Waterboy,

Most of my posts on this thread have laboured on the same point. And that is, the Bible is quite clear and not difficult to interpret on most things. For those who can’t accept that God is capable of miracles, it does become more difficult to interpret.

It can be annoying when fundamentalists are criticised for not reading the Bible properly, especially after having to put up with that extraneous interpretation of straight forward narrative in the story of Mary.

Mary was old enough to be married and to take a long journey with her husband. She responded very maturely in trying circumstances, to say the least. She is not an immature, unwilling victim, as you make out.

A theological dictionary will define a fundamentalist in terms of accepting the miraculous birth of Christ, his death, bodily resurrection, and his other miracles, as described in the Scriptures. We fully take into account the cultural and historical underpinnings of the texts, something that anyone approaching any historical document would do, and anyone could do with a bit of common sense.

A literal interpretation is understood when it is required by the author (I’d hate to take a ride in a car with some of the posters above. What do you do when you come to a STOP sign? Mmmmmm, what does it really mean, or what do I wish it to mean?)

Going back a few posts, my comment about ‘bearing witness to the life of Jesus’ is a bit vague and needs fleshing out. But there is no backing away from the Gospel being a message for all peoples. Mel Gibson’s ‘The Passion’ was a good example of communicating the message using the arts and technology at their best.

On the contrary, my Bible is not stolid or irrelevant. It contains great stories and amazing events. It is mainly about a guy who holds life and death in his hands. Don’t invite him to a funeral, he might wreck it. If you call believing that stuff boring, then what is not believing it?

George,

Much of this debate, as I see it, has been to do with how the church battles away in the face of modern science. To this end, I am glad you have taken on the challenge of trying to define the relationship between science and faith. And I wouldn’t argue much with what you and most others have said here about science.

I don’t believe it is a coincidence that science was largely born and grew up in the Christian West. It is almost as if one swam out of the other. When both are kept a little in check and are correctly interpreted, they don’t have much argument and sit quite well next to each other.

The main bug bear at the moment is the theory of evolution. In that regard, I don’t agree with Waterboy. I don’t think it is as stable or as secure as he thinks it is.

However, I also don’t agree that that my comments should be interpreted as “pitting science against faith”. Where have I said or implied that science and faith are adversaries or combatants? I wish them both well, and am grateful for the gains they have both brought the human race.

As Jesus said in regards to what is the ‘greatest commandment’, “Love the Lord your God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength”. I think that implies all our capacities for reason, science, intellect, and emotion (and let’s not be scared of that last one).

George, as you know, I struggle to follow your arguments, and most often I give up in despair. I hope that on this occasion you can help me out.

In a recent post you distilled the issues into a four-line summary:

>>It is not true that religion and science are on a collision course.
It is not true that religion and science are mutually irrelevant.

It is true that some interpretations of religion and some interpretations of science are on a collision course.
It is true that "uninterpreted" religion and "uninterpreted" science are mutually irrelevant.<<

I can picture "collision course". That is presumably when two sets of ideas reach a point where they are totally incompatible with each other, in that the fundamentals that underpin one are diametrically opposite to those that underpin the other, and therefore cannot be reconciled.

But what should I understand from "mutually irrelevant"?

How is this different from individual irrelevance? Are they only irrelevant, perhaps, when put next to each other - but how can this be achieved? I.e., how far apart do they have to be before they become relevant again, and to whom?

Mick,
I agree with what you wrote, and apologise for the clumsy expression “pitting science against faith” which in such generality I did not want to apply to you. The reason for my generalisation was, indeed, your treatment of evolution theory, which is a part of biology or scientific cosmology, as relativity theory or quantum mechanics are parts of physics. I do not know of your biological qualifications, I am certainly not a specialist, but I know that in biology classical Darwinian theory has been extended/amended, but all versions fit the description “evolution theory” which in this generality is accepted by a vast majority of scientists (with the small exception of ID people around William Dembsky and Michael Denton). The same can be said about relativity theory or quantum physics, although there are physicists - or people claiming to be experts in physics - who oppose Einstein, and the same with quantum physics.

