Module 1: Foundational Terms

Module 1:Foundational Terms

Module 1 • Naturalism as a metaphysical philosophical construct attempts to give a well-defined and valid account of what its adherents consider “all of reality.” • Logic – The study and use of methods for evaluating reasoning. The truth claims on which an inference is based are premises, and the truth claim inferred from a premise or premises is a conclusion. Arguments are deductive or inductive.

Module 1 • Three popular current worldviews that compete for adherents in the marketplace of ideas include secular naturalism, mystical pantheism, and Christian theism. • Pantheism andpanentheism – Both reject theism. Pantheism denies (1) the personality of God and (2) the transcendence of God, and (3) that the cosmos was created. Panentheism allows for God’s transcendence so allows for some distinction within it’s framework. Modern cosmology, specifically the belief in a need for a cause of the universe, can be seen to undermine both pantheism and panentheism.

Module 1 • Scientific investigation is an exploration of creation that is a form of creation revelation. • Big Bang – the most widely accepted theory for the origin history and structure of the universe. In broad outline, the big bang theory describes the universe as a measurable system that expands from a singular beginning of matter, energy, space, and time under pervasive and constant laws of physics.

Module 1 • The Scientific Revolution was led by the philosophical work of Francis Bacon and the experimental and observational methods of Galileo Galilei. • A new meaning for science had developed by the 1860s,which prioritized physical and experimental knowledge to the exclusion of theological and metaphysical knowledge.

Module 2: Historical Development of Science in the West

Module 2 • Aristotle’s ideas about causation had a significant influence on Western approaches to science, religion, and ethics. His investigation of the questions “What is being?” and “What is substance?” led him to make a detailed study of the natures or essences of things. • Aristotle then developed an account of the "four causes" as a way of articulating his understanding of the nature of things. According to Aristotle, the matter out of which an object is made is its material cause, and the arrangement of the matter can be said to be its formal cause.

Module 2 • The earliest church fathers had little to say about science. Science was a minority interest, and there were not many reasons for apologists or theologians to engage with it. • Modern science undisputedly developed in the Christian West. Alongside the rise of science was the question of the history of science.

Module 2 • Natural philosophers and theologians developed a model called the "two books metaphor," according to which God has revealed himself in the two “books” of his Word (the Bible) and his world (the created order). As such, the two domains were able to operate independently and in support of oneanother. • The scientific revolution was largely launched by Nicolaus Copernicus and his theory that the Earth revolved around the Sun.

Module 2 • The beginnings of the Enlightenment period can be traced to the work of René Descartes (1596–1650)—specifically, his program of doubt aimed at establishing the discipline of philosophy. • The Renaissance was characterized by an interest in the literary achievements of the classical world, most notably astrology. There was a high profile dispute between the Catholic Church and Galileo and his heliocentrism that led to his death. The direct influence of established churches over scientific practice began to wane during this period.

Module 3: Genesis and Modern Science, Part 1

Module 3 • Genesis 1–11 has been at the center of perhaps the most heated interchanges about theology and science, particularly with respect to its description of the creation of the cosmos and humanity. • Since the Protestant Reformation, which emphasized a more literal understanding of the biblical text, the predominant view until recently has been that the creation days were each 24 hours long.

Module 3 • The day-age view of the days of creation argues that the Hebrew term yôm is literal, but refers to a long but finite time period. The six “days” are understood as six sequential but non-overlapping periods. • The 24-hour day view of the days of creation argues that the term yôm is not used within Genesis 1:1–2:3 to allow for a figurative view and that a figurative or metaphorical explanation is problematic for interpreting the bible as a whole.

Module 3 • The results of the Human Genome Project suggest that the original population of humans was comprised of at least ten thousand people.If this is true, Adam and would need to be understood as a representative couple. • The evolutionary model of the fall takes Adam and Eve as a representative historical couple or as a literary model from which a theological principle is drawn.

