God & Science - 2 of 3 - Historical Overview
Beginning in the late 1500's and early 1600's, early modern philosopher-scientists discovered that mathematics could be used to characterize the motion of the planets and local motion. The approach of using mathematics to characterize how God works is not to be found in Scripture. The geometrical-mathematical approach of viewing reality comes from the Greeks, and has several atheistic implications (for example, one could infer that God must work in a mathematical way all of the time (a Deistic view)).
Modern science started in the 1500's when the reigning Aristotelian-paradigm of science was challenged by a mathematically-based paradigm purporting to give a better description of how the planets and things move. This mathematical way of viewing God's working in the world was then adopted, especially by Protestants, as the Biblical approach to viewing the world.
Due to the success of the scientific enterprise in characterizing motion as well as its practical applications, it has never looked back. The mathematical “law-based” view of reality has shown itself to be very fruitful & useful. It was a deterministic way of looking at things with non-Biblical implications built-in to such a view (such as the Deistic/Rationalistic/Atheistic ways of viewing the world).
In addition, the Historical sciences (including Geology, Biology, Anthropology, Cosmology, etc.) started developing. The Historical sciences continued to develop, and typically assumed an old earth/old universe, with attendant non-Biblical implications. An old earth/old universe view of the world was needed in order to accommodate the evolutionary views introduced by Darwin and his associates.
In the early 1900s, as the physical sciences continued to develop, a statistical way of viewing reality came to dominate the Operational Sciences – Quantum Physics. This view, taken to its extreme, implies that anything can happen at any time (a statistical view of nature). This view also has non-Biblical implications.
Questions to be answered:
Wasn’t the Christian worldview of the early scientists integral (necessary) to the development of modern science?’
As you saying that we can never trust science? It works so well….
Weren’t the early modern scientists convinced that God created the world in a fixed mathematical way?
Isn’t the law of gravity truth?
Did the early scientists have a deterministic view of the world? Is this view Biblical?
Do modern scientists have a statistical view of the world? Is this view Biblical?
What are the differences between Operational Science and Historical (Origins) Science?
Other questions ….
