Participants: Clifford Goldstein
Series Code: CFTF
Program Code: CFTF000005
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00:20 Hi, Cliff Goldstein here,
00:23 and I want to welcome you to Contending for the Faith. 00:26 We are continuing our series 00:28 on the questions of faith and science, 00:31 because I have said on a number of the programs 00:34 in many ways faith and science 00:36 work together very harmoniously, 00:39 very harmoniously though times there have been problems 00:43 and this is been exacerbated 00:45 by men like Richard Dawkins Slake, 00:47 the late Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett. 00:52 These men have been deemed the new atheists 00:55 and they could be best described as kind of 00:58 oh, atheists fundamentalists. 01:01 But with fundamental is being used 01:03 in the worse sense of the word. 01:06 And that's because these man are, 01:09 they use a phrase hardcore ontological materialists. 01:14 That means that they believe that 01:17 all existence is purely material, 01:20 as an atoms, and protons, and fermions, and bosons 01:25 and that's all there is to anything 01:27 and there is no room for the supernatural, 01:30 there is no place for the divine, 01:32 no place for the spiritual 01:34 as in a belief in God's spirituality. 01:37 They utterly refuse, 01:40 you know, to allow any idea of God 01:42 or the supernatural or a faith 01:45 as in anyway traditionally understood 01:48 and they are promoters of the myth, 01:51 yes, the myth that's science 01:55 is all rationality and reason and experiment and truth 02:00 and that religious faith is just well, you know, 02:03 silliness and superstitions and nonsense. 02:08 And you know, interestingly enough 02:11 there position is really not a scientific position. 02:15 It's not something that science even demands. 02:19 It is a metaphysics position, a philosophical position 02:24 that some tried to push off as science. 02:29 In fact, listen to this well know-- 02:30 this quote by a scientist. 02:32 This quote is been made the rounds for a while. 02:35 Listen to this "We take the side of science 02:39 in spite of the patent absurdity 02:42 of some of its constructs, in spite of the tolerance 02:46 of the scientific community 02:48 for unsubstantiated just-so stories, 02:53 because we have a priori, 02:55 we have a prior commitment to materialism. 03:00 It's not that the methods and institutions of science 03:04 somehow compel us to omit material explanation 03:09 of the phenomenal world, but on the contrary, 03:13 that we are forced by our a priori adherence 03:17 to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation 03:23 and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, 03:28 no matter how counterintuitive, 03:32 no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated." 03:38 Now I don't want to brag down and in all this 03:40 and you can find this quote and pursuit yourself. 03:44 But what he is saying here 03:46 is that even though science itself does not demand, 03:50 that scientists expect a material 03:53 explanation of the world, 03:55 a purely materialist explanation of the world 03:58 the science do it, the scientists do it anyway. 04:02 And that is therefore 04:03 just right out of the gate before hand. 04:06 They have-- that's because right out 04:07 of the gate before hand 04:08 they have made a commitment to do that, 04:10 and it's not science demands it they just do it anyway. 04:14 Now I don't want to be, 04:15 but I find that in amazing quote. 04:18 I'm really stunned by how open and honest this guy is 04:22 and he also gives the reason why they do it. 04:25 Listen to the reason why they locked themselves 04:27 in this dogmatic a priori materialism. 04:30 Here is what he said, 04:33 and he goes "It's not that the methods 04:34 and institutions of science somehow compel us 04:37 to accept a material explanation 04:39 of the phenomenal world, but on the contrary, 04:42 that we are forced by our a priori adherence 04:45 to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation 04:50 and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, 04:54 no matter how intuitive-- how counterintuitive, 04:57 no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated." 05:01 Then he says "Moreover, that Materialism is absolute, 05:06 for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door." 05:12 In other words, the idea that they can't possibly 05:15 allow anything smacking of God, of faith, 05:18 of the supernatural into their science, 05:21 this is the idea. 05:22 Now I risk reviewing 05:23 a lot of unanswered questions here by moving on 05:27 but I don't brag down in all of this, 05:29 but this is the point I want to say, 05:32 is that if you hold this view, 05:34 automatically by default that without any real 05:37 even any real reasons at all other than 05:41 just wanting to keep out 05:42 what has been deemed the God hypothesis, 05:45 if you want to keep that out of your science 05:48 then there is no question that faith 05:51 which we understand here 05:52 at the Jhudiel Christian tradition. 