Category: Gratuitous Snarkiness

Metacatholic reports that Jim West has taken leave of his senses, and since I always read whatever Doug has to say (though not Jim)^*, I wandered over to see what would make Doug say such a thing.

I found there some odd notes on the relationship of science and faith, as report by Doug of Jim, and then I did it … I followed the link to see whether I agreed with Doug’s reading of what Jim had said. Thus I am punished for some small number of my sins⁺.

I find there the following quote:

… Science presupposes the absence of God. Biblical faith presupposes his presence. Both presuppositions cannot be true.

I can think of dozens of elements of science that might be reasonably regarded as contradictory with similar dozens of elements of Biblical faith (whatever that might be), but that isn’t one of them.

But then I thought about it a bit more. If one defines “Biblical faith” as, for example, believing everything about just about everything that the Biblical writers believed, then it would be contradictory. For example, if one believes that events all happen by specific intervention of God, as in “he makes his sun to rise in the morning,” (Matthew 5:45) then that is incompatible with science.

On the other hand, if that is what is meant by “Biblical faith” then let me have nothing whatsoever to do with it. I’ll take science every time.

I don’t happen to think revelation works that way, and I couldn’t possibly care less about what the Biblical writers believed about the physical world–the proper subject of scientific study. I personally am very glad that scientists exclude miraculous, divine activities from their studies.

Not to do so would be much like concluding that a certain process didn’t work because someone wandered by and smashed the test tube before it finished, or that a certain chemical reaction would transform lead into gold because someone came by and swiped the lead, leaving gold in its place.