Advances in science prove there are miracles????
Advances in science prove there are miracles????
Your questions aren't about science Davis. You are asking about beliefs about the past.
Perhaps studying things from the past is not science to you, but that just means you are defining science differently than any scientist I know of. I invite you to contact the science departments at any of the best universities that I have already listed in prior posts (and you have resorted to ignoring) and ask them if they consider the study of things from the past as being outside of science.
Need I remind you that the creation tale you revere as sacred is very much a product of the past, coming from a scientifically ignorant nomadic tribal society several thousand years ago. I am not aware that a single autograph copy exists of the Old (or New) Testament. Anything scientific within its pages has a much more tenuous claim to being scientifically verifiable than the vast majority of what universities teach.
For example, in my post that you just responded to, I reference your belief in the reality of a talking snake and a talking donkey in the past. Those are incidents briefly alluded to in the legends you revere. In science, the anatomy of both snakes and donkeys, both existing and centuries back, have been meticulously studied. I am not aware of any hint of a residual (vestigial, if you will) structure in either donkeys or snakes that could have generated human type sounds. Since there are lots of snakes and lots of donkeys, and lots of studies of them and their “ancestors”, it is not only reasonable but very likely that no donkey or snake has ever conversed in human speech.
In a similar fashion, science can investigate what would be required for a human to live in a fish for a few days. Issues with digestive acids, available oxygen, the necessary room, pressure at depths, body temperature, etc. etc. all show that story to be beyond nonsense.
Want to discuss what is required at a chemical and mineralogical level to transform a river into blood? Science can address that, and when the scientific difficulties are placed along the simple claim in an ancient tribal tale that it happened, well, which is most likely to be right? And so on for all the items I mentioned.
But yes the evidence does support a supernatural creation.
If we focus on creation in three levels – first, science has a pretty good handle on what we think the universe was like few seconds after the big bang. The big bang itself is such a unique event that there is still a lot of work to be done to be comfortable that science has an accurate understanding. Second, we have a much better handle on the major processes in star and planet formation. Oodles and oodles of technical papers and astrophysical studies dealing with that subject. And thirdly, the formation of life itself? Again that probably occurred on earth in some localized region that likely has been destroyed by tectonic activity billions of years ago, and would leave almost no trace in the geology in its earliest phases. Lots of studies working on how the jump from raw elements to the first reproducing life form might have happened.
The science that you offer for each of those stages of creation are: first, the universe – God says “poof”, it is done. Kinda thin on scientific content there. Secondly, the sun, moon, earth, God says “poof”, and there they are. Maybe that is the kind of science you like, but I’m not sure on how to express the involved astrophysics laws of “poof”. And the creation of life. I guess God says “poof” for each “kind” on the appropriate day. Pretty simple science in some of that – no need to look for genetic similarities, since kind “A” was created independently of kind “B”.
Instead of years of study leading to PhDs in specialized subsets of General Relativity or contraction of gas clouds or thermonuclear stellar ignition or genetic ancestral relationships, just think, with your model one hour in high school would be plenty to make the students experts on how the universe, sun, moon, stars, and thousands of life forms were created.
. an Intelligent Designer.
Wasted effort, since Mother Nature (who isn’t very intelligent) does the same job.
And, the evidence does support that scripture is divinely inspired and inerrant.
I gave you a list of things your scriptures talk about – talking snakes, bloody rivers, grass-eating mosquitoes, etc. What is the scientific evidence you speak of for each of these (other than the tribal legend itself)?
But.... Lets look at miracles just from a logical point of view.
Both of us would likely agree that miracles are a violation of laws of nature.
We would agree that there are scientific laws such as the speed of light, law of biogenesis etc. It seems atheists believe that violations of these laws may have happened in the past. Or, we could look at how Newton’s laws were confirmed millions of times per day---Then Einstein’s theory of relativity showed Newton’s laws may be wrong, or inadequate explanations. Therefore, miracles are possible.
Is that really your argument? We found an improvement on Newton’s ideas, so then anything can be overturned? I have seen a lot of improvements in our understanding of things in my career. I have seen a huge number of new understandings enter into the scientific world. And very seldom have I seen any of those that moved science closer to agreement with the Genesis creation account. Most of the advances in astronomy and physics that I know of either had little direct bearing on the Genesis tale, or moved science farther away from the Bible.
We have talked earlier in this thread about the fact that in the Western world several centuries back much of science was patterned on the Genesis story, simply because science was still very much in its infancy. You brag about Galileo’s devotion to the scriptures. But the fact is a huge percentage of the top scientists now are pointedly in opposition to ideas that are anathema to you. Would Galileo likewise turn his back on that ancient tribal creation account if he lived today? I don’t know, but I do know of lots of scientists whose understanding of science is vastly beyond what Galileo had, and they see no benefit in continuing to believe in people turning to salt and sticks turning into snakes. Lord Kelvin went way past Galileo in science, but was not a biologist. Nevertheless he opposed Darwin’s ideas, based on his unmatched mastery of thermodynamics. But in so doing, he supported the Bible in the field he knew little about (biology), and had no qualms about ignoring Genesis timelines in the field he was good at (physics). You would have loved him in the area where he was poorly qualified, and hated him in the field in which he was well qualified.
The distance between science and ancient religious tales is steadily growing.