05:55 And science which you know refuse as it's now practice, 06:00 then you gonna have conflict. 06:01 How could they not be in conflict? 06:03 One absolutely doesn't allow anything at all like that in 06:07 the other is that's foundational toward thus, 06:11 you have the conflict. 06:14 But I said before on programs 06:16 for most of the history and science and religion, 06:20 the term science really this is a much later term 06:23 that really wasn't a conflict at all. 06:27 We tend to view the history of faith and science 06:29 through the lens of Galileo in the church 06:32 or through the creation ever loops 06:34 and controversy and there they-- 06:36 and they have there roles 06:37 but there is much more complicated than that. 06:41 In fact, listen to another quote, 06:43 this from a book titled "Science and Religion, 06:46 A Historical Introduction. 06:49 Yet science is even more changeable them theology. 06:53 If the historical landscape is littered 06:55 with discarded theological ideas, 06:58 it is equally littered with discarded scientific ones. 07:03 Failure to understand this historical reality 07:06 has led those who see the march of science 07:09 as one of inexorable progress to view controversies 07:13 between science as religions in-dispute as disputes 07:18 in which religion was always wrong 07:20 and science is always right. 07:23 The true factors of the case are very much more complex 07:27 and refuse to be summarized in these simple terms." 07:33 That's heavy, especially this idea, 07:37 this idea about the landscape being littered 07:40 with discarded scientific ideas. 07:44 You know, we forget that 07:46 there were some very smart educated scientists 07:50 who had very good for belief, 07:52 reasons for belief in scientific theories 07:55 that we today know or believe turned out to be wrong. 08:01 And that's why we today, we need to be aware 08:04 that many of the things 08:06 that science tells us could be wrong as well. 08:10 In fact, I think that many of them 08:12 and particularly when it comes to human origins are wrong. 08:16 And that's it we been looking at 08:17 and what I want to continue to look at in this series 08:21 and if you been following along you know 08:22 what I been saying, 08:24 but I want to repeat this again 08:26 we have to realize that science as powerful as it is, 08:30 it doesn't have all the answers. 08:33 And I don't think could ever have all the answers for me 08:38 because me as believer in the God of the Bible, 08:41 I think that reality is too big, too broad, 08:44 you know, for the relatively narrow scope 08:47 that science works in. 08:50 I think of the text in 2 Corinthians 4:18 08:54 "While we do not look at the things which are seen, 08:57 but the things which are not seen. 09:00 For the things which are seen are temporary, 09:04 but the things which are not seen are eternal." 09:10 I don't think that scientists with their atom smashers 09:14 or their test tubes or their space telescopes 09:17 are gonna be too much help to us there, do you. 09:22 And one of the reasons we are looked at 09:26 is you saw the program before, 09:28 one of the things we looked at 09:29 if you saw on the program before, 09:31 the program is called Seen is Believing. 09:34 We looked at this fancy term called empiricist epistemology. 09:39 Epistemology is the study of what we of-- 09:42 how we come to know what we know 09:45 and empiricism is how we come 09:48 to know things through our senses. 09:50 It's a way we come to knowledge okay, 09:54 that we use our senses. 09:55 I mean, for instance if you say in mathematics 09:59 you know, when I divide 65-- 650/5 you get 130. 10:05 You don't actually sit there and count those things, do you? 10:08 You don't count them out and so on. 10:10 No, you can't have certain mathematical techniques 10:13 that help you give you the answer. 10:16 If you say that the number 100 10:18 is greater than the number five 10:20 you don't have to get 100 things 10:21 and count them out 10:23 and five things and look at them. 10:24 No, you don't have to use your senses. 10:26 You can just use rational thought to do that. 10:31 No math and reasons are another form of knowledge 10:34 another kind of epistemology. 10:37 Though science uses math, 10:39 it uses it to inscribe empirical things, 10:42 it uses it to describe things of the world 10:44 as they come to us. 10:46 It can use math to explain moments of the stars, 10:49 the planets, the asteroids and light. 10:52 But it still studying them, 10:54 it's still an empiricist method. 10:57 And weather you're doing chemistry 10:59 or weather you're doing physics or weather you're doing biology 11:03 you are employing an empiricist epistemology. 