Dr. J. P. Moreland

"Christianity and the Nature of Science" Lecture Notes

by Jason Gastrich

Lecture at Biola University/Talbot Theological Seminary - April 16, 2002

Intro by Dr. Craig Hazen

Dr. J. P. Moreland - "Christianity and the Nature of Science"

Chemistry degree from Univ. of Missouri and Theology Doctorate from USC

Get "Jesus Under Fire" book

We live in a culture that has been blinded by science.

Science and science alone can't show us reality.

If science answers everything, religion isn't necessary.

Time magazine's recent article, "How the Universe Will End" illustrates the Big Bang was the origin of the universe. "The universe will keep expanding until there's no more energy or light. Everything will reach absolute zero."

Science doesn't trump religion.

Humanists believe science provides tangible answers, but Christianity and religion cannot.

The California Framework gives information to public schools about what they should do when fundamentalist children oppose their teaching of evolution.

To some, science is related to reason and religion is related to superstition (or put nicer, "private feeling").

The embracing of God is not the abandonment of reason.

Scientism and Non-Empirical Knowledge

The Intelligent Design Movement is on the rise.

Creation isn't simply believed by those guys in San Diego any more.

Scientism: if you can't test something in a lab, it can't be true. Something can be known to be true, if and only if it can be tested.

Scientism is self-refuting. It makes itself false. Scientism is a philosophic view about the limits and nature of knowledge. It must be limited to what is empirically testable.

It something is self-refuting, it is impossible to be true. It doesn't just happen to be false, but possibly true with more research. No more scientific investigation could show that a self-refuting statement could be true.

Science is based on a lot of non-scientific assumptions which are incapable of scientific proof.

1) There is such a thing as truth. (The existence of truth is widely disbelieved by post-modernists.)

Defending truth is not something that science itself can do.

Physics doesn't give us truth about reality.

2) Science assumes values: i.e., honest reporting.

Science is vulnerable to skepticism because it claims to have the answers to ......

Empiricism: if you can test something with your five senses (and other equipment), you can know it's real. If you cannot, then there's no way to tell if it is real or not.

Science is limited to what the five senses can test (and the extension of the senses through instruments).

A contingent truth is something that is true, but could have been false. For example, "there is a podium in this room" or "apples are red".

A necessary truth is something that is true, but could not have been false. Even God Almighty couldn't make a necessary truth false. These are mathematics, logic and metaphysics.

Mathematics:

For instance, 2 + 2 = 4. It always will and it never could equal anything else. We discovered this and we didn't invent it.

Logic:

If it's raining outside, then it's wet.

Philosophy:

Kindness is a virtue.

All knowledge that is gained by sense experience is contingent truth. The only kind of knowledge that your five sense can give you is contingent truth.

For instance, the statement "Ravens are black" is a contingent truth. There could possible be a raven that is not black.

If we gained knowledge of math and logic by the 5 senses, then the truths of math and logic would be contingent truths; but they're not.

Science itself assumes knowledge of things that are not empirically testable.

For instance, we don't know consciousness or self-consciousness by science.

When you introspect yourself, you don't confront any body parts. There's nothing that you taste, touch or hear. Consciousness is invisible.

Self-knowledge is not empirical knowledge. This is why Psychology will never be a hard science.

The patient alone has access to his or her consciousness. You can't observe consciousness directly.

Ethical knowledge doesn't come by the 5 senses.

Nobody can know what truth is by their 5 senses.

The Correspondence Theory of Truth: (Aristotle and biblical theory) - truth is when things are the way one takes it to be, says it to be or thinks it to be

For example, if I think the grass is green and the grass is green, then it's green. Reality is what makes it true.

The world consists of individual, particular things. Things have properties or attributes.

There are also relations. "The table is larger than the pen."

Truth is a relation, not a thing or an attribute. Reality and a thought, sentence or belief is the truth relation.

The book store case (an illustration of truth):

Dr. Moreland gets a call about a book that is in the library. He goes there and sees it. He has a thought about it.

The knowledge that your thought is true involves two things that you can't test with your senses. The thought and the relation of the thought to the book.

