Re: [asa] FW: What if YECism were self-evident?

Jon Tandy wrote:

> But what if the situation were different? What if the last 150 years of
> geology and cosmology had not revealed such convincing evidence of an old
> universe? What if the evidence for young-ness were so self-evident that most
> scientists accepted this fact as a basis for their methodology? What changes
> would this make in our practice of science today? Would this eliminate the
> warfare between science and religion, between naturalistic and supernaturalistic
> philosophies, or between atheism and theism? Would philosophical naturalism
> be dead in such a world?
>
>

Like others have expressed, this is an interesting point.

Certainly, as you say, YEC-ism would not be viewed so
negatively and as embarrassingly mad as it currently is.
It might even be possible for scientists to use something
like the Dawkins' phrase about being an "intellectually
satisfied" _believer_. At any rate, the animosity
and vituperative language would be less intense (at least
on this matter).

There are several questions here, however. It would depend
on _why_ it is "obvious". If it is because a completely
mechanistic explanation solution can be shown for everything
that happened in the world (to quantitative precision), then
as you have said, there may be some continued "warfare",
particularly if religious people were talk about miracles.
Indeed, if there was more quantitative precision on measuring
all aspects of life, there could be more animosity than
currently is the case.

So you would have to describe in what way it is known that
the world is 6000 years old. You would have to clearly
describe to what extent miracles are phenomena that are
witnessed in this world and how much evidence can be shown
for them. You would need to describe to what extent
the supernatural can be observed. Finally, is there justice
in this world you describe, or does it appear (as the writer of
Ecclesiastes suggested) that time a chance came to each?

So, the reason that many good (as in "skilled in their craft") scientists
reject religion is because it does not appear to be obvious that God
is actually working in the world. But were there some known way to
engage the supernatural (aside from possibly prayer), I quite expect that
scientists would be researching it seriously.

So this poses a paradoxical point. Were these things "obvious"
to us scientists, we would not need to have faith would we? I
would push a button, and a mountain would float in the air (or
whatever) and I could make it move in nanometer precision to
some precise place I intended. Heck, why talk mountains, soon
we would be trying to move galaxies. There is an arrogance
in all this too. Maybe the world we have is a little like
the apostle Paul's affliction: so that "his Grace may be
sufficient".

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Received on Fri Sep 22 09:58:04 2006