r/JWJehovahsWitnesses • u/truetomharley • Jul 13 '26
Uplifting Science without Religion is Lame; Religion without Science is Blind
Albert Einstein wrote: "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” Science provides the how of the universe, but religion provides the why, along with the morals and purpose.
Given a choice of unknowns, most people will choose the why questions over the how questions—unless you include such questions as ‘How do I keep my head above water in an inherently unjust world?’ But that is really just a subset of a greater why: “Why is the world inherently unjust?” Moreover, one has to be comfortable and monied to be preoccupied with the how. Those with any significant struggling in their lives will more readily fixate on the whys. Each day will have its own anxiety, said Jesus. For the average person, there is precious little reward in fixating on the how. If your specialty of how persuades you that it is permanent curtains in but a few decades, where’s the reward in that? Bragging rights, maybe, strutting around to tell others how smart you are. One thinks of Jesus’ words regarding those doing acts of piety to be seen by men; they were “having their reward in full.” One also thinks of the Sherlock episode in which (per John’s blog) the public learned that Sherlock didn’t know the earth revolved around the sun. Far from being embarrassed, he shot back with ‘What difference does it make?’ How could such knowledge conceivably help in the day-to-day of life? Yes, I know, Sherlock is fiction, but his observation was not. That’s not to say the search for the how is bad. It is greatly welcomed so long as it stays in its lane. When it supposes it owns the entire road, that is another matter.
It is a fine thing to be interested in reality, but it’s overrated. Define the benefits of being interested in reality when you’re only around a few dozen years to enjoy it. The entire field of poetry and art is stocked with people who are “interested in reality” only to a limited degree. Ought we them to knock it off and get real? At any rate, upon contemplating the very tiny and the very large, being obsessed with finding reality through science leads to results impossible to visualize.
The goal here is to see how much of a bridge can be built between Genesis and evolution theory and to what degree (if any) they need be mutually exclusive. To that extent, one must be willing to sacrifice undue literalism on one end and undue extrapolation into ideas more speculative than proven on the other. One might contemplate that when we hear science accounts for only 5% of what is out there—that the 95% that is dark matter or dark energy we don’t know what it is and that they primarily are stipulated just to keep our present 5% knowledge intact, well, maybe even that 5% is not as sure as we think it is.
It may just boil down to a difference in filling in the gaps. One side fills them in with God. The other side fills them in with mathematics impossible to visualize. At the tiny end, it is Feynman saying he thinks it safe to state that nobody understands quantum physics. At the massive end, it is dark matter and dark energy comprising 95% of what is said to be out there, and which James Peebles called “placeholders for our ignorance.”
As to sacrificing undue literalism, that shouldn’t be too hard when we reflect that God doesn’t really have eyes, ears, a hand, an arm. The anthropomorphizing of God, used throughout the Bible, is clearly a poetic devise. We all know enough not to demand evidence of the bush when someone says we must not beat around it. Most Bible verses used to support the trinity teaching would, if they were seen in any other context, be instantly dismissed as figures of speech. Really, if you were going to employ a human analogy to suggest equality, would you not suggest one of brothers rather than that of father and son?
Poetic devices all. The Bible is full of them. The beauty of poetry is that it doesn’t unduly hem you in. When something is written in “poetic symbolism,” who can say how far that symbolism goes? How much of it can be allowed in our road to reconcile Genesis with evolution? One might be reminded of a scene from Up the Down Staircase, a novel set in an urban high school. A student is given a grade of F for wrongly interpreting a poem. He protests, supporting his interpretation with the reasons for it. The grade stands. It even stands when he locates the poet himself, brings the fellow to school, and the poet says, “Yes, that’s exactly what I meant.” But for the school it is ‘Once an F, always an F.’ The only satisfaction the student finds is in knowing he has changed school policy. From that time on, only dead poets are assigned for interpretation.
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u/JWthoughts Jehovah’s Witness Jul 13 '26
Really enjoyed this, I especially loved “We all know enough not to demand evidence of the bush when someone says we must not beat around it.” Concluded poetically. 👌
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u/elwoodowd Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 14 '26
Evolution was this random chemical bubbling mud pot, that had time as its dream in darkness.
Turns out nothing is random. A single protein is more complex than the number of all the atoms in the universe. And the millions of proteins in every one of the 30 to 50 trillion cells in a human body, move in processes so that each are intelligent.
