Natural Blogarithms

In my Faith and Science course, when we covered the scientific models for origins of the universe, we studied the “mainstream” model of the Big Bang. I remember making the comment that for many Christians who are scientists, the idea of a Big Bang at the beginning of the universe is completely consistent with the idea of God as Creator. “God spoke and BANG, it was”.[..]

Dr. Boyd was in charge for another day. This time he covered topics from the history of science as an illustration of how science progresses. Using specific case studies from the history of scientific endeavor, we learn some important principles that undergird how we understand science as it is today.[...]

In today’s class, we were fortunate to have one of my colleagues from our division direct the class. This is the third time this class has been offered at Wayland. The first two times, this faculty member and I co-taught the class. I’ll be honest and tell you that being the sole teacher this semester has been an enormous challenge, much greater than the last two. It was extremely helpful to have someone in class bouncing ideas off of. In the current scenario, I appear much more as the “expert” and less of the facilitator in the discussion. Today’s class was like the “good ole days”.[..]

If the Mosaic account of cosmogony (the account of the creation in Genesis) is strictly correct, the sun was not created till the fourth day. And if the sun was not created till the fourth day, it could not have been the cause of the alternation of day and night for the first three days. But either the word “day” is used in Scripture in a different sense from that in which it is commonly accepted now or else the sun must have ben the cause of the alternation of day and night for the first three days. Hence it follows that either the Mosaic account of the cosmogony is not strictly correct or else the word “day” is used in Scripture in a different sense from that in which it is commonly accepted now.[...]

Today in class, the rest of the students finished presenting the short oral reports over the classical arguments for the existence of God. Following this, we delved into the basics of Logic and Reason, covering the basic structures of logic: [...]

Today in Faith and Science we went over a couple of interesting articles concerning how we might integrate Faith into our Science curriculum at Christian universities. One author proposes that scientific research can be directed by the understanding that God is the cause of natural law. The second author responds to the first author, maintaining that the creation must surely have some level of autonomy so that not all things are directly caused by God. They are worth your time if you are interested: [...]

During Faith and Science on Monday, the students were allowed to continue collaborating in their groups (2 groups of 4) to decide on their final working definitions of faith and science. After 30 minutes or so, the groups went to the board and recorded their definitions for faith and for science. They then made the effort to assimilate their definitions. [..]

To begin class on Friday, I went over a few interesting entries that have been made on the class blogs. As part of this course, the students are required to maintain a personal blog over the topics of this course. Up to this point, they have each been asked to post entries on a series of questions, such as encountering conflicts between science and religion, their perspective on miracles, their firm or nor-so-firm opinion on the origin of the universe, etc. [..]

So far in the Faith and Science course we have spent some time discussing the importance of our worldview, Flatland, and definitions of important terms. We concluded that even scientists who hope to achieve true objectivity are inevitably victims of their own biases. Are there are ways to overcome this bias? [...]