John B. my many thanks to both the author Mr. Goldstein and the Signs of the Times January 2016 issue.
http://www.signs@pacificpress.com to order.
A WIFE, comes home early, and finds her husband in bed with another woman. The husband denies it by saying, "Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes"?
Granted, a silly line, but this line has a very important implications, because so much of what information we take in, comes to us by our eye-sight. The question then to be asked, is.."Just how accurately do our sight, hearing and the other of our senses portray the world to us"?
After all, have we not all been fooled by a mirage on the summer's highways? Or by an optical illusion {or is it a pollution?} Or even a magician on stage?
This issue gets even more critical, when the question of science arises. Because after all science is from the human mind, agree?
Note: Because scientists are human, they are also subject to all the human biases, preconceived notions, and hold to the can we call them Prejudices? the things we have accepted as each has been taught? As humans the most difficult thing for us is to set aside long held facts and beliefs, that are not true, and have been proven to be false, yet still rejected by many! The Piltdown man, comes to mind, a proven hoax, by the 1930's yet still in some Text-books in schools. As are the drawings of a whole family, the Nebraska Man, from one farmer's finding a tooth! The next year, the same farmer, in the same field, plowed up a JAW bone with one missing tooth, into which a replica of the ONE tooth fit perfectly, yet there's a problem, the Jaw and the TOOTH belonged to a PIG! Some are SO eager to prove evolution, that truth has little bearing on their ideals! For example the "DATING" of the Moon rocks, was arrived at by consensus only not by scientific means! One man, a Creationist, after Mt. ST. Helen blew her top, within a few years, he gathered three rock samples from a newly forming lava cone, sent them to three different University labs, and got three widely differing dates for their ages!. From a low of 2 Million years to a high of 4 Billion, from the same single rock, that had not seen the sunlight until about 2 years before its... "BIRTH"!
The NEANDERTHALS all have been shown as a huge protruding lower jaw, just as the large apes, but what is not KNOWN, is that the lower Jaws of the found skulls, have been photographed up to 1 inch gap between jaw and skull, in order to show the ape-like features! Mitochondrial DNA from found teeth have proven that they were fully human! Yet it took much digging to find these buried deep facts. . . if they have nothing to hide I ask WHY?
Science, is a form of "EMPIRICISM",-- the concept that knowledge comes to us from what we experience with our five senses, especially sight, being at times deceptive, thus how much does this deception influence science as well, seeing all are human?
This issue gets even more important when it comes to the question of faith and science. For most of history, science and faith have gotten along just fine. Even today, in most cases, little conflict exists. However, in one very important area, that of origins, the authority of science and the authority of God's Word conflict. And the sad fact is that many people, believe science should have the final say. After all, "It's Science"!-- the idea being that, because it's science, it has to be correct.
This notion is a fallacy-- one that even many "Christians" (?) have bought in to. There's no question that science has done wonderful things, allowing us to manipulate and interact with nature in ways that would boggle the minds of our ancestors. However, should science trump the Bible in areas where the two conflict, especially when science is merely one source of knowledge?
THE ROOM AND THE LIGHT.
Am account I read of some one's visit to a museum will help lead us to an answer.
"At the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C.," the writer said, "I entered an exhibit-- a small room so dark that an usher had to guide me in. The only light was a dimly lit wall opposite my seat. However, within a few minutes the light got brighter. As I sat there, still wondering what it was about, the3 usher guided in an other man to a seat..
BUT WHY?, NOW !
"Then it hit me! The room seemed bright enough toy mind, which had adjusted to the light. But to the man that just entered, the room was so dark that he needed an usher. In other words, the reality of the room appeared one way to me and another way to him."
"There was only one room, and one light in it, so whose view was the true one that accurately corresponded to the immediate environment around us both....his or mine?
This anecdote says something significant about the limits that are inherent in all human attempts to understand the world, including those of science: we aren't granted complete access to reality. The world comes to us through our five senses. As we know, our senses can be exceedingly deceiving, even when we use science. Hence, how much can we trust even what science tells us?
SENSE AND SCIENCE.
Keep in mind, please, that science is a human attempt to understand, explain, interpret, describe, and, ideally, explain the world. Whether it's Aristotle, 2,500 years ago, looking at bugs, Darwin in the Galapagos Islands, studying birds, or a chemist working for a corporation, or astronomers using the Hubble Space Scope to examine stars, or a biologist claiming that life on earth began between 3.8 and 4 billion years ago... science is human beings, sometimes with the aid of devices, using their senses to explore the natural world..
