Science and Apologetics?

1
Science and Apologetics?

• by Ard Louis
• Dept. of Chemistry
• Cambridge University
• www-louis.ch.cam.ac.uk/urbana/

2
Biological self-assembly

• Biology is soft--matter come alive
• Self-assembly of multi-component structures
• What hope for the modeller?

3
Protein folding Positive design and Negative
design for folded state pathway
Levinthal Paradox resolution relies on negative
design in pathway. Another Paradox Sequence
space 20150 more atoms than exist in the
universe
C.M. Dobson, Nature 426, 884 (2003)
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Reversible self-assembly

• Reversible self-assembly of one-component
  structures from individual sub-units
• Virus self-assembly in-vivo (Fraenkel-ContratWill
  iams 1955- TMV)
• Clathrin

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Positive and Negative Design for Virus
Self-Assembly
Model petagonal bi-pyramids negative and
positive design Iain Johnston reversible
self-assembly
D.J. Wales, Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. A, 363,
357-377 (2005)
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Positive and Negative Design for Virus
Self-Assembly
gas of monomers
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(No Transcript)
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Science has proven There is no God

• Fear?

9
OUTLINE

• What does the Bible say about the natural world?
• Using science in apologetics
• Witnessing to scientists
• The Origins debate ...

10
God reveals himself through nature

• Romans 118
• 18 The wrath of God is being revealed from
  heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness
  of men who suppress the truth by their
  wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God
  is plain to them, because God has made it plain
  to them. 20 For since the creation of the world
  God's invisible qualitieshis eternal power and
  divine naturehave been clearly seen, being
  understood from what has been made, so that men
  are without excuse.

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God reveals himself through nature

• Psalm 19
• 1 The heavens declare the glory of God the
  skies proclaim the work of his hands.
• 2 Day after day they pour forth speech
  night after night they display knowledge.

12
God reveals himself through nature

• Psalm 8
• 3 When I consider your heavens,
• the work of your fingers,
• the moon and the stars,
• which you have set in place,
• 4 what is man that you are mindful of him,
• the son of man that you care for him?

13
God reveals himself through nature

• Austrian Alps

It was a beautiful afternoon and suddenly the
remarkable beauty of creation around me was so
overwhelming, I felt, I cannot resist this
another moment. -- Francis Collins on his
conversion.
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God reveals himself through nature
15
Francis CollinsDirector, National Human Genome
Research Institute, USA

• The work of a scientist in this project,
  particularly a scientist who has
• the joy of also being a Christian, is a work of
  discovery which can also
• be a form of worship. As a scientist, one of the
  most exhilarating
• experiences is to learn something.that no human
  has understood before.
• To have a chance to see the glory of creation,
  the intricacy of it, the
• beauty of it, is really an experience not to be
  matched. Scientists who
• do not have a personal faith in God also
  undoubtedly experience the
• exhilaration of discovery. But to have that joy
  of discovery, mixed
• together with the joy of worship, is truly a
  powerful moment for a
• Christian who is also a scientist

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God created and sustains the world

• In the beginning, God created the heavens and
  the earth Gen 11
• Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness
  was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit
  of God was hovering over the waters. Gen 12
  
• For by him Christ all things were created
  and in him all things hold together Col
  116,17
• The Son is the radiance of Gods glory
  sustaining all things by his powerful word Heb
  13

17
God sustains the universe

• Psalm 104 (praising Gods creation)
• He makes springs pour water into ravines it
  flows between the mountains the wild donkeys
  quench their thirst v10,11
• Natural processes are described both as divine
  and non-divine actions
• 2 perspectives on the same natural world

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Science studies the Customs of the Creator

• If God were to stop sustaining all things the
  world would stop existing
• Donald MacKay, The Clockwork Image, IVP
• An act of God is so marvelous that only the
  daily doing takes off the admiration
• John Donne (Eighty Sermons, 22 published in
  1640)
• Miracles are not God intervening in the laws
  of nature they are God working in less
  customary ways

