Exam 3 Flashcards
- Leonard Brand has an interesting view of natural and supra-natural laws. Explain how Brand views these laws and how he relates the two.
o Natural: laws of nature that are observed and understood by humans
o Supra-natural: don’t understand, not always operational, not always used.
o Related: They are unified in God’s view -> God interjected into the system, but doesn’t break any laws
- Explain how bias is controlled in the scientific community (in at least 2 ways).
o Use good research design and careful data collection (include falsifiability).
o Discuss results with colleagues and present papers to other scientists.
- Describe the “god-of-the-gaps” criticism of a “creationist worldview”.
o “God of the gaps” says that when a creationist worldview can’t explain something, they just label it as God. They want to close the gap and make God irreverent
- According to Mayr in what ways are religion and science different? Alike?
o Different: Science can’t evoke the supernatural, therefore cannot rely on divine revelation as an explanation of the origin of life.
o Alike: They both bring forth “first principles” to study the natural world. They are assumptions that effect how they view the natural world
- List and describe Mayr’s first principles (4 of them) as presented in class.
a. Which ones would be in harmony with a biblical worldview.
o One: Principle of Objectivity- Real world exists independent of the knower
o Two: The real world is up to investigation by human perception, and we can understand the physical world
o Three: Uniformitarianism- Same processes that happen today happened back then
o Four: Methodological Naturalism- natural processes are sufficient to explain the natural world; non-natural causes are unnecessary.
o Biblical: 1 & 2; reject 3 & 4
- What is the litmus test for asserting something is scientific?
o What is the source of the hypothesis? Falsifiable?
o Testability of the hypothesis?
- Why should a Christian scientist bother with an Interventionist paradigm when addressing the origins issue or any issue in science? Use the Pisco fossil bed as an illustration
o Christians should bother with an Interventionist paradigm when addressing scientific issues because interventionism has something to offer, doesn’t overlook issues of evolution.
o Investigations are limited by our paradigm of choice.
o Well preserved whale skeletons led to the inference of rapid burial by Christians and led geologists to think that the sediment formed over millions of years.
- Compare Philosophical naturalism to methodological naturalism
o Philosophical naturalism: Worldview that denies supernatural.
o Methodological naturalism: Only natural causes can explain natural events; allows intervention but doesn’t say it’s true; cannot study supernatural with science.
- Describe the relationship between cause and events, differentiating between proximal causes and distal causes.
o Events are always caused by something; events can be observed, causes can’t be.
o Proximal causes: immediate cause (no plants, no dinosaurs)
o Distal causes: Distant cause (asteroid caused dust cloud so no sunlight for plants)
- Brand & Chadwick propose an approach to the relationship between science and religion that provides constructive interaction between them as represented in Figure 6.in the text. Using the model explain the relationship between science and religion, the interface if you will.
o The first domain is science, and the second domain is religion. In the science domain, there is hypothesis testing and hypothesis development. In the religion domain, there is development of religious concepts and testing of religious concepts.
o Challenges in our science: we rethink science and collect new data.
o Challenges in interpretation of scripture: study more carefully
2 Methods of interpretation of Christian View
- Traditional Judeo Christian View: God is standard, Bible has authority b/c its from God
- Naturalistic View: Humans determined Bible, was sharing of experiences
6 lines of evidence to support our faith
- Reliability of scripture
- transformative power turning lives to good affect
- Some concepts can’t be tested
- Creation/Flood myths and Genesis Account
- Pentateuch and Sanitation (harked on modern science on discovered)
- The account of the striped sheep deal between Jacob and Laban (alleles discovered)
Science operates using a set of assumptions referred to collectively as the Philosophy of Naturalism. List the 6 assumptions in this philosophy according to Brand. Which assumptions are compatible with a Biblical Worldview? Which are not?
o Living things and physical phenomena are like machines; they are mechanisms that can be studied and understood. (yes)
o On a day-to-day basis, natural processes are not dependent on the capricious whims of the spirits, or the operation of magic.
o The processes of nature follow predictable laws. By experiment and observation, we can learn what these laws are. (yes)
o Scientific hypotheses must be testable using only criteria accessible to our five senses. (yes)
o Change has occurred in organisms and in the physical universe — neither are static. New species of animals and plants have arisen, and geologic structures change with time.
o Science will not consider the possibility of any intervention in the history or functioning of the universe by any higher power
(naturalism)
Use Brand’s work with the fossilized whale remains in the Pisco Peru formation to illustrate the use of the model.
o According to Brand, the supernatural as a possible cause raises new ways to look at the data, which may give a better account of the data and its explanation.
o If the interpretation of the Pisco Peru formation is that the Earth is millions of years old, that would cause a conflict in our religious concepts; therefore, we must gather new data to change our scientific interpretation