Theories are thoughts in people's minds. Scientific theories are disgustingly invisible. They can be expressed in language, but they are not, in themselves, scientific.

Cause and effect connections cannot be known totally by the five senses.

Forces are disgustingly invisible.

If you limit your knowledge to what you can sense with your five senses, all you can know is certain sense experiences follow other sense experiences. This is called contiguity in space and time.

Causation is production or bring about.

For instance, you cannot see a billiard ball hit another ball and actually cause motion, the force of the second ball moving. We attribute an occult or invisible entity, a power that is released or triggered and produces the motion of the second ball. The triggering of causal production cannot be seen or observed.

Where did you get the notion of a power that produces something? Experiences. By being aware that by raising your arm, you brought about moving your arm.

Words such as "attraction" or "propulsion" must be used when talking about movement because this causal production of movement cannot be observed.

Trying to determine cause and effect, science has went far beyond our five senses.

There are 1) statements OF science and 2) statements ABOUT science

NOMA: Non Overlapping Magisterium - Religion is the domain of values. Science is the domain of facts.

2^nd order issue about science

1^st order issue of science

Scientists never start with observations. They always start with a model, a hypothesis or theory.

Science must be guided by natural laws. It has to explain things in reference to natural laws and it's tested against the empirical world.

"Science by it's very definition cannot include God because God is not a scientific concept." This is a terrible statement about what science is.

Creationism is a scientific theory by definition.

An example of a law:

Pressure x volume is proportionate to the temperature of a gas.

Scientists say they explain things by appealing to the laws of nature.

Scientists think Creationists appeal to miracles by God that cannot be explained by natural laws.

Science doesn't explain things by natural laws. Natural laws are the things that need to be explained.

Models are what explain things; not laws.

For example, the law of gravity doesn't explain anything. Newton thought that gravity was the power of the Spirit of God. Since a Spirit is the only thing that can be more than one place at a time, and only God is everywhere at once, gravity gives a mathematical expression of this.

When we explain things in science, we really don't appeal to laws, we appeal to causal things that make effects.

There is no reason why the cause of an event cannot be a person.

Experimental science deals with repeated phenomenon. You come up with a law, then try and build a model that explains the law.

Historical science tries to explain one time events that won't happen again. Why did the dinosaurs die? When you explain things in historical science, you do not explain everything by laws. What you are trying to explain is not the general fact, it's the specific fact.

The only way you can discover historical, scientific facts is by finding the one-time, causal antecedent.

Historical scientific events can be caused by a person or an event. For instance, an archaeological object can be found that indicates what has happened. Sometimes there is an eventual cause (a meteor, lack of food, etc. could have caused the extinction of dinosaurs) or there is a personal cause (a person killed them, a person ate them, etc.).

Archaeology, Forensic Science, Psychology, SETI, etc. are all considered legitimate sciences by the affluent community. All of these sciences have to do with the past; with historical science. Therefore, Creation Science would fall under the same category and should be considered a legitimate, historical science, too.

The aforementioned sciences are not observable and not explained by laws. They suggest intelligent design.

If Creationists aren't doing science, then either are the fields listed above.

1) Randomness, order and information

random: non-repetitive, very simple, not specific

i.e. "8312*&jds"

order: highly ordered, repetitive, simple, parts are prior to the whole

i.e. "Me, Me, Me"

information: non-repetitive, complex, the whole is prior to the parts

i.e. "John loves Mary"

SETI - "information only comes from minds"

Information comes from intelligence.

The defining characteristic of life is information, not order.

Check out "Intelligent Design" by Bill Demski

* Start with a phenomenon

a. Does the phenomenon have contingency? If no, then there's a necessary law of nature producing the effect.

b. Does the phenomenon have contingency? If yes, then there is a complex reason. (Like three tails in a row would happen by chance.)

c. If yes and it's very improbable, ask if it's independently specifiable.

d. If no, then the event happened by chance.

e. If yes, then there is intelligent design.

Improbability doesn't indicate that the only answer is chance.

The structure of DNA is highly improbable and identifiably specifiable.

We know that things like DNA have to be arranged in a certain way to live and a very small difference amounts to no life.