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Interpreting the Bible

• What kind of language?
• What kind of literature?
• What kind of audience?
• What kind of context?
• All truth is Gods truth, so, properly
  interpreted, science and the Bible cannot
  contradict

20
Bible is not a science textbook

• Moses wrote in a popular style things which,
  without instruction, all ordinary persons, endued
  with common sense, are able to understand but
  astronomers investigate with great labour
  whatever the sagacity of the human mind can
  comprehend ... this study is not to be
  reprobated, nor this science condemned ... (men)
  ought not to neglect this kind of exercise ...
  since the Spirit of God here (i.e. Genesis) opens
  a common school for all, it is not surprising
  that he should chiefly choose those subjects
  which would be intelligible to all ... Moses
  therefore, rather adapts his discourse to common
  usage. -- Commentary on Gen 116

John Calvin 1509-1564
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Bible is not a science textbook

• The whole point of scripture is to bring us to a
  knowledge of Christ --- and having come to know
  him (and all that this implies), we should come
  to a halt and not expect to learn more.
  Scripture provides us with spectacles through
  which we may view the world as Gods creation and
  self-expression it does not, and was never
  intended, to provide us with an infallible
  repository of astronomical and medical
  information. The natural sciences are thus
  effectively emancipated from theological
  restrictions

John Calvin 1509-1564
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OUTLINE

• What does the Bible say about the natural world?
• Using science in apologetics
• Witnessing to scientists
• The Origins debate ...

23
Science/Religion and the conflict metaphor?
Science and religion cannot be reconciled ...
Religion has failed, and its failures should be
exposed. Science, with its currently successful
pursuit of universal competence should be
acknowledged the king --Prof Peter Atkins,
Oxford U, in 1995
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Science/Religion and the conflict metaphor?
I dont know any historian of science, of any
religious persuasion or none, who would hold to
the theory that conflict is the name of the game
between science and religion, it simply isnt
true. --Prof Colin Russell, Open
University, UK
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Science/Religion and the conflict metaphor?

• Pervasive myth (Emperor has no clothes)
• Scientists are about as religious as the general
  population
• Galileo example far more complex
• Really about Aristotle/Greek cosmology
• Galilieo Connection, Prof Charles Hummel, IVP
  (1986)

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Christian origins of science

• Science has deeply Christian roots.
• Uniformity
• Rationality
• Intelligibility
• See e.g. books by Stanley Jaki R. Hooykaas e.g.
  China
• Royal Society, the words first scientific
  society. Founded in London July 15, 1662, many
  were Puritans

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Founders of Royal Society

• This most beautiful system of the sun, planets
  and comets could only proceed from the counsel
  and dominion of an intelligent being.
• Sir Isaac Newton

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Founders of Royal Society

• Wrote The Wisdom of God Manifested in Works of
  Creation, governor of the Corporation for the
  Spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in New
  England
• Sir Robert Boyle(1627-1691)

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Mechanism v.s. Meaning

• Conflating mechanism and meaning is origin of
  most confusion

why is the water boiling?
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Nothing Buttery
humans are collections of chemicals
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Scientism

• The cosmos is all there is or ever was or ever
  will be Carl Sagan
• The most important questions in life are not
  susceptible to solution by the scientific method
  Prof. Bill Newsome, Stanford U.