Hence, how much can we trust even what science tells us?
Note:(JB). During the 1950's when I was in Public School, I was taught that earth was 3.5 billion years old, yet by the time I hit high school, it has AGED to 4.5 Billions of years! Must have needed to give, EVOLUTION more time?
Note(JB) All of us are human, and more than a few humans tell lies, agree? Thus do NOT discount this possibility!
And all that is fine. after all, one could argue that most of what we know, at least about the natural world, we know from our senses. Even knowledge revealed to us---things we wouldn't know otherwise, such as our birthday--- we know only because someone told us (via our ears), or we read it (via our eyes). And if we know that John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and that Julius Caesar held the title of PONTIFEX MAXIMUS [ all POPES HAVE, History shows that Pagan Rome, became the Holy Roman Empire, ruled by the the Popes!], How do we know these things other than, again, by either our eyes or ears, or both?
SENSORY DEPRIVATION:
Yet for thousands of years people have struggled with the difficult question about how accurately, or inaccurately our senses funnel the world to us. What's the difference between what's OUTSIDE our brains and how it appears to us INSIDE OUR BRAINS?
When a scientist looks at a tree, what he sees is not the tree itself, but an image of the tree that exists ONLY in his or her mind! If this mind suddenly quit functioning, the image would disappear, but the TREE ITSELF, would still exist!
So what transformation takes place by the time whatever is external to us is captures by our senses, and converted into the chemical-electric impulses in our bodies and brains that underlie all our experiences? What's the difference between the image of the tree existing in your head, and the tree itself? Certainly a lot, because whatever in your head, it isn't two tons of wood,bark and leaves.
As the museum example showed, our senses can give conflicting views of what's "Out there". To one person the room appeared well lit; to the other it appears dark. If science studies what's "Out There", then it should not be concerned with how the room appears to different people. The issue is really with the room itself. Why would a geologist studying a shale cliff face, care about how the cliff appears to the eyes of say a bat, or a lens of a camera, or to one who is color-blind? In the same, science science is concerned only with what the room is really like in and of itself, regardless of the size, of the pupils in the eyes of the intelligent beings in the room itself.
Yet the difficult question remains: How well do our senses, even for scientists, reveal the real world?
REALIST VS. EMPIRICISTS..
There are two philosophies about what constitutes science: SCIENTIFIC REALISM and SCIENTIFIC EMPIRICISM.
The REALISTS argue that science does give us, if not an Absolute true account of the world, then at least an approximate one. They argue that even though science rests upon experience inside our brains, it goes deeper than that to the truth about reality that exists outside our brains. Science must discover what's "really out there", which is why realism is, in the words of Hilary Putnam, "the only philosophy of science that does not make the success of science a miracle."
Note: (JB) Only the Creator God, is in the "Miracle Business!" Never any human, creatures!
In contrast, scientific "empiricists" argue that science gives us only our own SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCES, of how the world appears to us and that it never gets to the REAL world. the truth itself. According to empiricists, the most that science can do is to explain, even somewhat superficially, the why of the things we observe appear to us as they do.
Now, if the philosophers of science can't agree on whether science is giving us a "true account of the world," The why...WHY.. do so many people, including "Christians(?), lie down, and play dead before nearly every scientific declaration, as if what science declares, MUST be true?
FAITH STATEMENTS>
There's no question that science has been incredibly fruitful human endeavor. And it's still just that: A HUMAN ENDEAVOR. And thus it comes with all the human limitations, weaknesses, and prejudices, [(JB) including preconceived ideas and biases] that we all suffer from to one degree or an other!
How else can we explain why scientists are constantly changing and or upgrading, their vies and theories about the natural world? { Which in the fundamentals never changes!]
For instance, how many decades ago was it that the latest and greatest news from science was that of the great dangers to health being "Saturated Fats"? Tet today the latest scientific facts are well... science was wrong, Saturated fat isn't bad for our arteries after all,{ but fat creates fat, on our bodies.}
What changed? Did the fat change, NO! Did we, our bodies change, NO! SCIENCE CHANGED! As a human and cultural project, simply shifted in the wind of opinion.
