Joe Barta wrote:

SNIP

That said, I have a few very minor comments to what you wrote...

SNIP

Sidebar: When I have this conversation with my fellow Theists,
particularly those in the school of so-called "literal
innerant"


"Innerant"... this word threw me. Until I knew what it meant, the
phrase "literal innerant" was a complete mystery. It would seem that
the correct spelling is "inerrant"...

in·er·rant (adj.)
Incapable of erring; infallible.
Containing no errors.

My apologies. It was late when I wrote the post and I didn't check
spelling closely enough. You have both the spelling and the meaning
correct.


And for the benefit of other dummies like me, a "literal inerrant", in
this context is one that takes the text of the Bible literally... that
it is literally infallible. If the Bible says God created the universe
in 6 days, then by golly that's all it took.

Just be careful. By, the "Bible", they mean the *autographs* - the
original texts. Most all inerrantists agree that the texts have been
corrupted to some degree over time because we no long have the
originals, only copies. They thus heartily support activities like
archaelogy, lingustics, and texual criticism as means to better
understanding what the original texts contain. Pretty much all of them
argue that such textual "corruption" is fairly minor and typically has
little effect on the end meaning. So far, they've been largely
vindicated (about the quality of the texts we have today) by this claim
each time older and older texts are found that more-or-less confirm
today's texts.

SNIP


I'm still a little puzzled why there is the need to believe there is
an "author". If an apple falls from a tree, we think in terms of "it
just happened" and if we dig further we can find perfectly rational
and understandable explanations as to why it occurred. We normally
don't think in terms of someone "designing" that apple to fall.

I understand that this gets into the "philosophy of science" as you
put it, but why even suggest that this philosophy might have an
author? Thousands of years of religious teachings aside, where does
the notion of "authorship" come from?

To me, all truth springs from nothing. It just is. If we don't
understand something, it's because we simply don't understand it (yet)
or are incapable of understanding it.

Or am I just restating the same thing in a different way?

"Truth" does not "spring from nothing". What is "True" always depends on
your rules for acquiring knowledge (your epistemology). An apple falls
from a tree and we can describe that by the laws of physics only because
we have an agree-to play book about how physics is done. But that is a
very small issue of mechanics. The more interesting question is how the
Universe in which the tree exists ever came to be. How is it that the
law of gravity operates as it does? Why was there a Big Bang and where
did the matter and energy therein come from? These are not questions of
mechanism, they are questions of First Cause...

Your question has no simple answer, nor is there any "proof" - see my
earlier post about the non-provability of axiomatic starting points. All
I can give you is *my* take on it. You may- or may not find it
responsive. Note that I am not trying to convert you or sell you
anything here, I am merely responding to your question in the only way I
can. I am a Theist - someone who believes in an Author - for several
reasons:

1) Step back from the detail of biology, physics, or any of modern science
and look at the Whole Picture we see so far - The Universe taken as
whole. I know of no example *within* that Universe we're looking at
where Something comes from Nothing. All Somethings have a First Cause -
another Something or Someone that brought them into being. It thus
seems reasonable to infer that the Universe itself had a First Cause.

The fact that anything exists implies it came
from somewhere/someone/somehow.

2) Assume that every bit of Science we currently posses is *precisely*
correct and without error. That is, assume that the Science
we have today at all levels of certainty is right on the money.
Even if that were thecase, Science is unable to answer the basic question
of First Cause: How did the Universe as a whole come to be?
Science is limited to questions of mechanism, it cannot address
*cause* or *meaning* (which is why the IDers believe the philosophy
of Science is broken). IOW, not how does it *work*, but how did
the whole business even come to be in existence.
There are several possibilities:

a) The Universe is a magical place and we can't reliably know anything
about it. (If true, then Science is pointless because it may
well just all be an illusion.)

b) There are versions of a) above that claim that knowing the
First Cause is mystical/magical, but that we can still reliably
know things about the mechanics of how it works. This always
struck me as the "giving up before you've started" plan.
Understanding Mechanism without giving thought to Cause reduces
all of us to mere machinery. There is ample evidence that
humans particularly are considerably more than just machines.
Try accounting for aesthetics, laughter, love, hate, creativity,
and so in in purely mechanical terms. Contemporary Science
is mired down in this purely mechanical view of all things and
keeps trying to produce explanations that would account for
exactly these kinds of things, and they generally fail.

