How does Science relate to Faith?

Sir John Polkinghorne discusses the ambitions and limits of science, and the deep resonances between what science reveals and faith believes.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Faith
• Science
• Christianity
• John
• Polkinghorne
• Faraday
• Institute
• Humanism
• Physics

[tostrong4you]

@dancarollo And by the way. If your religion is based on the Bible, and the Muslim religion is based on the Koran. How do you know which one is 100% correct? I mean if you are going to treat every sentence, every word of the book as 100% correct, then how do you know its correct and the others are not?

[tostrong4you]

@dancarollo Errrrrr nope

Whats more probable? You have a highly intelligent(being) alien in your back yard?

Or a whole bunch of rocks? plain old matter and energy is simpler than magic flying

all powerful, all-knowing creatures in other dimensions.

[dancarollo]

@tostrong4you. As the well-known Franciscan monk (William of Ockham) reminded us in the principle of lex parsimoniae (economy of explaination) --- that simplier explainations are to be preferred to complex ones. To propose a universe that creates itself -- or to propose an infinite number of universes in order to explain why ONE of them happens to have the elegantly fine-tuned properties ours does --- seems the height of irrationality.

[dancarollo]

@tostrong4you. We've known through observation and testing that matter cannot have the properties of being "self-existing" and eternal. That essentially leaves two choices: 1) matter exists as a brute fact that me must simply accept (doesn't need explaining) or 2) It just "popped" into existence spontaneously. And not only that, but exists in a very peculiar way that happens to be fine-tuned for the evolution of intelligent life itself (See Martin Rees' "Just Six Numbers")

[tostrong4you]

@TheisticThinker well then why cant you imagine for matter to never come into being?

Something that always exists, that doesn't have an end or beginning.

I mean what is more believable to you? Something simple to always exist or something unimaginably genius and complicated to always exist?

[TheisticThinker]

@tostrong4you What is meant then with God being 'eternal' is that He never came into being, and will 'always' exist. An entity that is timeless cannot be said to begin to exist, or cease to exist.

[TheisticThinker]

@tostrong4you Relate that to Big Bang Cosmology, if our Universe indeed follow a Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-W­alker model (the standard Hot Big Bang model), then whatever caused the Universe is not apart of the physical world, since that is the very effect. And it's not apart of time, because time also came into being at t = 0.

[TheisticThinker]

@tostrong4you Matter haven't existed forever, the ingredients for matter came into being at the Big Bang, which marks a boundary to space and time. "Before" nothing physical exists. What is meant by God always existing is that he is not part of time, and this was the view of many Church fathers, and is also reflected more metaphorically in Scripture.

[dancarollo]

Also, just because an idea is "ridiculous" doesn't automatically mean it's false -- or off the table for consideration. Take the idea of multiverses for example. Some actually think this has scientific merit, and hope (wishfully, in my view) that the data will eventually support it.

[dancarollo]

The nature of the universe, it's rational transparency, it's amazing properties -- still manages provokes our greatest questions, whether you like it or not. Not saying this proves anything about God -- just saying the question of ultimate meaning, and ultimate reality will always be important questions that aren't going away anytime soon -- and which science itself will never answer. In the end, you're really left with a choice: What is it that provides the "best fit"?