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God of the gaps

• Science cant understand it gt it must be God.
• often a reaction to mechanism meaning or nothing
  buttery
• When we come to the scientifically unknown, our
  correct policy is not to rejoice because we have
  found God it is to become better scientists
  Prof. Charles Coulson, Oxford U

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God of the gaps

• It is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an
  infidel to hear a Christian, while presumably
  giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, taking
  nonsense. We should take all means to prevent
  such an embarrassing situation, in which people
  show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh
  it to scorn .... If they find a Christian
  mistaken in a field which they themselves know
  well, and hear him maintain his foolish opinions
  about the Scriptures, how then are they going to
  believe those Scriptures in matters concerning
  the resurrection of the dead
• St. Augustine

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Newton and the planets

• This most beautiful system of the sun, planets
  and comets could only proceed from the counsel
  and dominion of an intelligent being.
• Sir Isaac Newton

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Newton and the planets
18th century Orrery from a London coffee house,
used to show the perfection of the orbits, which
reflect Gods perfection
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Leibnitz objects

• For, as Leibniz objected, if God had to remedy
  the defects of his creation, this was surely to
  demean his craftmanship
• John Hedley Brooke, Science and Religion, CUP
  1991, p147

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Laplace and Napoleon

• Mécanique Céleste (1799-1825)
• Napoleon Why have you not mentioned the creator?
• "Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là.

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Chaos and the planets

• Our understanding of the Solar System has been
  revolutionized over the past decade by the
  finding that the orbits of the planets are
  inherently chaotic. In extreme cases, chaotic
  motions can change the relative positions of the
  planets around stars, and even eject a planet
  from a system.
• The role of chaotic resonances in the Solar
  System, N. Murray and M. Holman, Nature 410,
  773-779 (12 April 2001)

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Arguments from science

• Unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics
• Fine-tuning in cosmology

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Unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics
Quantum Mechanics Relativity Antimatter

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Fine Tuning and the Anthropic Principle

• The universe is the way it is, because we are
  here Prof. Stephen Hawking, Cambridge U
• If the fine structure constant were changed by
  1, the sun would immediately explode Prof. Max
  Tegmark, U. Penn
• Just Six Numbers by Sir Martin Rees

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We are made of Stardust He C via a
resonance

• Sir Fred Hoyle, Cambridge U
• A common sense interpretation of the facts
  suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with
  physics .. and biology
• His atheism was deeply shaken

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Fine Tuning and the Anthropic Principle

• Fine tuning is not a proof of God, but seems more
  consistent with theism than atheism
• Note the difference with God of the gaps
• We seem to have three choices'... We can dismiss
  it as happenstance, we can acclaim it as the
  workings of providence, or (my preference) we can
  conjecture that our universe is a specially
  favoured domain in a still vaster multiverse. If
  this multiverse contained every possible set of
  laws and conditions, then the existence of our
  own world with its particular characteristics
  would be inevitable.
• Sir Martin Rees --
• John Leslie firing squad argument

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Using science in apologetics

• Key issues are philosophy/worldview
• conflict metaphor
• meaning v.s. mechanism
• nothing buttery
• scientism
• Arguments based on science
• watch out for God of the Gaps or the argument
  from personal incredulity
• Fine tuning, the unreasonable effectiveness of
  mathematics and other arguments in the spirit of
  Ps 19 The heavens declare the glory of God...

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OUTLINE

• What does the Bible say about the natural world?
• Using science in apologetics
• Witnessing to scientists
• The Origins debate ...

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Engaging with Scientists

• I.m.h.e. more open than arts/humanities students
• Often looking for a higher cause to which to
  dedicate their lives idealists
• Receptive to truth
• Still rarely become Christians through
  intellectual argument alone

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Science as a calling ?

• Good Scientific praxis resonates well with
  Christian principles
• Called not driven makes better scientists
• in Christian community
• Science and its derivatives will,through
  globalisation, have an increasingly large
  influence on thinking in the 2/3 world. Impact
  on missions.
• Christians are needed

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Summary

• The Bible
• God created the world
• Nature attests to Gods qualities (Rom 1, Psalms)
• God sustains the universe
• Biblical language of Divine action (God sent the
  rain)
• Bible is not a science textbook
• world has a beginning
• stars, sun, and moon are not Gods etc...

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Summary

• Science and apologetics
• main issues are worldview/philosophy
• best to use arguments based on non-controversial
  science
• Scientists
• to first order no different from anyone else
• Could you be called to science?

