I suspect that this is a false dichotomy, even though it does not appear to be.
I don't see how, but I welcome your argument. Indeterminacy is either elemental to the universe or it is not, but regardless, we can't tell the difference between it being elemental to the universe or a nonlocal hidden variable pulling strings. And in either case, there can be no unified theory that fully describes the universe. Show me where I'm wrong, or committing any fallacy.
Kurt Godel would probably have reservations about the universe being describable with a single scientific theory. I know I do. There is more to the universe than science.
And science itself says as much. Indeterminacy is what prompts the philosophical interpretations like "multiple universes". We don't have any evidence of multiple universes, we have evidence that is inconsistent with determinacy.
Even though I'm sorta uncomfortable with your way of describing things here, I understand where you're coming from.
I think it's extremely interesting to think about it this way. We both agree that science here is blind as a bat, so when the scientists are forced to tell the truth, when they think that "nobody's looking," such as when they think that, what they're saying couldn't possibly bear on their conflict with the Bible and the plain reading of Genesis, this is what they say, that God is a nonlocal hidden variable and dark matter and dark energy. These are the gaps in science, and we both also know that these are such catastrophic cracks if science were an edifice, that science is less stable than a house of cards in a hurricane. Or in a typhoon, as it were.
But nonetheless, when human ingenuity is applied to much of the content or the propositions of science, it quickly sorts itself out between the practical (the reason for the great increase in the common wealth since the Reformation) and the irrelevant. I fear that so many Christians have consigned cosmology to the latter category, and when faced with people like you and I who actually think a great deal about cosmology, that we are summarily dismissed. It's not a hill that they feel is worth dying upon.
But certainly the science that has and that will lead to increasing common wealth and health, isn't going away, and shouldn't. This category of scientific knowledge or propositions is science's bottom-line value to mankind. Its cosmological content or propositions, are not in that category. Whatever science teaches in this domain doesn't contribute to our common wealth and health. In fact it mostly defies it.
I prefer to view science in the sense that it is an approach to truth, not a delineator of it. When you ask science: What is God? it does not answer, because "it knows" that if you are practicing science, you've already made up your mind on who God is.
But all those words about science that we've written are not science, they're philosophy. I have a similar view on that: Philosophy is an approach to truth, not a delineator of it. When you ask it: What is God? it does not answer, because "philosophy knows" that if you are practicing it, you've already made up your mind on who God is.
Like with ethics and morals, there just isn't one authoritative conception of the distinction between philosophy and science, where they overlap, where and how they integrate together, where one leaves off and the other picks up. I myself think of them as largely identical, with measurement being the distinguishing feature between them. Viz., if you feed philosophy measurements, you wind up with science.
But where you say that words written about science are not science, that's what I think too. Because (according to me) science begins with measurement, and philosophy does not require any measurements to proceed, science is more exclusive and philosophy is more inclusive. So whatever science cannot address, there philosophy is. And things that are above or over science are where philosophy maintains total intellectual dominion, and words about science are above or over science.
So you do believe that God created fertile soil without dead things and also made rocks with what looks like dead things in them.
If you were to examine the fertile soil it would look like dead things. In fact perhaps the best soil of all (this is hypothetical) includes not only sand, silt and clay, but also some diatomaceous earth, which are fossils of tiny creatures, and God would have made that perfect soil with the diatom fossils in situ too. What I am saying is that Eden's soil had what would have looked to us today to be organic material produced from plant material that had died and decomposed or degraded in order to be optimally available for the plants' roots that He had just made.
This is a science thread. Do you have evidence for that second claim?
There's no such thing as science that isn't also philosophy. The concern of philosophy is the same as science, truth. Truth is factual. Facts are true propositions or statements or sentences or thoughts or ideas. I have no evidence that Eden even existed, let alone that its soil contained what would appear to us today to be compost or
humus. I hope you agree that we have no evidence that Eden ever existed. But we certainly have no evidence that fossils were created by God in situ. We don't have any evidence that God created Adam and Eve fully grown and mature either.
