Ross said:
bob b said:
"The "fuss" is over whether these "naturalistic" hypotheses are what really happened or whether they are simply the best hypotheses that can be made given the assumption that everything happened "naturally" with no intervention by an intelligent agent."
All science can ever do is to present hypotheses. Science does not deal in truth. But, as I've said repeatedly (and this is my whole point), naturalistic mechanisms do not rule out the hand of God.
True, but with the possibility of intervention before us, the question of "what happened" has been expanded to include possibilities generally ignored by scientists.
Ross said:
bob b said:
"It seems to me if one entertains the possibility of God then all bets are off."
I'm not sure what you mean.
Let me amplify.
Many people believe in Jesus Christ. FACT
Our detailed knowledge of Him is essentially limited to the New Testament. FACT
Those who believe in Jesus Christ and His life as recorded in the NT should logically tend to believe, or at least seriously consider, that what He said was true.
If it is true that Jesus essentially verified the truth of scripture (OT), then Christians should seriously consider the possibility that events recorded in the OT actually happened and are not merely fables.
Once I came to the conclusion some 20 years ago that the automatic feedback control systems in living forms (this was actually recognized over 50 years ago by workers in the field) made the probability of their creation in a slow, gradual way essentially nil, I began to study scripture in an effort to determine whether any of the stories found there were not possible according to physical law. I found that most were not, including the Flood.
In fact, in light of general relativity, I found that it might be possible for the Earth to be only a few thousand years old, in its time frame, yet the universe about us might show great age in its time frame. Scripture states 11 times that God stretched out the heavens, undoubtedly during Creation Week. I believe that this process might be what created the apparent great age of the universe. A similar unusual creation event for the Solar System might have caused the original rocks to show great age when dated radiometrically.
If one keeps abreast of the latest findings in Astronomy it is apparent that there is no completely satisfactory hypothesis for the initial formation of the universe, and also for the solar system, the Earth and the Moon. If God intervened at appropriate points during Creation Week, then any further major intervention by God, such as hypothesized by many in order to agree with "Molecules to Man" evolution, would not have been necessary.
To sum it up, I have found that one can be a big fan and supporter of science in general (which I am) without "buying into" either the "Big Bang" or "Molecules to Man" evolution.
