Title: een fysicus over de kosmos, de aarde en het leven
1een fysicus over de kosmos, de aarde en het leven
- Dr. Ard Louis
- Department of Physics
- University of Oxford
- www.cis.org.uk
- www.faraday-institute.org
- www.cpgrad.org.uk
2Botsende culturen?
- Christelijke subculturen
- Wetenschapelijke subculteren
- cultuur ligt vaak onder de oppervlakte
Woorden Gewoonten Tradities Gedrag Geloof Waarden
Aanamen
Mijn argument Much of the tension between
evolution and faith is due to unrecognized
cultural assumptions
3Beginnen met de Bijbel
- Bijbel aan de grondslag van mijn leven
- Ik ben classiek evangelisch/charismatisch in mijn
Bijbel interpretatie en praxis - Wetenschap heeft een dienende relatie, geen gezag
kan b.v. helpen met interpretatie - Henri Blocher In the Beginning IVP (1984) p 25
- Nooit ons wereldbeeld boven de Bijbel
- B.v. Copernicus/Galileo en Aristoteles
4- Culturele verschillen
- Metaphoren zijn belangrijk
- Toeval etc
- Antropomorphisatie (survival of the fittest)
-
- Waarom een groot verschil tussen Christelijke
profesioneele wetenschappers en leken? - Wetenschappelijk bewijs met tapijt argumenten
5Biologische self-assembly
- http//www.npn.jst.go.jp/ Keiichi Namba, Osaka
- Biologische systemen self-assemble (ze vormen
zichzelf) - Kunnen we dat begrijpen?
- Kunnen we het nabootsen? (Nanotechnologie)
6Virus self-assembly
viruses
T1
T3
11/3/2020
7Self-assembly van computer virusen
Computer virusen?
Monte-Carlo simulaties stochastische
optimalisatie http//www-thphys.physics.ox.ac.uk/u
ser/IainJohnson/
8Self-assembly met lego?
9Eiwitten en het Paradox van Levinthal
Levinthal Paradox 150 amino acids 10 angles
between them 10150 different states. How does
protein find its folded native structure?
CULTUUR VERSCHIL Physici/Chemici/Ingenieurs
vinden dit belangrijk Biologen niet zo belangrijk
we used same design principles to make viruses
self-assemble
10Biologicsche self-assembly
Als we het niet zouden zien zouden argumenten er
tegen sterk lijken(Levinthal) onmogenlijkheids
argumenten hebben weinig success in de biologie
11Hoe interpreteren we de natuur?Natuur Theologie
- Paley Newman Barth ..
- The fundamental thesis of the book is that if
nature is to disclose the transcendent, it must
be "seen" or "read" in certain specific ways --
ways that are not themselves necessarily mandated
by nature itself. It is argued that Christian
theology provides a schema or interpretative
framework by which nature may be "seen" in a way
that enables and authorizes it to connect with
the transcendent. - --- A. McGrath p x about "the Open Secret"
12Wonderlijke toepasselijkheid van de taal van de
wiskunde
Quantum Mechanics Relativity Antimatter
Paul Dirac 1902-1984
Zie ook The applicability of mathematics as a
philosophical problem, Mark Steiner HUP (1998)
"The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in
the Natural Sciences," in Communications in Pure
and Applied Mathematics, vol. 13, No. I (February
1960), Eugene Wigner
13Wij zijn gemaakt van sterrenstof He C
via een resonancie
- A common sense interpretation of the facts
suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with
physics .. and biology - His atheism was deeply shaken
Sir Fred Hoyle, Cambridge U
14Tapijt argumenten
- Wetenschap als een tapijt
- --de kracht ligt niet aan één enkele draad maar
aan het geheel en hoe ze zijn zamengewoven. - Je kunt aan een paar draadtjes trekken, maar
daardoor breek je het tapijt niet.
The Golemization of Relativity, David Mermin,
Physics Today 49, p11 April 1996
.
Ik geloof net zo in het christendom als dat ik
geloof dat de zon is opgegaan niet alleen omdat
ik hem zie, maar omdat dit mij in staat stelt om
al het andere te zien C.S. Lewis, Theology as
Poetry in The Weight of Glory,
15Natuurgeschiedenis
- Grootheid van God
- het universum
- 100 miljard stellenstelsels, met elk 100 miljard
sterren - De hemel verhaalt van Gods majesteit - Psalm 19
- Wat is de mens? Psalm 8
In our galaxy there are 100,000 million stars,
like our sun. our galaxy is one of 100,000
million galaxies. In a throwaway line in Genesis,
the writer tells us, "he also made the stars" ..
