[continued from previous message]   
      
   >> to enrich one's prayer. Thus the circle of light grows; but it is   
   >> always ringed round with darkness: for however our capacity may   
   >> increase, it remains finite, and God remains infinite. Indeed the more   
   >> the light grows, the more we realize what His Infinity means, what   
   >> Immensity is. The theologian sees far more problems about the Blessed   
   >> Trinity than the ordinary Catholic. But this is an ordinary   
   >> accompaniment of knowledge. The man who knows nothing about a subject   
   >> has no difficulties either, sees no problems, can ask no questions."   
   >   
   >So God is a 'mystery beyond understanding' but some people occasionally   
   >do get to understand bits and pieces? Just how does one determine that   
   >they are correct about these bits and pieced?   
      
   It is obviously impossible to "determine" correctness in a scientific   
   way but what one can doe is examine that understanding in the context   
   of everything else that we know and experience. I have done that. My   
   interest in ToE and later ID began twenty odd years ago when I was   
   told by someone I respected that my religious bleifes were God of the   
   Gaps. I knew nothing about evolution at that stage - I had never even   
   studied Biology at school - so I took the time and trouble to educate   
   myself in evolution and other subjects and am totally comfortable that   
   my religious beliefs have developed in a way that is totally   
   compatible with everything science has to offer.   
      
   This, again is where I think ID'ers go wrong. They struggle with   
   matching science to their religious beliefs and, instead of opening   
   their minds a bit to figure out the conflicts they see, they try to   
   discredit the science which is a futile exercise.   
      
      
   >   
   >>   
   >> Science is like this too; every time a question is answered, it opens   
   >> up new questions. Take abiogenesis, another example of a word for   
   >> something we don't really understand. Around a hundred years or so   
   >> ago, we knew virtually nothing about the origin of life; we now know a   
   >> heck of a lot about it. We have figured out the ins and outs of the   
   >> Big Bang and that it happened just under 14 billion years ago. We have   
   >> figured out that the earth came along about 9 billion years later and   
   >> bacteria, the first recognisable life forms, bacteria, came along   
   >> about a billion years after that. We are still, however, trying to   
   >> figure out how that bacteria came into being. At some points,   
   >> scientists just have to say "We don't know" and that admission does   
   >> not undermine or denigrate science; it certainly does not mean, as   
   >> some IDers seem to think, that because we don't know *all* the   
   >> answers, we don't know any of them so everything else can be thrown   
   >> out! The same principle applies to religious belief and understanding   
   >> - there are limits to our understanding and we should never be afraid   
   >> to say "don't know". Again I see this as a shortcoming in ID and   
   >> Creationism - whether it is science or religious belief, they regard   
   >> "don't know" as some sort admission of failure.   
   >   
   >I think your analogy fails. In science the the bits that move from   
   >unknown to probably known is due to objective evidence. How does that   
   >work in the religious sphere?   
      
   Firstly, I think that you are missing out an important bit in regard   
   to science which is that the greatest steps forward are not always a   
   simple result of direct evidence, they are often sheer inspiration.   
   One of the best examples of that, in my opinion, is Darwin's   
   identification of the role of Natural Selection which was not directly   
   shown by the evidence, it was inspirational insight on Dawkins. That   
   does not dismiss the value of the prior research that Dawkins had   
   done, it was that prior work that prepared Dawkins mind to encourage   
   him to spot what nobody else had sotted, leading to Huxley's   
   exclamation "How incredibly stupid not to have thought of that."   
      
   In the same way, I think people who have spent a lifetime thinking   
   about and studying religious belief can develop inspirational insights   
   - inspiration and revelation are synonyms in my mind. As a side note,   
   I think this whole concept of where inspiration or revelation comes   
   from is a good example of an area where science has nothing really to   
   offer in explanation, at least at this stage.   
      
   Where there is a difference is, of course, in what happens after that   
   inspiration/revelation occurs. Science can carry out physical tests   
   and research to test out the inspiration but religious belief (or   
   philosophy in general) cannot do that and we have to rely on the the   
   sort of r4easoning and comparison with things that I mentioned above.   
   To take one example of that, I have mentioned previously that I am   
   heavily influenced by the ideas of Teilhard de Chardin. He had made a   
   lifelong study of both science and religion which prepared his mind   
   for the inspirational/revelational idea that physical development from   
   the Big Bang to where we are today could be related to a journey back   
   to God. We can examine the reasoning he used and see does it stand up   
   to scrutiny against what science tells us but we have no way of   
   practically testing his ideas. As I said earlier, that is where we   
   move from science to faith but, whilst that can be argued as a   
   shortcoming in areligious belief, it does not in my view undermine   
   those beliefs.   
      
      
      
      
      
   >>   
   >> Another aspect of that mystery is that as humans, we are constrained   
   >> by human language in trying to describe something that is beyond   
   >> human. That's why I think we should not get overly hung up on a word   
   >> like "omniscient" or its partners "omnipresent" and "omnipotent". They   
   >> are simply shorthand for the mystery where neither time nor place   
   >> exist for God, everything is happening at once and all the time. It's   
   >> a bit like scientists using "singularity" for just prior to the Big   
   >> Bang; nobody can say exactly what the word means but everyone has a   
   >> general idea of what it is trying to describe. The same also applies   
   >> to the word "create"; it refers to everything having its source in God   
   >> but we don't understand exactly how that happened. As Pope Francis   
   >> declared, however, God was not "a magician, with a magic wand."   
   >   
   >The "magician, with a magic wand." is fictitious. A real magician is a   
   >trickster (greatly admired for their skills). The fictitious "magician,   
   >with a magic wand" is preforming miracles, just like God.   
      
   I don't quite agree but have no appetited for debating analogies.   
   (Bear in mind what I said about the limitations of human language in   
   describing things that are essentially beyond human description.)   
   >   
   >>   
   >> Again, the same principle applies to "miracle"; RonO and others try to   
   >> make it out as a denial of science but it is a word used to describe   
   >> something that science cannot explain so by definition, it cannot be a   
   >> contradiction.  I've asked Ron to identify even one miracle that   
   >> contradicts any specific science and needless to say, he hasn't been   
   >> able to do so.   
   >   
   >IMHO a true miracle is something that cannot *in principle* be explained   
   >by science not just something that currently cannot be explained by science.   
      
   Can you give an example of something that cannot *in principle* be   
   explained by science?   
      
   >   
   >>   
   >> In regard to miracles, it's worth pointing out that there are two   
   >> broad categories of miracles - those that as a Christian I must   
   >> believe and those that are optional for belief. The first category is   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)