I've hesitated to jump into this debate again. Partly because those I agree with have been doing a good job holding their own, partly because I've been crapload-busy with the work thing, and partly because, well, because it takes me a long time to compose what I want to say.
I rarely get involved in "religion v. science" arguments because, well, to my mind we always end up playing on the scientist's epistemological playing field, and that's like telling the Packers the way to beat the Bears is to show up for the game at Yankee Stadium.
When the electricity to the Jumbotron isn't even turned on.
Take, for example, the recurring debates on the sufficiency of "proof."
Whether its debates on the existence of God, on the validity of evolution, or whatever, we always seem to get caught up on what the scientific "evidence" says. But we're not proving or disproving anything, all we're doing is debating plausibility. That's fine, but when we wrap it up in the language of "proof," we're claiming more for our inductive powers than we ought.
If you want to get Christian about it, we're captured by our own pride. All of us -- pro-religion and anti-, pro-science and anti-.
Because what we are striving at here *is* induction. And induction from an incredibly small sample.
Dfosterf's citation of "Drake's equation" drives the point home to me. I've always liked this equation. (Though I always thought it was Carl Sagan since I first heard it on the old Cosmos series). But it's got a big problem, doesn't it? Like all human cosmology, "religious" as well as "scientific," it can only speak to the particulars of an infinitesimal part of the universe.
I remember many years ago reading Aldo Leopold's Sand County Almanac many years ago. At one point he got caught up in the incredible diversity to be found in a small patch of ground. But when I think back to it, how much of the universe (or of God's creation, if you stand with Cheesey and I) can any of us get knee deep in the particulars of anything other but one of those little patches. Call the patch "Iowa" if you want, or "molecular biology" or "the teachings of the Apostle Paul" or whatever. Add all those patches for each of the 6 billion or so souls currently living and of all the souls who have lived in the history of planet Earth. And you still have knowledge of just a tiny, teeny, really really really small part of the universe.
You know, one of those fractions that you can only express in terms of ten-to-the-minus-gazillion-power.
Sure, you can tell stories about the other part, the "one minus ten-to-the-minus-gazillion" part.
But that's what they are. Stories. Analogies from what you know about that teensy little fraction. Dressing them up in scientific notation and peer review and rules of evidence and all the rest isn't going to change the fact that we're dealing with cosmic level analogy-making here.
If all we were talking about was the human world, that's okay. In the everyday world of human science, engineering, economics, religion, theology, and the rest, that's just fine. The scientific method is wonderful. The economic way of thinking is wonderful. Systematic theology is wonderful. Valuable. Worth applying to lots and lots of problems.
The limits to understanding in those situations are the limits of accumulated education, knowledge, and human capital. And, as anyone who has been paying attention in the last 2000 or so years of history knows, those limits have been pushed way back.
But when you bring questions of God and the universe in, you're no longer going to get very far. Because the small sample problem is going to up and bite you.
Heck, "small sample" is itself a gross exaggeration. We might as well be trying to predict global warming or the World Series winner from a single grain of sand in the Sahara.
Zero started this thread asking about Noah's Ark. I can't explain the flood. I can't explain large parts of what God seems to do/say in the Bible. I can't explain God.
Not only can not "prove" or "disprove" His existence, I can't even conceptualize how to try. His is, to quote Philippians 4:7, the peace that passes all understanding. All I can do is believe, or not believe.
God doesn't have to obey the "natural laws" we have been striving to estimate and describe. God is the law.
Or, if you don't want to believe in God, substitute "universe." The universe can't be explained in any significant fraction. I may believe in the Big Bang, I may believe in natural selection and/or evolution, I may believe in quantum electrodynamics. But as to applying those beliefs to the universe, I can only reason inductively from a very small sample.
In the end, it isn't a matter of evidence or proof. It's a matter of faith and where we put that faith. Put it in God, put it in your own abilities to reason, put it in the scientific method and the accumulated pages of the American Economic Review. It's still a stance of faith on your part.
Because when it comes to the particulars of the divine, to the universe, to "nature," the limits of our understanding are not significantly different than they were in Paul's day, or Abraham's.
We've learned that some of the rituals described in the Pentateuch are silly. We've learned new dietary limitations. We've learned a lot.
But we are still cosmically profoundly ignorant.
What we "know" today, compared to what our ancestors knew back when the books of the Bible were being put together, or back when the "canon" was decided at Nicea, is probably an increase of several orders of magnitude. The problem is, what we don't know is still hundreds, thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of orders of magnitude bigger still.
In fact our ignorance is so cosmically huge that we can't even estimate how many orders of magnitude it is.
Our ignorance is so profound that we've got nothing but decisions of faith we can make.
It isn't about science versus religion. Science and religion are just two competing ways human beings organize their ignorance.
It isn't even about faith versus reason. Faith is what we reason from.
All of us.
And when we reduce our debates to questions about evidence, we never engage the really cosmic question at the bottom: just what (or who) should we have faith in?
I know where mine resides. Unless he's been playing devil's advocate all this time, and I hope he hasn't been, I know where Cheesey's resides.
My question for the rest of you is this: in what or who do you ground your faith? And if your faith resides in the reason of men, how do you feel about being grounded in such profound ignorance?
One of the nice things about grounding one's faith in God, one doesn't have to be limited in one's hopes and aspirations to the depths of human ignorance. One trusts He who isn't profoundly ignorant.
But what do you do when you aren't so grounded? When the only thing you can trust is your profoundly ignorant self or other profoundly ignorant souls?
Or perhaps I ought to ask the question another way? *How* do you do it?
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Romans 12:2 (NKJV)