So, Sunday was to have been the day when there was finally time to sit down and write about the things that were on my heart. However, when we came home from church and shopping we found that our young dog was missing. So, instead of thinking and writing as I intended, I've been praying, calling all the vets and groomers and going through the neighborhood to see if anyone has seen the new puppy. We're both so sad. He has been quite a handful but we have come to love him and realize that as hyper as he is, he is a part of our family. So, there's a huge gap when he's not here in the mornings - and the evenings - and between.
For those of you who do pray, if you would please ask that God would send him home, I would appreciate it. The general consensus of opinion from the Animal Control people is that he has been stolen, likely by someone within a mile or so of the house. They are hoping if I put up/out fliers that these people will feel guilty and let him go so he can get picked up by Animal Control and returned to us. He was within a few weeks of going in for his final shots and being microchipped. I was also in the process of grooming him so he looks a bit scraggly without his face and two of his legs finished - but that also means that he doesn't have his collar on either.
Thanks!
For I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes...
21 comments:
So sorry to hear of this.
Deb and I are praying!
Sad indeed. Odd that someone would steal a dog, at least to my mind. [virtual hug here]
I'll have to admit: even I miss Basil a little!
I miss him a lot! I went door to door tonight for 2.5 hours with fliers but nobody has seen him. I'll go with another batch a different direction in the neighborhood tomorrow after work.
Thanks for your prayers and hugs!
I am very sorry to hear that news Susan.
I lost a dog a few years ago, and it was very stressful.
Susan, I'm sorry to hear Basil is missing. I can relate to the love\attachment to a pet. ...I hope you don't mind me continuing my comments to Maalie et al here.
Maalie,
I'm glad you mentioned the "peer review" system of science because I believe that is also confronted in the 3rd of five reasons why science can never give us truth:
3. Science commits the fallacy of induction.
Induction is the attempt to derive a general law from particular instances. Science is necessarily inductive. For example, if a scientist is studying crows, he might observe 999 crows and find that they all are black. But is he ever able to assert that all crows are black? No; the next crow he observes might be an albino. One can never observe all crows: past, present, and future. Universal propositions can never be validly obtained by observation. Hence, science can never give us true statements.
Maalie, with you being a bird scientist (forgive me; I don't know what the correct title I should use) I thought the above example might interest you.
We will keep right on praying!
I pray to our Father that He would help you find him. Amen.
I forgot to say- I think our Diamond Python ate our dog......
Maalie is away in Italy Luther...
Wednesday afternoon, I was driving near Wipfler Park and saw a little dog near the ball field. We stopped the van, but it was not your dog. Then we saw another dog about the same size, but it was not yours. We had our eyes peeled. D2 had seen your photo and explained to me that both of those little barkers were very different. I really, really, really wanted to find your dog... that would have made my day!
Thanks everyone! I really appreciate your thoughts!
Craver - I wish you could too! That would make my day as well. I'm going to try to take a few minutes to pass out some fliers over by the park on the way back to prayer meeting tonight.
"Universal propositions can never be validly obtained by observation. Hence, science can never give us true statements."
Triston - What I think you were aiming at is that momentary, finite observations cannot give us UNIVERSALLY true statements. However, they can give us true statements for THOSE PARTICULAR CONDITIONS and AT THAT POINT IN TIME.
The real problem with scientific empiricism--and there are a lot--is that it is based entirely on sensory information. We know that people do not sense things entirely equally; you say it's blue, I say it's cerulean. Now, that can be alleviated by saying it's light at a wavelength of 495 nanometers. But then you must ensure that what your eyes are reading in the spectrometer is in fact 495 nm.
The real problem is a problem of simple logic. What we usually assume is causality is really just corrollation. For example, we observe that whenever it rains, the sidewalk is wet. We assume therefore a universal causality, that is, The sidewalk is wet (q) because it rained (p). (If p, then q.)
The problem is that, while it's true that rain results in wet sidewalks, just because the sidewalk is wet doesn't mean it rained. Perhaps it's wet because I spilled my drink, or a fire hydrant erupted, or I was using my lawn sprinkler, or a tidal wave came. What once looked like causation really turns out to be merely CORROLLATION, or at best only one of many viable options. Causation can therefore only exist in an "If and ONLY if p, then q" relationship. And that is, I think, a much bigger problem with empirical reasoning.
Fourth reason why science can never give us truth:
4. Equations are always selected, they are never discovered.
In the laboratory the scientist seeks to determine the boiling point of water. Since water hardly ever boils at the same temperature, the scientist conducts a number of tests and the slightly differing results are noted. He then must average them. But what kind of average does he use: mean, mode, or median? He must choose; and whatever kind of average he selects, it is his own choice; it is not dictated by the data. Then too, the average he chooses is just that, that is, it is an average, not the actual datum yielded by the experiment. Once the test results have been averaged, the scientist will calculate the variable error in his readings. He will likely plot the data points or areas on a graph. Then he will draw a curve through the resultant data points or areas on the graph. But how many curves, each one of which describes a different equation, are possible? An infinite number of curves is possible. But the scientist draws only one. What is the probability of the scientist choosing the correct curve out of an infinite number of possibilities? The chance is one over infinity, or zero. Therefore, all scientific laws are false. They cannot possibly be true.
The statement of Karl Popper is correct: “It can even be shown that all theories, including the best, have the same probability, namely zero.”
Good thoughts Andrew.
