Status Updates From Can Science Explain Everyth...

"The crucial difference between the Christian worldview, and a worldview that denies the existence of God, is that the Christians do not believe that this universe is a closed system of cause and effect. They believe that it is open to the causal activity of its creator God."

"Christians do not deny the laws of nature. On the contrary, they regard the laws of nature as descriptions of those regularities and cause/effect relationships which have been built into the universe by its creator--and according to which it normally operates. If we did not know them, we should never recognize a miracle if we saw one."

"To argue that the laws of nature make it impossible for us to believe in the existence of God, and the likelihood of His intervention in the universe, is plainly false. It would be like claiming that an understanding of the laws of the jet engine would make it impossible to believe that the designer of such an engine could or would intervene and remove the fan. Of course he could intervene!"

"Thus, from the theistic perspective, the laws of nature predict what is bound to happen if God does not intervene. It is no act of theft, of course, if the creator intervenes in His own creation."

"Newton's law of gravitation tells me that if I drop an apple, it will fall towards the center of the earth. But that law doesn't prevent someone intervening and catching the apple as it descends. In other words: the law predicts what will happen, provided there is no change in the conditions under which the experiment is conducted."

"The scientific use of the word 'law' is not the same as the legal use. Where we often think of a law as constraining someone's actions, there is no sense in which the laws of arithmetic constrain or pressurize the thief in our story."

"To suppose that Christianity was born in a prescientific, credulous, and ignorant world is simply false to the facts. The ancient world knew the law of nature as well as we do: that dead bodies do not get up out of graves. Christianity won its way because of the sheer weight of evidence that one man had actually risen from the dead."

"It was in fact a Belgian priest, Georges Lemaître, a believer in God, who first suggested on the basis of Einstein's theories, that there had been a beginning to space time. That beginning was eventually jokingly called The Big Bang by the cosmologist Sir Fred Hoyle, who did not himself believe in it."

Truth!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qym7Z...

"The Bible and science evidently agree that the universe had a beginning. That is quite remarkable. For from the cosmological perspective, the idea of a beginning belongs to the 20th century. Up until that time the view of Aristotle--that the universe was eternal--had dominated European thinking. The irony is that the Bible had been saying that there was a beginning for thousands of years."

"We may say that God no more competes with science as an explanation of the universe than Henry Ford competes with science as an explanation of the motor car. God is an agent creator explanation of the universe--He's not a scientific explanation."

"The modern system makes it appear as though everything were explained. The truth is that the laws of nature describe the universe, but they actually explain nothing. We pause to reflect that from the perspective of science, the very existence of laws of nature is a mystery in itself."

"A major survey in the American Journal of Public Health points out that in the majority of studies...religious involvement correlates strongly with well-being, happiness, life-satisfaction, hope and optimism, purpose and meaning in life, higher self-esteem, better adaptation to bereavement, greater social support, less loneliness, lower rates of depression, and faster rates of recovery from depression--"

The cake analogy: Essentially, science is useful to tell us how a cake is made, and what it's made of. But it cannot tell us why the baker made it. It cannot explain the intended purpose.

"Unfortunately, the idea that science is the only way to truth often leads people to think that scientific means the same as rational--that is, in accordance with reason. This is false, and obviously so. For all of the disciplines mentioned above--history, literature, and so on--require the use of reason; as do most things in life. Reason has a far larger scope than science."

"But even then, the reasons for that opposition were not merely intellectual and political. Jealousy, and also it must be said that Galileo's own lack of diplomatic skill, were contributing factors. For instance, he irritated the elite of his day by publishing in Italian and not in Latin, in order to give some intellectual empowerment toward new people."

"Galileo observed sun spots, which blemished the face of what Aristotle taught was a perfect sun. In 1604 Galileo saw a supernova, which called into question Aristotle's view that the heavens were unchanging--immutable. Aristotelianism was the reigning worldview at the time, and formed the paradigm in which science was done. But it was a worldview in which cracks were already beginning to appear."

"In the spirit of developing modern science, Galileo wanted to decide theories of the universe based on the basis of evidence, not on arguments based on an appeal to the current ruling theories in general, and the authority of Aristotle in particular. Galileo looked at the universe through his telescope and what he saw left some of Aristotle's major astronomical speculations in tatters."

"In his famous letter to the grand Duchess Christina in 1615, Galileo claimed that it was the academic professors who were so opposed to him--that were trying to influence the church authorities to speak out against him. The issue at stake for the academics was clear: Galileo's scientific arguments were threatening the all-pervading Aristotelianism of the academy."

Wait... it was his PEERS?! o.O