From Michael Keas at Salvo:
The truth is that science and biblical religion have been friends for a long time. Judeo-Christian theology has contributed in a friendly manner to such science-promoting ideas as discoverable natural history, experimental inquiry, universal natural laws, mathematical physics, and investigative confidence that is balanced with humility. Christian institutions, especially since the medieval university, have often provided a supportive environment for scientific inquiry and instruction.
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We have documented the truth that Christianity was a major factor in the growth of science. Why do myths of science–faith disharmony dominate popular culture today? Misconception flourishes when famous and influential scientists make pronouncements about the history of science based on their own biased assumptions rather than the actual historical record. An anti-Christian agenda also often lurks below.
Stephen Hawking is among the worst offenders. His A Brief History of Time (1988), the second-best-selling science book of all time, is riddled with falsehoods about the history of science and theistic religion. For instance, Hawking asserts that the earliest explanations of the cosmos invoked unpredictable spiritual beings as the cause of natural phenomena. Christianity never offered such an explication, but you’d never know it from him. More.
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“The truth is that science and biblical religion have been friends for a long time.” – not only that, but ‘science’ is Latin for ‘knowledge’ and as such it is a composite of Observation and Beliefs: http://nonlin.org/philosophy-religion-and-science/
Here a few more take downs of Hawking’s book “The Grand Design”:
Confusing law with agency is a profoundly deep philosophical error on Hawking’s part:
Even Hawking himself reluctantly admitted, via Godel’s incompleteness theorem, that a purely mathematical ‘theory of everything’ is impossible:
Godel further stated:
And if we rightly let the Agent causality, i.e. the Mind, of God ‘back’ into the picture of modern physics, as the Christian founders of modern science originally envisioned, (Newton, Maxwell, Faraday, and Planck, among others), then an empirically backed reconciliation between Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity readily pops out for us in Christ’s resurrection from the dead. Specifically, we have evidence that both Gravity and Quantum Mechanics were dealt with in Christ’s resurrection from the dead:
Verses and Music:
Supplemental notes:
We know that science was flourished under the auspices of Christianity in Europe just as it did for a time under Islam. The conflict between science and religion only arises when a claim about the natural world by a faith is contradicted by the findings of empirical science.
Science recognizes that there is a profound mystery about the origins of the Universe and the laws by which it is governed. A lot of people are trying to come up with new ideas to try an explain it all. Maybe most of them are wrong. Maybe all of them are wrong so far but that is no reason not keep on trying.
We cannot rule out the possibility that there is some sort of intelligent agency behind it all. The problem is that knowing who did it doesn’t tell us anything about how it was done.
The argument is about, ‘ways of knowing’. Religion is a way of knowing and understanding our world, and creation. As such, its historical importance to humanity, and its limited ability to answer natural questions can not be ignored; with its limited tools, and ideas, it came up with some pretty impressive ideas, rules, and questions.
But as science became more methodical, and was willing less and less, to accept, ‘God did that, back off’, as an explanation conflict innevitably grew.
Today religion, and especially Christianity likes to expound the myth that modern science was brewed in the enlightenment pot of Church and Scince; nonsense! No scientist, then or now, goes to the Bible to answer natural questions.
The church, and Islam today, fights kicking and screaming for science to stop finding things out that upset their powers; and after all, for the Church it is nothing to do with inquiry, and everything to do with their diminishing role, importance, their power.
The old univerities were indeed Christian, and they did indeed cultivate inquiry, up to a point. This set up does not bathe Christianity in a warm cloak of fostering Scince. All the universities were originally Christian, if you wanted to learn anyting the first thing needed was a belief in God.
The argument that all the old scientists were Christian, therefore Christianity cultivated investigation is absurd on its face. You had to be Christian to get in the door, in fact to be otherwise was almost impossible for these people, living at this time.
And today? Well, let’s just say no scientist except those at AIG, CMI, and ICR, asks if their findings fit within Biblical parameters. All respected religious scientists today, leave their books, and faith upon the doorstep of the lab, anything else, (I desperately hope you agree) wouldn’t be science, it would be faith, and those two simply can not work together.
A glaring non-sequitur.
Perhaps UB,
but it does have a benefit of being true. Religion and science are poles apart, and one of the most glaring truths is that for a scientist to be a scientist, (regardless of their faith), they must leave their faith ouside the lab’s door.
Their various holy texts are next to useless on science, and the less said about Pi=3.0, the better.
Non-sequitur? Religion/Science/Bible/Facts, hmmm.
No, rv, it doesn’t. It the half-baked ramblings of a propagandist ideologue. You start with a false premise, then you think you’ve demonstrated the truth of that premise by using a non-sequitur. You appear unable to think straight.
OT:
As to the science vs. religion warfare myth, the truth of the matter is that Christianity and science have never been at war with each other. In fact, modern science owes its very existence to the Christian worldview. The warfare myth, like so many other myths from Darwinists, is a patently false ‘just so story’ that was invented by atheists from their imagination. A completely false narrative that is continually promulgated by modern day Darwinian ideologues that has, like Darwinian evolution itself, absolutely no basis in reality.
Moreover, if any worldview is at war with science, then it is certainly atheistic materialism itself that is at war with modern science
So Rvb8 Science and religion, you seem to have the view that this site and most who post here are anti science nothing could be further from the truth we love science but we also understand the difference between science the methodology, and science the pronouncement of materialist atheists.
Regarding the origin of life “yes that old chestnut” I believe based on my reasoning from science that a supernatural intelligence was required for life to originate, if I am wrong please present the evidence from science that life had a completely natural no intelligence required beginning.
If said evidence is not forthcoming am I to believe that this evidence is lacking and you just believe (FAITH) that nature created life by chance , or perhaps you are willing to cast off this faith and go where the scientific evidence leads that life is not a chance event, and you are accusing the wrong people of putting faith blind faith first.
Bornagain77@9, I have often wondered. Do your comments that start with “OT” mean “OFF TOPIC” or “ON TOPIC”?