It keeps getting stranger at the creationist blog of the Discovery Institute. There we found a really strange one titled Science, Scripture, and the Image of God, and it was written by Nancy Pearcey.
Nancy’s description at the end says she’s a Discoveroid fellow who is also a professor and scholar in residence at Houston Christian University. She’s been described by The Economist as “America’s pre-eminent evangelical Protestant female intellectual.” Very impressive! Here are some excerpts from her post, with bold font added by us for emphasis, and occasional Curmudgeonly interjections that look [like this]:
Even science depends on the concept of the image of God. [What?] For science to be possible, a culture must embrace two convictions:
that nature has an intelligible order
and that the human mind is capable of discovering that order.
No problems yet — but stay with us! Then she says:
Today we are so used to thinking that nature has a rational order — that there are “laws” of nature — that we tend to think the idea is simply intuitive. [It’s not?] But historian A. R. Hall, in a classic book titled The Scientific Revolution, 1500-1800, argues that no other culture, east or west, ancient or modern, has ever used the word “law” in the context of nature. It arose solely in the West during a time when its culture was permeated by Christianity.
Ooooooooooooh! No one else used the word “law” in the context of nature. After that bombshell she tells us:
As Hall argues, because the God of the Bible was both a creator and a lawgiver, it made sense that this God would give laws to his creation. In his words, “The use of the word ‘law’ in such contexts [i.e., nature] would have been unintelligible in antiquity, whereas the Hebraic and Christian belief in a deity who was at once Creator and Law-giver rendered it valid.”
Ooooooooooooh! This is so profound! She continues:
The second requirement for science is just as important — the conviction that humans have minds that are capable of discovering that order. In his book Darwin’s Century, anthropologist Loren Eiseley explains that science originated from “the sheer act of faith that the universe possessed order and could be interpreted by rational minds.” In other words, science requires an epistemology, or theory of knowledge, guaranteeing that the human mind is equipped to gain genuine knowledge of the world.
Ooooooooooooh! An act of faith! Let’s read on:
Historically, this guarantee came from the doctrine that humanity was created in the image of God — and that therefore human reason reflects, in some measure, the Divine Reason. Perhaps the most famous line of the early scientists is that they wanted to “think God’s thoughts after him.” The phrase comes from Johannes Kepler, an early astronomer.
Another excerpt:
In How the West Won, sociologist Rodney Stark summarizes the impact of Christianity in these words:
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the rise of science is not that the early scientists searched for natural laws, confident that they existed, but that they found them. It thus could be said that the proposition that the universe had an Intelligent Designer is the most fundamental of all scientific theories and that it has been successfully put to empirical tests again and again.
Ooooooooooooh! Proof of the Intelligent Designer! Isn’t this amazing? And now we come to the end:
The exhibit at the Museum of the Bible [Nancy is featured there] has it exactly right. The conviction that humans are created in the image of God is the foundation for what it means to be human and for what we can accomplish.
There you have it, dear reader. You can’t be a Darwinist unless you accept the complete holy-moley package. Isn’t that amazing?
Copyright © 2023. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
The Sensuous Curmudgeon 
“America’s pre-eminent evangelical Protestant female intellectual.”
Or, in short: Idiot.
“because the God of the Bible was both a creator and a lawgiver, it made sense that this God would give laws to his creation.”
That does actually makes sense. That’s like if the God of the Bible was in the bowling league then God would invent bowling leagues.
I am ignorant about Islamic philosophy, but I wonder whether it considers something like laws of nature. Of course, Judaism has the Torah. And, everybody knows about Karma in Hinduism and other religions, and in East Asian religions, there is the Tao.
Whatever.
There is some difficulty in supposing an Omniscient and/or Omnipotent, Omnibenevolent, Omnipresent, Supernatural, Design basis for stuff.
There is the famous problem of Theodicy, the Problem of Evil. ISTM that any treatment of Evil and Omnibenevolence has a corresponding problem with the other “Omnis”. At least, someone proposing an Omni ought to address the corresponding Problem.
As far as the Supernatural, there is all of the treatment of how the Supernatural will produce unwelcome outcomes.
And Design – I need not point out the failures of design.
Excuse me, I have some problem in signing this in the usual way.
TomS
The Universe is orderly. Nothing could exist, other than momentarily, if it were not. Order relies on there being principles of organisation. OK so far.
Now all that remains to demonstrate is that these principles are divinely ordained, rather than originating from the fundamental properties of space, time, matter and energy.
Well, something must have set them up and given them the values they have, right?
Er… no. The “must” in that sentence is unjustifiable. Nobody knows why the fundamental properties of the Universe, or their values, are what they are. But if they were different, we wouldn’t be here to observe them, so if we exist, so must they.
