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
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.
ReplyDeletere: "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)
ReplyDeleteI will try and write more on that. Here is an earlier post on the subject.
ReplyDeletehttp://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.