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Origins

• Controversial -- where we come from determines
  identity, meaning, destiny
• 4 views
• 1) Young earth creation science (YECS)
• 2) Progressive creationism
• 3) Intelligent Design
• 4) Theistic evolution

old earth
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Advice from Augustine

• In matters that are so obscure and far beyond our
  vision, we find in the Holy Scripture passages
  which can be interpreted in very different ways
  without prejudice to the faith we have received.
  In such cases, we should not rush in headlong and
  so firmly take our stand on one side that, if
  further progress in the search for truth justly
  undermines our position, we too fall with it. We
  should not battle for our own interpretation but
  for the teaching of Holy Scripture. We should
  not wish to conform the meaning of Holy Scripture
  to our interpretation, but our interpretation to
  the meaning of Holy Scripture.

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Advice from C.S. Lewis

• When the author of Genesis says that God made man
  in His own image, he may have pictured a vaguely
  corporeal God making man as a child makes a
  figure out of plasticine. A modern Christian
  philosopher may think of the process lasting from
  the first creation of matter to the final
  appearance on this planet for an organism fit to
  receive spiritual as well as biological life.
  Both mean essentially the same thing. Both are
  denying the same thing -- the doctrine that
  matter by some blind power inherent in itself has
  produced spirituality.
• (C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock Eerdmans (1970), p
  46)
• Does this mean that Christians on different
  levels of general education conceal radically
  different beliefs under an identical form of
  worlds? Certainly not. For what they agree on
  is the substance, and what they differ about is
  the shadow. When one imagines his God seated in
  a local heaven above a flat earth, where another
  sees God and creation in terms of Professor
  Albert North Whiteheads philosophloosely,
  process theology, this difference touches
  precisely what does not matter.

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Advice from Schaefer

• We must take ample time, and sometimes this will
  mean a long time, to consider whether the
  apparent clash between science and revelation
  means that the theory set forth by science is
  wrong or whether we must reconsider what we
  thought the Bible says.
• Francis Schaefer

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Advice from Westminster Theological Seminary

• The Westminster Confession's doctrine of the
  clarity of Scripture (17) goes hand in hand with
  its inspiration, infallibility, and authority.
  Yet it implies that not all parts of the
  Scriptures are equally clear or full. Here we
  must follow Calvin's great motto that where God
  makes an end of teaching, we should make an end
  of trying to be wise.(11) With Augustine and E.
  J. Young, the revered teacher of our senior
  faculty members, we recognize that the exegetical
  question of the length of the days of Genesis 1
  may be an issue which cannot be, and therefore is
  not intended by God to be, answered in dogmatic
  terms. To insist that it must comes dangerously
  close to demanding from God revelation which he
  has not been pleased to bestow upon us, and
  responding to a threat to the biblical world view
  with weapons that are not crafted from the words
  which have proceeded out of the mouth of God..
• http//www.wts.edu/news/creation.html

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Advice from Billy Graham

• "I don't think that there's any conflict at all
  between science today and the Scriptures. I think
  that we have misinterpreted the Scriptures many
  times and we've tried to make the Scriptures say
  things they weren't meant to say, I think that we
  have made a mistake by thinking the Bible is a
  scientific book. The Bible is not a book of
  science. The Bible is a book of Redemption, and
  of course I accept the Creation story. I believe
  that God did create the universe. I believe that
  God created man, and whether it came by an
  evolutionary process and at a certain point He
  took this person or being and made him a living
  soul or not, does not change the fact that God
  did create man. ... whichever way God did it
  makes no difference as to what man is and man's
  relationship to God.
• - Billy Graham quoted by David Frost
• Source Book - Billy Graham Personal Thoughts of
  a Public Man (1997, p. 72-74)