This is nothing new. Earlier in the twentieth Century, one famous writer and thinker, Alfred North Whitehead, wrote: "Fifty-seven years ago it was when I was a young man in the University of Cambridge. I was taught science and mathematics by brilliant men and I did well in them; since the turn of the century I have lived to see every one of the basic assumptions of both set aside....And yet, in the face of that, the discovers of a new hypotheses in science are declaring, "Now at last, we have" certitude".
Unfortunately, one generation's "Certitude," often becomes an other generation's myth. What scientific "certitudes" of today will our grandchildren laugh at?
FAITH ANS SCIENCE.
Belief in the Holy Bible and belief in science, both rest upon assumptions! Science assumes that we can learn about the natural world through observation and reason. Christians assume that God exists, not just through nature, but also through the Bible. In most cases these assumptions do NOT clash. For instance, the Microscope and the Telescope, both inventions of science, have revealed a depth and complexity to the natural world that clearly point to the wonderful creative powers of God.
NOTE: (JB). I know that God is, due to the changes in my character for the good! A truth I have experienced! This only.. The Divine is able to do.
Isaiah 42:5 "Thus saith God the LORD, he that created the heavens, and stretched them out; he that spread forth the earth, and that which cometh out of it; he that giveth breath unto the people upon it, and spirit to them that walk therein:"
NOTE (JB) "... and stretched out the heavens..." .It was not until Mr Hubble, concluded in the 1930's time frame, that science knew the universe was expanding, yet God has man so write between 740- 697 B.C time frames.{Isaiah] To bad the people of science oft reject the Bible, they would learn many things, by the study of it.
Nevertheless, the conflict over origins, a very sequential one---remains. The most popular today it seems being the MACRO-evolution, {small, minute changes due to mutations within a species}, yet it fully conflicts and contradicts the Bible, at its most basic levels, not only destroying not just the Bible's Creations accounts, but two other crucial doctrines, that stem directly from it: The Fall of Adam and Eve, which tells us how we humans became sinners, and the Gospel, which tells us of God's plan to rescue us from our sins. And YES, the issue IS that important!
Romans 6:22-23 "But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."
John 3:15-16 "That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."
NOTE (JB) Rome has for some decades now, agreed with science, telling her followers that Creation Story, is but an ALLEGORY, not an actual account, yet they expect us all to fully believe them when they speak of the rest of God's Holy Word? Please give me a break! Enough of the deceptions and lies! God is more than able to protect and PROJECT HIS WORD, to all, as it is written!
2 Thessalonians 2:9-12 "Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness."
Two thousand years ago Jesus said this:....
Matthew 15:8-9 "This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men"
Sadly 1 billion human beings, have been deceived by the Traditions of the Fathers, whose word is held above the word of God, by Rome's leadership.
Yes the context of this science view and Matthew 15, above differs in context, the principle fits the challenge that this scientific "certitude", about creation presents us with. Christians, then, need to ask themselves, where they put their faith, for in both cases, it's still all, about the matter of faith. Faith either in God and His Word, or the many differing words of men. Even if and when these words come wrapped up in the mantle of science! It still is, in the end, ONLY the words of man!
Here's what many consider the most horrific words a human can hear....
Matthew 7:23 "And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.." {meaning "lawlessness" the breaking of God's TEN COMMANDMENTS! [Exodus 20 1-17] .
Thanking you dear reader, for your time.
Questions? Comments? John at www.servant@frontier.com
Want/Need more info? Visit you local Seventh-Day Adventist Church, any Saturday/Sabbath 9-10 AM. You'll be surprised at your welcome, and begin to learn that Jesus can give you HIS peace of mind, the world only is in awe about..
Other sites. wwwaftv.org www.blbn.org www.3abn.org. www.benabraham.com
John B.
Am account I read of some one's visit to a museum will help lead us to an answer.
"At the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C.," the writer said, "I entered an exhibit-- a small room so dark that an usher had to guide me in. The only light was a dimly lit wall opposite my seat. However, within a few minutes the light got brighter. As I sat there, still wondering what it was about, the3 usher guided in an other man to a seat..
BUT WHY?, NOW !
"Then it hit me! The room seemed bright enough toy mind, which had adjusted to the light. But to the man that just entered, the room was so dark that he needed an usher. In other words, the reality of the room appeared one way to me and another way to him."
"There was only one room, and one light in it, so whose view was the true one that accurately corresponded to the immediate environment around us both....his or mine?
