Thinking Christianly about Science

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Thinking Christianly about Science

• Dr. Ard Louis
• Department of Physics
• University of Oxford
• www.cis.org.uk
• www.faraday-institute.org
• www.cpgrad.org.uk

2
Cross-cultural, broad-brush talk

• Christian sub-culture(s)
• Scientific sub-cultures
• culture is often caught not taught

Words Customs Traditions Behaviour Beliefs Values
Assumptions
3
Biological self-assembly

• http//www.npn.jst.go.jp/ Keiichi Namba, Osaka
• Biological systems self-assemble (they make
  themselves)
• Can we understand?
• Can we emulate? (Nanotechnology)

4
Virus self-assembly
viruses

• Self-assembled from identical subunits
  (capsomers).
• Characteristic number T.
• Capsid T 12 pentamers, 10(T - 1) hexamers.

9/18/2020
5
Self-assembly of computer viruses
Computer viruses?
Monte-Carlo simulations stochastic
optimisation http//www-thphys.physics.ox.ac.uk/us
er/IainJohnson/
6
Self-assembly with legos?
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Christian reaction Fear?
8
Science and faith?
Big, fun! questions Is there a God? Is there
more to life than this? How do I obtain reliable
knowledge about the world?

• Some Christian and Islamic writers seem unwilling
  to examine deeply held beliefs, presumably
  because they are afraid that this kind of thing
  is bad news for faith. Well, maybe it is -- for
  intellectually deficient and half-baked ideas.
  But it doesnt need to be like this. There are
  intellectually robust forms of faith -- the kind
  of thing we find in writers such as Augustine of
  Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, and C.S. Lewis. They
  werent afraid to think about their faith, and
  ask hard questions about its evidential basis,
  its internal consistency, or the adequacy of its
  theories
• Alister McGrath in Finding Dawkins God,
  Blackwell (2004)

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OUTLINE

• What does the Bible say about the natural world?
• Thinking about science and certainty
• The Origins debate ...

10
The Bible

• B The Bible, as originally given, is the
  inspired, inerrant and infallible word of God.
  Christians must therefore submit to its supreme
  authority and sufficiency, both individually and
  corporately, in every matter of belief and
  conduct.
• South East Gospel Partnership DB

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Biblical or cultural?
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Interpreting the Bible

• What kind of language?
• What kind of literature?
• What kind of audience?
• What kind of context?

• The antidote to bad interpretation is not no
  interpretation, but good interpretation, based on
  common sense guidelines
• G. Fee and D. Stuart, How to Read the Bible for
  All It Is Worth, Zondervan (1993), p17

13
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.

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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?

Milky way 100 Billion stars Universe 100
Billion galaxies
"he also made the stars" .. Gen 116
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God reveals himself through nature
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Thinking Christianly about the natural world....

• Wonder and Worship
• Fearfully and wonderfully made ...

18
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 created and sustains the world

• In the beginning, God created the heavens and
  the earth Gen 11
• All things were made by him, and without him ws
  not anything made that was made John 13
• 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
• You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive
  glory and honor and power, for you created all
  things and by your will they existed and were
  created, Rev 411

20
Biblical language of creation

• He makes springs pour water into ravines it
  flows between the mountains the wild donkeys
  quench their thirst Psalm 104 10,11 (praising
  Gods creation)
• "Do you hunt the prey for the lioness and satisfy
  the hunger of the lions when they crouch in their
  dens or lie in wait in a thicket? Who provides
  food for the raven when its young cry out to God
  and wander about for lack of food? Job 3839-41
• For behold, he who forms the mountains and
  creates (bara) the wind, and declares to man
  what is his thought, who makes the morning
  darkness, and treads on the heights of the
  earththe Lord, the God of hosts, is his name!
  Amos 413
• 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

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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.

John Calvin 1509-1564
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The Bible...

• 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, but ...
• world has a beginning
• stars, sun, and moon are not Gods etc...