Because boy-oh-boy do we have evidence for them being made in the flood.
Please explain, and I'm being genuine.
I would have a few questions about the measurements. However, it's not much good arguing over the data with someone who does not have a well-formed notion of where the goods came from.
My position is that it's not worth arguing about the story that they're telling us from their measurements, but that it is worth arguing whether that story is true. And they have no leg to stand on when the discussion goes this way. It's entirely a matter of interpretation, as to whether the story they're saying is written in the rocks and in the stars, is actually true. And there's no PhDs in this interpretive domain. All our views are of equal authority. My view is that the story is fantastically improbable, and patently so. And again my opponents have no leg to stand on in retort. There's nothing they can do to argue that it's more likely than it appears, because the improbability is elemental to the story they're telling us is written in the rocks and in the stars. It's almost as if it's by design, ironically, that it's so improbable that we can't honestly believe it's a nonfiction account. What would punch through this otherwise basically impenetrable fortress of improbability, would be something like God, a nonlocal hidden variable pulling strings.
Most of those in the right domain would say it.
Why should you believe that?
Because they have degrees in the field?
I prefer to look at the evidence.
I'm not an expert, so at some point I have to yield to experts where experts already exist. This isn't to say I have to be unthinkingly spoon-fed whatever the experts tell me is the truth, but that where their domain is categorically different from philosophy, where in one way there are no experts, I just take their word for it. I gather from the tone of this thread that people think I take what PhD geologists for example say, about philosophical matters, as true, but no. I take what they say on geological matters as true (i o w if the appeal to authority is valid), but that doesn't weigh on theological matters, and, if it does appear to weigh on theological matters, then they are outside of their area of expertise, and their views are no weightier than mine or your view. But if I am mistaken in thinking that their views weigh on theology but they really don't, then it's my duty to sort out that problem myself, and if I try to argue that they are overstepping geology, and I am wrong about that, then there must be a coherent explanation that resolves the apparent conflict, that is all on my side. My personal answer to this, is to seek a common ground between a plain reading of Genesis, with a plain reading of nature. I trust the PhDs in the right domain to tell me the plain reading of nature, and compare that with the plain reading of Genesis. The solution that's still working for me, is that the story written in nature is of the fantasy genre. Which is perfectly balanced with what most who believe that story, tell me is also the nature of the plain reading of Genesis. We both believe in apparently fantasy, so the question is, which one is more believable. And that's a question of faith, which is unsurprising and comfortable for us Christians, though it could be uncomfortable for atheists to realize.
That would require starting at God's word, not at the feet of a nebulous cloud of people with the right paperwork.
I did that. That's where I start.
I don't care about being dismissed.
That's evident. And I don't care about being dismissed either, but being dismissed does mean that you're not going to advance your ideas. It doesn't mean therefore that your idea must be false, it's just a fact.
The story written in the rocks — the evidence — is overwhelmingly in favor of the history of the planet that the Bible plainly teaches.
So I need to point out a distinction between evidence and the story. The story is apart from evidence, alongside of it. The story is either consistent with the evidence, or it isn't, and vice versa. For example the evidence we have and the story of Christ's Resurrection are not the same thing. But the story is consistent with the evidence.
In geology or archeology I trust the PhDs to tell me a story that is consistent with the evidence. I have no geological or archeological or cosmological expertise to argue with them, but I also have no reason to think that they are incentivized to lie: that the story is inconsistent with the evidence, but that they're telling me otherwise.
And to repeat, please inform me of the evidence that you think is inconsistent with fossils being "millions of years" old.
l o l nice.
What is the best way to generate heat?
The best way, the only way, according to the story science is telling us, is that you don't generate heat at all, that all the heat that's ever going to be, already exists somewhere, in another form perhaps (fuel for example).
So the best way to generate heat is for God to create it ex nihilo. But if you need a ton of heat, and a very large heat density, I would say some form of either nuclear fusion, or if possible annihilating antimatter and matter?
What do you think?