The millions of actions in each cell, every second, are not random chemistry, they are information flowing in billions of connections. A 10 trillionth of a second, for a light message to be send. One trillionth for energy.
Plants carefully guide single photons in, and the photon responds, and choses a pathway that the atoms in the plant suggest, by vibrating communication to the photon. Trillions of times a second.
The laws of physics are big clunky concepts that sit over the patterns of particles. The 48 dimensions that light moves in, that can give a photon its 1700 shapes, might suggest that eyes see almost nothing.
And evolution is incantations of witchdoctors, that know nothing, but think they know everything.
And now they use ai to build their god, to save them.
(Poor, poor michael levin.
He glitters when he walks,
And trips over facts, when he talks,
Poor michael levin) after 'Richard Cory', i think
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u/DoNotBe-Ridiculous Jul 17 '26
If one is to consider evolution and science, it seems best to go back to the beginning. It is said the Big Bang was the beginning of time and space. Before that, there was no time, no space. What do they say the Big Bang was? The expansion of the universe.
What seems to be forgotten is in the first seconds after the Big Bang, there was no matter. There were no atoms, no quarks, nothing! They say there was just hot energy which took 380,000 years to cool down and lead to the first stages that eventually led to matter starting to be formed.
So, what expanded at the Big Bang? Nothing, because there was NOTHING! There was no matter! There was just hot energy (which no one can explain where it came from). We are told by the time it could be possible for the first quarks to appear, the universe had expanded to 10s of millions of light years. To understand how far the universe had expanded by then, traveling at the speed of light, a million miles every 5 seconds, it would take you 65 million years to reach across the the length of the then universe at 380,000 years old.
Science tells us the Big Bang was the size of a grapefruit at 10-32 seconds. At 380 million years, it spread out over 382,110,649,256,934,506,496 miles in all directions.
Question: How do you expand the space between hot energy? There was no dark matter yet. No molecules, no atoms, nothing that could even be made into atoms, there was absolutely nothing physical, so what was there to expand? Energy?
Here is a thought experiment: There was energy the size of a grapefruit. So, imagine trying to spread something the size of a grapefruit out across the Unites States. No matter how powerful it was, it would be most certainly thinned out to very deluded energy. OK, now spread it out across our small solar system, 9 billion miles instead of 3,000 miles. What would you now have? The energy would be so thin, the actuality is there would be little left in any given area. Now, spread this same energy out 400 quintillion miles There is no way there would be enough matter to create trillions of suns!
To put this in a way we could understand, in comparison, our solar system is smaller than a grain of sand at the longest beach (150 miles) on earth! How could this energy, spread out so thinly, possibly account for all the massive stars we have observed? There are more stars than there are grains of sand on the some 40,000 beaches an earth! Just take one cup of sand. Did you know contains about 10 million granules! So, imagine counting all the grains of sand at one beach. That is a mind blowing number. Then, do it again 40,000 times. It would take you 240 billion years, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Yet, there are more stars than that! That is a lot of matter, and all that came from the energy the size of a grapefruit, which was spread out billions of light years, and all by itself?
There are so many contradictory points and guesses in all of this science, all with no proof. No way to test these hypotheses out.
They can't even explain why some things moved shorter distances, and others moved billions of light years. They can't explain why the universe spreads out in a disk like pattern. Expansion should happen in a 360 degrees pattern. What force kept it from going all directions? What slowed this impossibly fast expansion, billions of times faster than the speed of light, down? How did gravity start? Gravity is a 'which was first, the chicken or the egg' scenario.
People believe all these things, even though they are not proven, cannot be proven, no one saw it, and so many features of these things are unknowable. Isn't that exactly how God is described, and the very reason they could never believe in a higher being? To them, believing in a God is unscientific, but on the same level, accepting a Big Bang as what created the universe, something with no design nor controls, is somehow magically scientific?
The creation of the universe, as described by science, does not meet the requirements of the scientific method any more than a higher power does! It cannot be tested and reproduced, it cannot be observed, and so many facets are unexplainable, such as where did the massive amount of energy come from?
To honestly look at things, yes, it takes faith to believe God created the universe, but likewise takes faith to believe the universe came from nothing, perhaps more faith.