Module 3 • The literal view of the fall argues that the genealogies of the Old Testament and the authors of the New Testament assume Adam to be a historical person. The role of the historical Adam in the fall is a test case for the relationship between science and faith. • Anthropology is the study of humankind, past and present, and is commonly divided into four subfields: biological anthropology, sociocultural anthropology, linguistics, and archaeology.

Module 4: Genesis and Modern Science, Part 2

Module 4 • Most scientists in the early part of the twentieth century assumed that the universe did not have a beginning and had existed forever. However, observations over the last hundred years or so give strong evidence that the universe had a beginning in an event. • Current astronomical evidence consistently shows that the universe has been undergoing a continual expansion of space since its beginning about 13.8 billion years ago.

Module 4 • Radiometric dating refers to analyses of naturally occurring materials and human artifacts that rely on measurements of radioactive atoms, or the products of radioactivity, to quantify the passage of time. • The first radiometric dating techniques were developed in the early twentieth century, shortly after the discovery of radioactivity by Henri Becquerel in 1896, and applied to rocks and minerals from the earth’s crust.

Module 4 • Evolutionary creationism is the Christian view that God, as creator and sustainer of the cosmos, was pleased to use evolution as the means for creating biodiversity on earth. • According to the theological view of the flood, there is no geological evidence for the flood, which there should be if there was a global inundation of the earth. Efforts to find such evidence over the years have failed.

Module 4 • The Gilgamesh Epic is perhaps the best-known Mesopotamian literary composition today, and it has important connections to the biblical story of the flood. • The similarities between the Gilgamesh Epic and the Genesis flood narrative make it highly likely that there is some connection between these flood traditions, but the exactnature of their relationship is a matter of speculation.

Module 5: Biological Evolution, Darwinism, and Intelligent Design

Module 5 • In terms of a fundamental definition, evolution is the change in average characteristics of a population over time. • The roles of fossil evidence, genetics, and the origin of Homo sapiens have all contributed to the debates about human evolution. • Sometimes Darwinism is used as a synonym for Charles Darwin’s scientific theory of evolution.

Module 5 • Most scientists think that all living organisms, including Homo sapiens, have been formed through a process of gradual modification from preexisting species, so that all living things share common ancestors. • Methodological naturalism is a highly controversial principle of scientific methodology. The basic idea is that “by its very nature, science is obliged to leave out any appeal to the supernatural.”

Module 5 • Natural selection is the idea that the genetic variations offspring inherit confer a slight advantage in navigating the ecological pressures, giving them a small differential reproductive advantage. • The theory of natural selection consists of three elements: (1) there is variability in natural populations; (2) some of this variability is heritable; and (3) some variants have qualities (“adaptations”) that enable them to reproduce more effectively than others.

Module 5 • Later thinkers in the Christian tradition built on the insights of the Greeks and developed the argument for the existence of a Designer, or a divine mind, behind the universe. The design argument’s premise is that the universe shows evidence of design or order. This order is detectable in ordinary empirical ways. • Intelligent design shares a middle ground between youngearth creationists and theistic evolutionists. For this reason, intelligent design is at once too radical for theistic evolutionists and not radical enough for youngearth creationists.

Module 6: Selected Biblical and Theological Issues Related to Modern Science

Module 6 • Affirmation of the transcendence of God—God’s radical nonidentity with this world in any aspect—is a staple of biblical theology,as is the affirmation of his immanence—God’s radical “direct” contact with even the innermost particulars of this world. • David Hume shaped the modern period’s discussion of the possibility of miracles. Hume denied miraculous activity on the basis of uniform human experience. However, this argument from uniform human experience depends heavily on the alleged lack of credible eyewitness claims.

Module 6 • Time plays a significant role in Christian theology. Most fundamentally, there is the question of the reality of time. • The theological importance of time becomes most evident when we ask about God’s relationship to time. One of God’s essential attributes is his eternality. • One’s view of time (tenseless or tensed) will provide a framework for understanding how God relates to the concept of time.