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OUTLINE

• What does the Bible say about the natural world?
• Thinking about science and certainty
• The Origins debate ...

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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 (e.g. Oxford Physics)
• e.g. 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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Nothing Buttery
humans are collections of chemicals
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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, Cornell U
The most important questions in life are not
susceptible to solution by the scientific method
Bill Newsome, Stanford U.
37
Limits of Science?

• Science is a great and glorious enterprise - the
  most successful, I argue, that human beings have
  ever engaged in. To reproach it for its inability
  to answer all the questions we should like to put
  to it is no more sensible than to reproach a
  railway locomotive for not flying or, in general,
  not performing any other operation for which it
  was not designed.
• -- Sir Peter Medawar, The Limits of Science,
  (Oxford University Press, Oxford (1987))

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God of the gaps?

• that couldnt have happened by natural means
  --gt God into the gap
• 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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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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Immediatism Leibniz objects

• And I hold, that when God works miracles, he
  does not do it in order to supply the wants of
  nature, but those of grace. Whoever thinks
  otherwise, must needs have a very mean notion of
  the wisdom and power of God

43
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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Populism and Paley

• God only present through interventions?
• God present in the whole thing?
• - (providence - sustains all things ... Col
  115)
• Natural laws -- customs of the creator
• Miracles -- God working in un-customary ways
• always for a theological purpose

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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

See also The applicability of mathematics as a
philosophical problem, Mark Steiner HUP
(1998) E. Wigner "The Unreasonable Effectiveness
of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences," in
Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics,
vol. 13, No. I (February 1960)
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Science and Beauty
A Scientist does not study nature because it is
useful he studies it because he delights in it,
and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If
nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth
knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing,
life would not be worth living.
Henri Poincaré 1854 1912
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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 (just 6 numbers) --
• John Leslie firing squad argument

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Tapestry arguments and inference to the best
explanation

• The Golemization of Relativity, David Mermin,
  Physics Today 49, p11 April 1996
• Science is a tapestry
• -- you can pick at a few strings, but that
  doesnt break the whole cloth

Why do I believe in Jesus Christ? tapestry
argument
If we are to understand the nature of reality, we
have only two possible starting points either
the brute fact of the physical world or the brute
fact of a divine will and purpose behind that
physical world John Polkinghorne, Serious Talk
Science and Religion in Dialogue, (1995).
.
53
Witnessing to scientists

• To first order just like everyone else
• To second order, more likely to be interested in
  apologetic arguments
• Worldview issues are key here --
• Often open to idealism (e.g. Ards career talk)

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Summary of first part

• What does the Bible say?
• Good interpretation is key
• God created and sustains the world
• God reveals himself through nature (Natural
  Theology)
• Not a science text book, but
• Thinking about science and apologetics mainly
  philosophy/world view issues
• Conflict metaphor for history
• Mechanism and meaning
• Nothing buttery
• Scientism and the limits of science
• God of the gaps and miracles
• Unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics
• Fine-tuning and anthropic principle
• Tapestry arguments and inference to the best
  explanation

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History of life on earth

• Does where we come from determine who we are and
  how we should live?

• OUTLINE
• Origin of life?
• Defining words Evolution
• Modern themes in evolutionary theory
• Christian approaches to biological complexity
• YECS
• Progressive creation (concordism)
• Theistic evolution (biologos)
• Intelligent Design (ID)
• Interpretation of Genesis 1-3

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History of life on earth
earth forms from accretion disk

• Grandeur of God?
• humans -- last 2 seconds of 24 hr day
• not unlike astronomy the heavens declare the
  Glory of God - Psalm 19
• What is man that you are mindful of him? Psalm 8

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Late Heavy Bombardement

• 4-3.8 Billion years
• Brutal some impacts probably vaporized the sea.
• Any life wiped out

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First fossils?

