We are off to a good start for this
edition of the website! Let's summarize our findings so
far. We at Thomas Ministries believe that there is much
to be gained by a thoughtful reconciliation of science
and faith. The basic premise of the Thomas Ministries is
that absolute truth exists. The basic function of the
Thomas Ministries is to pursue that truth, and the basic
promise of the Thomas Ministries is that we will never
intentionally suppress that truth. We have presented
what we see as a very strong case that truth
relativized is truth destroyed. We see the pursuit
of truth as the great common denominator to science,
philosophy, and the Christian faith. Scientific
investigation is in fact the search for the truth about
ourselves and the world around us. The Christian faith
necessarily includes the search for the truth about
ourselves, the world around us, and about God. Given
that science is the pursuit of truth, and the biblical
Christian faith is a revelation of truth, the two must
meet somewhere. The Thomas Project is intended to
identify and describe that "somewhere" more clearly.
This is the basis for the motto of the Thomas
Ministries, "truth arises where science meets faith."
Thomas Ministries, however, is not focused on either
a presentation of so-called "creation science," nor a
defense of creation science. Rather, the point is to
examine where truth leads us with respect to humanity in
particular, and with respect to the world in general. We
find characterizing the interaction of science and faith
by the battle cry of "It's either evolution only or
creation science only!" to be too limited and unhelpful
to properly investigate the relationships between the
Christian faith and science. We are not interested in
blind adherence to the dogmatic traditions of either the
scientific community, or the religious community.
We have acknowledged that the
historical atrocities associated with historical
Christianity bear no resemblance to the message of
repentance, peace and love embodied by the life and
works of Jesus of Nazareth. We do not condone them. But
we also find it unacceptable to reject investigating
Christianity on the basis of hypocrisy, since hypocrisy
is common to all worthwhile human endeavors. We have
seen that the scientific community itself has a major
set of issues with respect to hypocrisy, but still takes
itself quite seriously. If nothing else, hypocrisy can
be viewed as unfortunate common ground between science
and the Christian faith, but its ongoing presence in
both should not be used as an excuse to fail to
investigate either.
We have found one of the fundamental
obstacles in the effort to reconcile science and the
Christian faith is the faulty perception of the role of
evidence in both communities. We have demonstrated that
science is not reasoning only on the basis of evidence.
We have also demonstrated that the Christian faith is
not "blind faith" (i.e. faith without evidence). The
importance of evidence to both communities cannot be
overstated. Neither can the importance of the sound
handling of evidence by both communities be overstated.
What we call "reasoning beyond the evidence" is
essential to the scientific method. What we at Thomas
Ministries call "evidence-based faith" is essential to
the Christian faith.
We also investigated and showed false
the concept that science is only operable in the realm
of the repeatable and the testable. We examined how the
science of origins deals with such non-repeatable events
as the beginning of the universe and the beginning of
life. Forensic sciences were also found to be dealing
with the reconstruction of one-time events such as
crimes or other past events.
Feedback/Comments/Questions |