I See No Conflict Between Christianity and Science

Alister McGrath’s book The Big Question is very good on this issue.

My first college degree was in agriculture. We had to take science classes on plant and livestock reproduction. You cannot come out of a plant or livestock breeding biology class with a traditional evolutionary position and be able to get any results in selective breeding. We needed to know the facts so we could bring our knowledge into the industry. That knowledge matched with scripture.

You cannot come out of a plant or livestock breeding biology class with a traditional evolutionary position and be able to get any results in selective breeding.

How would there be any conflict on that point? Darwinian evolution is about how species evolved without selective breeding. It doesn’t say random selection by “survival of the fittest” is an alternative to selective breeding, or that random is better than selective.

Answers in Genesis likes to use the term “historical” a lot in reference to Darwinian evolution. That’s a useful distinction. It isn’t really about how anything ought to be done, but a story about things allegedly happened in the past…. with a lot of implications for the present, I suppose, but mostly as context and language.

And there are a lot of people doing science for no other purpose than to test or confirm some aspect of that history.

One of the things I found fascinating when I visited AiG’s Creation Museum was how much of the mechanisms of natural selection they affirmed. They even said in at least one display that actual new species have come to exist by natural selection. (I have a photo somewhere of the placard.) They just really hate the term “evolution” for it, because of the theological/philosophical baggage—and of course the millions of years, which they emphatically reject.

I don’t share their degree of certainty about a lot of the details, but their rejection of the Darwinian evolution story, with its complete absence of purpose, design, or a Creator is on track and resonates with me.

How would there be any conflict on that point?

Selective breeding is about getting rid of genetic material in order to accentuate other genetic material and then having to find old sources of genetic material to reintroduce needed characteristics. For example, if you want a tall corn plant, you want to get rid of the material that would make it short. The problem comes that when you get rid of the material to make it short, you might also get rid of material that gives it disease resistance or better nutrient characteristics. In order to address that, you have to breed back in the lost genetic material from existing lines.

New genetic material must come from existing genetic material- that is the whole point. There are huge seed banks in underground caves just so plant breeders can have access to a wide diversity of genetic material. Some of those seeds are from plants that do not yield well or even have any desirable characteristics, but they might just have some important genetic material that other varieties no longer have so it is important to have access to them for selective breeding. The point is that we need the genetic material that God made.

It also means that we get diversity because of a loss of genetic material, not because of a gain of material. Based on this scientific evidence, I believe that Noah would not have had as many animals on the ark as we might think. For example, there are a lot of cats in this word and the tiger, lion, and house cat may have had the same ancestor. It is just that since the ark, they devolved to have less genetic material than at the time of Noah, so now we have much more diversity. Scientifically speaking we get diversity through loss of genetic material, not gain of genetic material. Thus in a technical sense, devolution has more scientific support than evolution.

The problem with being wrong is that up until the moment you realize you are wrong, it feels just like being right.

Science is wrong a lot. And, yes it often corrects itself. But it’s going to have conflict, just by the natures of science and revelation.

Another huge source of conflict is apparent age. I think this is so big, that it’s actually best to embrace the conflict. The universe appears OLD. Consistently OLD. The Hawaiian Islands look very old, and each one older as you go west. And there are eroded subsea mountains heading west to Asia. That hot spot has been erupting and making islands for a very long time.

So, if you believe, as I do, that the world was created several thousand years ago, it isn’t ever going to look its age.

Dan made a good point about science being wrong. That is actually one of the fundamentals of the scientific method. The method is to take a hypothesis (something that is unproven) and to see if it holds true. Often it does. Often it does not. Many of us tried to point that out during covid, but so many were so dedicated to what their media source told them that they acted as if the scientific hypothesis were scientific laws even when the testing of the hypothesis proved the opposite of the ideas presented. The problem is when science becomes a person's religion and they make dogmatic decisions based on unproven hypothesis. It is even worse when Christians attack other Christians based on this dogmatism. Sadly, we saw way too much of that 4 years ago.

New genetic material must come from existing genetic material- that is the whole point. There are huge seed banks in underground caves just so plant breeders can have access to a wide diversity of genetic material

Thanks.

I see what you mean. Mainstream evolution seems to assume increasing genetic info over time. I think maybe I have read Meyer and Behe and others on that point. I’m not sure at the moment. Not enough coffee yet.

I find it frustrating when people who do not have a very good grasp of science, end up calling people who do have a good understanding of science, "science deniers." It is especially frustrating when they do so simply because we were pointing out unscientific conclusions that others have.

Humans have been thinking badly for a long time (Gen 3 comes to mind!).

With “science” and “science deniers” these days we see a whole lot of what some used to call argumentum ad verecundiam

Nice summary here: https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Appeal-to-Authority

With “the science says…” or “science says…” it’s a twist on argumentum ad verecundiam. The twist is that the alleged authority being appealed to is so vague, it isn’t really identified at all. So it’s kind of ‘appeal to imaginary authority.’ In descriptions of the fallacy, they talk about relevance and legitimacy of the authority. The authority can’t be relevant or legitimate if it isn’t really identified. Which scientists/groups of scientists say? What kind of science do they do? Where is there research documented? Without that, it’s argumentum ad verecundiam.