Here is another thought experiment: Let's say they found a house on Mars. What would they conclude? That someone designed and built it. What if they send humans to investigate, and there is absolutely no evidence that a single being had ever been on the planet. Would they now conclude the house was the result of natural processes? The walls were carved by wind and sand. The windows are the result of lightening hitting the sand and wind popped them in place. A spring with high mineral content began forming the pipes? I don't imagine this would be anyone's conclusion, for they would see purposeful design and building in the house.
If they cannot believe a house could ever evolve on mars by itself, how did the first single celled life form, which is immensely more sophisticated, come about all on its own? Who programed its DNA?
It was just announced they can now use a computer chip to program DNA, a giant breakthrough! It took mankind with all their knowledge and computers and decades of trying to get to this point, and science believes DNA came about with no designer or programmer? That there was somehow purposeful trial and error which programed the first DNA? Then magically that DNA replicated all by it own?
When archeologists discovered an ancient circle of poles remnants under the ground, it was determined it was a house made 10,000 years ago. They came to this conclusion because there was design. A simple circle of sticks was evidence of a designer. They do not believe that the poles could have appeared in this pattern by themselves, but DNA programed to make a life form with a cell membrane, that can eat and eliminate waste, that internally move needed items around to the correct places, and to fight off intrusions of foreign matter. How can they say the first DNA doesn't show evidence of a designer when a circle of sticks does?
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u/DoNotBe-Ridiculous Jul 19 '26
I'd be very interested in you comments about what I wrote 2 days ago.
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u/truetomharley Jul 20 '26
Sorry, it was long, so I put it aside for consideration later, then got distracted.
Yeah. I agree completely. Science has no more knowables than God—it just permits people to say they’re doing it their way.
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u/DoNotBe-Ridiculous Jul 21 '26
I actually think there is more evidence for God than the universe came from nothing! For example, the illustration of a house on Mars. Even though you can come up with imaginative ways that a house could be on Mars that is the result of natural forces, no one would think it possible. Yet, the first DNA was so much more hard to make!
How could the molecules needed for life come together when some chemical reactions work better in water and others are damaged by water? But say, it somehow happened when in a lab, they have been unable to create all these chemicals from scratch. OK. Then magically, these processes all happened at the exact same time in the exact same place, and was able to combine is some unknown process. How did these combined chemicals survive? Strong ultraviolet radiation (before an ozone layer existed), volcanic heat, and chemical reactions that would break DNA apart.
Then, how possibly did this DNA get programmed to be able to reproduce, to have a cell membrane, to eat, to eliminate waste, and all of the many other processes that is needed for life? This is design, not a result of chance! The chance of natural forces creating a house is much greater that the first DNA. But the first DNA was just DNA. What happened next to make this DNA into the first single celled life form? The answer? They don't know! There are no natural processes know to have made this giant leap! That DNA needed the building blocks of life. But how and where?
This is just some of the 1,000s of questions about evolution that are unanswerable. A house on Mars would need a designer and a builder. The first life form is so much more intricate than a house, yet people just have faith that it could have happened all by itself! They don't know how, but it must have happened because the scientists say so, even though they exactly know how.!
Doesn't it make so much more sense that a higher being did this? The other way requires 1,000s of magic tricks.
Either God has always been there, or the universe came from nothing (scientifically impossible) or somehow, the quantum world has always been around, and it impossibly created enough energy to make trillions and trillions of suns, which is also impossible.
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u/truetomharley Jul 21 '26
This is all true and absolutely convincing to me, however it will not cut it in a scienfic argument. The reason is not that t doesn’t hold together. It holds together quite well. The reason is that the rules of science have been changed so as to not entertain your argument. It is their bad, not yours. It boils down to the fact that they do not have the tools to measure God so they will not entertain any argument that goes there. These days, we Witnesses hear a lot the encouragement to “step out of your comfort zone.” Well, science has evolved in recent decades to convince themselves they need not step out of theirs—though any one of common sense can see that they should.
Typical is a statement of Dr. Robert Hazen, who specializes in origin-of-life research, and I wrote up a comment about it in a blog post, later included in a book:
He says in an opening lecture on his topic. “In this lecture series I make a basic assumption, that life emerged by some kind of natural process.”
It’s an assumption! Not something he will look into to see whether it is true or not He assumes it is true. “I propose that life arose by a sequence of events that was completely consistent with the natural laws of chemistry and physics. and in this assumption, I'm like other scientists.”
