“Don” writes:

Thanks for your friendly welcome. 🙂

If regarding the Bible as authoritative means I am anti-science, then ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ you have to dismiss many of the great founders of modern science as anti-science. Pascal wrote, “Except by Jesus Christ we know not what our life is, what our death is, what God is, what we are ourselves. Thus, without Scripture, which has only Jesus Christ for its object, we know nothing, and we only see obscurity and confusion in the nature of God and in nature herself.” — Blaise Pascal (1623-62), The thoughts, letters and opuscules of Blaise Pascal, Translated from the French by O.W. Wright, Hurd & Houghton, NY, 1964, p. 335.

Oh, and you can write Newton off—he wrote much more on theology than he wrote on physics and calculus. And you can forget Kepler, who saw his research as “thinking God’s thoughts after him”. And Robert Boyle, and … Indeed, even secular historians have noted that modern science arose because of the Christian (i.e., Bible-based) mindset of the intellectuals of the day. See, for example: http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v18/i2/origins.asp.

Ken:

Accepting the Bible as authoritative is not the same as accepting it as inerrant.

Most peopls are aware that many great scientists from the past were Christians. But stating that they were “creationists” in the modern sense of that word is another matter entirely.

People are always influenced by the culture in which they live. And since the great scientific societies were formed in the (relatively) early days after the Reformation, it’s not surprising that they were influenced, at least in their public utterances, by the religious culture.

I suspect that we might get into a distinct thread about just what the religious beliefs of scientists were. It’s not easy digging these out, and some surprises await thoise who actually delve into these things.

Don:

Dr Loren E. Eiseley, a leading science historian and evolutionist (1907-1977) concluded: ‘[by] The sheer act of faith that the universe possessed order and could be interpreted by rational minds… The philosophy of experimental science …began its discoveries and made use of its method in the faith, not the knowledge, that it was dealing with a rational universe controlled by a Creator who did not act upon whim or interfere with the forces He had set in operation. The experimental method succeeded beyond man’s wildest dreams but the faith that brought it into existence owes something to the Christian conception of the nature of God. It is surely one of the curious paradoxes of history that science, which professionally has little to do with faith, owes its origins to an act of faith that the universe can be rationally interpreted, and that science today is sustained by that assumption.’ (Darwin’s Century: Evolution and the Man who Discovered it. Doubleday, New York, 1969,p.62.)

I see nothing in the Bible that contradicts experimental science; only the story telling that goes in the guise of historical science.

Ken:

I think you mean that you see nothing in _your interpretation_ of the Bible which contradicts experimental science. But, of course, there is absolutely nothing in the Bible about virtually all of modern experimental science. I’ll expand on that if anyone wants to disagree or asks for details.

Salaam Ken Smith