• First chemical evidence for fossilized life --
  3.8 to 3.5 Billion years ago
• -- evidence is C12 enrichment
• -- Hopanes from cyanobacteria (microbes
  responsible for generating Oxygen) found 2.5
  Billion year old shale

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Origin of life
Cambrian Explosion
what happened here? Origin of life?
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Origin of life

• The problem of the origin of life has much in
  common with a well-constructed detective story.
  There is no shortage of clues pointing to the way
  in which the crime, the contamination of the
  pristine environment of the early earth, was
  committed. On the contrary, there are far too
  many clues and far too many suspects. It would
  be hard to find two investigators who agree on
  even the broad outline of events.
• Leslie Orgel (1998)

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Aside 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 most Christians agree that God created
  this mechanism)
• Evolution as a big picture worldview
  (scientism)
• 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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Language Random or stochastic?

• Random mutations and natural selection...
• Stochastic (Monte Carlo) optimisation
• e.g. used to price your stock portfolio .....

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Lego blocks or clay?

• Evo-Devo Lego Blocks
• pax6
• sonic-hedgehog
• shaven-baby
• tinman
• Endless Forms Most Beautiful The New Science of
  Evo Devo and the Making of the Animal Kingdom.
  S.B. Carroll (Blackwell Science 2005)

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Why so few genes?
Mycoplasma genitalium (483) (300 minimum?)
E.coli (5416)
S. cerevisiae (5800)
Drosophila Melanogaster (13,500)
C. elegans (19,500) P. pacificus (29,000)
H. sapiens (22,000)
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Why so few genes?
We share 15 of our genes with E. coli
25 yeast
50 flies
70 frogs
98 chimps
66
Gene language
Why are there so few genes? complexity comes
from the interactions gene networks systems
biology
transcriptional network for yeast Saccharomyces
cerevisiae
67
Gene language

• Genes are trapped in huge colonies, locked
  inside highly intelligent beings, moulded by the
  outside world, communicating with it by complex
  processes, through which, blindly, as if by
  magic, function emerges. They are in you and me
  we are the system that allows their code to be
  read and their preservation is totally dependent
  on the joy that we experience in reproducing
  ourselves. We are the ultimate rationale for
  their existence.
• Denis Noble --
• The Music of Life Biology Beyond the Genome (OUP
  2006)

• Genes swarm in huge colonies, safe inside
  gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off from the
  outside world, communicating with it by tortuous
  indirect routes, manipulating it by remote
  control. They are in you and me they created us,
  body and mind and their preservation is the
  ultimate rationale for our existence.
• Richard Dawkins --
• The Selfish Gene (1976)

68
Contingency v.s.deep structures Re-run the
tape of evolution?
When you examine the tapestry of evolution you
see the same patterns emerging over and over
again. Gould's idea of rerunning the tape of life
is not hypothetical it's happening all around
us. And the result is well known to biologists
evolutionary convergence. When convergence is the
rule, you can rerun the tape of life as often as
you like and the outcome will be much the same.
Convergence means that life is not only
predictable at a basic level it also has a
direction. Simon Conway Morris Life's Solution
Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe (CUP,
2003)
69
Convergent Evolution?
Convergent evolution in mechanical design of
lamnid sharks and tunas Jeanine M. Donley, et al.
Nature 429, 61-65 (6 May 2004)
70
Convergent Evolution

• North America
• Placental Sabre-toothed cat
• South America
• Marsupial Sabre-toothed cat

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Convergent Evolution
compound eye
camera eye
72
Convergent Evolution?

• Enormous number of examples ... from proteins to
  vision up to societies to intelligence.
• Are rational conscious beings an inevitable
  outcome?

