GOLD, INCENSE AND MYRRH. NOT ALL THOSE WHO WANDER ARE LOST...

"It takes just one page in the Bible to describe the creation of the universe, the Earth, the sky, the seas and all life on our planet.
For thousands of years, Judeo-Christian belief has accepted this progresson as truth.
But the Genesis acount has no right to be correct.
The author could not have known these things happened in this order, and in the detail science has come to recognize".

CASES NOT SUITABLE TO THE METHODOLOGIES OF SCIENCE:
- THE ORIGIN OF UNIVERSE;
- THE ORIGIN OR ENERGY THAT RESULTED IN THE UNIVERSE;
- WHAT LIES BEYOND THE UNIVESE?
- WHY IS THERE SOMETHING RATHER THAN NOTHING?

" Science can offer some wonder to us as a species, but maybe only religion can provide guidance and purpusefulness to the individual passing through his or her daily routine - particularly when that ruoutine is living out in a concrete city.
I have stated that evolution is a fact. I see no problems whatsoever with the process of evolution. But I have encountered questions about life on earth that should have an equivalent scientific answer, yet to which no such answer seems forthcoming.
For instance, Why do living things reproduce?
This is easy to answer where higher animals are concerned, where juveniles eventually look after their parents. But where the offspring disappear over the horizon or into the depths, the case is less straightforward.
If asked what would happen to the first living organism to evolve, I would not predict 'reproduction'. What benefit to the first individual could be gained from reproducing? If anything, reproduction requires an energy sacrifice. Science tells us what happens during the process of reproduction, but I can't find an explanation for why it happens at all. And then, given that individuals do reproduce, why do they speciate?
Here, as is most often the case, science can provide an explanation. Speciation happens because genetic mutations occur - errors during the process of gene duplication. But errors. Plato alluded to our defective senses, making a point of errors. Errors are necessary for the variety of life that we have - for evolution, as I have just mentioned.
Geneticists take for granted that 'a mutation has occurred' here and there on a genome, but such error, at the fundamental level, is without an explanation.
Maybe the origin of reproduction could be considered an error. But why should errors occur?
Again, if I were to guess how the first organism reproduced, I woud suggest 'accurately'. A parent should give rise to an exact replica of itself. This, surely, is parsimony, the 'less is better' concept that underpins science and is applied in Occam's razor.  It follows the laws of physics. But then, there are many other cases of errors in the natural world. The decay of an atom involves the error of energy loss, and chaos (as it is found in nature) occurs when the organization of systems breaks down.
Maybe errors on the molecular scale filter through to the macro level of human behaviour. Are the same errors, I wonder, accountable for human tragedies?
Errors provide evidence against the creation - God's system must be error-free, and yet, as we see in our world of science, it is not. But maybe, since they represent a departure from parsimony, errors provide challange to science, too.
A possible explanation for errors is that they are part of a purposeful system, a tool by which to achive evolution, for instance.
Could the parsimonious scenario be that God created the original universe - the energy or matter - along with the necessary potential for errors, and from here everything self-assembled in line with our scientific explanations?
It is interesting that the writer who penned Genesis cap.1, in the Bible, depicted God in a form unlike humans or anything we can conceive of, but also as a God who could sometimes appear harsh.
This is consistent with a God that allowed his building blocks to self-assemble, with the added potential for error.
In which case, disease and other adverse occurrences become explicable, averting the question on How a good God could let such things happen?

At least, these are my observations and thoughts as an onlooker on the science versus religion debate.
I am trying my best to be impartial, attempting to pick the virtues from each side of the argument.
Again, I am a practising scientist and just as I will seize upon anything unreasonable in a research paper or grant proposal that I am asked to review, I will weed out anything irrational in this subject of science versus religion, too.
Soon it will be simple for me to declare creationism dead on the ground, but here I am just beginning to find incompleteness (not inadequacy, but insufficiency) in science as an explanation for the universe, too. I am also warming to the idea that we are better off, as individuals, living with religion than without it".
(Andrew Parker, The Genesis Enigma, London 2009, p. 297-298).

 

 

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY YEAR 2017

FORGIVE EVERYONE WHO'S TRYING TO RUIN YOUR LIFE
HELP OTHERS WHO ARE EXPERIENCING YOUR SAME STRAGGLE
BE SURE YOU'VE TAKEN CARE OF THOSE NEAR YOU
AIM YOUR HARD QUESTIONS AT GOD, NOT MAN
BE HUMAN ENOUGH TO ACKNOWLEDGE YOUR NEED
BE ASSURED, THERE IS A PURPOSE AND AN END
FINALLY, SURRENDER YOUR DAY TO GOD, AND LET IT GO!