11:07 You are studying how things appear to us. 11:11 In fact, this leads to a very deep question, 11:17 a question that people have been debating 11:20 for literarily thousands of years 11:22 and amazingly enough even with all this time 11:25 they still haven't come to an answer. 11:30 You know, and this is the question, 11:32 if you remember one of the early shows 11:35 we talked about Isaac Newton 11:37 and his great work on the theory of gravity okay, 11:41 but when got done we looked at it, 11:43 we realize that Newton never explained 11:46 what was going on, he never gave a definition. 11:49 All he did was describe how it-- 11:52 how nature reacted. 11:54 All he did was make-- you know, make predictions. 11:58 He never gave any answer as to what was really going on. 12:04 So he just told us how nature itself acted, 12:08 didn't give us any explanation of why. 12:12 But you know there are some who would say 12:16 that Isaac Newton didn't even get that far. 12:19 They argue that Newton or any science at all does not 12:23 and cannot tell us at all about what nature itself, 12:28 about that what nature itself really is 12:31 or what it's like or really what it really does. 12:35 Instead and listen to this here, 12:37 because this gets new odds but it's very important. 12:41 They said all science can do is tell us 12:45 how nature appears to our senses. 12:49 That is it tells only how nature 12:52 and the world appeared to us, 12:54 how it looks to us as human beings constituted 12:58 the way we are but that's a radically 13:00 different thing from telling us 13:03 what nature is in and of itself. 13:06 Now this is really a very profound 13:09 and important idea 13:11 and I want you to listen carefully 13:13 and think it through, 13:15 because if you think this through with me 13:18 I think it will help you see that 13:20 there is a very fundamental and inherent limit to science 13:25 and that could help you not-- so I have to be so afraid 13:30 when somebody makes a scientific statement 13:33 that challenges your faith. 13:35 Let me give you an example of what I'm talking about. 13:39 I could remember a number of years ago 13:42 I went to the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC 13:45 and that's kind of where some of the real strange "art" is. 13:50 And I remember I went to this exhibit 13:52 and I was in a dimly with room, it was so dark that the ushers, 13:57 an usher had to guide me by my hand 14:00 and sit me down on a chair 14:02 because it was so dark I couldn't see anything. 14:06 And I'm just sitting in this dark room 14:08 and I'm wondering this is art? 14:10 You know, I don't want to seem like philistine 14:12 but I'm wondering what's going on here. 14:14 Well, anyway after a little while 14:17 I noticed these lights started to come out from the wall. 14:21 It was like-- there was just this 14:22 tiny dim light in the wall and it's started to get, 14:25 it started to get larger and larger 14:28 it actually started to come out from the wall 14:32 and I'm assume before long the room was quite well lit. 14:36 well, as I said sitting here wondering you know, 14:40 what kind of art this is and as I'm sitting there 14:45 the usher came in with another person, 14:48 but what was fascinating the usher had to guide 14:52 the person in by hand 14:54 and sit the person down in the seat 14:57 and I remember thinking 15:00 what did that he need usher for? 15:02 Why did he need the usher to bring him in? 15:05 The room was filled with light now, 15:08 the room was filled 15:10 as the light moved out from the wall. 15:14 So what was that to do with the usher? 15:17 Then it hit me, the room to my mind 15:22 which had adjusted to the light, 15:24 my eyes have adjusted to the light, 15:26 my brain had adjusted to the life, 15:28 seemed bright enough, 15:31 but to the man who just entered in his-- 15:34 in his mind the room was so dark 15:37 as it was to me when I first came in 15:40 that he needed an usher to sit him in the chair. 15:45 Now here is the question, 15:49 the reality of the room seemed different to him 15:53 than it seemed to me. 15:55 Now listen to me here 15:56 because this is where it gets crucial. 15:59 There was only one room 16:01 and there was only one light in it, 16:04 so whose view of the loom, 16:06 the room and the light was the true one 16:09 the view that accurately corresponded 16:12 to the immediate environment of both of us? 16:15 That is the room to me was filled 16:19 with enough light to me to see clearly 16:21 because my mind and eyes had adjusted. 