Distance Learning Office, Caronport, Saskatchewan
Responding to annoying fallacy, 12:28PM
Weather = Warm and Sunny
On the news today there was a story about stem cell research finding the cell responsible for creating red blood cells. It is a fantastic discovery, one that shows off the human body's incredible complexity. Indeed, the sheer depth of complexity and how every piece fits together so well is astounding. Then I read the first comment under the story which was as follows:
| "Anyone who don't believe there isn't an Intelligent Designer is naive. This finding is another proof!" |
Now, I'm not sure if this was just horrible grammar or if the writer was trying to invoke a double negative. Either way it doesn't matter. This line of argument is pointless.
In Christian Fundamentalism's war with Science this is a common strategy of finding something incredible about the world and saying that it is 'proof' of God, or at least 'proof' of an intelligent designer. Incredible geological formations, breathtaking astronomical wonders, the intense complexity of micro-biology. In all of these things the Christian can see the wonder of God, the work of his hands, but it is not any proof to the scientist.
Why? It's not because God doesn't exist or that he did not create these things, it is because science doesn't care nor can it ever know. Science is the study of physical things and assumes a sort of naturalism, which means that it will only ever look for natural causes of things. It doesn't matter how heart stirring or spiritually enriching something is, science will only ever recognize the natural processes inherent in nature.
For instance, for many years this argument was used on a specific type of rock that had unexplainable red spirals all throughout it. Christians said that this was proof of God's design. After a bit of study the geologists said, "actually no it isn't. We can trace these red particles to that hill over yonder. What happened was that the rocks rolled down the hill picking up debris and the rolling motion is where the spirals came from."
I'm not sure if that was a good example, but the general theme has always been Christians claiming God's divine creation on this or that object and then science uncovering a naturalist explanation of why that thing is the way it is.
I think this whole issue is really annoying because it literally gets us nowhere.
Even if we had some sort of object that was indeed created by God, science wouldn't be able to recognize it as such and would create a naturalist explanation for it. That's what science does, and it has lead to the greatest advancements in medicine, architecture, and standard of living. A type of Christianity that tries to scientifically prove what is scientifically unverifiable will always fail and be pushed back and back on the defensive.
Now philosophically this is a completely valid argument, the principle that everything seems to be structured so incredibly well, fine tuned exactly to the sliver of a decimal so that even if something were off by even the minutest point, human life would not exist. However, science doesn't recognize this either. If you want to talk about proofs for God then enter a philosophical discussion and draw examples from science, not vice-versa.
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