rob_murfin@hotmail.com (Murf) wrote in message news:<cff14f12.0410140553.384ec67e@posting.google.com>...

Hello everybody,

[snip]

In evidence I said "how come you can see all of the stars at night
then? After all, many of them are clearly more than 4,500 light years
away?"

He told me that "astronomy is a souless science - they lie to you".

Hmmph. He was obviously a twat, but is my line of arguemnt sound -
i.e. that you can see (or even detect) stars more than say 10,000
lightyears away a robust argument against a "young" view of
creation/existance?

Though some folks will argue to the contrary, it's been my experience
that good scientists with a strong faith do not find their faith
challenged, but indeed strengthened, by science; and good scientists
with a weak faith do not find their faith strengthened, but indeed
find their faith further weakened, by science. (There are exceptions,
including a few notable scientists who have had their minds changed
--or rather, their hearts changed -- by evidence they encounter.) In
my experience, there is no demonstrated correlation whatsoever between
the "quality" of a scientist and their belief in God, despite
anecdotes. Speaking of anecdotes, I myself have worked at a federally
funded international laboratory with two excellent physicists with an
explicit confession of faith -- one a Catholic priest and another a
nun.

As has been pointed out by other posters, there is no way to convince
a dogged creationist that the evidence points otherwise, nor is there
a way to convince a dogged atheist that the evidence points toward a
supernatural creator. There are always "workarounds".

Mostly it seems to be a matter of attitude about the stuff we don't
yet understand. Part of it has to do with a careful definition of the
word "supernatural".

Taxonomically, we can divide folks into those thinking that we will
eventually have a fundamental understanding of everything (a theory of
everything) even if complexity makes its application intractable; and
those thinking that there will never be a conclusion to the search for
the most fundamental. Of those who think we will never come to the
end, we can further divide these into two camps: those who think that
some portion of the unknown is *inherently unknowable and incapable*
of being brought into our system of knowledge; and those who think
that it is a continuous chase of ever incorporating more into our
system of knowledge. Of course, if there is a line between natural and
supernatural somewhere in the realm of what we don't understand, that
line's existence also lies in the realm of what we don't understand,
and so it's unanswerable. Of those who believe in a finite and
closable theory of everything, there are again two camps: those who
think that achieving it will eliminate the need for a God, having
subsumed everything into a "natural" explanation; and those who think
that the achievement will amount to a confrontation with the
inescapable existence of God.

Even among those who are dealing strictly with our current body of
knowledge and trying to reconcile that with Biblical truth, there are
those who will say it's a little hard to believe that, after
delivering the Bible 2000 years ago, God has had nothing to say since
then. Those people will argue that perhaps God delights in our
uncovering the design and can barely wait for us to stumble on the
next surprise he has laid for us.

Leaving aside evolution, paleontology, geology for the moment and
getting back to physics, there is even agony about the anthropic
principle and whether we are but one little "bubble universe" out of
an infinitude of universes, which happens to be the one where we
(humans) could spring into existence and question the structure of the
laws of physics -- a view introduced by Lenny Susskind and company.
Some faithful feel their faith threatened by the anthropic principle,
taking it to mean that we are indeed an accidental occurence in an
"anything-that-is-possible-does-exist" megaverse. Some faithful feel
their faith enlarged by this, as it points to a God that is even
larger and more creative than we had dreamed up to now.

To the extent that these taxonomic forks represent different
"interpretations" of our body of understanding, the choice is indeed
not a matter of science but of... well, choice -- which is not to say
coin-toss arbitrary. Sometimes choices are made more important as
choices when there is no clear idea which path is "correct". To the
extent these forks represent different interpretations of what we
don't even know yet, that seems to be even less in the domain of
science. Again, that's not to say it's not important. Those who would
elevate science to be the only worthwhile activity in the pursuit of
truth are probably overestimating the method of science itself, in my
opinion.

PD