This anecdote says something significant about the limits that are inherent in all human attempts to understand the world, including those of science: we aren't granted complete access to reality. The world comes to us through our five senses. As we know, our senses can be exceedingly deceiving, even when we use science. Hence, how much can we trust even what science tells us?
SENSE AND SCIENCE.
Keep in mind, please, that science is a human attempt to understand, explain, interpret, describe, and, ideally, explain the world. Whether it's Aristotle, 2,500 years ago, looking at bugs, Darwin in the Galapagos Islands, studying birds, or a chemist working for a corporation, or astronomers using the Hubble Space Scope to examine stars, or a biologist claiming that life on earth began between 3.8 and 4 billion years ago... science is human beings, sometimes with the aid of devices, using their senses to explore the natural world..
Hence, how much can we trust even what science tells us?
Note:(JB). During the 1950's when I was in Public School, I was taught that earth was 3.5 billion years old, yet by the time I hit high school, it has AGED to 4.5 Billions of years! Must have needed to give, EVOLUTION more time?
Note(JB) All of us are human, and more than a few humans tell lies, agree? Thus do NOT discount this possibility!
And all that is fine. after all, one could argue that most of what we know, at least about the natural world, we know from our senses. Even knowledge revealed to us---things we wouldn't know otherwise, such as our birthday--- we know only because someone told us (via our ears), or we read it (via our eyes). And if we know that John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and that Julius Caesar held the title of PONTIFEX MAXIMUS [ all POPES HAVE, History shows that Pagan Rome, became the Holy Roman Empire, ruled by the the Popes!], How do we know these things other than, again, by either our eyes or ears, or both?
SENSORY DEPRIVATION:
Yet for thousands of years people have struggled with the difficult question about how accurately, or inaccurately our senses funnel the world to us. What's the difference between what's OUTSIDE our brains and how it appears to us INSIDE OUR BRAINS?
When a scientist looks at a tree, what he sees is not the tree itself, but an image of the tree that exists ONLY in his or her mind! If this mind suddenly quit functioning, the image would disappear, but the TREE ITSELF, would still exist!
So what transformation takes place by the time whatever is external to us is captures by our senses, and converted into the chemical-electric impulses in our bodies and brains that underlie all our experiences? What's the difference between the image of the tree existing in your head, and the tree itself? Certainly a lot, because whatever in your head, it isn't two tons of wood,bark and leaves.
As the museum example showed, our senses can give conflicting views of what's "Out there". To one person the room appeared well lit; to the other it appears dark. If science studies what's "Out There", then it should not be concerned with how the room appears to different people. The issue is really with the room itself. Why would a geologist studying a shale cliff face, care about how the cliff appears to the eyes of say a bat, or a lens of a camera, or to one who is color-blind? In the same, science science is concerned only with what the room is really like in and of itself, regardless of the size, of the pupils in the eyes of the intelligent beings in the room itself.
Yet the difficult question remains: How well do our senses, even for scientists, reveal the real world?
REALIST VS. EMPIRICISTS..
There are two philosophies about what constitutes science: SCIENTIFIC REALISM and SCIENTIFIC EMPIRICISM.
The REALISTS argue that science does give us, if not an Absolute true account of the world, then at least an approximate one. They argue that even though science rests upon experience inside our brains, it goes deeper than that to the truth about reality that exists outside our brains. Science must discover what's "really out there", which is why realism is, in the words of Hilary Putnam, "the only philosophy of science that does not make the success of science a miracle."
Note: (JB) Only the Creator God, is in the "Miracle Business!" Never any human, creatures!
In contrast, scientific "empiricists" argue that science gives us only our own SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCES, of how the world appears to us and that it never gets to the REAL world. the truth itself. According to empiricists, the most that science can do is to explain, even somewhat superficially, the why of the things we observe appear to us as they do.
Now, if the philosophers of science can't agree on whether science is giving us a "true account of the world," The why...WHY.. do so many people, including "Christians(?), lie down, and play dead before nearly every scientific declaration, as if what science declares, MUST be true?
FAITH STATEMENTS>
There's no question that science has been incredibly fruitful human endeavor. And it's still just that: A HUMAN ENDEAVOR. And thus it comes with all the human limitations, weaknesses, and prejudices, [(JB) including preconceived ideas and biases] that we all suffer from to one degree or an other!