So the argument, “There are laws, therefore there must be a lawmaker” goes the same way as “There is a Universe, therefore there must be a Universe-maker”. It doesn’t follow. As Sportin’ Life said, “It ain’t necessarily so”.
But wait a moment. “There is a table, therefore there must be a carpenter”. That works. Why not for Universes?
Well, we know that tables exist, and even if we had never seen one before, we would be able to discern the marks of tool use on them, and could know they were artefacts. But more importantly, we know that carpenters exist. We’ve seen them at work. We don’t see the equivalent of tool use on the Universe, and although we have observed “stellar nurseries”, we certainly don’t see a Universe maker busying Himself among the baby stars.
So the problem is that all of these propositions are founded on the same misapprehension – that natural law, or its values, must demonstrate the existence of intent and actual “design”. There is no “must” about it.
And here’s the thing: for that argument to work, there has to be a “must”. If there is none, then all we get is another confession of ignorance.
So I don’t know. I have no knowledge. Agnosis.
– Dave Luckett.
@Dave Luckett
Agreed.
But I think that the case for the argument for an agency for the laws of nature has more problems.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
What is the necessity which gives rise to the invention of natural laws?
TomS
Oh, and one more thing…
There always were minds that sought to understand the principles that underlie the physical Universe. Certainly they existed in ancient Greece, Babylon, Persia, India, China, and then in the Islamic world, and it seems likely to me that only the paucity of records prevents them from being found in other places.
But as applied to Western society, that kind of search for knowledge had a remarkably rapid onset, and, once begun, it grew steadily and then explosively as its results became manifest. Lone investigators had always worked as individuals whose discoveries were often forgotten with them, but the last quarter of the fifteenth century saw the appearance of a whole class of scholars no longer concerned with interpreting texts, but with observing and explaining natural effects from natural principle.
Was this novelty caused or assisted by their Christian faith? Or at least by their belief in a law-giving God whose laws could be understood?
That’s arguable, I think, but the argument would have to rebut two classes of objection.
One, that the Christian churches did their very best to suppress and anathematize this activity, once they became aware of its effects. Why, if truth was to be sought, not from authoritative texts, but by direct examination of the physical world, the implication was that the texts did not have authority, not even Holy Writ itself!
Two, that the rise of this new way of thought coincided directly with the schism and then fragmentation of western Christianity. Over the following centuries, the advance of empiricism invariably coincided with the retreat of the Church.
If Christianity were so consonant with the search for natural law, why did it strive to repress that search? And why did it shrink in substance, in influence, in authority, and eventually in membership, as that search succeeded more and more?
If Professor Pearcey is the caliber of scholar that is claimed, it must certainly have occurred to her that her thesis must answer those questions adequately. It can only be my inadequate search skills that have prevented me from finding that material.
– Dave Luckett
“because the God of the Bible was both a creator and a lawgiver, it made sense that this God would give laws to his creation.”
Imagine if judges had to uphold the laws of his creation. They would go around sentencing everyone to thermodynamics. Inane analogies for $100 Alex.
As I understand it, though my knowledge here is superficial, al Ghazali developed the doctrine of occasionalism, according to which things happened according to natural laws because things happened according to the will of God, and the will of God was coherent. I have no idea whether he was trying to solve the problem of how the universe is comprehensible, or (I guess more probably) the problem of how an orderly universe is compatible with an infinitely powerful deity. He is often blamed for the demise of Islamic science, but this makes no sense, because the dates don’t match.
Lucretius argued from the existence of laws of nature to the non-existence of gods capable of arbitrary actions. And the Royal Society arose at a time when Deism had supplanted Christianity in many educated minds, perhaps as a result of revulsion against wars of religion such as the dreadful 30 years War in Europe, and Wars of the Three Kingdoms (sometimes mislabelled the English Civil War) in Britain and Ireland.
Paul Braterman
@Dave Luckett
In the Roman Catholic countries, the oltimate authority was the Catholic Church. The Bible and authentic tradition, as authorized and as interpreted by the Church.
@Paul Braterman
It is often ignored how small is the probability of an unlimited and inscrutable agency to have chosen fine tuning of a universe.
/s/TomS
Perhaps Nancy would understand more about the development off science if she read To Explain the World – The discovery of modern science. On the other hand, maybe I should go back to my laboratory and look for some god in the supply cabinets.
Sir Luckett, Esq, FRIC, FRAC
Identifies the rub:
Pearcey is manifestly not a scholar. She’s a Bible-soaked Christian apologist (apologies to apologists) with inflated credentials, living on the bottom of a very small pond.