Gen 116
16Natuurgeschiedenis
- Grootheid van God
- Analoog aan het universum
- Ruimte ? ? tijd
- 24 uurige aarde je leven 1 milliseconde
- De hemel verhaalt van Gods majesteit - Psalm 19
- Wat is de mens? Psalm 8
17Natuurgeschiedenis
- EMOTIONEEL DEBAT ? Determineert waar we vandaan
komen wie we zijn en hoe we zouden moeten leven? -
18Intermezzo het vertroebelend woord Evolutie
- 1) Evolutie as Natuurgeschiedenis
- De aarde is oud(/- 4.5 Billion years)
- Complexere levensvormen volgen op simplere
levensvormen - 2) Evolutie as a mechanisme voor biologische
complexiteit - Mutaties en natuurlijke selectie
- (note Christenen zijn het er over eens dat God
dit geschapen heeft) - micorevolutie, immuunsysteem etc
- 3) Evolutie als wereldbeeld (evolutionisme)
- George Gaylord Simpson
- "De mens is het resultaat van een doelloos
en natuurlijk proces dat hem niet heeft bedoeld.
Hij is niet gepland. - of Richard Dawkins
- "Darwin maakt het mogelijk om intellectueel
vervulde atheist te zijn. - Zie ook Bas Haring, Midas Dekkers, etc..
19Tapijt argumenten case study 1 een oude aarde ?
- Science is a tapestry -- you can pick at a few
strings, but that doesnt break the whole cloth
- Radiometric dating (many overlapping isotopes)
- ice cores
- up to 8000 years -- volcanoes like Vesuvius
- up to 740,000 years
- Milankovitch cycles
- Tree rings
- All these methods (when used properly) agree.
There is no scientific controversy - http//www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html
20Tapijt argument een oude aarde ?
Milankovitch Cycles here seen in 420,000 years
of ice core data from Vostok, Antarctica
research station.
21Common descent in biology?
Page from Darwin's notebooks circa1837 showing
his first known sketch of an evolutionary tree
depicting common descent.
22Case study 2 evolution of horses
Can sound like weak inductive reasoning to many
physical scientists
23Case study 3 common descent of human chimp?
- Divergence of the chimpanzee and human lineages
occurred about 6 million years ago the times of
lineage divergence are not to scale - News Views The chimpanzee and us, Wen-Hsiung
Li and Matthew A. Saunders, Nature 437, 50-51
(1September 2005) .
24tapestry arguments in biology chromosomal
banding
Humans have 46 (2 X 23) chromosomes Apes have 48
(2 X 24) chromosomes
chromosome 2 Human, Chimp, Gorilla, Orang-utan
- The origin of man a chromosomal pictorial
legacy. J.J Yunis and O. Prakash, Science 215,
1525 (1982)
25tapestry arguments in biology fusion of
chromosome 2?
chromosome 2 Human, Chimp, Gorilla, Orang-utan
26tapestry arguments in biology evidence from
the human genome
Chromosome 2 is unique to the human lineage of
evolution, having emerged as a result of
head-to-head fusion of two acrocentric
chromosomes that remained separate in other
primates. The precise fusion site has been
located in 2q13-2q14.1 (ref. 2
hg16114,455,823-114,455,838), where our analysis
confirmed the presence of multiple subtelomeric
duplications to chromosomes 1, 5, 8, 9, 10, 12,
19, 21 and 22 (Fig. 3 Supplementary Fig. 3a,
region A). During the formation of human
chromosome 2, one of the two centromeres became
inactivated (2q21, which corresponds to the
centromere from chimp chromosome 13) and the
centromeric structure quickly deterioriated 42.
Generation and annotation of the DNA sequences of
human chromosomes 2 and 4, L.W. Hillier et al.,
Nature 434, 724 (2005).
27endogenous retroviruses
HERV-K insertions
- In humans endogenous retrovirus sequences make up
about 1 of the genome. - Lebedev, Y. B., et al. (2000) "Differences in
HERV-K LTR insertions in orthologous loci of
humans and great apes." Gene 247 265-277.
28tapestry arguments in biology more threads of
evidence
- Genetic threads
- SINEs (Alu )
- LINEs
- Retroviral insertions
- pseudo genes (e.g. olefaction)
- chromosomal inversions
- Phenotypal similarities
- Fossils
29Tapestry arguments in biology
- The tapestry for do humans and chimpanzees share
a common ancestor? seems to most biologists to be
unbreakably strong
For some physicists, mathematicians and
engineers -- these arguments may still seem
foreign and vague It doesnt smell like the
scientific method they are familiar with -- for
example where is the repeatability? What is the
predictive power of these arguments? Where are
the numbers?