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YECS

• easiest to rationalise with Genesis
• Motivated by desire to uphold scripture
• Either the Bible is true, or evolution is true
  (HM Morris Science and the Bible)
• This can lead to heated rhetoric
• But can't we be Christian evolutionists, they
  say. Yes, no doubt it is possible to be a
  Christian and an evolutionist. Likewise, one can
  be a Christian thief, or a Christian adulterer,
  or a Christian liar! Christians can be
  inconsistent and illogical about many things, but
  that doesn't make them right.
• -- HM Morris, 1980, King of Creation, pp.83-84
• Conflict metaphor

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Defining Evolution

• Evolution as Natural History
• the earth is old (4.5 Billion years)
• more complex life forms followed from simpler
  life forms
• Evolution as a mechanism for the emergence of
  biological complexity
• generated by mutations and natural selection
• (note God created this mechanism)
• Evolution as a big picture worldview
• George Gaylord Simpson
• "Man is the result of a purposeless and
  materialistic process that did not have him in
  mind. He was not planned. He is a state of
  matter, a form of life, a sort of animal, and a
  species of the Order Primates, akin nearly or
  remotely to all of life and indeed to all that is
  material."
• or Richard Dawkins
• "Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually
  fulfilled atheist."

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Is the earth old?

• Science is a tapestry -- you can pick at a few
  strings, but that doesnt break the whole cloth

• Radiometric dating (many overlapping isotopes)
• ice cores
• up to 8000 years -- volcanoes like Vesuvius
• up to 740,000 years
• Milankovitch cycles
• Tree rings
• All these methods (when used properly) agree.
  There is no scientific controversy
• http//www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html

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Church fathers

• "Now what man of intelligence will believe that
  the first and the second and the third day
  existed without the sun and moon and stars?
• Origen 185 - 254

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Calvin on using science

• As far as I am aware, there is no evidence that
  Galileo had any direct knowledge of Calvin's
  writings. Nevertheless his understanding of the
  nature of the language used by the Bible when
  referring to the natural world is the same as
  Calvin's as the following quotations from the
  Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina show.
• B1. These propositions set down by the Holy
  Ghost were set down in that manner by the sacred
  scribes in order to accommodate them to the
  capacities of the common people, who are rude and
  unlearned. (p. 181)
• B2. It is necessary for the Bible, in order to
  be accommodated to the understanding of every
  man, to speak many things which appear to differ
  from the absolute truth so far as the bare
  meaning of the words is concerned. (p. 182)
• B3. For that reason it appears that nothing
  physical which sense-experience sets before our
  eyes, or which necessary demonstrations prove to
  us, ought to be called in question (much less
  condemned) upon the testimony of biblical
  passages which may have some different meaning
  beneath their words. (p. 182f)
• B4. ...having arrived at any certainties in
  physics, we ought to utilize these as the most
  appropriate aids in the true exposition of the
  Bible and in the investigation of those meanings
  which are necessarily contained therein, for
  these must be concordant with demonstrated
  truths. (p. 183)
• The first two quotations express the same
  'accommodation' understanding of biblical
  language as Calvin adopted. The third recognises
  that, as a result of this, the literal sense of
  the biblical text may sometimes be at variance
  with the scientific understanding of the natural
  phenomenon described. In the final quotation
  Galileo makes the point made by Prof. McKay that
  one reason why biblical interpreters should take
  scientific knowledge into account is that it will
  help them to recognise when the biblical writers
  are using the language of appearance or cultural
  idioms, and so help them avoid the kind of
  misinterpretation made by those who condemned
  Galileo.
• lehttp//www.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/cis/lucas/lectur
  e.html

