Science and Origins Sunday School

[Ackbach]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9v2h2awAHU&t=446s&list=PLXqNhbObfqJrg2kUg__sNU8PJS46Bv1mi&index=5

This is a Sunday School lesson I taught for both the adults and the high-schoolers at my church a few weeks ago.

First, there's a YouTube of the video (see above).
Second, there's the definitions handout.
Third, there's my lesson plans (in the next post).

Definitions

1. Truth consists of all archetypes in the mind of God. These archetypes may be spoken and/or revealed or not.
2. All false things are those things that are not true.
3. Logic is the art of reasoning correctly. It is something we get from the Bible, and is directly from God. God is utterly logical. There are two main branches of logic: deductive and inductive. Deductive logic, roughly, goes from the general to the specific, and inductive logic goes from the specific to the general.
4. A statement, or proposition, is a sentence that is either true or false.
5. Mathematics is the art of recognizing numerical patterns in God's revelation.
6. Statistics is that branch of mathematics dealing with the collection, analysis, interpretation, presentation, and organization of data used in inductive logic. Alternatively, statistics is inductive logic.
7. An observational study is a set of observations in God's creation, where the variables studied are not under the control of the observer (typically due to ethical or logistical constraints). People use statistics to analyze the results of
   observational studies.
8. An experiment is a set of observations in God's creation, where the observer controls at least some of the variables under study. IMPORTANT NOTE: Only experiments can determine causality, though this is still extraordinarily difficult. That is, experiments can answer the question "Why?" Observational studies cannot. See Mill's Methods for why this is the case. People use statistics to analyze the results of experiments.
9. A scientific statement is a statement whose truth or falsity people can evaluate by means of an experiment or observational study.
10. Operational Science is the collection of all scientific statements, together with the equipment and personnel to do the observational studies and experiments. Note: operational science is inherently statistical/inductive in its nature.
11. An Historical Science is any field of study attempting to piece together past events in order to explain those events. While there are portions of historical sciences that can include scientific statements, typically the central claims of an historical science are not scientific statements.
12. The Theory of Evolution is an historical science that attempts to explain the diversity of life around us as change in the inheritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. IMPORTANT NOTE: the
    Theory of Evolution has two aspects, or scales: microevolution, dealing with changes within the species level, and macroevolution, dealing with changes at or above the species level. ANOTHER IMPORTANT NOTE: The Theory of Evolution absolutely depends on death as the great selector. Within the theory, how do organisms know which genetic mutations to keep, and which to discard? By the "survival of the fittest," which automatically implies the "death of the less-than-fittest." So if there is no death before the Fall, then there cannot have been macro-evolution before the Fall.
13. Epistemology is that branch of philosophy that asks the question, "How do we know what we know?" It is concerned with certainty.
14. "Last Thursdayism is the idea that the universe was created last Thursday, but with the physical appearance of being billions of years old. - RationalWiki (not a source I would recommend for most things, as it is completely godless).

 

[Ackbach]

Lesson Plan

Personal introduction.

Yank rug out from underneath Kant. Kant was refuting the skepticism - rather thorough-going skepticism as well as empiricism - of David Hume. As Kant wrote, "Hume awoke me from my dogmatic slumbers." To answer Hume, Kant had two realms: the noumenon and the phenomenon. The noumenon refers to anything that exists that we cannot detect with our senses, aided or unaided. The phenomenon consists of anything that we can detect with our senses, either aided or unaided. The crucial thing to know about Kant is that he inserted an airtight divide between these two realms, in terms of methods of inquiry. That is, if you are investigating the noumenon, you use certain methods, and if you are investigating
the phenomenon, you use other, quite distinct, methods.

Kant's philosophy is, I believe, largely responsible for the modern over-specialization we see in academia, where two people from two closely allied fields such as analytic number theory and algebraic number theory can't even begin a conversation! Kant was doing well in refuting Hume, but he did us no favors in the long run.

I am going to be unapologetically non-Kantian in my approach to faith and science. In practice, this means far more that my faith informs my science, rather than my science informing my faith. Why this is the case will hopefully be apparent by the end of this lesson. It has to do with certainty and epistemology. Science is studying the works of God. Theology must therefore be central to all scientific study, as well as any other study, for that matter.

Thesis Statement: Science is unable to answer questions of origin. This thesis statement is quite broad; I'm going to go to the fundamentals of science, and the scientific method, to show why this is the case.

• Q. How does science go about answering questions? A. We need to define the term science carefully. See definitions handout. Operational Science goes about answering questions by using the scientific method. The scientific method puts forth an hypothesis to be tested. Scientists devise an experiment (preferably; if cause-and-effect is not necessary to test the hypothesis, then an observational study may be adequate) to test the hypothesis. They run the experiment, collect data, analyze the data, decide whether the data supports their hypothesis or not, and then they write all of this up.
  
