Alchemy reconsidered

There has been a dialogue going on the blog where I have been challenged to present even one example of the idea of God creating the Universe helping to solve a scientific problem or present an answer to a problem. Below is an excerpt with Creeper in italics and Radar in bold:

creeper: "Name an example in which invoking a supernatural explanation led to a scientific insight or breakthrough. Name an invention that was made possible by invoking a supernatural explanation".

radar: "All of them. Yes, all. I do believe (and those of you who know the history of science can chime in) That it was the belief in a good creation, that is, a logical one, caused early scientists to believe they could understand cause-and-effect in the world around them. They anticipated that there would be logic in the design of things. Therefore the sciences began on the assumption that a good God created things in an orderly and comprehensible way."

Again, here's that confusion again between world view and process. One can be a fervent Christian or a staunch atheist and still go into the lab and soberly examine things under a microscope and determine the order and relationships between them.

The scientists in question may have believed in God etc. but note that they did not invoke supernatural explanations in their work.

The question remains unanswered:

Name an example in which invoking a supernatural explanation led to a scientific insight or breakthrough. Name an invention that was made possible by invoking a supernatural explanation.


"If you completely toss out the supernatural from the beginning, then one would expect that in a world that came from a random event, the processes would themselves be random and very probably not be predictable."

1. It seems you're confusing "random" with "devoid of natural laws and fundamental forces".

2. Science proceeds from the observable, and the observable includes certain rules and relationships. Every day the sun appears on the horizon, when I toss a ball up in the air it falls back down and bounces, when a male and a female mate they produce offspring etc. Observing this allows one to conclude a certain order regardless of whether one believes this is because of God.

The observable also includes, due to our limited perception of the world and its complexity, events that appear random. A freak tidal wave, or someone being run over by a bus.


"Of course, life would be problematic in a random and unpredictable world. I would throw something and it might just fall to the ground one time, hit me in the knee one time, and sail off one hundred yards away the next, all with the same amount of perceived effort on my part.

But of course life itself would not be possible in a world of random processes, for the makeup of my lungs that would allow for the absorption of oxygen could work one minute and not the next. The properties of oxygen could be vastly different with every passing minute.

I could go on, but I hope the point is made. The very ability to postulate that there is no supernatural is based on orderly processes that are incomprehensibly logical were this a randomly produced universe."


1. Now this is where you apply Occam's Razor, Radar. What we have are a certain kind of order - let's call this the physical laws: things fall, bounce, are gravitationally attracted to each other, are magnetically attracted to each other. In your example, these are what will make something you throw fall more or less the same all the time.

Natural science says that this is because of gravity, wind resistance, friction, momentum.

You say it's because of gravity, wind resistance, friction, momentum - all of which only exist because of the supernatural. This adds a hypothetical layer of complexity that is (a) not indicated by any evidence, and (b) not necessary, as it adds no explanatory power.

2. Your proposition is of course a complete strawman, and a false dichotomy. Nobody is arguing we live in a random universe, and we are not limited to the two options of either a completely random universe or an orderly universe constantly propped up by God.
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Okay, well let us first begin with an quote from Wikipedia concerning Occam's razor-

"Occam's Razor (also spelled Ockham's Razor) is a principle attributed to the 14th-century English logician and Franciscan friar William of Ockham. Originally a tenet of the reductionist philosophy of nominalism, it is more often taken today as a heuristic maxim that advises economy, parsimony, or simplicity in scientific theories.

Occam's Razor states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explantory hypothesis or theory. The principle is often expressed in Latin as:

entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem,

which translates to:

entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity.

Furthermore, when multiple competing theories have equal predictive powers, the principle recommends selecting those that introduce the fewest assumptions and postulate the fewest hypothetical entities. It is in this sense that Occam's Razor is usually understood."


Since the macroevolution hypotheses requires more additional assumptions and corollaries than does Creation, then a Darwinist shouldn't resort to the Razor in an argument, since that is a loser for him from the beginning.