Might as well swap “the science says” out for “Dr. Who says…” or just “everybody knows” (morphing argumentum ad verecundiam into ad populum)

“Science denier” is a step deeper into weaseliness. It appeals to unidentified authority, then dresses it in the eternal favorite, ad hominem. So the reasoning is,

• You’re wrong because an authority I’m not even going to identify says so
• And you’re wrong because the above puts you in a category of people who are wrong just because of the category they are in

But what we mostly do these days is:

• Hear the claim
• Agree or disagree at a gut level
• Throw together some reasoning of convenience
• Preach it to the choir

Or worse…

• Hear the claim
• Judge which tribe the claim represents
• Affirm or reject based on tribe/group identity
• Throw together some reasoning of convenience… or just don’t bother with reasoning at all
• Preach it to the tribe

That might sound like a rant, but I’m not bitter. We’ve probably been doing this since the Tower of Babel.

One caveat: Sometimes what looks like fallacy is just “extreme shorthand.” There’s a good argument, but we aren’t making it at the moment, due to the situation. But that so easily just becomes laziness, right? And if we have to shorthand an important controversial claim, shouldn’t that be somewhat exceptional rather than the norm?

Shorthand gets used in argumentation all the time, and I think it’s not just common, it’s necessary for normal (i.e. non-symposium-type) discussions to take place. However, it’s a common principle that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, as they should. I do agree that sometimes we do use “extreme shorthand,” even when we probably shouldn’t.

To illustrate all of this, in 2020, we accepted that staying at least 6 feet away from someone was reasonable, because given what we know of most viruses/illnesses, that was a reasonable precaution to take. It turned out in retrospect to not really be helpful, but again, it wasn’t an extraordinary claim, so most of us figured that didn’t need a study, even though if a good one had been done, we would have been able to avoid all the craziness with keeping kids completely separated in schools.

On the other hand, instead of what we knew from experience and evidence (quarantining the sick, and taking precautions with those who are especially susceptible), it was decided that all healthy people the world over should be quarantined from each other. That was an extraordinary claim, and I believe it was completely reasonable for even non-scientists to demand good evidence and not just the word of people who claim that they represented science, especially given all the other damage that would come from such a policy. In retrospect, that policy didn’t work either.

I do agree that deciding what is true by tribe is completely stupid, but as Aaron said, that doesn’t mean we should accept a nebulous concept of “scientific authority” without actually seeing something conclusive from that authority, even if the authority would usually have been considered to be valid (like the WHO or the CDC, both of whom have now damaged their credibility).

Of course when Trump, or Brix, or Fauci gave their speeches, they couldn’t always directly present evidence at that time. However, the evidence that supposedly backed what they said should have been provided in full for all to check afterwards. You earn trust by sharing what you know, not hiding it.

I do agree that deciding what is true by tribe is completely stupid, but as Aaron said, that doesn’t mean we should accept a nebulous concept of “scientific authority” without actually seeing something conclusive from that authority, even if the authority would usually have been considered to be valid (like the WHO or the CDC, both of whom have now damaged their credibility).

Of course when Trump, or Brix, or Fauci gave their speeches, they couldn’t always directly present evidence at that time. However, the evidence that supposedly backed what they said should have been provided in full for all to check afterwards. You earn trust by sharing what you know, not hiding it.

What I found interesting in 2020 is that Trump and Biden seemed to agree on Covid policy and the vaccine for the most part. The only big difference is that Biden was more willing to force the vaccine on people. The people who were tribal were the ones who were willing to do whatever the media and Biden and Trump told them to do. Those of us who followed the scientific method were much more skeptical, yet when we became skeptical of the government policy, some of our friends here on SI called us MAGA Trump extremists for questioning government policy even though Trump agreed with them and disagreed with us. That showed me how tribal this had gotten.

Now we are finding out that the military is stepping up and paying the medical bills for a soldier who was injured by the vaccine that she was forced to take. We are also seeing lawsuits going forward on Pfizer because it has come out that they knew of problems with their vaccine. All the while we had people here on SI saying there was absolutely no harm at all and zero side effects to the vaccine and that we were unloving if we did not take it or pressure people to take it. I am waiting for an apology from those people.

If you do a scientific study and have people put pesticides on their skin daily you will find that a lot of them never have any symptoms from it. I know a lot of farmers who did just that for years. This does not change the fact that many of those pesticides are know to cause cancer and/or cause skin irritation. The reality is that some people are more prone to getting cancer from poison than others. This is even true of asbestos. That does not mean that asbestos is safe or that pastors should encourage their congregants to breath it. Yet that is what we were told to do with an untested vaccine even after we had limited testing that showed that a number of people were having definite symptoms from the vaccine. In fact, some of us knew those people personally who died or had heart attacks right after taking it, yet we were still called unloving for not pushing the vaccine. Sure we could show a lot of people who took it and were just fine, just like I can show you a lot of people who breathed asbestos and are just fine. There was definitely some ungodly behavior here on SI over this 4 years ago. I understand that a lot of people were scared and panicked and were doing what they thought was right at the time, but I just wish they would apologize for it now and encourage all of us to learn from our mistakes.