30- TERUGBLIK
- Tapijt argumenten
- Vaak moeilijk voor een leek om goed in te
schatten - Verschillen van discipline tot discipline
- Biologen (ook Christelijke) geloven in de
evolutie (type 1 2) omdat tapijt argumenten
daarvoor sterk zijn. - Er blijven uiteraard nog veel vragen over details.
VOLGENDE VRAAG Hoe zit het dan met de Bijbel en
Genesis 12
31Newton en de planeten
- De planeet banen zijn onstabiel God hervormd
ze - Sir Isaac Newton
32 Leibnitz werpt tegen
- als God de gebreken van zijn schepping moest
herstellen, dit zeker afbreuk zou doen aan zijn
ambachtelijke vaardigheid - John Hedley Brooke, Science and Religion, CUP
1991, p147
33 Leibnitz werpt tegen
- En ik houd vol dat God, als hij wonderen
verricht, dat niet doet om in de behoeften van de
natuur te voorzien, maar in die van de genade. En
wie anders denkt moet noodzakelijk een lage dunk
hebben van de wijsheid en macht van God - -- geen God van de gaten!
34God van de gaten?
- We begrijpen iets niet --gt God in het gat van
onze kennis - When we come to the scientifically unknown, our
correct policy is not to rejoice because we have
found God it is to become better scientists
- Prof. Charles Coulson, Oxford U
35Meer Intermezzos?
- Bijbelse taal
- jaagt God voor de Leeuwen? (Job 38, Ps 104)?
- Secondaire en Primaire oorzaken
- Natuurwetten beschrijven het gewone handelen
van God? - Denkpatronen over wetenschap en geloof
- Nietsandersdanisme
- Mechanisme en betekenis
- Wetenschapisme
- God van de gaten
36Dawkins en atheisme van de gaten?
-
- "The individual organism ... is not fundamental
to life, but something that emerges when genes,
which at the beginning of evolution were
separate, warring entities, gang together in
co-operative groups as "selfish co-operators".
The individual organism is not exactly an
illusion. It is too concrete for that. But it is
a secondary, derived phenomenon, cobbled together
as a consequence of the actions of fundamentally
separate, even warring agents. - From Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow,
(Penguin, London, 1998) p 308. -
Prof. Richard Dawkins (Oxford)
37Gene language
- Genes are trapped in huge colonies, locked
inside highly intelligent beings, moulded by the
outside world, communicating with it by complex
processes, through which, blindly, as if by
magic, function emerges. They are in you and me
we are the system that allows their code to be
read and their preservation is totally dependent
on the joy that we experience in reproducing
ourselves. We are the ultimate rationale for
their existence.
- Genes swarm in huge colonies, safe inside
gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off from the
outside world, communicating with it by tortuous
indirect routes, manipulating it by remote
control. They are in you and me they created us,
body and mind and their preservation is the
ultimate rationale for our existence.
- Denis Noble --
- The Music of Life Biology Beyond the Genome (OUP
2006)
- Richard Dawkins --
- The Selfish Gene (1976)
38Natuurgeschiedenis
- EMOTIONEEL DEBAT ? Determineert waar we vandaan
komen wie we zijn en hoe we zouden moeten leven? -
39Intermezzo het woord Evolutie
- 1) Evolutie as Natuurgeschiedenis
- De aarde is oud(/- 4.5 Billion years)
- Complexere levensvormen volgen op simplere
levensvormen - 2) Evolutie as a mechanisme voor biologische
complexiteit - Mutaties en natuurlijke selectie
- (note Christenen zijn het er over eens dat God
dit geschapen heeft) - micorevolutie, immuunsysteem etc
- 3) Evolutie als wereldbeeld (evolutionisme)
- George Gaylord Simpson
- "De mens is het resultaat van een doelloos
en natuurlijk proces dat hem niet heeft bedoeld.
Hij is niet gepland. - of Richard Dawkins
- "Darwin maakt het mogelijk om intellectueel
vervulde atheist te zijn. - Zie ook Bas Haring, Midas Dekkers, etc..
40Metaforen Toeval of Stochastisch?
- Random mutations and natural selection...
- Stochastic (Monte Carlo) optimisation
- e.g. used to price your stock portfolio .....
41Lego blocks or clay?
- Evo-Devo Lego Blocks
- pax6
- sonic-hedgehog
- shaven-baby
- tinman
- Endless Forms Most Beautiful The New Science of
Evo Devo and the Making of the Animal Kingdom.