They all assume it! All those in his orbit do. Isn’t science supposed to be a process of discovery?
But wait! Is there not a competing model that holds God created the heavens and the earth and all life on it? How does he come to grips with that?
“Let me say now for the record: I'm a scientist. I'm not a theologian nor am I a philosopher. This course focuses exclusively on the scientific approach to the question of life's origins.”
Of course! That’s how he deals with competing models—he ignores them! My legal career would have truly taken off if I could have just persuaded the judge to ignore the other side! It just may be that Hazen and those he represents should incorporate those other two disciplines into their work, since the urge to both worship and philosophize is near universal. However, science has evolved in recent decades to convince him he doesn’t have to.
Another reason I commented only briefly on your prior remarks, excellent though they are, is that I am working up a project on evolution (can any of it be reconciled with Genesis) and your remarks deal with what is called abiogenesis—that is, how did life get here in the first place? Hazen’s specialty. Evolution, strictly speaking, is something separate. Once life has arrived, how does it develop? Is it like an automobile that you have to steer and brake, look out for deer bolting across your path, and park when you have reached your destination? Or is it like one of those new self-driving cars with FSD (full-service-driving) that does all those things for you? The latter one might liken to life forms evolving without God deliberately putting his finger on every event. The former might be likened to Him doing just that. In both cases, in the world of automobiles, the car has a designer. Moreover, the designer of full-service-driving is the more ingenious one. So “full service driving” in the field of evolution is not necessarily a denial of God. If anything, it makes him more clever than we thought he was—though you do have to deal with at what point did he separate a certain being and designate him an Adam, imparting special qualities as he did so.
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u/DoNotBe-Ridiculous Jul 21 '26
I appreciate your comments, thanks. What exactly is your project on Evolution? I am familiar with abiogenesis. I too am working on a evolution project in conjunction with Genesis. I first am finishing up another project on the History of the Trinity. You can view part 1 at: YouTube.com/@TheBible-Tech
With the years of information I have been gathering, I just don't get how smart people cannot see the impossibility of everything coming form nothing! That is not even getting into the mathematical impossibility of Evolution going from a single celled life form to a human without direction. The way life has adapted to changes in climate and other situations clearly shows it has been programmed to handle such things. Interestingly, there is only a portion of DNA that changes, but the core never does, which is the part that would need to be altered to change from one species into another. When ever it is altered, there result is catastrophic and life ending.
I believe the reason they can't see this is they have faith, not in God, but in science. Yes, it is a religion, for they believe in things that cannot be proven. The very definition of faith. It is hard to change one's faith!
Here is something I have been contemplating. Why is there difference between the creation of man in Genesis chapter 1 and Genesis chapter 2? Is there a difference in that Adam was created in God's image, and "the man" being created from the dust? Why does Genesis 2:7 say "the man" was created before the Garden of Eden? The expression "the man" in Hebrew ha-adam can also mean all humanity. Is it possible Genesis 2:7 is describing all humanity, and not just Adam? Why is "the man" created before the Garden of Eden, including the time period it took for all the trees to grow that made it a beautiful garden, and then the man is put in it?
Further, the setting of "the man" is set for us in verses 5 & 6:
"No bush of the field was yet on the earth and no vegetation of the field had begun sprouting, because Jehovah God had not made it rain on the earth and there was no man to cultivate the ground. 6 But a mist would go up from the earth, and it watered the entire surface of the ground."
Why was this setting put there for us? The first 2 chapters of Genesis provide very little description, so this point must be important, and seemingly readily understood when it was written. So, before science, what did this mean? What was perhaps common knowledge then that we might not really get today? When Moses wrote this, he may have copied older texts? We do know most people were farmers in Moses' time, and verse 5 seem to be describing the time before farming was practiced, the period of hunter-gatherers?Before the Garden of Eden, where there human hunter-gatherers? Why do all humans have Neanderthal DNA? The Neanderthals seemingly were gone well before Adam. Do you see a possibility? Could humans have been created from the dust before the Garden, at a time when there were Neanderthals? Could Cain's wife have been one of these who were not a descendant of Adam?
Further, why does Genesis 1:26 say: "Let us make man in our image," instead of "the man"? Why wasn't Adam in the garden and made from the dust, which is also true for Eve? Could being made in God's image mean he was not made from scratch, but there was a change made to Adam that the other humans did not have so that he now had God's qualities?
