This is part six of my series on science. Here are the other parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, and Bibliography.
The Biblical Perspective on Science
What is the biblical view of providence? Is it natural law? Is it indeterministic? We must have a biblical view of God’s providence, in order to dictate what Christian science would be. What’s the biblical evidence? The Bible pictures him acting with the creation directly and indirectly. We should speak of God acting in time, like when he creates light on the first day or when he confronts Adam and Eve right after the fall. These actions are consistent with God’s eternal nature.
God is always in control of events in this world. This doctrine is the common doctrine of God’s comprehensive providential control over his creation (sometimes called “meticulous divine providence”). Everything that takes place in the creation does so according to God’s sovereign plan, and nothing takes place apart from God’s will. This is common in the Reformed tradition.
·Ephesians 1:11
“…having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of his will”
-Hebrews 1:3
” And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of Sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,”
·Isaiah 46:8-11
“Remember this, and be assured;
Recall it to mind, you transgressors.
“Remember the former things long past,
For I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is no one like Me,
Declaring the end from the beginning,
And from ancient times things which have not been done,
Saying, ‘My purpose will be established,
And I will accomplish all My good pleasure’;
Calling a bird of prey from the east,
The man of My purpose from a far country.
Truly I have spoken; truly I will bring it to pass.
I have planned it, surely I will do it.”
·Isaiah 45:7
” I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the Lord, who does all these things.”
·2 Chronicles 7:13-14
“When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”
·Lam. 3:37-38
“Who has spoken and it came to pass unless the Lord has commanded it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and bad come?”
·Amos 3:6
“Is a trumpet blown in a city, and the people are not afraid? Does disaster come to a city, unless the Lord has done it?”
·Psalm 148:8
” Fire and hail, snow and clouds; Stormy wind, fulfilling His word;”
·Psalm 135:6
“Whatever the LORD pleases, he does, In heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all deeps”
·Psalm 103:19”
The Lord hath prepared His Throne in the heavens, and His Kingdom ruleth over all.”
Even over sinful events God providentially controls the world. (Gen. 50:20; Judges 14:1-4; 1 Sam. 2:25; Isa. 10:5-19; Acts 4:27-28; Rom. 9:14-21)
·Colossians 1:17:
” He is before all things, and in Him, all things hold together.”
The Bible teaches that God controls the events in this world and doesn’t set up these mechanistic “Natural laws” to govern the world, but, rather, he does it as the Sovereign Lord of creation. The regularities of nature are the regular way God controls the world.
“Learn then this basic truth, that the Creator is absolute Sovereign, executing His own will, performing His own pleasure, and considering nought but His own glory. “The Lord hath made all things for himself”(Prov.16:4)” A.W. Pink
Now, what does the Christian worldview give science? Well, it gives it the proper foundation. How does it do that? For starters, it gives a basis for thinking that your mental activities correspond to that which is in the world. God has created us for this world. It gives us a basis for causality, a basis for reliability, and a correspondence of the mind and the world. We have God’s providence to provide regularities in which to do induction. The presuppositions (or preconditions) of science need to be accounted for. We need an ordered external world because it doesn’t help science if the world is just the contents of your mind. You need to be studying something other than yourself. We need order because chaos isn’t intelligible. When you study a specific creature, you expect that the creature’s species would have the same features going from one to the next. If you look at the insides of pigs, you would find organs and other content. However, you don’t think the next pig will, instead, have rocks instead of organs and veins. We look at particulars so we can understand more about them in general. A random chance contingent world has no reason to be ordered. There also needs to be contingency. Plato, for example, believed in an ordered perfect world called the realm of the forms. He didn’t go out to look at particulars. He had the universals (Forms) that tell you everything about particulars. He would look to the abstract ideals. This view undermines any purpose of science because it has no contingency. The materialist can’t explain the rational element, and the rationalist can’t explain the contingency. We must have a mind that produces propositions that correspond to it. Induction is a precondition of science.
This was a problem, but we live in a much more advanced time. So, it seems that we are sure to have solved this problem. So, have we answered Darwin’s Doubt?
“Boiled down to essentials, a nervous system enables the organism to succeed in the four F’s: feeding, fleeing, fighting, and reproducing. The principle chore of nervous systems is to get the body parts where they should be in order that the organism may survive. . . . . Improvements in sensorimotor control confer an evolutionary advantage: a fancier style of representing is advantageous so long as it is geared to the organism’s way of life and enhances the organism’s chances of survival [Churchland’s emphasis]. Truth, whatever that is, definitely takes the hindmost.” Patricia Churchland (a Physicalist atheist philosopher)
Science also needs Logic, Truth, mathematics, and numbers. I believe, none of those things comport with either of their worldviews. Causality is not observed; nobody sees a causal connection.We see A and we see B, and causality is the relationship the immaterial mind imposes on A as it relates to B. We (hear, taste, smell, and/or feel) discrete sensations, but causality is something the mind imposes on the events, out there in nature. This was pointed out by David Hume. Kant responded that we take categories of thought and superimpose them on our ideas upon observation. Instead of saving it from Hume’s skepticism, this ends up psychologizing science. Why should the mind give a true account of the external world? How is this not arbitrariness, and how does it avoid skepticism?
Dr. J. P. Moreland mentions different kinds of scientific explanations: “Compositional or structural explanation. Here the properties of an object are explained in terms of the properties or structural relations of its parts. For example, the properties of the chemical elements are neutrons, electrons, and protons in the elements.
Evolutionary or Historical explanation. Here the properties or some other aspects of an object are explained in terms of the temporal development and history of the object and its ancestors. Evolutionary theory regarding living organisms is an example of this kind of explanation, as is an evolutionary development of a star.
Functional explanation. Here the capacities of an object are explained in terms of the function it plays in some system. Thus, the nature of the human heart is explained by reference to the role the heart plays in the circulatory system. Such explanations take the following form: “The function of x is to do y.”
Transitional explanation. Here a change of state in an object- an object transition from one state to another- is explained in terms of some disturbance in the object and the state of the object at the time the disturbance took place. For example, the change in the motion of an object is explained in terms of its initial motion and the forces acting on it.
Intentional explanation. Though controversial, some psychologists and biologist explain the behavior of an organism in terms of the beliefs, desires, fears, intentions, and so forth, of the organism. An example would be the explanation of anger or aggression in a person in terms of his fear of a loss of self-esteem.”These are in a way perspectives on the same world and they each explain some aspects of the world in which we live.
The Council 