S.B. Carroll (Blackwell Science 2005)
42Why so few genes?
Mycoplasma genitalium (483) (300 minimum?)
E.coli (5416)
S. cerevisiae (5800)
Drosophila Melanogaster (13,500)
C. elegans (19,500) P. pacificus (29,000)
H. sapiens (23,000)
43Why so few genes?
We share 15 of our genes with E. coli
25 yeast
50 flies
70 frogs
98 chimps
44Gene language
Why are there so few genes? complexity comes
from the interactions gene networks systems
biology
transcriptional network for yeast Saccharomyces
cerevisiae
45Gene language
- Genes are trapped in huge colonies, locked
inside highly intelligent beings, moulded by the
outside world, communicating with it by complex
processes, through which, blindly, as if by
magic, function emerges. They are in you and me
we are the system that allows their code to be
read and their preservation is totally dependent
on the joy that we experience in reproducing
ourselves. We are the ultimate rationale for
their existence. - Denis Noble --
- The Music of Life Biology Beyond the Genome (OUP
2006)
- Genes swarm in huge colonies, safe inside
gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off from the
outside world, communicating with it by tortuous
indirect routes, manipulating it by remote
control. They are in you and me they created us,
body and mind and their preservation is the
ultimate rationale for our existence. - Richard Dawkins --
- The Selfish Gene (1976)
46Contingency v.s.deep structures Re-run the
tape of evolution?
When you examine the tapestry of evolution you
see the same patterns emerging over and over
again. Gould's idea of rerunning the tape of life
is not hypothetical it's happening all around
us. And the result is well known to biologists
evolutionary convergence. When convergence is the
rule, you can rerun the tape of life as often as
you like and the outcome will be much the same.
Convergence means that life is not only
predictable at a basic level it also has a
direction. Simon Conway Morris Life's Solution
Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe (CUP,
2003)
47Convergent Evolution?
Convergent evolution in mechanical design of
lamnid sharks and tunas Jeanine M. Donley, et al.
Nature 429, 61-65 (6 May 2004)
48Convergent Evolution
- North America
- Placental Sabre-toothed cat
- South America
- Marsupial Sabre-toothed cat
49Convergent Evolution
compound eye
camera eye
50Convergent Evolution?
- Enormous number of examples ... from proteins to
vision up to societies to intelligence. - Are rational conscious beings an inevitable
outcome?
51- TERUGBLIK
- Metaforen zijn belangrijk
- toeval v.s. kansprocess
- genen taal etc..
- Er is nog veel te ondekken
- Atheisme van de gaten?
VOLGENDE VRAAG Waarom de sterke consensus onder
biologen dat de evolutie waar is?
52Tapijt argumenten
- Wetenschap als een tapijt
- --de kracht ligt niet aan één enkele draad maar
aan het geheel en hoe ze zijn zamengewoven. - Je kunt aan een paar draadtjes trekken, maar
daardoor breek je het tapijt niet.
The Golemization of Relativity, David Mermin,
Physics Today 49, p11 April 1996
.
53Wonderlijke toepasselijkheid van de taal van de
wiskunde
Quantum Mechanics Relativity Antimatter
See also The applicability of mathematics as a
philosophical problem, Mark Steiner HUP
(1998) "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of
Mathematics in the Natural Sciences," in
Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics,
vol. 13, No. I (February 1960), Eugene Wigner
54Wetenschap en Schoonheid
A Scientist does not study nature because it is
useful he studies it because he delights in it,
and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If
nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth
knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing,
life would not be worth living.
Henri Poincaré 1854 1912
55Tapijt argument een oude aarde ?
- Science is a tapestry -- you can pick at a few
strings, but that doesnt break the whole cloth
- Radiometric dating (many overlapping isotopes)
- ice cores
- up to 8000 years -- volcanoes like Vesuvius
- up to 740,000 years
- Milankovitch cycles
- Tree rings
- All these methods (when used properly) agree.
There is no scientific controversy - http//www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html
56Tapijt argument een oude aarde ?
Milankovitch Cycles here seen in 420,000 years
of ice core data from Vostok, Antarctica
research station.
57Tapijt argument gezamelijke afstamming Mens en
Chimpanzee?
- Divergence of the chimpanzee and human lineages
occurred about 6 million years ago the times of
lineage divergence are not to scale - News Views The chimpanzee and us, Wen-Hsiung
Li and Matthew A. Saunders, Nature 437, 50-51
(1September 2005) .