Creeper knew he was asking me a question that was loaded, since we are all natural creatures living in a natural world we cannot invoke supernatural solutions to problems. So of course the supernatural is never part of the solution. But it plays a very large role in science, or at least it has in the past and continues to do so in the daily grind of many scientists.

ALCHEMY

Alchemists were among the first scientists. We may scoff at their efforts, but they were an important part of the development of science. The infancy of Alchemy featured people who knew very little about the makeup of things. The Greeks had proposed that all things were made of earth, air, fire, and water. Really, early alchemists viewed the processes of life as magic and approached them as such. But they began to discover that there were logical systems in place and laws that were operative in nature that were predictable and orderly.

Such understanding made the scientist who was a believer in God confident that careful consideration of the way things worked and interacted would be comprehensible to them. The belief in a Creator God was a boon to early science therefore.

Wikipedia - The best known goals of the alchemists were the transmutation of common metals into gold or silver, and the creation of a "panacea", a remedy that supposedly would cure all diseases and prolong life indefinitely. Starting with the Middle Ages, European alchemists invested much effort on the search for the "philosopher's stone", a mythical substance that was believed to be an essential ingredient for either or both of those goals. Alchemists enjoyed prestige and support through the centuries, though not for their pursuit of those unattainable goals, nor the mystic and philosophical speculation that dominates their literature. Rather it was for their mundane contributions to the "chemical" industries of the day — ore testing and refining, metalworking, production of ink, dyes, paints, and cosmetics, leather tanning, ceramics and glass manufacture, preparation of extracts and liquors, and so on. (It seems that the preparation of aqua vitae, the water of life", was a fairly popular "experiment" among European alchemists.)"

Eventually, scientists learned that life was not magic, but logical and systematic. There would be no magic formula to avoid aging, no magic wand to transform rocks into gold. But scientists had developed a scientific methodology and although they laid alchemy aside, they pursued chemistry and other disciplines and continued to advance the knowledge of man. But it is important to note that very few scientists spent time looking for ways to turn rocks to gold beyond the 17th century.

DARWINISM

It is true that the knowledge that God created does not give us any immediate answers to problems. It is also true that knowing that there was no "philosopher's stone" did not present anyone with an answer to any one problem. Yet there is benefit here.

The idea that all life has evolved means that there are thousands of scientists who spend at least part of their time looking for useless information rather than pursuits that can help mankind. There are thousands of man-hours considering possibilities based upon a random evolutionary process that does not exist.

When man realizes that God created, then he realizes that all systems and all organisms were designed. This means that there are truly no vestigal organs, but everything was designed with a purpose. That there is or was a reason for every part of the genetic code. More time would be spent looking for ways to use our knowledge of genetics to fight cancer, or aging, etc, and less spent trying to figure out if we evolved from sharks!

More scientists would be spending time in more useful pursuits than digging in the African dirt looking for another "hominid" that turns out to be yet another kind of ape.

But the belief in evolution, like Alchemy, has been somewhat beneficial. Microevolution is certainly a process that can be demonstrated to happen. Macroevolutionists study microevolution in detail, learning valuable information about biology, about genetics, even as they try in vain to prove that Darwin was right.

Of course, some macroevolutionists get a bit off-track. Like this guy:

"His office, which he has inhabited for 38 years, is cluttered with books, stacks of paper, bones and even a few beers. There's a photo of him dressed like British naturalist Charles Darwin. Scattered pictures of lizards and a copy of his semi-autobiography, "The Lizard Man Speaks," reveal his area of expertise — lizards and evolutionary ecology. On his desk, he keeps a stuffed likeness of the Ebola virus that was sent to him by students who enjoyed his speeches."

But most Darwinists aren't waiting around for the ebola virus to give man his comeuppance. Most are good, dedicated and often brilliant men and women who are doing their best to advance knowledge and find answers to problems. I just wish they would quit looking for their equivalent of "panacea", acknowledge that everything appears to be designed because it is, and use that knowledge to help advance science in all disciplines.