In our ongoing series addressing the objections people have with Christianity we use this episode to dive in to the charge that we as Christians are anti-science. Is it the case that science and faith conflict? Or is it rather there is something else in the mix that is incompatible with Christianity? Michael Patton, Clint Roberts and Carrie Hunter discuss this and more. Dive on in with us.
2 replies to "Apologetics Unplugged: Christians Are Anti-Science, Part 1"
I really enjoyed the discussion! I’m a Christian, with an Associates in Science, a 130 IQ, and I held a 3.75 GPA in college while pursuing my Bachelor’s. Prior to college I loved both Science and Math, not so much now! I had always believed we knew much more than we do, or at least most theory had a solid logical basis, but in my studies I found a lot of backwoods ignorance!
I don’t have the specific case, but during the time the Panama Canal was build it was discovered that those suffering from Sickle Cell Disease didn’t get Malaria, so KNOWING Sickle Cell Disease caused abnormally shaped red blood cells, and Malaria attaches to normal red blood cells they still dumped a lot of money into research to find out why! Also Sickle Cell Disease causes Malaria symptoms, so if they found a way to stimulate the disease to prevent malaria, that would be pointless!
The one publicized study of increased incidents of Reye Syndrome with aspirin use, involved 15 patients with Reye syndrome, not all of them had taken aspirin, but all were symptomatic ie. fever and body aches. The study was done by the main investors in Tylenol about a year prior to the expiration of their patent. It looks like they were trying to kick out the competition!
They don’t really know what psychiatric drugs do in the brain or body. Even though they do have evidence that the drugs alter specific chemicals, doctors don’t do blood tests before prescribing them. Their reasoning for not testing prior to prescribing is those tests are expensive. More expensive than the lives of patient or those who may be impacted by the patients reaction to the drug? Many school shootings were at the hand of kids with psychiatric drug use, maybe a case of which came first the chicken or the egg shaped pill!
Medications are priced by the how much people will pay.
They didn’t go the MOON, there’s also no Santa! And I am not even gonna start on all the terminology!
A genius of a man spent his life calculating digits of pi, it would take a logical debate to prove why this was a waste of his life, but he received many highly recognized awards for a great contribution. No one questioned the fact that this was not really a great leap in math or beneficial.
The Fibonacci sequence, is not a big deal either, they say it approaches a magic number, it’s just approaching zero. Figure out that one and win the Field’s metal! 🙂
My chemistry course was full of usuallys, sometimes, and we thinks!
A surgeon was quoted saying he could sew or glue up a cut, but he couldn’t make it heal back together!
Yes, Math and Science are a means to describe what we see, and so is art, but when we have the Spirit we get to see more of the True picture and the Spirit enables us to see through messy worldly theologies. It’s sometimes cute to see the one who thinks he knows default to “I’m right, your wrong!”, but its not so funny when the law says that we have to follow whatever that guy says!
I truly enjoyed the debate, but I do hold the Christian constant that What God Says is True! and I do keep in mind that our translation of what God said might not equate to what he meant!
If people in our culture are suspect of Christian’s account of science, how do you think they represent Biblical knowledge? Try myth!
It seems a discussion of epistemically limits of science might yield more fruit. “The only truths are scientific truths,” is not a statement that can be determined scientifically. The self-refuting nature of logical positivism is always a surprise to nonreligious individuals.
So philosophy of science has produced the most fruit for me. Further asking them to give an account of the origin of the universe, galaxies, solar systems, life and evolution, etc. They usually don’t even know the age of the universe, large scale structure, four primary forces, etc.
Further ask them about the problem of induction from the great skeptic Hume. This approach requires study. And humility as you will have a deeper understanding of science then the skeptic.
No need to rely on sources they don’t find to be valid (Bible). After all Jesus used his opponents core teachings against them. So too we can rely on philosophy to demonstrate the error of
Scientism!