58tapestry arguments in biology chromosomal
banding
Humans have 46 (2 X 23) chromosomes Apes have 48
(2 X 24) chromosomes
chromosome 2 Human, Chimp, Gorilla, Orang-utan
- The origin of man a chromosomal pictorial
legacy. J.J Yunis and O. Prakash, Science 215,
1525 (1982)
59tapestry arguments in biology fusion of
chromosome 2?
chromosome 2 Human, Chimp, Gorilla, Orang-utan
60tapestry arguments in biology evidence from
the human genome
Chromosome 2 is unique to the human lineage of
evolution, having emerged as a result of
head-to-head fusion of two acrocentric
chromosomes that remained separate in other
primates. The precise fusion site has been
located in 2q13-2q14.1 (ref. 2
hg16114455823-114455838), where our analysis
confirmed the presence of multiple subtelomeric
duplications to chromosomes 1, 5, 8, 9, 10, 12,
19, 21 and 22 (Fig. 3 Supplementary Fig. 3a,
region A). During the formation of human
chromosome 2, one of the two centromeres became
inactivated (2q21, which corresponds to the
centromere from chimp chromosome 13) and the
centromeric structure quickly deterioriated 42.
Generation and annotation of the DNA sequences of
human chromosomes 2 and 4, L.W. Hillier et al.,
Nature 434, 724 (2005).
61endogenous retroviruses
HERV-K insertions
- In humans endogenous retrovirus sequences make up
about 1 of the genome. - Lebedev, Y. B., et al. (2000) "Differences in
HERV-K LTR insertions in orthologous loci of
humans and great apes." Gene 247 265-277.
62tapestry arguments in biology more threads of
evidence
- Genetic threads
- SINEs (Alu )
- LINEs
- Retroviral insertions
- pseudo genes (e.g. olefaction)
- chromosomal inversions
- Phenotypal similarities
- Fossils
- The tapestry for do humans and chimpanzees share
a common ancestor? seems to most biologists
almost unbreakably strong
for physicists, mathematicians and engineers --
these arguments may still seem foreign and vague
where is the proof?, how do you know? -- so
communities talk past each other
63tapestry arguments in biology
- But others biologists, I soon came to realize,
regarded logical arguments as suspect. To them,
experimental evidence, fallible as it might be,
provided a far surer avenue to truth than did
mathematical reasoning. .... Their implicit
assumption seemed to be How could one know ones
assumptions were correct? Where, in a purely
deductive argument, was there room for the
surprises that nature might offer, for mechanisms
that might depart altogether from those imagined
in our initial assumptions? Indeed for some
biologists, the gap between empirical and logical
necessity loomed so large as to make the latter
seem effectively irrelevant. - Evelyn Fox Keller, in Making Sense of Life
Explaining Biological Development with Models,
Metaphors, and Machines, HUP, (2002)
You cant ask those kinds of questions!!!! (Biolog
ist to AAL at Protein-Protein Interaction
Conf, June 2004) Where are the equations -- a
physicist might ask
64Tapestry arguments
- Basic scientific principles are shared across
fields - But what is considered necessary or
sufficient for a (self-organised) tapestry
varies from field to field (often unwritten) - cultural iceberg, above and below waterline
- evidence grant or paper review
- demarkation problems
- mathematics-gtphysics-gtchemistry-gtbiology-gtmedicine
-gtengineering - Differences --in spite of apparent epistemic
laxity ... it still works! - Christian evaluation needs communities of scholars
65- TERUGBLIK
- Tapijt argumenten
- Vaak moeilijk voor een leek om goed in te
schatten - Verschillen van discipline tot discipline
- Biologen (ook Christelijke) geloven in de
evolutie (type 1 2) omdat tapijt argumenten
daarvoor sterk zijn. - Er blijven uiteraard nog veel vragen over details.
VOLGENDE VRAAG Hoe zit het dan met de Bijbel en
Genesis 12
66Bijbels of cultureel?
67Wat is de genre?
- Genesis 1-23
- Phrases that occur 10 times
- 10 times God said (3 for mankind, 7 for other
creatures) - 10 times creative commands (3 x let there be
for heavenly creatures, 7 x let for world
below) - 10 x To make
- 10 x According to their kind
- Phrases that occur 7 times (heptads)
- and it was so
- and God saw that it was good
- Genesis 12-3
- Phrases that occur 3 times
- God blessed
- God created
- God created men and women
- Other numerical patterns
- Intro 11-2 contains 21 words (3 x 7) and
conclusion (2 1-3) contains 35 words (5 X 7) - Earth is mentioned 21 times and God 35 times
- -- see e.g. H. Blocher In the Beginning, p 33
or E. Lucas Can We Believe Genesis Today , p 97
68Wat is de genre?
