What Todd Wood would like to hear an evolutionary creationist say, and what Dennis Venema would like to hear a young-earth creationist say

That's a long title!

I just found two interesting articles, both quite readable, and neither too long for the average reader who is interested in the subject, and neither requiring special background in science or theology. Both of these articles were written for the Colossian Forum.

Todd Charles Wood is a committed young-earth creationist, and a believer. He has sound scientific credentials. (See here for a summary of the information on him. I'm pretty sure that he is no longer at Bryan College, however. Here's his blog.) I have been reading his blog for a few years. He has written an article on what he would like to hear from an evolutionary creationist. Dennis Venema is a committed evolutionary creationist, and a believer. He has sound scientific credentials. (See here for a summary of the information on him. That link also leads to Venema's writing for the BioLogos Forum.) I have been reading his posts in the BioLogos Forum for a few years. He has written an article on what he would like to hear from a young-earth creationist.

So what do they say? Well you can, and should, read the articles. But I can sum it up simply -- each author admits that "his side" doesn't know everything, and should be properly humble about it, and understand that Christians may differ on some issues and still be Christians, and hopes that the representative of the other side will do the same. In the case of Venema and Wood, they have. Unfortunately, that is not always true, and Christianity is worse off because it isn't true.

We don't know everything about origins. We do know that God was involved. Thanks for reading. Read Wood and Venema.

I'm thankful for ignorance.

I'm thankful for ignorance -- mine, not yours -- because it's fun learning new things, or re-learning things I've forgotten, and I think that doing so is part of the image of God in humans. Babies are learning stuff all the time, so it's normal to want to learn things. We sometimes wonder, "What good is it to accumulate knowledge?" But there is potential good in learning.

I'm also thankful for God's ignorance. He forgets forgiven sin!

It is possible that God has set limits on knowing, in the universe that He has created, such that even He, abiding by those limits, does not know everything. I am referring to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. I don't, if you will excuse the expression, know whether God is able to supersede the limits to human knowledge set by that principle. I also refer to the incompleteness theorems of Kurt Gödel, which say, more or less, that any mathematical system will be based, in part, on ideas, axioms, or statements that can't be proved -- in other words, there will always be doubt as to the rigor and consistency of mathematics. Again, I think it possible that God knows whether any axiom or statement is true or not, but it is also possible that God is Self-limited in this area, too.

It is also possible that God allows real randomness in the universe.

Thanks for reading! I learn things, or re-learn things, in the process of blogging.

Ignorance in science

Yesterday, I posted on Ignorance as submission, about how God knows everything, and we don't, and, sometimes, we have to just submit to that.

Today, I'd like to consider the question of ignorance in science. Really, the question of limits to science -- are there things that science cannot ever know?

I believe, and I am not alone, that God gave humans the ability to discover things, and that is part of the image of God (see here and here) in us. Part of discovering is what we now call science, God can be honored by good scientific work. Many of the great scientists of the past were deliberately trying to find out about how God made things, and even atheist scientists (and by no means all scientists are atheists) may honor God, unwittingly, by making new discoveries, or by developing new theories. Science can produce knowledge that can be terribly misused -- for example so-called atomic bombs, biological warfare, or using the Internet to spread racial hatred or to exploit women. But it can also produce knowledge that can be used for good. For example, the Internet can be used for communicating the gospel of Christ, or more efficient crops may be produced. But mostly, knowing more is a good thing.

It is possible that God has placed some limitations on scientific discovery, for His own reasons. I'm not aware of any such, but that would, I suppose, be possible. (One such reason might be to fight human pride.) That's not what I'm musing about here. I'm musing about limitations to scientific knowledge. Are there things that scientists can't learn? I believe that there are.

First, how do we know anything? How can I be sure that the computer I am typing this on actually exists, and that the yard I see out the window actually exists? Perhaps they are all the products of my imagination. Lest there be any doubt, I do believe the evidence of my own senses, unless there is very good reason not to, and so does every other sane person. But it is possible that I am deluding myself.

Second, why is there something, rather than nothing? Stephen Hawking, perhaps the most famous scientist of our time, recently said that that was the biggest mystery that he wished were solved. I don't see science solving that, ever. I believe that it is a limit on science. (Hawking is famously not a Christian. Neither is Michael Ruse, one of the most important philosophers of science, who also asks the question given at the beginning of this paragraph.) Hawking, with a co-author, wrote a book which claims to answer that question, and specifically claims that God need not be part of the answer, but the book has been seriously criticized, and not just on religious grounds. My judgment is that it does not really answer the question.

Third, what, if anything, came before the Big Bang? We don't know. I understand that some readers may believe that there was no such thing as a Big Bang. I disagree. The evidence is quite good, considering the subject, and I see no reason why a belief in the Big Bang and a belief in a supernatural Creator need conflict.

Fourth, where is a particular sub-atomic particle found, and what is it doing? For decades, scientists have believed that the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle sets limits on what we can know about very tiny particles -- one reason being that the very act of observation changes what we are trying to measure.