In a spasm of masochism I watched a few minutes of some of her brain-damagingly long videos and identified her main thesis: Christianity is the One True ™ Religion, and if you are a Christian you are a better person than every other organism on the planet.
Not surprisingly, Pearcey hangs out with some of the most disreputable, nauseatingly disgusting organizations to be found: Concerned Women of America, Eagle Forum, Family Whatever, Heritage Foundation, etc., all of which are anti-everything.
Most of what Pearcey says is either flat out wrong or doesn’t even rise to the level of being wrong. In short, the perfect Tooter.
It’s equally likely that science was created by the devil to caste on religion.
@Docbill1351, it’s concerned women FOR America. The Amercan exceptionalism is never far from the surface with this mob.
But how did you find out about her collections with all those other nasties? Serious question; I’m exploring connections between the creationists and political and conservative social policy groups, in connection with my work.
I tracked down the quote “America’s pre-eminent evangelical Protestant female intellectual.” to https://www.economist.com/prospero/2010/12/10/rallying-to-restore-god, Prospero is an opinion piece writer, so highbrow I need a telescope to look up to him. Her Wikipedia bio shows the full depth of her shallowness, and Prospero’s article shows exactly why he finds her admirable. Converted by no less a person than Francis Schaefer, who thinks everything since and including Thomas Aquinas has been a mistake, because you should not put intellect on the same level as faith. There is IIRC a good discussion of Schaefer in Tim LaHaye’s The Battle for the Mind
Wikipedia says that she ” has had the primary responsibility for promoting the movement’s viewpoint through op-eds, for journals and magazine’s, especially World magazine”. World magazine writes stuff about climate change that is reposted by the Cornwall Alliance, and last time I looked its front page was concerned that Trump may be softening his line of abortion
https://www.christianpost.com/news/franklin-graham-millennials-hold-your-nose-vote-donald-trump-interview.html
Hopefully they will hold their nose on the abortion thing too so that the hypocrisy will be on fine display. Although the unfortunate side effect of that “hypocrisy showcase, come on down!” effect will be the election of that guy again.
@PaulB
Yes, “Concerned” Women FOR America. Wendy Wight, er, Wright who laughed in Richard Dawkins’ face used to be Prez, but got kicked out for being too extreme. Wight, er, Wright is a huge proponent of “traditional family values” but has none of that probably because she put her dating profile on OK Harpy.
I snagged Pearcey’s affiliations from her very own website:
Just your average bigoted American hate groups, Christian nationalists and bog standard seditionists.
@docbill1351
“traditional family values” is a curious phrase. There are few examples of ideal family values in the Bible – and is there any mention of what are family values? And reference to “tradition” seems contrary to evangelical (reform rather than Catholic) Christianity.
/s/TomS
@TomS
“Traditional family values” is a right-wing, buckle-hatted, blue stockings slogan used to establish a sanctimonious holier-than-thou do-as-I-say authoritative position employed as both a cudgel and a shield by the Christian Ignoratti to establish their moral superiority over everybody else.
Ignoring the rampant hypocrisy on display everywhere you look, the values consist of a Christian family comprised of a straight, white, submissive housewife, and a macho straight white man, the breadwinner, who is not too educated but makes “good money” to support his family, a straight, white daughter, a straight, white son, a small dog preferring a scruffy mutt named Rover rather than a Bichon Frise named Charles.
The White Family lives in a modest, two-story house in a white neighborhood, attend the Church of the Immaculate White with their white neighbors. While the housewives plan the Spring Church Bazaar, the men grill hamburgers and reminisce about their high school glory days.
Of course, none of this exists outside of their fever-swamp brains, which explains why “conservatives” are perpetually angry, disappointed and sad about their lives.
“The use of the word ‘law’ in such contexts [i.e., nature] would have been unintelligible in antiquity, whereas the Hebraic and Christian belief in a deity who was at once Creator and Law-giver rendered it valid.”
There is a subtle but tiny infinitesimal hardly worth mentioning difference between the laws of nature and the laws of Christian deity guy. Try breaking the laws of nature and see what you get. You get a new law named after you and a Nobel prize. You didn’t actually break any laws–you defined a new one. Now try breaking a law of Yahweh. The only prize you get is a curse on your family and a stoning if you’re lucky. No new laws and everyone stays a caveman.
@Anonymous
And if God does not follow the laws of nature, we get a proof of God – only God could do that. If God follows the laws of nature, we get a proof of God – the proof from design.
TomS
TomS:
That’s very neat, a perfect example of a double-bind. With your permission, I’ll use it myself, with attribution.
@Dave Luckett
Thank you. And feel free to use it.
TomS
@Dave Luckett
Thank you. And feel free to use it.
TomS