Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Real Creation Science!

I have started work on my paper/talk for the forthcoming Conference on the Academy and the Church.

Here is a sketchy outline. I thank Ben Myers for many helpful discussions and ideas on this topic.

Karl Barth’s Doctrine of Creation: implications for the dialogue between science and theology

The Doctrine of Creation is an article of faith

The existence of God is a contestable hypothesis

The existence of the world is a contestable hypothesis

The covenant is the meaning and purpose of the creation

Creation is the external basis of the covenant

Science cannot discover meaning and purpose

The creation is distinct from God

There are limits to what can be known about God from science

There are limits to what can be known about science from theology

Justification for the practical naturalism of science

The creation is real and objective

Science is possible

The creation is good

A mandate for the scientific investigation of the world

Scientific knowledge can be beautiful

The orderliness of the creation reflects the faithfulness of the creator

The covenant is the internal basis of the creation

The reliability of physical laws

The creature can understand the creation

Creator creates creature

Science works

The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences

3 comments:

  1. Looks like a great talk Ross. Can you blog about that last one at some point? It's one I've never really understood. I've always been uncmfortable with the concept, having this niggling feeling that mathematics is as effective as you can reasonably expect.

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  2. re: "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics", it would be good to engage with Steiner's book, "The Applicability of Mathematics as a Philosophical Problem" (Harvard 1998)

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  3. I will try and write more on that. Here is an earlier post on the subject.

    http://revelation4-11.blogspot.com/2009/06/why-does-science-work-so-well.html

    McGrath discusses how the Doctrine of Creation illuminates this.
    (Scientific Theology, Vol. 1, p. 196-218). I need to re-read it.

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