A Very Brief Summary So Far: Limits of Science. Seven Points.

1) Scientific, materialistic reductionism is a valid, powerful and reasonable method. However it is an inherently limited mode of investigation. Using logic itself, it can be shown to be logically restrictive. In particular, it precludes mechanisms which are outside of its own 'natural' sphere. There's an analogy to be had with Godel's incompleteness theorems here. 

2) It's true that the 'sphere' of what is designated 'natural' will likely expand, and it already includes many inferences we cannot observe directly. However there remains a strong possibility that there are mechanisms completely outside of our ability to discern. Physical mechanisms could easily be enshrined in law, but, being defined by a higher being, man may lack the intellectual, perceptive or investigative capacity to uncover them.

3) The substantiation of a cosmos remains a singular event, as far as we know, and a supernatural one. Mathematical law may be self-consistent and correct, but that does not mandate an associated, substantiated, consciously-perceived, physical existence. This event of cosmos-incipience is necessarily supernatural.

4) Science also assumes that physical law and biological law are fixed and in that sense 'eternal'. We back-extrapolate in time using the same laws that manifest today. We can't prove this is a valid assumption to use.

5)  The next two points are unapologetically Judeo-Christian. All this connects with theology. What we can know of both God and creation, using our natural observations and reasoning, is going to be limited and subject to possible fundamental error. We need revelation from God. We need to believe He has engineered a supernatural ability within the human spirit to receive revelation and conviction about eternal, spiritual matters. 

6) God writes in simple ways for our benefit, not His. He knows in glorious intricacy how He created everything, us included. Consider this. God allows us, using simple procedures and acts of the will, to initiate complex processes, like reproduction or digestion! We still don't fully understand them. Indeed when we didn't understand them at all, we were still able to 'perform' them! In a similar fashion, He has given us a conscious existence we have relatively little real understanding of. We are entrusted with an existence we don't fully understand, but even so we are still given real freedoms to act, freedoms to initiate and change the course of events. We can have simplistic notions of how we interact with 'reality', but they still 'work'. God hands off to us, in our conscious existence, certain responsibilities. We were told, in the beginning, to populate and subdue the earth. Fulfilling our responsibilities does not require us to fully understand how they work. We don't need to know how God gave us the capacity to fulfil them. God relates to us in simple everyday language, pertinent and practical.

God's actions, and His intent toward us, as taken from Genesis, may likewise look simplistic, especially if we are inclined to intellectualism. They are simple for our sake. They are practical and pertinent. They are received by relational trust, through love. But the mode of communication works. They give us the necessary information. God's Word, His revelation, remains true through the ages and into eternity. All we can rightly do, if we wish, is consider the manner in which they are true, and the manner of the revelation. We can suggest and discuss details of the science behind creation. The important impetus of God's revelation is open to all to discover though, scientific in thinking or not. We are to meekly receive the Word of God, because it is uniquely able to save our eternal souls. Our souls will transcend the present creation anyway. The means for that transcension are known to God alone; our main job is to trust Him.

7) The truly important issues for us are in the relational and spiritual realms. Believe in God. Trust Him. Respond thankfully to His initiative in Christ. Keep trusting Him. The truly significant element of the Bible is received as it is lived. It is a living book, and absorbed as such. Its impetus hits us fully when we live in the presence of the God who ultimately authored and compiled it. It imparts ever increasing life as we grow in yielded obedience to Him.

There you are. The seven points overlap and interact of course. What do you think? Feel free to comment.

Steady State Cosmos, Steady State Laws, or Neither?

I'm a creationist because I believe we were created by God. What does that look like? Like Genesis. But if we want to expand on that? There are many in the creationism camp who think the world and its environment were formed 'mature'; as is. (Or rather 'as was'). In other words while there is an appearance, to modern Western man, of an evolving earth and cosmos, no such very slow maturation, from tiny initial seed beginnings, actually occurred. That is an illusion. The Big Bang is an illusion, an incorrect inference.

What if science does indeed have this badly wrong? What if we have dialled incorrect assumptions into our big picture thinking, thinking based on the scientific method? That method has limitations, and is a method with inherently and arbitrarily restricted scope. I just discussed some of the often-overlooked limitations in my last post.