16:24 There were receptors in my mind, in my head 16:26 that perceive the room where perceiving differently 16:30 from the man who had just come in. 16:32 To the man who had just come in 16:34 the room was too dark to see anything 16:38 so he couldn't find the seat. 16:40 Again listen to me here, there is just one room, 16:46 there is just one light okay, but my mind perceived 16:52 it radically differently than did the man who came in. 16:58 So now I ask the question, 17:01 what was the truth the reality about the room 17:05 and the light themselves, okay? 17:08 What was the room and the light really like 17:10 in enough themselves okay, 17:13 apart from these two subjective beings myself 17:17 and that man perceiving it? 17:20 Can you see what I'm trying to get that here? 17:23 I know how the room looked to me 17:25 but it looked to me radically different 17:27 than it looked to that man okay. 17:30 So who has had the true view of the room and the light? 17:34 Was there really in any absolute sense, 17:40 what that room was like? 17:42 I look at it this way, 17:44 suppose when I entered that room 17:45 instead of two eyes I had ten eyes 17:49 and suppose my eyes could see an greater electromagnetic band 17:54 than our eyes now can, same room, same light, 17:58 the same immediate environment, 18:01 the reality the room was exactly what it was 18:03 that didn't change at all, 18:06 but the receptors, the receptors 18:09 that I brought in would be radically, radically different. 18:14 So how would the room appeared to me than 18:17 and who would have the correct view of the room? 18:20 That was who would have the correct view 18:23 that wasn't filtered through senses or any one senses? 18:28 Suppose someone came in with 100 eyes 18:30 and with x-ray vision same room, 18:33 only it appear completely different to that person 18:37 than it would to those who had two eyes or twenty eyes. 18:42 But see so I'm asking the question now 18:46 what was the truth of the room as it came to our senses, 18:51 but what was the room itself really like? 18:54 If the Germans have a phrase 18:56 they call it the "ding an sich" the thing in itself. 19:01 Now what appears in our eyes because we have just seen, 19:04 our eyes will give us different appearances, 19:07 it will look different. 19:09 What was it in an of itself? 19:12 The German philosopher Immanuel Kant, 19:15 once he talked about the world as it appears to us. 19:18 He called that the phenomenon 19:21 and the world as it was in an of itself 19:24 and he said there is a gap between the two 19:28 and it's impossible for us 19:30 as human beings to cross that gap. 19:35 Now if this is idea is new to you 19:40 take little time to let the implication sink in 19:44 but there is this idea that there is a difference, 19:48 a divide between what is out there 19:51 in the real world, 19:52 the world as it is in an of itself 19:55 and how we as subjective beings precede it. 20:01 I think they are right there is this gap. 20:03 That some argue that we can never know 20:07 the world as it really is, 20:10 but only as we as human beings with our limited brains 20:14 and our limited sense receptors allow us to know it. 20:20 You know, I really think there is something to this 20:23 and I think it can explain for instance how right now, 20:28 right now I believe in this room 20:31 or may be where you are sitting right now 20:33 there could be angels and demons 20:35 right there in the room with you, 20:37 right now in the room with us 20:39 as it certainly as real as my voice or any thing here 20:43 and yet we don't see them, we can't sense them. 20:49 I mean, think about it too, 20:52 I'm gonna be silent for a second, 20:55 you don't hear anything, 20:58 how many millions of cell phone calls 21:03 are in the room right now? 21:05 How many millions of cell phone calls 21:07 are in this room as real as my voice, 21:09 as real as this table right here, 21:12 as real as the air, as real any of that 21:16 and yet do to the limited preceptors that we have, 21:20 the limited view of reality that our minds, 21:23 and our brains, and our bodies, 21:25 and our heads give us we completely miss them 21:31 or take another idea. 21:34 Suppose everyone in the world 21:37 were color blind to the color red, 21:41 suppose in all the cosmos there is no being 21:44 who had the receptors 21:46 that could take the electromagnetic waves 21:49 that project the color red and translate them in-- 21:53 and translate them into the sensation of red okay. 21:57 Sure what ever molecular structure it is that 22:00 creates those specific light waves 22:03 they are real, they exist 22:05 but it takes us and our specific receptors 22:10 to give us the color red. 22:12 But as I said suppose in all the universe there-- 22:16 all the universe were color blind 22:19 that nobody have those receptors 22:22 could there be the sensation of red. 22:27 I would say, no. It's impossible. 22:30 Now notice I use the word sensation, 22:35 is a sensation something that exist 22:38 only in our minds, its okay, 22:42 is that the same thing as the reality 22:44 that gives us the sensation? 22:48 I'm staring at the Mona Lisa let say, 22:52 I have certain sensations in my minds 22:56 shapes, colors, forms I see it all. 22:59 But what am I'm really seeing? 