FRAMEWORK VIEW
- SHAPED
- Day 1
- The separation of light and darkness
- Day 2
- The separation of the waters to form the sky and
the sea - Day 3
- The separation of the sea from dry land and
creation of plants
- INHABITED
- Day 4
- The creation of the lights to rule the day and
the night - Day 5
- The creation of the birds and fish to fill the
sky and sea - Day 6
- The creation of the animals and humans to fill
the land and eat the plants
Day 7 The heavens and earth were finished
and God rested
69Wat is de genre?
- Gen24-7 -- more patterns
- These are the generations
- of the heavens
- and the earth
- when they were created
- in the day that the Lord God made
- the earth
- and the heavens.
- Chiastic structure (C. John Collins, Genesis 1-4
PR (2006)) - When no bush of the field was yet in the
land and no small plant of the field had yet
sprung upfor the Lord God had not caused it to
rain on the land, and there was no man to work
the ground, and a mist was going up from the
land and was watering the whole face of the
ground then the Lord God formed the man of dust
from the ground and breathed into his nostrils
the breath of life, and the man became a living
creature. - A completely different emphasis!
70Wat is de genre?
- More like Revelation than like Luke
- But very clear in its teaching e.g.
- God created the world
- Creation is good
- I Tim 4 1The Spirit clearly says that in later
times some will abandon the faith and follow
deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. 2
Such teachings come through hypocritical liars,
whose consciences have been seared as with a hot
iron. 3 They forbid people to marry and order
them to abstain from certain foods, which God
created to be received with thanksgiving by those
who believe and who know the truth. 4 For
everything God created is good, and nothing is to
be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving,
5 because it is consecrated by the word of God
and prayer.
71Wat is de genre?
- More like Revelation than like Luke?
- But very clear in its teaching e.g.
- God created the world
- Creation is good
- Man is made in Gods image
- Mankind (adam) has fallen into sin
- A promise of redemption (seed of woman)
- MANY! More things
- No problems with perspecuity on doctrine
72Wat is de genre?
- Is it chronological?
- "Now what man of intelligence will believe that
the first and the second and the third day
existed without the sun and moon and stars? - Origen 185 - 254 First Principles, 4.3
- On this subject there are three main views.
According to the first, some wish to understand
paradise only in a material way. According to
the second, others wish to take it only in a
spiritual way. According to the third, others
understand it both ways, taking some things
materially and others spiritually. If I may
briefly mention my own opinion, I prefer the
third - Augustine of Hippo (354-430) De Gen. ad litt
VIII, 1. (on the literal interpretation of
Genesis)
73Jewish Commentators
- the sages agree that the creation of this earth
and sky was a single divine event and not a
series of distinct occurrences spread out over
six or seven days - N.M. Samuelson, Judaism and the Doctrine of
Creation, CUP (1994) p115 - The text does not point to the order of the
acts of creation the text does not by any
means teach which things were created first and
which later it only wants to teach us what was
the condition of things at the time when heaven
and earth were created, namely, that the earth
was without form and a confused mass - Rashi (1040-1105), Commentary on Genesis
- Many more examples, e.g. Maimonides (1135-1204)
etc
74Wat is de genre?
- Strong internal hints at elevated prose, more
like Revelation than like Luke - Two separate narratives (tablets)
- Numerical patterns
- Thematic patterns
- A common understanding of church fathers, early
Jewish commentators and early Evangelical
leaders. - Main theological teachings are crystal clear
(perspicuity) - Physical interpretation less so -- there science
can take a servant role and help you decide. - We must be very careful not to import our own
cultural biases into interpretation
75Bijbel en Wetenschap
- De wetenschap een knechtenrol voor Bijbel
interpretatie
- The Bible must not be placed under any other
authority! no authority, even one at the apex of
the scientific world, may impose his authority on
the Bible in order to dictate how it is to be
understood, even with the best intentions. - Instead of an authority, however, a ministerial,
servant-role apears possible. .. The knowledge
derived from the observation of reality
(science) would help us to understand the
language of the Bible better. - Henri Blocher In the Beginning IVP (1984) p 25
76AsideEmergence of Humans?
e.g. at what age is a child spiritually
responsible to God? John Stott on Homos Divinus
- Advice from C.S. Lewis
- When the author of Genesis says that God made man
in His own image, he may have pictured a vaguely
corporeal God making man as a child makes a
figure out of plasticine. A modern Christian
philosopher may think of the process lasting from
the first creation of matter to the final
appearance on this planet for an organism fit to
receive spiritual as well as biological life.
