Let’s start here:

http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/uc/20070721/lnq070722.gif

Let’s continue here:

I had a conversation with an old-roomie-turned-married-fellow friend (I have too many of those.. count: 5/0) of mine yesterday. There’s a little too much bunk flyin’ round Christianity. And one for being counted among the liberals (at least by the stupid-conservative.. note, this is a subset, not all conservatives are stupid) I took him up on his rant. What’s wrong with saying that “God made Adam from the dust of the ground” requires this to be through non-scientific means? That is, why not let science have it’s place and help inform the discussion about the means of man’s existence? Besides, thus far in the game it’s inconclusive (in a final sense) in either direction.

It seems that both parties (Christians & Scientists) have a tendency to read each other inherently with discredit, and read themselves with undying-trust-unto-ridicule. Likewise, they seem to miss the we’re-still-in-process-no-conclusions-yet method/message of science. Do I have a problem with these? Of course. Should you? Only if you know ppl with these perspectives.

So what of the line in the comic “..only acknowledges science that doesn’t conflict with the ancient scriptures”?

There’s a long line of history that most everyone on both sides of the camp are uninformed of.  Socrates sought truth by denying he had it, and asking others for it. Good start I suppose, humanity generally finds humility agreeable.  The Catholic Church defined the order of method of truth-finding to be: explicit in the Bible itself, co-equal with tradition, reason and papal statements ex cathedra. I’ve been told Wesley edited these 4 to have an ordered precedence, from Biblically clear statements, tradition, reason and then personal experience.

Taking this quadratum for truth-finding (though more clearly: simply a method by which we put confidence in propositions as being correspondent with external, independent reality) seems rather clear. First, we listen to the one who made reality, then we listen to those who’ve studied it through the years, then we listen to our studies and thoughts on it, then we listen to how it works when lived out in our context. Each iteration starts as widely as can be had, rather than starting within my own little bubble.

Then the role of science is in the category of our reason. Reason unbounded is like emotion unbounded: they are both guides we follow, but neither absolutely. We can only absolutely follow the absolute body of absolute, complete knowledge. And since our experience is more than content-knowledge, but relational, I’m stuck making this set of all knowledge into a personal being. And since independency is required of knowledge, and relationship is one of dependency, I’m stuck making this personal, all-knowing reality multiply-united: the Triune God. If my reason gets me this far by studying life, and if the Scientist reason gets them as far as they are by studying the ‘hard sciences,’ then we need to understand the unity of this external reality: how both of our views unite in the context of both.

If my Christianity has a place for reason, then I must follow it, not fear it like a plague. Science-ism has no place for the soft-sciences, but even itself is ruled by the hard-sciences, by their unwavering commitment to denial of independent reality being being more than content-knowledge.