The point I wanted to make is that any scientific findings - any scientific model of the material universe - can be interpreted by a Christian as compatible (on at least the subjective level) with our faith. Actually, the idea of a God who devised such a remarkable interplay of chance and necessity (Jacques Monod) through evolution, allowing the world to “create itself” (John Polkinghorne’s understanding of divine kenosis), including humans, the only beings (so far?) endowed with consciousness, is much more awe inspiring than the idea of a Supreme watchmaker or a Supreme computer programmer.

Pericles,
Thank you for calling my attention to the ambiguities that are probably due to my English.

Being on a collision course means that they might collide if left to themselves, i.e. if not reinterpreted in ways that do not contradict each other. [Some of these interpretations might inspire (a rather subjective term) each other, which, of course, does not mean that they must agree, lead on their own, to the same conclusions.] This is what in Barbour’s typology corresponds to Conflict, which I thus claim is inherent not in the science-religion relation, only in some of their interpretations. (ctd)

(ctd) Being mutually irrelevant means that science left "uninterpreted" is irrelevant to (independent of; irrelevant = unrelated to the matter being considered) a religious (I have in mind the Christian version, where I am most at home) world view, with its variety of subjective - psychological, cultural, but also metaphysical - manifestations. And vice versa, hence the word mutually.

Augustine had religious insights that are a source of inspiration even today, but he had very naive, from today’s point of view, ideas about biology, and there are respectable scientists - no need to mention names - with very naive ideas about religion and its philosophical insights. Of course, by science I always mean natural science: religion is certainly not completely irrelevant to the findings of e.g. cultural anthropology.

The independence (indeed, this is the term used in Barbour’s typology that corresponds to my case of “mutual irrelevance”) of science from religious presuppositions is sometimes referred to as “methodological atheism” that I also subscribe to, though “agnosticism” would here be a better term. A good example is Laplace’s reply to Napoleon when he queried the absence of any mention of God in his exposition of celestial mechanics: “Sir, I did not need this hypothesis”. Well, he was an atheist, but I am sure neither do Jesuit astronomers from the Vatican Observatory use the existence of God as a scientific hypothesis in their work as astronomers.

I do not understand what you mean by “individual irrelevance”. When you say a thing is irrelevant as such, you implicitly mean that it is irrelevant to what you are interested in, to what you are discussing, etc.

Finally, thank you again for the impulse to think over my science-religion “creed in a nutshell”.

If I might continue this train of thought for a moment, I have stripped your response of some of its more subordinate (insubordinate?) clauses, and arrived at the following.

>>Being mutually irrelevant means that science left "uninterpreted" is irrelevant to... a religious... world view... And vice versa, hence the word mutually.<<

So, "science left uninterpreted is irrelevant to a religious world view", and vice versa "a religious world view is irrelevant to science left uninterpreted".

OK, but what does it actually mean?

What exactly is "science left uninterpreted"? An example would help.

On reflection, I think you may have missed out the "uninterpreted" in front of "religious world view" - that would at least be consistent with your in-a-nutshell creed.

But again, what does an "uninterpreted religious world view" look like? An example could possibly help here as well.

It may just be, as you say, "due to your English", but I suspect it is a little more significant than that. The concepts do not, as they appear here, make any sense at all to what I would consider an everyday level of comprehension. But any search for deeper meaning is hampered by the essentially vague expression of the ideas.

>>I do not understand what you mean by “individual irrelevance”. When you say a thing is irrelevant as such, you implicitly mean that it is irrelevant to what you are interested in, to what you are discussing, etc.<<

Actually, that was my attempt at making sense of mutual irrelevance. I assumed that the mutuality was necessary for the irrelevance - i.e. each idea would be relevant on its own, but when confronted with the other, both would suddenly become irrelevant. The alternative, surely, would be independent irrelevance, where each is irrelevant regardless of the presence or absence of the other.

In which case, we could dispense entirely with the concept of mutuality, and simply be left with irrelevance.

But since deleting the "mutual" from your creed would deprive it entirely of sense, I thought I would look for other answers.

I'd like to understand better, can you help?