Both mean essentially the same thing. Both are
denying the same thing -- the doctrine that
matter by some blind power inherent in itself has
produced spirituality. - (C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock Eerdmans (1970), p
46)
77Advice from Billy Graham
- "I don't think that there's any conflict at all
between science today and the Scriptures. I think
that we have misinterpreted the Scriptures many
times and we've tried to make the Scriptures say
things they weren't meant to say, I think that we
have made a mistake by thinking the Bible is a
scientific book. The Bible is not a book of
science. The Bible is a book of Redemption, and
of course I accept the Creation story. I believe
that God did create the universe. I believe that
God created man, and whether it came by an
evolutionary process and at a certain point He
took this person or being and made him a living
soul or not, does not change the fact that God
did create man. ... whichever way God did it
makes no difference as to what man is and man's
relationship to God. - - Billy Graham quoted by David Frost
- Source Book - Billy Graham Personal Thoughts of
a Public Man (1997, p. 72-74)
78Samenvatting
- Complexe materie!
- Evolutie als
- Natuurgeschiedenis
- Mechanisme om biologische complexiteit te maken
- Wereldbeeld (evolutionisme)
- Metaforen zijn belangrijk
-
- Mechanismen van evolutie kunnen mooi zijn
- Tapijt argumenten en de consensus onder
wetenschappers omtrent Evolutie 12 - Bijbel interpretatie belangrijk om goed naar
genre te kijken.
79Writers of the Fundamentals
- One of the original Fundamentalists
- There is not a word in the Bible to indicate that
in its view death entered the animal world as a
consequence of the Sin of man. - When you say there is the six days and the
question whether those days are meant to be
measured by the twenty-four hours of the suns
revolution around the earth -- I speak of these
things popularly. It is difficult to see how
they should be so measured when the sun that is
to measure them is not introduced until the
fourth day. Do not think that this larger
reading of the days is a new speculation. You
find Augustine in early times declaring that it
is hard or altogether impossible to say what
fashion these days are, and Thomas Aquinas, in
the middle ages, leaving the matter an open
question.
James Orr 1844-1913
80The Bible and Science
- The lesson of Galileo, , should remind us that
careful observation of the natural world can
cause us to go back to Scripture and reexamine
whether Scripture actually teaches what we think
it teaches. Sometimes, on closer examination of
the text, we may find that our previous
interpretations were incorrect. - Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology IVP (1994) p
273
Wayne Grudem
81The Bible is not a science textbook
- The whole point of scripture is to bring us to a
knowledge of Christ --- and having come to know
him (and all that this implies), we should come
to a halt and not expect to learn more.
Scripture provides us with spectacles through
which we may view the world as Gods creation and
self-expression it does not, and was never
intended, to provide us with an infallible
repository of astronomical and medical
information.
John Calvin 1509-1564
82Advice from Schaefer
- We must take ample time, and sometimes this will
mean a long time, to consider whether the
apparent clash between science and revelation
means that the theory set forth by science is
wrong or whether we must reconsider what we
thought the Bible says. - Francis Schaefer
Francis Schaefer 1912-1984
83Warfield on evolution
- B. B. Warfield (1851-1921). A biblical
inerrantist as evolutionist. Livingstone DN, Noll
MA, 1 Isis. 2000 Jun91(2)283-304. - The theological doctrine of biblical
inerrancy is the intellectual basis for modern
creation science. Yet Benjamin Breckinridge
Warfield of Princeton Theological Seminary, the
theologian who more than any other defined modern
biblical inerrancy, was throughout his life open
to the possibility of evolution and at some
points an advocate of the theory. Throughout a
long career Warfield published a number of major
papers on these subjects, including studies of
Darwin's religious life, on the theological
importance of the age of humanity (none) and the
unity of the human species (much), and on
Calvin's understanding of creation as
proto-evolutionary. He also was an engaged
reviewer of many of his era's important books by
scientists, theologians, and historians who wrote
on scientific research in relation to traditional
Christianity. Exploration of Warfield's writing
on science generally and evolution in particular
retrieves for historical consideration an
important defender of mediating positions in the
supposed war between science and religion.