Here I want to look more at the 'looking back deep into time'. Or 'back extrapolation'.

Science looking at recent time is a powerful method, giving clear results. But 'deep time'? Why might we get things wrong with that?

Reductionism always assumes this one present and constant reality, one framed by the same laws and equations. One framed by other observed constraints, such as the arrow of time. On planet Earth, by biological decay and death. By reproduction and birth. But what if a supernatural agent has shifted the very framework of reality at different times or places? What if our steady-state assumptions are not warranted? What if the current backdrop as investigated by us, from within it, is a 'temporary' arrangement? What if we have a) assumed it's permanent without justification, and b) as a result, have fooled ourselves into thinking we have successfully back-extrapolated to beginnings and obtained the 'big picture'?

I've already, last post, pointed out that by assuming science is always naturalistic, we limit science as a method. It has a restrictive mode of operation. Mechanisms beyond our familiarity are screened out before they get a chance for consideration. A corollary of this is that science can never be considered a technique with universal efficacy, universal powers of explanation. 

Further than that, with science, we are always doing this exercise in back-extrapolation. In doing this, we are assuming our basic governing laws and equations, as well as being discoverable, have remained constant throughout. Perhaps laws have pertained in the past that we don't and maybe can't 'get'.

When we question what God has said in Genesis, we may be insisting on this steady state back extrapolation in our worldview. What if laws and time have changed fundamentally? What if reality cohered in the past, to physical law, but in a very different way? There I go, I'm already using terms like 'past'. We verbalise, and we conceptualise, starting from the familiar. Sure, that can and has got us a long way. Too many thought experiments without physical reality checks, whether retrospective or predictive/verified, and we can easily deceive ourselves about long-range science. We need to acknowledge we always reason with what we've got. That's the real essence of naturalism. Without revelation from a truthful higher source, we would have no option.

Heisenberg said that 'we investigate reality as it presents to our modes of investigation' and not 'reality itself'. We have no choice there. There's actually a further qualification. In science, we investigate reality as it is now, and assume the underlying, bottom-rung 'fabric' always was the way it is. If there is a theory of everything, what if it has changed, or even morphed, since the times recorded in early Genesis?

Instead or questioning the Word of God, we need to humbly acknowledge our limitations. We need to admit that we of necessity bring unproven assumptions to the table when we attempt to reason our way into the past.

It's unlikely we could understand, or even relay, an adequate report of, the process of creation. Likewise a sudden, God-ordained transition in the framework of our existence, in the past, might be undetectable to us. It may leave no trace, or traces which we misinterpret when view through our own paradigms. All we can do is investigate the existence we find ourselves in, using tools available from within. Using our minds, methods and instruments, which materialist-reductionists take to have been derived, evolved, produced from within.

The Bible discusses the end, as well as the start, of this physical age, in several places. The end, apparently, is also beyond anything but allegorical description.

But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.

(2Peter 3:8-10)

What if we live in a cosmos with a tentative, transitory, stability? A cosmos with the illusion of great age, when subjected to certain modes of investigation? A cosmos which was fundamentally different before, even in the time of the first man and woman? Not only in the framing physics but also in terms of the characteristics of biological life? Were there biological species not succumbing to death? Not reproducing by the present sexual means? Were we once like that? Having a fixed maturity rather than requiring a process of maturation?  What if we have deluded ourselves about our origins, because we want to delude ourselves? Because we are too proud to face our limitations and assumptions about life?

And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.

(Revelation 6:14)

Is our problem not that the Bible is a dated, or incorrect, book? Rather that we have deluded ourselves about our present existence by effectively worshipping it as final reality? and deluded ourselves by worshipping ourselves, by filing to acknowledge our limitations and necessary assumptions? 

The Bible is the written Word of God. It will prove true. Our job is to meekly receive it. There are mysteries currently hidden from us, and from our most effective and earnest investigative techniques. The techniques have some real power, don't get me wrong. I'm a scientist and an engineer. But don't worship them. Don't carry them outside of reasonable and proven remit.

 

What sort of Explanation are we hoping to get to with Naturalism?