The main point I'm getting to is that there is really only one source of truth: God’s Word. Science CANNOT give us truth. If it could, it would not have to be updated. So many things that science once told us were true and fact have been proven false, and 100 years from now, many supposed "absolutes" of science will again be proven false. It cannot give us truth, as the above (4th reason why science cannot give us truth) demonstrates.
"What is the probability of the scientist choosing the correct curve out of an infinite number of possibilities? The chance is one over infinity, or zero. Therefore, all scientific laws are false. They cannot possibly be true."
This is not a true statement. (a) One divided by infinity is an imaginary number; it's not zero. (b) The boiling point of water is never an average. It's variable insofar as the solute concentration and/or the barometric pressure changes. But at a given solute concentration and barometric pressure, water always boils at the same temperature (e.g., 100% pure water at 101.3 kilopascals of air pressure boils at 100.0 degrees Celsius). (c) Average is always mean, not mode or median; by definition "mean" means the same thing as "average." But this does corroborate what I said previously about correlation, since you're speaking of fitting a line of regression to fit plots on a Cartesian plane. Doing so is always meant to show only correlation. (However, many scientists say that correlation of 1.0 or close to it (0.9 or higher) implies a causal relationship.) We can double-check such lines of regression by making sure that such a line has the lowest possible standard deviation--a sort of "checks and balances" system in statistics.
Remember, scientific laws--which may sometimes be derived from lines of regression or other Cartesian formulas, such as F = ma--always serve to DESCRIBE what is universally OBSERVED to happen. It's never a law if (a) it isn't observed, and (b) it doesn't always hold true under the specified circumstances. Laws do not necessarily claim to be universal statements (though they may be erroneously interpreted this way); they only describe what is always OBSERVED to happen when it is observed.
Instead of commenting, I think I'll just give the fifth reason why science can never give us truth:
5. All scientific laws describe ideal situations.
As Clark has said, “At best, scientific law is a construction rather than a discovery, and the construction depends on factors never seen under a microscope, never weighed in a balance, never handled or manipulated.” Clark uses the law of the pendulum as an example:
The law of the pendulum states that the period of the swing is proportional to the square root of the length. If, however, the weight of the bob is unevenly displaced around its center, the law will not hold. The law assumes that the bob is homogeneous, that the weight is symmetrically distributed along all axes, or more technically, that the mass is concentrated at a point. No such bob exists, and hence the law is not an accurate description of any tangible pendulum. Second, the law assumes that the pendulum swings by a tensionless string. There is no such string, so that the scientific law does not describe any real pendulum. And third, the law could be true only if the pendulum swung on an axis without friction. There is no such axis. It follows, therefore, that no visible pendulum accords with the mathematical formula and that the formula is not a description of any existing pendulum.
From the five logical difficulties presented, it can be readily seen that science is not capable of giving us any truth. And if the scientific method is a tissue of logical fallacies, why should Christians seek to argue from science to the truth? Simply stated, they should not. Science is useful in accomplishing its purpose, i.e., subduing the Earth. But that is all it is useful for, nothing more.
Science has its place in a Christian philosophy, an important place. But science is never to be seen as a means of learning truth. Truth is found in the Scriptures alone; the Bible has a monopoly on truth. It is God’s Word that must be believed, not the experiments of men. As Robbins has said: “Science is false, and must always be false. Scripture is true and must always be true. The issue is as clear, and as simple, as that.”
but why is scripture true? its as much a nonsense as science then....by your own arguement
Hi Simon,
Truth is propositional, and only propositional. This view is in stark contrast to views, both academic and popular, of truth as encounter, truth as event, truth as pictorial, truth as experiential, truth as emotive, truth as personal, truth as mystic absorption into or union with the divine.
Truth is only propositional, and as we have seen, all universal propositions by science are false and can only be false.
I believe the Bible alone is the source of all truth because it claims to be the source of truth. When God makes a promise, He cannot swear by something or someone higher and therefore He swears by Himself. And since the Bible is God’s Word, it cannot appeal to a higher source, so it attests to itself. Again, you can cough this up to circular reasoning, but as even Maalie conceded in a previous post, all starting axioms by their very nature are circular, including those of science.
I appreciate the Westminster Confessions statements on the Word of God:
We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the church to an high and reverent esteem of the holy Scripture. And the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is, to give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes of the only way of man’s salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies, and the entire perfection thereof, are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God: yet notwithstanding, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.
The point of the above is that there are many glorious evidences that the Bible truly is the Word of God, yet the highest testimony of all is the Bible’s own testimony of itself. Science cannot give us truth, as we have seen. Only God’s Word can give us truth because it is not only true, it is truth itself. “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.” (John 17:17). This statement by Jesus encourages us to think of the Bible not simply as being “true” in the sense that it conforms to some higher standard of truth, but rather to think of the Bible as being itself the final standard of truth. The Bible is God’s Word, and God’s Word is the ultimate definition of what is true and what is not true: God’s Word is itself truth.
You are free to deny this, but I intend to define everything in the world based on God’s Word of truth.
so do you believe me if i say "I am the soruce of all truth" simply because I said so?
Seems odd
I would believe you if you were to say that you were the source of an excellent voice Simon, for there is evidence for that. Or that you could speak quickly - for there is evidence for that also - in fact, how good an auctioneer would you be if you couldn't! But, the source of all truth, there is no evidence for that, at least not for you. There is evidence that Jesus is the source of all truth - or rather I should say Truth with a capital "T".
Have you found him yet Susan?
Love Lorenzo.
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