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Jhud -> RE: Why is only the science the conflicts with the OT so wrong? (9/23/2008 1:40:42 PM)
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I have had this conversation numerous times around here before, so some of the stuff I will say here is a repeat - but hopefully it won't bore too many people.
Part of the problem with these discussions is the confusion over the terms 'scientific' and 'literal'. Something can be literally true, and not scientific. Something can be true and not literal. Something can be scientific, and not true. So if some believes (as I do) that the Bible is true, and that it is literally true, it does not then mean I am making a scientific statement, or that science contradicts either of these statements.
For example, when a meteorologist states, "The sun will set at 6:30pm today" he is making a literal statement, though not a scientifically accurate one. From our perspective the sun literally appears to sink below the horizon; and a literal description of that isn't 'untrue', though it is unscientific.
And if we think about ways of communicating things, sometimes the truest way to communicate them is less than literal. The example I always give is the song, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, which is based on actual events that occurred in 1975. One line now famously states -
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
When the skies of November turn gloomy.
Now we all know lakes don't have minds and wills of there own which are affected by autumn weather patterns; but that line accurately portrays the foreboding one feels when in a boat out on those deep, very cold waters in fall, much better than a scientific statement describing weather patterns and lake temperatures. And thus it conveys a truth to someone who hears it that science never could.
I think it is also important to note that often when someone (particularly materialists) say, "Science says this..." what they really mean is, “My narrative of the origin of the universe says this, and I think science supports that narrative.”
This is an important distinction because there really is no scientific way to study the history of the universe; the scientific method can be employed to study very specific aspects of nature and from that make inferences about what might have occurred to produce those phenomena that make sense in light of what we already know, but there cannot be, nor will there of be, a scientifically established story of how the universe came to be, because that is not really what science does.
Some scientists may attempt to explain it that way, and some people may glom onto those explanations as a means of justifying their beliefs, but there really isn't a scientifically demonstrable narrative per se. All narratives are almost by necessity metaphysical in some way, and thus neither 'scientific' nor 'literal'.
So in part the OP is really on the wrong track here; Scripture can be literally true and not break the scientific method, though it may be the case (and I certainly think it is) that the narrative of Genesis contradicts the narrative of materialists that they claim is the product of science.
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