logic, physics, biology, psychology, sociology, economics, are fully competent to solve their own problems by their own methods…no particular science is competent to either solve metaphysical problems, or to judge their metaphysical solutions." (The Unity of Philosophical Experience, page 249)
Science and Religion by A.L. <a very good read​

 

[outhouse]

God can destroy our science.

No the concept cannot.

The concept does have a negative effect on science because it closes so many minds, and religion factually produces fanaticism and fundamentalism.

That is all

Yes religion in the wrong hands has a negative effect on humanity.

We should trust God, not science

No.

We use moderation with religion, and WE NEVER place mythology before science.


No one gets a good education going to a church.

That's why universities are for.

 

[outhouse]

No, the Bible is not against science.

Correct.

It is the people who have little knowledge of their own mythology that ruin the beauty of text with a literal interpretation, that are factually against science.

The book breeds fanaticism in those educated and not educated.

Religion does not stack up against reality very well, reality generally is perverted by the religious to reinforce the mythology many will not accept the truth for.

 

[outhouse]

STOP IT

No you stop it. Open your mind to more then mythology.

Don't be trying to take people to Hell with you

No such place exist, once you understand how the mythology evolved over a thousands years.

Love ya

Love you to. Use moderation, and for love of god, please educate yourself on how the bible was authored and redacted and edited. Learn about religion.

JESUS IS LORD. ACCEPT HIM

Rhetoric brother

Lord simple means master of a house. He can be the master of your house if you like, but do not proselytize to me.

Accept science and education and knowledge, and ill back you wherever you go.

 

[kepha31]

How about a little history, outhouse.

I'm not trying to negate your passion for science and education and knowledge. We need more of it. But if it were not for the Catholic Church, you would have little or no "science and education and knowledge". I would be so bold as to say that if it were not for the Catholic Church, we would still be under the heel of the emperor, but I digress.

About the least fashionable thing one can do these days is utter a kind word about the Catholic Church. The idea that the church has been an obstacle to human progress has been elevated to the level of something everybody thinks he knows. But to the contrary, it is to the Catholic Church more than to any other institution that we owe so many of the treasures of Western civilization. Knowingly or not, scholars operated for two centuries under an Enlightenment prejudice that assumes all progress to come from religious skeptics, and that whatever the church touches is backward, superstitious, even barbaric.

Since the mid-20th century, this unscholarly prejudice has thankfully begun to melt away, and professors of a variety of religious backgrounds, or none at all, increasingly acknowledge the church's contributions.

Nowhere has the revision of what we thought we knew been more dramatic than in the study of the history of science. We all remember what we learned in fourth grade: While scientists were bravely trying to uncover truths about the universe and improve our quality of life, stupid churchmen who hated reason and simply wanted the faithful to shut up and obey placed a ceaseless stream of obstacles in their path.

That was where the conventional wisdom stood just over a century ago, with the publication of Andrew Dickson White's book, "A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom," in 1896. And that's where most Americans (and Europeans, for that matter) believe it still stands.

But there is scarcely a historian of science in America who would endorse this comic-book version of events today. To the contrary, modern historians of science freely acknowledge the church's contributions — both theoretical and material — to the Scientific Revolution. It was the church's worldview that insisted the universe was orderly and operated according to certain fixed laws. Only buoyed with that confidence would it have made sense to bother investigating the physical world in the first place, or even to develop the scientific method (which can work only in an orderly world). It's likewise a little tricky to claim the church has been an implacable foe of the sciences when so many priests were accomplished scientists.

The first person to measure the rate of acceleration of a freely falling body was Father Giambattista Riccioli. The man who has been called the father of Egyptology was Father Athanasius Kircher. Father Roger Boscovich, who has been described as "the greatest genius that Yugoslavia ever produced," has often been called the father of modern atomic theory. In the sciences it was the Jesuits in particular who distinguished themselves; some 35 craters on the moon, in fact, are named after Jesuit scientists and mathematicians.