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• 1 Isis. 2000 Jun91(2)283-304.
• B. B. Warfield (1851-1921). A biblical
  inerrantist as evolutionist.
• Livingstone DN, Noll MA.
• School of Geosciences, Queen's University of
  Belfast, Northern Ireland.
• The theological doctrine of biblical
  inerrancy is the intellectual basis for modern
  creation science. Yet Benjamin Breckinridge
  Warfield of Princeton Theological Seminary, the
  theologian who more than any other defined modern
  biblical inerrancy, was throughout his life open
  to the possibility of evolution and at some
  points an advocate of the theory. Throughout a
  long career Warfield published a number of major
  papers on these subjects, including studies of
  Darwin's religious life, on the theological
  importance of the age of humanity (none) and the
  unity of the human species (much), and on
  Calvin's understanding of creation as
  proto-evolutionary. He also was an engaged
  reviewer of many of his era's important books by
  scientists, theologians, and historians who wrote
  on scientific research in relation to traditional
  Christianity. Exploration of Warfield's writing
  on science generally and evolution in particular
  retrieves for historical consideration an
  important defender of mediating positions in the
  supposed war between science and religion.

62
James Orr

• One of the original Fundamentalists
• There is not a word in the Bible to indicate that
  in its view death entered the animal world as a
  consequence of the Sin of man.
• When you say there is the six days and the
  question whether those days are meant to be
  measured by the twenty-four hours of the suns
  revolution around the earth -- I speak of these
  things popularly. It is difficult to see how
  they should be so measured when the sun that is
  to measure them is not introduced until the
  fourth day. Do not think that this larger
  reading of the days is a new speculation. You
  find Augustine in early times declaring that it
  is hard or altogether impossible to say what
  fashion these days are, and Thomas Aquinas, in
  the middle ages, leaving the matter an open
  question.

63
C.S. Lewis

• When the author of Genesis says that God made man
  in His own image, he may have pictured a vaguely
  corporeal God making man as a child makes a
  figure out of plasticine. A modern Christian
  philosopher may think of the process lasting from
  the first creation of matter to the final
  appearance on this planet for an organism fit to
  receive spiritual as well as biological life.
  Both mean essentially the same thing. Both are
  denying the same thing -- the doctrine that
  matter by some blind power inherent in itself has
  produced spirituality.
• (C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock Eerdmans (1970), p
  46)
• Does this mean that Christians on different
  levels of general education conceal radically
  different beliefs under an identical form of
  worlds? Certainly not. For waht they agree on
  is the substance, and what they differ about is
  the shadow. When one imagines his God seated in
  a local heaven above a flat earth, where another
  sees God and creation in terms of Professor
  Albert North Whiteheads philosophloosely,
  process theology, this difference touches
  precisely what does not matter.

64
The Westminster Confession's doctrine of the
clarity of Scripture (17) goes hand in hand with
its inspiration, infallibility, and authority.
Yet it implies that not all parts of the
Scriptures are equally clear or full. Here we
must follow Calvin's great motto that where God
makes an end of teaching, we should make an end
of trying to be wise.(11) With Augustine and E.
J. Young, the revered teacher of our senior
faculty members, we recognize that the exegetical
question of the length of the days of Genesis 1
may be an issue which cannot be, and therefore is
not intended by God to be, answered in dogmatic
terms. To insist that it must comes dangerously
close to demanding from God revelation which he
has not been pleased to bestow upon us, and
responding to a threat to the biblical world view
with weapons that are not crafted from the words
which have proceeded out of the mouth of God.
Westminster Theological Seminary
http//www.wts.edu/news/creation.html
65
Theistic evolution

• Did God create by stochastic mechanism?
• Dominant view amongst Christian academic
  scientists and theologians

66
Tapestry arguments in biology common descent of
human chimp?

• Divergence of the chimpanzee and human lineages
  occurred about 6 million years ago the times of
  lineage divergence are not to scale
• News Views The chimpanzee and us, Wen-Hsiung
  Li and Matthew A. Saunders, Nature 437, 50-51
  (1September 2005) .