A human being is more than just a collection of cells programmed
by DNA in the same way that a Bach Motet is more than just notes
on a page: The whole is somehow greater than the sum of the parts,
and purely mechanistic explanations are laughably inadequate
to circumscribe this. There is something profound and transcendent
about being human that cannot be explained away because we understand
the "gears and pulleys" that make us what we are physically.

Theologians will tell you that this transcendent character
of humanity exists because we "made in God's image". I think
that's as reasonable a hypothesis as any.

There is a transcendent component to human experience.
This suggests that there is a source of that transcendence
that is larger than just the mechanics of life.

(BTW, one of the great inconsistencies within today's Science
community lies in this very area. If you argue that mankind
is purely a machine, you have no basis for moral law of any kind.
If I'm just a machine, then the best/strongest/most fit machine
should survive. There ought never be any reason for laws against
murder and mayhem, because these are just the "best machines"
conquering other machines. You cannot deny trancendence in
the matter of mankind's essential character on the one hand,
but demand transcendant moral law on the other.

Sure, a bunch of "machines" can all get together and decide
that having some sort of legal system is in their own
self-interest as a matter of survival, but any notion of
"right" or "wrong" is utterly inconsistent.
Yet, you'll find precious few Scientists to agree that there is
no such thing as morality, nor any need for it. They pretty
much all have *some* moral code by which they abide - and for
a lot more reason than purely utilitarian self-interest in most
cases I've met. Similar examples exist in other areas - how is
it that mere machines can enjoy art or music, exhibit strong
emotions, and so on. The core answer to this is that Science
itself may well have to limit itself to understanding humanity
in purely mechanical terms - unless, of course, the IDers can
finally make their case. But *Scientists* don't have to do that.
Many consistent and thoughtful Scientists will tell you that
they use Science only as a tool to undersand Mechanism, but they
personally remain interested in Cause and human transcendent
experience because they too grasp that the whole is larger
than the sum of the parts.)

c) The Universe has always been eternally existent. (Very unlikely,
given the current understanding of the Big Bang which fairly
compellingly argues for an event that began the Universe.)

d) The Universe has an Author. Someone/something/somehow made
the Universe come to be. If that Someone/something itself
had an Author, we have to repeat the logic (The Author had
an Author who had an Author ...). Eventually you come to one of
two possibilities:

There is an infinite progression of Authors - the so-called
"turtles all the way down" theory.

There is an Ultimate Author that transcends time and terminates
the "stack of turtles".

I don't buy "turtles all the way down" because if true, it leaves
the question open as to how there could be an infinite succession
of Authors.

The Ultimate Author subcase here makes more intuitive sense to me:

The fact that anything exists implies that someone/something
brought it into being _and_ that there is an Ultimate Author
behind it all that transcends time, space, and all known laws
of the this Universe and all other possibly existing
Universes.

Have I proven my case? Nope. You never can prove your starting points.
But at the very least, I hope you are convinced that there is a
thoughtful and measured analysis that leads to Theism that is not in any
way inferior to the analysis that leads to the development of any other
knowledge system like Science.

More to the point, I hope you embrace the idea that to truly "know"
things, you need *multiple kinds" of knowledge systems. It's not *just*
Science, or Mathematics, or Logic, or Theology, or Existential
Experience, or ... we need to become knowledgeable, we need them *all*.
There have been two great tragedies in human intellectual development.
The first was to *divide* knowledge systems and pit them against each
other: Theology v. Science, Reason v. Experience, and so on. The second
was the emergence of philosophies in the 20th Century that were
*destructive* to knowledge. Deconstructionism and Post-Modernism are
examples of worldviews that outright destroy knowledge by
attempting to show that nothing can ever actually be known.

I hope this answers your question...



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Tim Daneliuk
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