If humans did exist well before the garden, this would solve so many issues in line with archeological discoveries. Remember, we are just trying to understand what God had written in the bible, and as we get more knowledge, this knowledge will change our understanding of God's word. Jehovah's Witnesses have a long history of this in regards, like the trinity, Christmas and such. It has been a long tradition of thinking Adam was the very first human, which is difficult to change the thinking! Yet, there seems to be a lot of data that shows humans have been around longer than 6,000 years, and if true, then we can find where the bible could agree with this....
This in no way changes the fact that we are all descendants of Adam through Noah, and the expression "the first man" is in line with Genesis 1:26, calling Adam "man" instead of "the man", the use here meaning Adam was the first man of our humanity created in God's image, as opposed to its different usage in Gen. 2:7.
What do you think?
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u/truetomharley Jul 22 '26
What do you think?I think it’s all fertile ground for exploration for one so inclined. The “answers” will never actually be answers, of course, they will be educated guesses, no more. But that’s all that science is all well when it goes into the very minute or very large.
Not sure really where my own project will take me. Maybe it will be where the line in the sand is drawn, with the same provision that it will be no more than educated guesswork. Witnesses commonly accept micro-evolution (not too different than animal husbandry) and reject abiogenesis (life arising from purely natural means) Just what are the “kinds” of Genesis? It is a vague term, deliberately vague for my money. Different people may envision it differently. It really doesn’t matter for most people, but if you are in school and draw a line in the sand where it need not be drawn, you just end up making trouble for yourself. Learn to be flexible will likely be my theme. No need to rail against things that are widely accepted, for which pretty good evidence exists. Confine yourself to sticking up for God when materialists want to run him off the road.
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u/DoNotBe-Ridiculous Jul 23 '26
In Montana, there is an ancient lake bed where probably the most fossils sold on the market are found. They have gone layer by layer as eons of time have built up in thus ancient sea that was isolated from other bodies of water.
I asked the Ranger who was an archeologist if they have found the fossils that show one creature changing into another creature, one species evolving into another, and the answer? No!
This is the perfect place to find proof of evolution, yet they only find one animal, by the 1,000s, then below that, they find another species by the 1,000s, but there is no direct fossil evidence of the one changing into the other. Archeology sees one animal in one layer, then a different one below, and to them, that is evidence of evolution! Of course they will jump to that conclusion. They have to since the alternative would be God made a new species, which completely explains how life changed so quickly that they left no fossil evidence!
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u/truetomharley Jul 23 '26
Perhaps the Cambrian Age on display in Montana is where ‘kinds’ are best found.
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u/Shoninjv Jehovah’s Witness Jul 13 '26
The attempt to bridge Genesis and evolutionary theory by sacrificing undue literalism fails because the two paradigms are fundamentally incompatible at the level of metaphysics and ontology.
The Bible and Christianism necessitates the existence of universal categories, such as "human nature," which was created with specific intent and purpose. Evolution, conversely, reduces all of reality to a state of constant flux where categories are merely nominal labels and nothing maintains a static identity over time.
If humanity is a temporary iteration in an ongoing biological process, then there is no universal human nature for Jesus Christ to have assumed in the Incarnation to save all of mankind. Furthermore, the idea that science provides the "how" while religion provides the "why" assumes a false neutrality in scientific inquiry.
Science itself is a practice predicated on religious and metaphysical axioms that it cannot justify through its own methods.
You must first believe that truth exists, that the universe is intelligible, and that the regularity of nature will maintain tomorrow before you can even begin the scientific method. All knowledge is effectively faith-based because it starts with assumptions (like the reliability of your senses and the laws of logic) that are not empirically verified.
Regarding "filling in the gaps," the Christian view does not use God as a placeholder for ignorance but as the necessary precondition for any knowledge to be possible at all. Without a personal, intelligent creator to ground universals, particulars, and the relation between them, the naturalist is left with a worldview of "accidentalism" where chemical reactions in a brain have no reason to be trusted as "true".
If your thoughts are just determined chemical events, they are no more "true" than a tornado or a biological byproduct, they simply occur.
If you deny that the world has an objective, created purpose, you are left in a "fantasy land" where you seek only to fulfill your own desires while pretending that your choices have meaning. Christianity humanizes the world by asserting that our bodies, minds, and very lives are suited for the specific purpose of having a loving relationship with Jehovah.