67
tapestry arguments in biology chromosomal
banding
Humans have 46 (2 X 23) chromosomes Apes have 48
(2 X 24) chromosomes

• The origin of man a chromosomal pictorial
  legacy. J.J Yunis and O. Prakash, Science 215,
  1525 (1982)

68
tapestry arguments in biology chromosomal
banding
Humans have 46 (2 X 23) chromosomes Apes have 48
(2 X 24) chromosomes

• Chromosome 2 Humans, Chimpanzees, Gorillas,
  Orang-utans.

69
tapestry arguments in biology fusion of
chromosome 2

• Chromosome 2 Humans, Chimpanzees, Gorillas,
  Orang-utans.

70
tapestry arguments in biology evidence from
the human genome
Chromosome 2 is unique to the human lineage of
evolution, having emerged as a result of
head-to-head fusion of two acrocentric
chromosomes that remained separate in other
primates. The precise fusion site has been
located in 2q13-2q14.1 (ref. 2
hg16114455823-114455838), where our analysis
confirmed the presence of multiple subtelomeric
duplications to chromosomes 1, 5, 8, 9, 10, 12,
19, 21 and 22 (Fig. 3 Supplementary Fig. 3a,
region A). During the formation of human
chromosome 2, one of the two centromeres became
inactivated (2q21, which corresponds to the
centromere from chimp chromosome 13) and the
centromeric structure quickly deterioriated 42.
Generation and annotation of the DNA sequences of
human chromosomes 2 and 4, L.W. Hillier et al.,
Nature 434, 724 (2005).
71
tapestry arguments in biology more threads of
evidence

• Genetic threads
• SINEs (Alu )
• LINEs
• Retroviral insertions
• pseudo genes
• chromosomal inversions
• Phenotypal similarities
• Fossils
• The tapestry for do humans and chimpanzees share
  a common ancestor? seems to me almost unbreakably
  strong
• See Graeme Finlay booklets Gods Books
  GeneticsGenesis (on sale)

for physicists, mathematicians and engineers --
these arguments may still seem foreign and vague
where is the proof?, how do you know? ---
communities talk past each other
72
tapestry arguments in biology

• But others biologists, I soon came to realize,
  regarded logical arguments as suspect. To them,
  experimental evidence, fallible as it might be,
  provided a far surer avenue to truth than did
  mathematical reasoning. .... Their implicit
  assumption seemed to be How could one know ones
  assumptions were correct? Where, in a purely
  deductive argument, was there room for the
  surprises that nature might offer, for mechanisms
  that might depart altogether from those imagined
  in our initial assumptions? Indeed for some
  biologists, the gap between empirical and logical
  necessity loomed so large as to make the latter
  seem effectively irrelevant.
• Evelyn Fox Keller, in Making Sense of Life
  Explaining Biological Development with Models,
  Metaphors, and Machines, HUP, (2002)

You cant ask those kinds of questions!!!! (Biolog
ist to AAL at Protein-Protein Interaction
Conf, June 2004) Where are the equations -- a
physicist might ask
73
Tapestry arguments

• Basic scientific principles are shared across
  fields
• But what is considered necessary or
  sufficient for a (self-organised) tapestry
  varies from field to field (often unwritten)
• cultural iceberg, above and below waterline
• evidence grant or paper review
• demarkation problem
• mathematics-gtphysics-gtchemistry-gtbiology-gtmedicine
  -gtengineering
• Differences --in spite of apparent epistemic
  laxity ... it still works!

74
Recommended Books, see also www-louis.ch.cam.ac
.uk/urbana/

• Science and Christianity Conflict or Coherence?,
  Henry F. Schaefer, III (Apollos, 2003)
• Quarks, Chaos and Christianity, John Polkinghorne
  (Triangle, 1994)
• Science Its Limits, Del Ratzsch (IVP 2000)
• Rebuilding the Matrix, Denis Alexander (Lion 2001)

75
Recommended Books, see also www-louis.ch.cam.ac
.uk/urbana/

• The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, Mark Noll
  (IVP, 1994)
• Battle for the Beginnings, Del Ratzsch (IVP, 1996)