  IMPORTANT NOTE: If scientists want to say that A causes B, they must perform an experiment with controlled variables.
  
  The historical sciences are considerably more limited in their methods, unless, of course, there are historical documents explaining what happened. If there are no historical documents, then historical sciences must make rather large assumptions, construct models of the system under study, run the models out in time to the present day, and compare the model with reality. Far less can be known in this method of inquiry even than in operational science.
  
• Q. How certain are the answers science gives us, either operational or historical? A. Never $100\%$, even in operational science. This applies across all scientific disciplines - physics, chemistry, biology, etc. The reason for this is that the scientific method, itself usually better than the historical methods, is inductive in its nature. Induction of this type is technically a logical fallacy. Result: science is a collection of useful falsehoods.
  
• Q. Can you dive in a bit more concerning the distinction between operational and historical science, and the difference in certainties involved? A. Well, let us recall that the scientific method is not available for evaluating the central claims of an historical science, whereas it is for an operational science. As an aside, this distinction I am making is hotly contested by those who believe in macro-evolution. They would have you think that the theory of evolution is "science every bit as much as physics." But that is, quite simply, not the case. What the historical science can do, by way of testing its claims indirectly, is to say that if such-and-such central claim is true, then it should manifest itself in a certain way today - that way being something we can measure.
  
  One objection to this distinction is to say that even in so-called operational science, you can only observe, strictly speaking, past events; so that, supposedly, this distinction is meaningless. To that I would answer that the difference is still before the experiment: can you make an event happen in the future or not? For example, if I want to test the hypothesis that every time I let go of a marker, it falls, I can easily make that experiment happen. But if I want to test the hypothesis that Napoleon was poisoned, I can't repeat history to test that hypothesis. This is the basic distinction between historical science and operational science.
  
• Q. In contrast to the epistemology of science, which we have seen is rather crummy, what is the epistemology of the Christian? A. The Holy Spirit convinces the believer that the Bible is true. Now, the Bible is true whether anyone believes that or not, but the Holy Spirit is the great Persuader of the truth of the Scriptures. So the Bible is inspired, inerrant, and infallible.
  
• Q. How certain is the knowledge that the Christian gets from the Bible? A. Well, that the Bible is true we know with $100\%$ certainty. Naturally, to get at that truth, we must use proper exegesis and hermeneutics.
  
• Q. What does the Bible say about origins? A. Well, if you take Genesis historically, which despite the text having some characteristics of "exalted prose narrative", is definitely the best fit, then you have mature creation by God of the world in six 24-hour days, all less than $10,000$ years ago.
  
• Q. What does science say about mature creation? A. It cannot disprove it. Bring forth the semigroup argument: if a system evolves in time from A to B to C, versus the identical system evolving from B to C, and you have no memory about
  what actually happened, then there is no way to distinguish between these two possibilities.
  
• Q. How does the semigroup argument not also prove "Last Thursdayism"? A. Because we have a record. The semigroup argument shows we cannot disprove Last Thursdayism, actually; that's a far cry from actually proving Last Thursdayism. But since we have a record in the Bible about what actually happened, we do not need to fear Last Thursdayism. What God has told us about what actually happened is what actually happened.
  
• Q. But - but - but why do parts of the universe "look old"? And isn't it deceitful of God to make things look old when they're really not? A. We don't know all the reasons why God made parts of the universe to look older than they were. That He did so is evident: Adam would not have been able to eat fruit from trees if the trees didn't already look old enough to bear fruit! Plain reasoning would also dictate that Adam be old enough to talk, to be married, to exert dominion over the animals. Adam was not an infant when he was created. One possible reason God created with apparent age is for beauty. With light from the stars already streaming to the earth, with trees and plants already old-looking, etc., the universe would be more beautiful than otherwise.
  
  The claim of deceit is arrogance of the first order. If God made us, and He did, then He is in authority over us. We are accountable to Him, not He to us. Moreover, if we accept the Genesis account as history, then I see in it indications that God created with apparent age, in which case there's no deceit. But naturally, what I've just said won't appease atheists who don't accept the authority of the Bible. At the very least, we can point them to Genesis, and say we believe God created with apparent age, and He told us He did it.

 

[Lamb]

Well done! I'm listening to the YouTube video now. I like how you say "Faith and science are not enemies." The reason I like that is because a niece of mine is a scientist and even though we don't discuss faith I'm sure in the future it will come up in conversation.

I'm starring your thread as my favorite to come back to later.

I've not heard the term Last Thursdayism. [edited because I misunderstood something about this]

Was everyone in the audience a church member or did you open it up to the public as well?

 

[Ackbach]

Was everyone in the audience a church member or did you open it up to the public as well?

It was just whoever was in church that day. I've opened it up now, though!