23:01 I'm having sensations in my head 23:04 and what our sensations 23:06 but sense impressions that exist in my mind. 23:09 I mean the painting is out there, 23:11 the Mona Lisa is out there but it isn't in my head 23:15 the painting itself isn't my head of course not. 23:18 What do I see, 23:19 but electromagnetic waves that the painting reflects. 23:24 Well, actually I don't even really see them 23:26 if you want to get technical about it. 23:28 If you really want to get technical about it 23:30 I don't see that waves coming at me the speed of light. 23:33 I said its have impressions in my head 23:36 but these magnetic waves they hit my eyes 23:39 and then the nerves in my eye, 23:40 the rods and cones take it back to the optic nerve 23:43 and that goes in to my brain the back part of my brain 23:46 and I'm given with the electro chemical processes in my brain 23:51 and its in these brain that all the stuff out there 23:54 is translated into what I perceive as the Mona Lisa 23:59 and the shape and colors of the Mona Lisa. 24:02 So when you sense, when you see the Mona Lisa, 24:04 it isn't really the Mona Lisa itself is it? 24:07 It's really just a bunch of chemicals, 24:09 the paint that is made up of molecules, 24:12 that are made up of atoms, 24:13 that are made up of quarks and electrons 24:16 and the forces that bring them together. 24:18 Isn't that really what the painting is 24:20 and yet we never get anywhere near that. 24:23 Instead what I'm saying is 24:26 there is a vast gap between reality itself 24:32 and what we perceive is reality. 24:35 I once heard a story about somebody was on chemotherapy 24:39 and the chemotherapy suddenly food 24:42 that they once loved became compoundable, 24:45 food they ate their whole life suddenly-- 24:48 but where did the change take place? 24:50 Was it in the food or was it in them? 24:52 I mean, suppose that person love Cap'n Crunch cereal, 24:56 suddenly now they eat Cap'n Crunch and-- 24:59 they want to vomit it up. 25:01 Where did the change take place? 25:03 Did it change place in the external reality 25:06 in the Cap'n Crunch itself as a ding on zeek 25:11 or did it take the change take place in them 25:14 in their senses? 25:16 The reality itself was it-- was the same, 25:20 but what changed was how we perceive it. 25:25 And this I dare say is an issue with all our senses, 25:29 with all our empirical tools 25:32 and it's the same thing was science. 25:36 Science in its own way has to deal 25:38 with this great limitation as well. 25:42 Thus, we come to a question 25:45 that has been asked for a long time. 25:48 Does science tell us what is really out there, 25:51 or does it tell us or does it tell us 25:53 just how the world appears to our senses? 25:57 And if it's just how the world appears to our senses, 26:00 what is it really teaching us about truth? 26:04 This has been a big question 26:06 and to this day it remains unresolved. 26:10 That this is true, 26:12 I think if there is something to this, 26:13 this means that even science cannot tell us 26:16 what the world is really like 26:19 but only as it appears in our experiences 26:22 or even in the experiences 26:24 that our scientific instruments give us. 26:28 Anyway at least this is the argument 26:31 and I think there is something to it, 26:33 something to-- we need to keep in mind 26:36 when we think about the limits of scientific knowledge. 26:41 You know, I have said this before 26:43 some people say, who cares about all this? 26:45 It doesn't matter. 26:47 I want to build the better mouth strap 26:49 and my science helps me to build a better mouth strap 26:52 and who care about all the rest of this stuff and that's fine. 26:55 And there is a whole weighing of scientists 26:57 and philosophy of science that says, 27:00 that's all science could do, that's all that matters 27:03 all the rest of this stuff is just a bunch of hilosophical 27:06 and metaphysical mumbo-jumbo 27:08 and its got nothing to do with science. 27:10 Okay, and that's fine and you can believe that 27:13 and amen, more power to you. 27:16 But on the other hand if you are looking for science 27:22 as the final orbiter of truth, 27:26 as the ultimate expression of reality 27:29 then these questions, then these are questions 27:32 that have not been answered. 27:34 Thus again, I want to wrap this up 27:38 and I think that as believers in God, 27:42 as believers in the Bible we don't have to be afraid 27:47 when someone makes a scientific pronouncement 27:51 that goes directly against our faith. 27:54 We can take the Word of God over and beyond any of that. 28:00 You know, I know that the context 28:01 is a bit different but Paul says 28:05 "For we walk by faith and not by side." 28:11 And that I think what we looked at that's for sure 28:14 especially when you can't even know for sure 28:17 what you are seeing anyway. |
Revised 2015-01-29