When man investigates anything at all, using the 'Greek' mode of thought, he looks for causes for the effects he observes. This is the essence of the scientific method. Not only that, it is also the essence of the general western mode of thought. In many or most things. We look for predictive and explanatory powers. For this we look for an underlying theory, mechanism or set of laws. These laws then 'cause' all the emergent structures and behaviours of our experiments. Indeed, ultimately, they 'explain' everyday life. Or so it seems.

What is interesting to me is the types of cause we are able to admit into our scientific thinking.

With science, we are generally looking for causes we already understand, at least to a degree. I'd agree that with physical science, we often have a good or excellent understanding of how reality behaves. In science, we limit ourselves to naturalistic causes. Naturalistic causes are means and mechanisms which arise in the natural world around us. That's why we call them 'natural', to distinguish them from 'supernatural'.

We could argue about whether there even is a 'supernatural'. We could also discuss what would count as supernatural. I'll keep it relatively simple.

But how can we ever know that the means and mechanisms, behind everything and anything, were already in place for us to see? We can, with science, often infer realities we can't see directly. Sub-atomic particles like quarks, as an example, are inferred, along with the rules they behave under. Scientists would include them as part of natural explanations. Why? Not because they can be observed; they can't. But because they clearly exist within this creation and because they obey laws. We can make real predictions with them. 

Isn't it clear that to assume all causes will be amenable to this kind of analysis and explanation is really a leap of faith? How can we really know we'll always be able to detect and understand the mechanisms and laws behind what we see? Yet science insists we will. The very definition of science restricts us to things we are already able to understand.

It is good to look for explanations, and this is not a call to defeatism or ceasing investigation. We won't find out unless we try. It is certainly possible we will be able to comprehend an underlying law or process in a certain scenario or remit. There may be no understanding at present, and understanding may develop with time. As an example, and whatever you think of Darwinism, there was clearly a mechanism for conveying the attributes of organisms onto their progeny. Although within his lifetime no-one had any real idea how the inheritance of traits occurred, it was evident that it did occur. You only had to observe your own family over a couple of generations to establish that. Of course the science of genetics and DNA followed on. Darwinism, if correct*, had a deeper potential theoretical underpinning.

It is perfectly reasonable to infer that a mechanism exists to explain the behaviour you observe. It's also reasonable to start by asking if it is one humanity is able to grasp, understand and use predictively.

It's at this point scientists and others usually jump the gun. They make an associated leap and infer that there always will be a mechanism of this type. One we can understand. A naturalistic one.

We need to be truthful and objective here. We need to note that

1) There is no solid reason to assume all mechanisms, all causes, are going to be 'naturalistic'. In other words, arising from within the creation we see.

2) Our idea of 'naturalistic' includes the assumption that our species can understand it.

3) We probably don't have a rigorous definition of  'naturalistic' anyway. What exactly fits into that category of explanation? 

Anyhow, at some point, of necessity, we'll wind up tracing things back to something that 'just is'. Look at the overall flow of science. We've attempted to trace man back to an ancestral species, then to a primordial cell, then to chemical elements, then to particle physics, then to a basic field theory or other 'theory of everything'. This we don't have, but we are travelling hopefully and may get there. If we do, we can then ask, 'why is there a universe, one we experience consciously, built around that theory?' It's one thing to have an elegant set of formulas constraining the behaviour of everything, another to explain why there's an 'everything' corresponding to the mathematical laws. And why is the mathematics behind the laws even 'true'? Does mathematics need a universe to be valid? For example, is Euclidean geometry* just 'true', or is it only true in a universe like ours, with our consciousness? 

 I'd suggest there is no precedent whatever for the creation, or substantiation, of an experienced reality associated with any physical-mathematical law or laws. We can't consider this conflation of maths and physical substantiation as an inevitability

A creation like ours necessarily derives from a supernatural event, even if the laws associated with the event are themselves 'natural'.

My conclusion on naturalism? There seems an inevitable point coming where we will have to ditch it, in this one place at least. 

We'll come to a line in reductionism where it's unrealistic, unreasonable even, to expect a naturalistic explanation. In fact, there are probably other such places, such as the beginning of life.

Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.

(Hebrews 11:3)

*Euclidean geometry is, physically speaking, an approximation, of course.

*I don't think it is correct, in the big picture. I use it as an example to highlight the flow of scientific investigation and discovery. There is much sound science in genetics.