Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Science and the Search for Answers Apart from God (Vanity of Vanities)

Qoheleth once said of God "He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end." (Eccl 3:11)

Dennis Overbye's article Laws of Nature, Source Unknown has generated a great deal of interest and comment.

It's interesting that with all the knowledge, experience and science of men, man - while he recognizes law and order in the universe, has not been and is not able to discover the source of law.

Not surprising that man finds himself not only with circular reasoning but in a circular bind in trying to explain law apart from God. (law from no law... but that's still a law; laws emerging "higgledy-piggledy" from primordial chaos... so that scientists should be looking "not so much for the ultimate law as for the ultimate program" ... but where did the program come from and who's the programmer, etc.)

But at the same time, isn't the acknowledgement that science must presuppose order even to do what it does interesting? Here again, one must at least borrow from (or assume the truth of) the biblical position not only to make sense of the universe but even to suggest and study a universe that makes sense.

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