jebedaya wrote:
I do belive that, and though i am more of a "natural explanations" kind of guy, i know that on some cases this is only a matter of personal choice.
I think that "natural explanations" are right in the vast majority of cases, but we can't rule out supernatural causes
a priori. We should aim for
true explanations rather than "natural" ones. It's not clear whether science is good at finding truth, but it's still a worthwhile aim.
jebedaya wrote:
Quote:
the significant point is that most people have been so indoctrinated with the evolutionary interpretation (the creationist one is forbidden in most schools) that they can only see evidence for evolution
I could say the same thing about the creationism theory. Some people live with it since the beggining of their lives, and never stop to think it through, they just accept it as an undeniable truth. Well, at least in my country (a 70% catholic majority), i've never met a single person that is not familiar with creationism. The same can't be said about evolution.
Yes, but that's because they are taught creation as a tenet of their faith. Science is supposed to be superior to religion (or so I'm told) because it lacks this element of indoctrination. My point is that it doesn't: secularists use science teaching in schools (in the USA, UK, and Australia at least) to indoctrinate students exclusively in the secularist theory of origins, which they claim is the only scientific theory. It attains the status of "the only theory" purely because it's the currently preferred
naturalistic theory. Other theories exist, but they are either not preferred or not sufficiently naturalistic. At least the religious folks are honest about the basis of their beliefs: secularists try to smuggle their beliefs in the back door disguised as good science.
jebedaya wrote:
I think that they are pretty much settled on this matter, and instead of trying to proof that the universe is 6.000 ou 10.000 years old, it would be best to acknowledge that this doesn't matter, and that God could've created the universe even if it has billions of years.
No matter in science is ever "settled". There are just different degrees of "universally accepted", and no theory or law is so sacred that it can not be challenged by new data. I'm a great believer in the laws of thermodynamics, for example, and I would be quite prepared to wager against anyone who claims to have found a system which violates them. I expect to win that bet, but it would be
extremely interesting if I lost it. The laws of thermodynamics are among some of the most universally accepted laws of science -- but does that mean we shouldn't try to find flaws in them? Certainly not -- although it's a major challenge to come up with an experiment that hasn't already failed to overthrow these laws, which is why they're so well accepted in the first place.
Sadly, modern science does have its sacred cows: long ages and evolution are the prime exhibits. Challenge these and you'll be denounced as a heretic ("crank", "flat earther", "pseudoscientist", and so on). People get very hot under the collar about these things.
You've mentioned that God could have created in long ages just as well as short ages. This is true, but is it relevant? There are scientists who have good evidence for a young universe. Why should they accept that the age of the universe is a settled matter? As far as they are concerned, it's
not a settled matter, and they'd like the opportunity to present their data, preferably without being treated as a heretic. Unfortunately, you can't question long ages without implicitly questioning most of geology, palaeontology, cosmology, and evolutionary history. If short ages are true, then great slabs of modern science are built on false premises, and that's unthinkable. Worse, the creationists would suddenly have the best theory of origins again! Atheism would lose its intellectual respectability!
There are very good reasons why certain people want the age of the universe to be a settled matter, and "scientific integrity" isn't one of them.
jebedaya wrote:
Until something can't be explained, it would still be called be paranormal, but i think that once it became the norm instead of the exception, then the need to call it paranormal would no longer exist, and science would engulf it, the same way that you could say that religion engulfs science. So neither sides could ever be satisfied.
Not quite. Providing an explanation does not make the explanation
true. If it's true that God created the universe in six days, then no amount of naturalistic explanation is ever going to suffice. Note that there's a difference between a story about history (like the Big Bang or the origin of life) and a story about how things work (like laws of physics and chemistry): if the former are wrong, then they're just wrong; if the latter are wrong, they can still be
useful. Newtonian physics is a fair example of this: we know it's not entirely correct, but it's still near enough an approximation to use for a mission to the moon. Come to think of it, stories about history can be useful if they're wrong, but the major uses tend to be
social ones, not
technological ones.
jebedaya wrote:
Still, that's why i preffer science over religion, because at least in theory, there's this rule, that nothing is sacred. But there are always those that stray from the path.
Much as I like science and technology, I do appreciate the Bible for the fact that it is not subject to revision (or not supposed to be). My slowly advancing appreciation for that document results in constant mental and behavioural adjustment, even though the document itself remains the same. Religion is a lot like science in that regard, actually -- moreso than you think. Scientists study the world, and must be prepared to revise their theories in light of new understanding. Christians ought to study the Word, and be prepared to revise their beliefs in light of new understanding. There's not a lot of overlap between these two studies: scientists learn how the world behaves; Christians should learn how they ought to behave.
A religion with a scripture that changes would be like science in a world where the laws change. Science is hard enough when the laws are static -- or seem to be, at least.