73
Christian approaches to emergence of biological
complexity

• Origins does where we come from determine who we
  are and how we should then live?
• Christian approaches
• Young Earth Creation Science
• Earth is about 10,000 years old
• Genesis 1,2 are historical in the modern sense
• mainly in the last 50 years
• Progressive Creationism
• Earth is old
• Complexity came about through miracles
• Varied views on exegesis of Genesis
• Theistic Evolution
• Earth is old
• Complexity came about through normal processes of
  God
• Genesis 1,2 are theological (framework view
  --prose poem)
• Intelligent Design
• All the above views are strictly creationists
  and believe in intelligent design
• Capital ID is a more recent movement, could be
  YECS, PE, or TE.

74
The Bible and creation

• 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...

75
YECS

• GOOD
• Motivated by desire to uphold scripture
• easiest to rationalise with Genesis
• great at popularisations
• Good understanding of the dangers of evolutionism
• LESS GOOD
• characterised by heated rhetoric and false
  dichotomies
• 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
• Reinforces conflict metaphor
• Often fast and lose with quotes and science
• Disconnected from scientific community and
  tapestry arguments
• very hard to reconcile with science (Avaroism?)
• http//www.answersingenesis.org/
• http//www.icr.org/
• Ken Ham, Henry Morris, Duane Gish, Jonathan
  Safrati

76
Advice from Augustine

• 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

77
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.

78
Progressive Creationism/Concordism

• GOOD
• Motivated by desire to harmonise scripture with
  science
• often accepts most of Natural History
• easier to rationalise with scripture than TE
• a middle way?
• LESS GOOD
• No one clear scheme --
• doesnt solve some thorny questions (like death
  before fall)
• Not always as easy to reconcile with science
• http//www.reasons.org/
• Hugh Ross, Norman Geissler

79
Theistic Evolution/Biologos

• GOOD
• Motivated by desire to harmonise scripture with
  science
• easier to rationalise with science
• dominant view among professional scientists and
  theologians
• LESS GOOD
• More difficult to harmonise with scripture
• doesnt solve some pressing questions (like death
  before fall)
• Sometimes misses the dangers of evolutionism
• http//www.cis.org.uk
• http//www.asa3.org
• Francis Collins, Denis Alexander, B.B. Warfield,
  Henri Blocher

80
What kind of literature?

• Genesis 1-23
• Phrases that occur 10 times
• 10 times God said (3 for mankind, 7 for other
  creatures)
• 10 times creative commands (3 x let there be
  for heavenly creatures, 7 x let for world
  below)
• 10 x To make
• 10 x According to their kind
• Phrases that occur 7 times (heptads)
• and it was so
• and God saw that it was good

• Genesis 1-23
• Phrases that occur 3 times
• God blessed
• God created
• God created men and women
• Other numerical patterns
• Intro 11-2 contains 21 words (3 x 7) and
  conclusion (2 1-3) contains 35 words (5 X 7)
• Earth is mentioned 21 times and God 35 times
• -- see e.g. H. Blocher In the Beginning, p 33
  or E. Lucas Can We Believe Genesis Today , p 97

81
What kind of literature?
FRAMEWORK VIEW

• SHAPED
• Day 1
• The separation of light and darkness
• Day 2
• The separation of the waters to form the sky and
  the sea
• Day 3
• The separation of the sea from dry land and
  creation of plants

• INHABITED
• Day 4
• The creation of the lights to rule the day and
  the night
• Day 5
• The creation of the birds and fish to fill the
  sky and sea
• Day 6
• The creation of the animals and humans to fill
  the land and eat the plants

Day 7 The heavens and earth were finished
and God rested
82
What kind of literature?

• Gen24-7 -- more patterns
• These are the generations
• of the heavens
• and the earth
• when they were created
• in the day that the Lord God made
• the earth
• and the heavens.
• Chiastic structure (C. John Collins, Genesis 1-4
  PR (2006))
• When no bush of the field was yet in the
  land and no small plant of the field had yet
  sprung upfor the Lord God had not caused it to
  rain on the land, and there was no man to work
  the ground, and a mist was going up from the
  land and was watering the whole face of the
  ground then the Lord God formed the man of dust
  from the ground and breathed into his nostrils
  the breath of life, and the man became a living
  creature.
• A completely different emphasis!