How else can we explain why scientists are constantly changing and or upgrading, their vies and theories about the natural world? { Which in the fundamentals never changes!]
For instance, how many decades ago was it that the latest and greatest news from science was that of the great dangers to health being "Saturated Fats"? Tet today the latest scientific facts are well... science was wrong, Saturated fat isn't bad for our arteries after all,{ but fat creates fat, on our bodies.}
What changed? Did the fat change, NO! Did we, our bodies change, NO! SCIENCE CHANGED! As a human and cultural project, simply shifted in the wind of opinion.
This is nothing new. Earlier in the twentieth Century, one famous writer and thinker, Alfred North Whitehead, wrote: "Fifty-seven years ago it was when I was a young man in the University of Cambridge. I was taught science and mathematics by brilliant men and I did well in them; since the turn of the century I have lived to see every one of the basic assumptions of both set aside....And yet, in the face of that, the discovers of a new hypotheses in science are declaring, "Now at last, we have" certitude".
Unfortunately, one generation's "Certitude," often becomes an other generation's myth. What scientific "certitudes" of today will our grandchildren laugh at?
FAITH ANS SCIENCE.
Belief in the Holy Bible and belief in science, both rest upon assumptions! Science assumes that we can learn about the natural world through observation and reason. Christians assume that God exists, not just through nature, but also through the Bible. In most cases these assumptions do NOT clash. For instance, the Microscope and the Telescope, both inventions of science, have revealed a depth and complexity to the natural world that clearly point to the wonderful creative powers of God.
NOTE: (JB). I know that God is, due to the changes in my character for the good! A truth I have experienced! This only.. The Divine is able to do.
Isaiah 42:5 "Thus saith God the LORD, he that created the heavens, and stretched them out; he that spread forth the earth, and that which cometh out of it; he that giveth breath unto the people upon it, and spirit to them that walk therein:"
NOTE (JB) "... and stretched out the heavens..." .It was not until Mr Hubble, concluded in the 1930's time frame, that science knew the universe was expanding, yet God has man so write between 740- 697 B.C time frames.{Isaiah] To bad the people of science oft reject the Bible, they would learn many things, by the study of it.
Nevertheless, the conflict over origins, a very sequential one---remains. The most popular today it seems being the MACRO-evolution, {small, minute changes due to mutations within a species}, yet it fully conflicts and contradicts the Bible, at its most basic levels, not only destroying not just the Bible's Creations accounts, but two other crucial doctrines, that stem directly from it: The Fall of Adam and Eve, which tells us how we humans became sinners, and the Gospel, which tells us of God's plan to rescue us from our sins. And YES, the issue IS that important!
Romans 6:22-23 "But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."
John 3:15-16 "That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."
NOTE (JB) Rome has for some decades now, agreed with science, telling her followers that Creation Story, is but an ALLEGORY, not an actual account, yet they expect us all to fully believe them when they speak of the rest of God's Holy Word? Please give me a break! Enough of the deceptions and lies! God is more than able to protect and PROJECT HIS WORD, to all, as it is written!
2 Thessalonians 2:9-12 "Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness."
Two thousand years ago Jesus said this:....
Matthew 15:8-9 "This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men"
Sadly 1 billion human beings, have been deceived by the Traditions of the Fathers, whose word is held above the word of God, by Rome's leadership.
Yes the context of this science view and Matthew 15, above differs in context, the principle fits the challenge that this scientific "certitude", about creation presents us with. Christians, then, need to ask themselves, where they put their faith, for in both cases, it's still all, about the matter of faith. Faith either in God and His Word, or the many differing words of men. Even if and when these words come wrapped up in the mantle of science! It still is, in the end, ONLY the words of man!
Here's what many consider the most horrific words a human can hear....
Matthew 7:23 "And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.." {meaning "lawlessness" the breaking of God's TEN COMMANDMENTS! [Exodus 20 1-17] .
Thanking you dear reader, for your time.
Questions? Comments? John at www.servant@frontier.com
Want/Need more info? Visit you local Seventh-Day Adventist Church, any Saturday/Sabbath 9-10 AM. You'll be surprised at your welcome, and begin to learn that Jesus can give you HIS peace of mind, the world only is in awe about..
Other sites. wwwaftv.org www.blbn.org www.3abn.org. www.benabraham.com
John B.
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