B.B. Warfield 1851-1921
84(No Transcript)
85God openbaart zich door de natuur
- Psalm 19
- De hemel verhaalt van Gods majesteit,
- Het uitspansel roemt het werk van zijn handen
-
Melkweg 100 miljard sterren Universum 100
miljard sterrensteden
God maakte ook de sterren" .. Gen 116
86Intelligent Design (capitalised)
heterogeneous movement -- will focus on ID
centred at Discovery Institute
- some key publications and people
- The Mystery of Lifes Origin (1984)
- Charles B. Thaxton, Walter L. Bradley, Roger L.
Olsen - Evolution, a Theory in Crisis (1986)
- Michael Denton
- Darwin on Trial (1991)
- Philip Johnson
- Darwins Black Box (1996)
- Michael Behe (CT book of the year)
- Icons of evolution (2000)
- Jonathan Wells
- No Free Lunch (2001)
- William Dembski
87What is ID
- Intelligent agency, as an aspect of scientific
theory making, has more explanatory power in
accounting for the specified, and sometimes
irreducible complexity of some physical systems,
including biological entities, and/or the
existence of the universe as a whole, than the
blind forces of. . . matter.1 That is,
intelligent design is a better explanation for
entities exhibiting complex specified information
(CSI) than are appeals to the inherent capacities
of nature (i.e. chance and/or physical
necessity). ID suggests that the world contains
objects that exhaust the explanatory resources of
undirected natural causes, and can only be
adequately explained by recourse to intelligent
causation. - (definition from Peter S. Williams)
88Irreducible Complexity
Michael Behe (1996)
- Bacterial flagellum, immune system, etc... are
too complex to have evolved
- This result is so unambiguous and so significant
that it must be ranked as one of the greatest
achievements in the history of science ... The
discovery of intelligent design rivals those of
Newton and Einstein, Lavoisier and Schroedinger,
Pasteur and Darwin.
89Complex Specified Information
William Dembski
- CSI -- information that could not have come
there by chance alone? - e.g. when we see a statue v.s. weathered rock
- Law of the conservation of information
90Intelligent Design
- Philosophical issues
- Definition of science (demarcation) ?
- Problems, but why not follow the evidence?
- Theological issues
- when/why does God intervene?
- miracles?
- Newman/Barth critique
91ID and Christians
- Major issues is -- why these miracles?
- Miracles occur to serve Gods redemptive purpose
- Origin, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin etc...
And I hold, that when God works miracles, he
does not do it in order to supply the wants of
nature, but those of grace. Whoever thinks
otherwise, must needs have a very mean notion of
the wisdom and power of God Leibnitz
e.g. what is the Biblical rationale for
supernatural action aiding the creation of the
flagellum?
92Intelligent Design (capitalised)
- GOOD
- Looking at complex questions in
science/philosophy - counteracting evolutionism
- middle road, broad church?
- LESS GOOD
- Detached from scripture
- doesnt solve some pressing questions (like death
before fall) - very political
- http//www.discovery.org
- William Dembski, Michael Behe, Stephen Meyer,
Paul Nelson
93Calvin on using science
- As far as I am aware, there is no evidence that
Galileo had any direct knowledge of Calvin's
writings. Nevertheless his understanding of the
nature of the language used by the Bible when
referring to the natural world is the same as
Calvin's as the following quotations from the
Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina show. - B1. These propositions set down by the Holy
Ghost were set down in that manner by the sacred
scribes in order to accommodate them to the
capacities of the common people, who are rude and
unlearned. (p. 181) - B2. It is necessary for the Bible, in order to
be accommodated to the understanding of every
man, to speak many things which appear to differ
from the absolute truth so far as the bare
meaning of the words is concerned. (p. 182) - B3. For that reason it appears that nothing
physical which sense-experience sets before our
eyes, or which necessary demonstrations prove to
us, ought to be called in question (much less
condemned) upon the testimony of biblical
passages which may have some different meaning
beneath their words. (p. 182f) - B4. ...having arrived at any certainties in
physics, we ought to utilize these as the most
appropriate aids in the true exposition of the
Bible and in the investigation of those meanings
which are necessarily contained therein, for
these must be concordant with demonstrated
truths. (p. 183) - The first two quotations express the same
'accommodation' understanding of biblical
language as Calvin adopted. The third recognises
that, as a result of this, the literal sense of
the biblical text may sometimes be at variance
with the scientific understanding of the natural
phenomenon described. In the final quotation
Galileo makes the point made by Prof. McKay that
one reason why biblical interpreters should take
scientific knowledge into account is that it will
help them to recognise when the biblical writers
are using the language of appearance or cultural
idioms, and so help them avoid the kind of
misinterpretation made by those who condemned
Galileo. - lehttp//www.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/cis/lucas/lectur
e.html