83
What kind of literature?

• More like Revelation than like Luke
• But very clear in its teaching e.g.
• God created the world
• Creation is good
• I Tim 4 1The Spirit clearly says that in later
  times some will abandon the faith and follow
  deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. 2
  Such teachings come through hypocritical liars,
  whose consciences have been seared as with a hot
  iron. 3 They forbid people to marry and order
  them to abstain from certain foods, which God
  created to be received with thanksgiving by those
  who believe and who know the truth. 4 For
  everything God created is good, and nothing is to
  be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving,
  5 because it is consecrated by the word of God
  and prayer.

84
What kind of literature?

• More like Revelation than like Luke?
• But very clear in its teaching e.g.
• God created the world
• Creation is good
• Man is made in Gods image
• Mankind (adam) has fallen into sin
• A promise of redemption (seed of woman)
• MANY! More things
• No problems with perspecuity on doctrine

85
What kind of literature?

• Is it chronological?
• "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 First Principles, 4.3
• On this subject there are three main views.
  According to the first, some wish to understand
  paradise only in a material way. According to
  the second, others wish to take it only in a
  spiritual way. According to the third, others
  understand it both ways, taking some things
  materially and others spiritually. If I may
  briefly mention my own opinion, I prefer the
  third
• Augustine of Hippo (354-430) De Gen. ad litt
  VIII, 1. (on the literal interpretation of
  Genesis)

86
Jewish Commentators

• the sages agree that the creation of this earth
  and sky was a single divine event and not a
  series of distinct occurrences spread out over
  six or seven days
• N.M. Samuelson, Judaism and the Doctrine of
  Creation, CUP (1994) p115
• The text does not point to the order of the
  acts of creation the text does not by any
  means teach which things were created first and
  which later it only wants to teach us what was
  the condition of things at the time when heaven
  and earth were created, namely, that the earth
  was without form and a confused mass
• Rashi (1040-1105), Commentary on Genesis
• Many more examples, e.g. Maimonides (1135-1204)
  etc

87
Writers of the Fundamentals

• 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.

James Orr 1844-1913
88
What kind of literature?

• Strong internal hints at elevated prose, more
  like Revelation than like Luke
• Two separate narratives (tablets)
• Numerical patterns
• Thematic patterns
• A common understanding of church fathers, early
  Jewish commentators and early Evangelical
  leaders.
• Main theological teachings are crystal clear
  (perspicuity)
• Physical interpretation less so -- there science
  can take a servant role and help you decide.
• We must be very careful not to import our own
  cultural biases into interpretation

89
AsideEmergence of Humans?
e.g. at what age is a child spiritually
responsible to God? John Stott on Homos Divinus

• 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)

90
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)

91
Origins and biological complexity

• Science is fun
• Nature is full of self-assembling things
• Science and Faith - big, fun questions
• Origins lots to still figure out

92
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95
History of life on earth
earth forms from accretion disk

• Grandeur of God?
• humans -- last 2 seconds of 24 hr day
• not unlike astronomy the heavens declare the
  Glory of God - Psalm 19
• What is man that you are mindful of him? Psalm 8

96
Late Heavy Bombardement

• 4-3.8 Billion years
• Brutal some impacts probably vaporized the sea.
• Any life wiped out

97
First fossils?

• First chemical evidence for fossilized life --
  3.8 to 3.5 Billion years ago
• -- evidence is C12 enrichment
• -- Hopanes from cyanobacteria (microbes
  responsible for generating Oxygen) found 2.5
  Billion year old shale