By the 18th century, writes historian Jonathan Wright, the Jesuits "had contributed to the development of pendulum clocks, pantographs, barometers, reflecting telescopes, and microscopes, to scientific fields as various as magnetism, optics, and electricity. They observed, in some cases before anyone else, the colored bands on Jupiter's surface, the Andromeda nebula, and Saturn's rings. They theorized about the circulation of the blood (independently of Harvey), the theoretical possibility of flight, the way the moon affected the tides, and the wave-like nature of light."

Their achievements likewise included "star maps of the southern hemisphere, symbolic logic, flood-control measures on the Po and Adige rivers, introducing plus and minus signs into Italian mathematics."

These were the great opponents of human progress?

Seismology, the study of earthquakes, has been so dominated by Jesuits that it has become known as "the Jesuit science." It was a Jesuit, Father J.B. Macelwane, who wrote the first seismology textbook in America in 1936. To this day, the American Geophysical Union, which Macelwane once headed, gives an annual medal named after this brilliant priest to a promising young geophysicist.

The Jesuits were also the first to introduce Western science into such far-off places as China and India. In 17th-century China in particular, Jesuits introduced a substantial body of scientific knowledge and a vast array of mental tools for understanding the physical universe, including the Euclidean geometry that made planetary motion comprehensible.

Jesuits made important contributions to the scientific knowledge and infrastructure of other less developed nations not only in Asia but also in Africa and Central and South America. Beginning in the 19th century, these continents saw the opening of Jesuit observatories that studied such fields as astronomy, geomagnetism, meteorology, seismology and solar physics. Such observatories provided these places with accurate time keeping, weather forecasts (particularly important in the cases of hurricanes and typhoons), earthquake risk assessments and cartography.

The early church also institutionalized the care of widows, orphans, the sick and the poor in ways unseen in classical Greece or Rome. Even her harshest critics, from the fourth-century emperor Julian the Apostate all the way to Martin Luther and Voltaire, conceded the church's enormous contributions to the relief of human misery.

The spirit of Catholic charity — that we help those in need not out of any expectation of reciprocity, but as a pure gift, and that we even help those who might not like us — finds no analogue in classical Greece and Rome, but it is this idea of charity that we continue to embrace today.

The university was an utterly new phenomenon in European history. Nothing like it had existed in ancient Greece or Rome. The institution that we recognize today, with its faculties, courses of study, examinations and degrees, as well as the familiar distinction between undergraduate and graduate study, come to us directly from the medieval world.

By the time of the Reformation, no secular government had chartered more universities than the church. Edward Grant, who has written on medieval science for Cambridge University Press, points out that intellectual life was robust and debate was vigorous at these universities — the very opposite of the popular presumption.

It is no surprise that the church should have done so much to foster and protect the nascent university system, since the church, according to historian Lowrie Daly, "was the only institution in Europe that showed consistent interest in the preservation and cultivation of knowledge."

Until the mid-20th century, the history of economic thought started, more or less, with the 18th century and Adam Smith. But beginning with Joseph Schumpeter, the great economist and historian of his field, scholars have begun to point instead to the 16th-century Catholic theologians at Spain's University of Salamanca as the originators of modern economics.

And the list goes on.

I can already hear the complaint: What about these awful things the church did that I heard about in school? For one thing, isn't it a little odd that we never heard any of the material I've presented here in school? Doesn't that seem a trifle unfair?

But although an episode like the medieval Inquisition has been dramatically scaled back in scope and cruelty by recent scholarship — the University of California at Berkeley, not exactly a bastion of traditional Catholicism, published a book substantially revising popular view — it is not my subject here. My aim is to point out, as I do in my book "How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization," how indebted we are, without realizing it, to an institution popular culture teaches us to despise.
​

Commentary: History shows contributions of Catholic Church to Western civilization | Deseret News

I hope you enjoyed reading this, I tried to make it pretty.