 

[Josiah]

Ackbach,

I will have to set aside quite a block of time to listen to the whole presentation..... those rarely present themselves but I'll make a priority to try to do that.

In MY world, I make a pretty sharp distinction between the two obsessions of my life (they may well be the same as yours, lol). I always have (even when I was a little boy). It's one of the reasons I never talk about science stuff here (and I don't talk spiritual stuff in science contexts). I guess I've come at ease with this (a tiny bit like the Law/Gospel distinction or Church/State one).

I realize that science often DOES speak in absolutes, and in terms what what IS or IS NOT. But we both know, this isn't actually what is meant. Any study of the history of science documents that what is certain today may well be ridiculed as absurd tomorrow - all this is evolutionary, developing. Science is far more pragmatic than any in science like to admit - we tend to run with WHATEVER (however absurd!) seems to work - it seems to answer our questions, open possibilities and even predict what we then discover. Whether it's TRUE in some philosophical sense.... well, as one Physics prof of mine once said, "that's something for those pipe smoking, sandal wearing, long hairs over in the Philosophy Department to argue about."

I guess WHATEVER feelings I had of science "KNOWING" went out the window in my theoretical physics classes.... In some ways, the more one learns the weirder things get and the more one becomes aware of how little we actually know.....

Don't misunderstand me: OBVIOUSLY I'm not anti-intellectual (I would not have bothered with grad school if I was,I would not be employed as a scientist today). I just won't worship science as my god. I actually think SOME in society place WAY too much esteem and faith in science.

I sense PART of your issue is that science can't TECNICALLY prove past things. True enough (technically, it would have to be repeatable and obviously unless we create a new universe, that ain't going to happen). But, before I hear you out, I think you may be placing the bar much too high - higher than science should. As I'm sure you know, math CAN show some things are at least possible.... labs CAN show what seems to happen... (as you know, there is LOTS of research into ASPECTS of "the Big Bang"). Now, is it likely this will ever PROVE anything? In an absolute sense, I can't prove that reality is real.... I can't prove that I'm here.... I can't prove this is here or now is now. Again, science (in spite of the way it DOES tend to express itself) isn't so much about proof in that absolute sense. Like all disciples, it assumes much. But I think within a milieu, given reasonable assumptions, it CAN show what seems to work: what answers our questions, explains what we see, predicts what we discover. At least given the assumptions. Is that PROOF? Nope. But it may be as close as anything gets to anything?


I tend to avoid the whole Science Vs. Religion debate (mostly because I see no conflict). And because I took one class in biology (and that only in high school!) I'm 100% disqualified to say a word about evolution and biology. I do TEND to THEORIZE that the "creation accounts" in Genesis 1 and 2 are not absolute science in our very modern sense of that, I read them as religion. And I confess, I tend to skip right over the first 11 chapters of the OT (my brain exploding if I read that stuff). But I admit, there are teachings there (Paul's whole theology of soteriology depends rather strongly in a literal Adam and Eve for example...... although I'm pretty sure organisms have been dying for a very, very long time). Fortunately, I don't take my brain or "questions" or "answers" or "problems" all that seriously...... I have my "world view" and I wear my "glasses" and that tends to reflect the concepts of "reality" that are very much a part of the world for the past few centuries; like ALL people in ALL places and ages, we ALL view everthing through our glasses. No one can remove them but identifying them and how they impact how we see and what we see is helpful. I also have the "eyes" of faith, the faith given to me by God, the faith in my heart.... which tends to be stronger if not always sharper. And I have a lot of humility in both. Study science...... stand before God..... they both have a profoundly humblizing effect.


Again, looking forward to viewing the video.



- Josiah

 

[Lamb]

Ah, so I misunderstood the definition of Last Thursdayism and have looked it up now. That's not what I believe LOL

I do believe that God created the earth to appear as a mature earth and as an artist I can understand creating something in that manner and calling it good. God didn't have to wait for an earth to be billions of years old before it became what He wanted. He called it into being and there it was. And it was good

I'm still going through the video. I am taking a long time because I know you put a lot of research and effort behind this and I want to be able to absorb it and understand the points you make. I tend to stop videos and walk around my house and clean and ponder. That's me It might take me all day to get through the entire thing! LOL

Some points I like are
- We're all biased in some way and scientists should admit it
- The main gist of Historical Science and how it differs and can't be proved by other sciences
- Science has become an idol

Okay, back to the video...

 

[Lamb]

I noticed your video says Part 1. What will be discussed in part 2?

 

[Ackbach]

I noticed your video says Part 1. What will be discussed in part 2?

Part 2 was a Q&A that I shared with my pastor, Matt Holst. He had done a short series on Death Before the Fall, and made the theological case that death before the Fall was not possible (careful definition of death, by the way, to include only animal and human death, not plant death).

 

[Lamb]

That's very interesting. Could you share any of that in a new thread for us? I'd love to read it!