98
Origin of life
Cambrian Explosion
what happened here? Origin of life?
99
Origin of life

• The problem of the origin of life has much in
  common with a well-constructed detective story.
  There is no shortage of clues pointing to the way
  in which the crime, the contamination of the
  pristine environment of the early earth, was
  committed. On the contrary, there are far too
  many clues and far too many suspects. It would
  be hard to find two investigators who agree on
  even the broad outline of events.
• Leslie Orgel (1998)

100
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

101
Intelligent Design (capitalised)
heterogeneous movement -- will focus on ID
centred at Discovery Institute

• some key publications and people
• The Mystery of Lifes Origin (1984)
• Charles B. Thaxton, Walter L. Bradley, Roger L.
  Olsen
• Evolution, a Theory in Crisis (1986)
• Michael Denton
• Darwin on Trial (1991)
• Philip Johnson
• Darwins Black Box (1996)
• Michael Behe (CT book of the year)
• Icons of evolution (2000)
• Jonathan Wells
• No Free Lunch (2001)
• William Dembski

102
What is ID

• Intelligent agency, as an aspect of scientific
  theory making, has more explanatory power in
  accounting for the specified, and sometimes
  irreducible complexity of some physical systems,
  including biological entities, and/or the
  existence of the universe as a whole, than the
  blind forces of. . . matter.1 That is,
  intelligent design is a better explanation for
  entities exhibiting complex specified information
  (CSI) than are appeals to the inherent capacities
  of nature (i.e. chance and/or physical
  necessity). ID suggests that the world contains
  objects that exhaust the explanatory resources of
  undirected natural causes, and can only be
  adequately explained by recourse to intelligent
  causation.
• (definition from Peter S. Williams)

103
Irreducible Complexity
Michael Behe (1996)

• Bacterial flagellum, immune system, etc... are
  too complex to have evolved

• This result is so unambiguous and so significant
  that it must be ranked as one of the greatest
  achievements in the history of science ... The
  discovery of intelligent design rivals those of
  Newton and Einstein, Lavoisier and Schroedinger,
  Pasteur and Darwin.

104
Complex Specified Information
William Dembski

• CSI -- information that could not have come
  there by chance alone?
• e.g. when we see a statue v.s. weathered rock
• Law of the conservation of information

105
Intelligent Design

• Philosophical issues
• Definition of science (demarcation) ?
• Problems, but why not follow the evidence?
• Theological issues
• when/why does God intervene?
• miracles?
• Newman/Barth critique

106
ID and Christians

• Major issues is -- why these miracles?

• Miracles occur to serve Gods redemptive purpose
• Origin, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin etc...

And I hold, that when God works miracles, he
does not do it in order to supply the wants of
nature, but those of grace. Whoever thinks
otherwise, must needs have a very mean notion of
the wisdom and power of God Leibnitz
e.g. what is the Biblical rationale for
supernatural action aiding the creation of the
flagellum?
107
Intelligent Design (capitalised)

• GOOD
• Looking at complex questions in
  science/philosophy
• counteracting evolutionism
• middle road, broad church?
• LESS GOOD
• Detached from scripture
• doesnt solve some pressing questions (like death
  before fall)
• very political
• http//www.discovery.org
• William Dembski, Michael Behe, Stephen Meyer,
  Paul Nelson

108
Summary

• Origins questions are complex
• Immediatism
• Anti-traditionalism
• Populism ..
• Our common enemy is philosophical naturalism
• The Metaphilosophy of Naturalism, Philo 4, 2
  (2000)
• by Quentin Smith http//www.philoonline.org/libra
  ry/smith_4_2.htm
• The justification of most contemporary
  naturalistic views is defeated by contemporary
  theist arguments
• Naturalists passively watched as realist
  versions of theism, most influenced by
  Plantingas writings, began to sweep through the
  philosophical community, until today perhaps
  one-quarter or one-third of philosophy professors
  are theists, with most being orthodox Christians.
  

109
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

110

• 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.

111
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.

112
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.......
• 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.
• (C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock Eerdmans (1970), p
  46)

113
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