Fifth, there are things that we cannot know, because of time, distance, or both. For example, we cannot know exactly what is going on at this very moment, on planets around the stars in some distant galaxy, because, if we ever get there, too much time will have passed. The very evidence of what went on then, there, will have decayed significantly, or disappeared. On a more commonplace level, we can't predict the future exactly.

Sixth, in mathematics, which is a tool of science, there are things that cannot be proved, or disproved.

If science has limitations, does that prove that there is a God? No. It is certainly compatible with the existence of God, but the main evidence for God's existence is not scientifically oriented.

It may be that one or more of the limitations listed above will eventually be shown not to be limiting. Not knowing that is, in itself, a limitation on present science.

I have previously had a profitable dialog with an atheist, covering part, but not all, of the same ground, and you are welcome to read some of that.

Thanks for reading.

Ignorance as submission

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? I don't know, and you don't, either. I don't even know if angels can dance on the head of a pin, or if they would want to. There is a Wikipedia article on the subject, and, among other things, it says that this question has been used as a dismissal of theologians of the past, and that "[in] modern usage, this question also serves as a metaphor for wasting time debating topics of no practical value." (Dismissal of the theologians of the past may have been unjust -- they may not have really cared very much about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, according to the article.)

A friend recently asked me a question -- not the one above -- about angels. I responded that I didn't know much about them. I also looked up the subject, and discovered that there has been a great deal of speculation about these beings, among Christians, and, before the time of Christ, among Jews. As this Wikipedia article about the view of angels among Christian theologians puts it, "the Biblical canon is relatively silent on the subject."

It seems to me that knowledge of what angels look like, how they originated, how they spend their time, and the like, are a subject that God doesn't think we need to know very much about. Why not? I don't know. Perhaps that sort of knowledge would be dangerous to some of us. Almost certainly, having answers to such questions is not necessary for redemption by Christ. It's of no practical value.

There are a lot of things that some of us Christians would like to know the answers to. For example:
When and how is Christ returning?
What did Jesus do between his birth and his trip to the Temple, at about age 12? Did he have any siblings? How many siblings? What were their names, and what were they like? What happened to them? What happened to Joseph? When did he die?
What did Adam and Eve look like?
What did Jesus look like?
What was Paul's thorn in the flesh?

Granted, some of us think that we have the answers to these, or other such questions, especially the first one, but some of the rest of us have different answers, and none of the answers we think we have are supported unambiguously by the Bible.

Do I need to know the answers to these questions, in order to be redeemed from sin? No. Apparently, in God's view, they are of no practical value.

Humans need to submit to God's authority. Put like that, most Christians don't have major problems. Oh, sometimes we disobey. But we understand that we need to obey, and understand that we should repent when we don't, and we resolve, with God's help, to obey in the future. But we also, I believe, need to submit to God's authority not only in relation to our own behavior, but in relation to knowledge, and acknowledge our own ignorance. Being ignorant is part of submission, too.

Job went through a lot. At the end of the Book of Job, after Job questioned God for several chapters, off and on, God appeared, and, basically, said to Job "You don't know anything, so why are you questioning me?" Job basically said "You are so right. I'm sorry." (See here for more on that dialogue.)

There are some things that we should know, and submission to God's authority is not a valid excuse for knowing things that we can discover, and should discover. For example, it's no excuse for not studying the Bible, or for not reading and seeing and hearing what others have to say about it. In fact, not doing those things is failing to submit to God's authority. But there are a lot of areas, some Biblical, some not, where I have to say, basically, "God, I don't understand this, or know how this worked, or how it will work, and I'm just going to trust you on this subject." I have to recognize that I'm not meant to have definite knowledge on some things, and submit to an omniscient, omnipotent God who does, and Who can do something about them, if He chooses to.

In addition to the type of question I gave above, there's another type of question. Why did God let, or cause, some particular thing -- fill it in yourself -- to happen? Why didn't God cause this particular outcome, or let it happen? Here, of course, Job is the textbook case. Although we are (sort of) told why Job suffered as he did, we aren't sure that Job was ever told at all. The point of God's lecture to Job, about the world around Job, was not about questions of understanding how nature works, but it was about why bad things happen to good people. That's the question Job really wanted an answer to. He got an answer, but it was "I am God, and I, myself, am the answer. That's all you need to know." (See also Till We Have Faces, by C. S. Lewis.)

Thanks for reading. I hope to post soon on the limits of scientific knowledge.

Knowledge and Understanding

"That is one of the pet falsehoods of your world! Is man's greatest knowledge more than a little? or is it therefore dangerous? The fancy that knowledge is in itself a great thing, would make any degree of knowledge more dangerous than any amount of ignorance. To know all things would not be greatness." George MacDonald, Lilith (public domain, 1895) Chapter XXVIII

The fact is, no man understands anything; when he knows he does not understand, that is his first tottering step--not toward understanding, but toward the capability of one day understanding. George MacDonald, Lilith (public domain, 1895) Chapter XXX