Module 6 • The virgin birth refers to the biblical claim that by a unique miraculous action of God, Jesus of Nazareth was conceived within a virgin named Mary without any contribution from a biological human father, such that Jesus was born to a mother who had not had sexual intercourse. • The doctrine of the incarnation affirms both the full deity and the full humanity of Jesus of Nazareth, two natures in one person. It is considered by critics to be metaphysically impossible and contradictory. • The doctrine of the incarnation has wide-ranging implications. It reaffirms the goodness of the physical world.

Module 6 • Surveying the historical landscape surrounding the death and resurrection of Jesus, a handful of particular facts are distinguished as especially well-established according to recent scholars. This is known as the minimal facts method. • Theologians debate whether when God created the world he did so freely or out of necessity. Those who are rational theologians argue that he did so as an activity of reason, while voluntarist theologians argue that God created not wholly determined by reason, and therefore the created world is contingent, not logically necessary.

Module 7: Anthropology, Theological and Scientific

Module 7 • Evolutionary psychology is the systematic attempt to apply evolutionary theory to cognition and behavior in humans and other animals. It has emerged as a cross-disciplinary field that proposes evolutionary explanations of specific cognitive capacities on the assumption that they are adaptations or by-products of adaptive features. • Psychology investigates phenomena through the formation of theories, the collection of empirical data to test theories, and the interpretation of patterns derived from statistical analyses of the empirical data.

Module 7 • Moral psychology is the scientific study concerned with the mental, emotional, behavioral, and social processes involved in the formation and expression of an individual’s regard for the rights and welfare of others. • Two main twentieth-century approaches to moral development are the cognitive developmental approach and the character development approach.

Module 7 • The physicality of mental and physical states is a debated issue, with one explanation being substance dualism, where a mental “substance” is understood very broadly to mean an enduring mental subject of some kind. • The argument from reason is a name applied to an argument, or a group of arguments, that attempts to make a case against a naturalistic philosophy by pointing out that such a philosophy undercuts the claim to hold rational beliefs.

Module 7 • The Human Genome Project was an international, collaborative research program whose goal was the complete mapping and understanding of all the genes of human beings. • Established in 1990, the Project was massive—by far the biggest coordinated effort ever attempted in the history of biology. • Over six thousand identified inheritable diseases are caused by defects in the DNA coding information. Now that genomes can readily be sequenced and compared to the reference genome, it is often possible to diagnose specific illnesses more rapidly than previously dreamed possible.

Module 8: Key Scientific Disciplines and Concepts in Christian Perspective

Module 8 • Cosmology is the study of the origin and structure of the universe, and it has been the object of study for almost as long as there have been humans to study it. Contemporary scientific cosmologybegan in 1915 when Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity replaced the theory of gravity developed by Isaac Newton. • Einstein assumed something called the cosmological principle, according to which on large scales, space-time geometry is homogeneous (mass-energy is evenly distributed) and isotropic (the universe looks basically the same in every direction from every location).

Module 8 • Today general relativity ranks as the most exhaustively tested and firmly established principle in physics. • The space-time theorems and the principles of cause-and-effect imply that a causal agent beyond space and time is responsible for creating space and time. Thus, at the very least, the space-time theorems reasonably point to a deistic interpretation of reality. • Chaos theory, somewhat misnamed, is the result of our lack of infinite precision in specifying the system’s initial conditions, there are limitations to what can be calculated about its development. Chaos is thus the result. This leaves open a possible avenue for God’s providential action, for the future is not necessarily rigidly.

Module 8 • There are two kinds of dark matter. Ordinary dark matter (protons, neutrons, and electrons) interacts strongly with photons (light), but exists in concentrations insufficient to emit detectable light. Exotic matter (neutrinos, axions, and other particles) interacts either weakly or not at all with photons and, regardless of concentration, emits no detectable light. • Dark energy is even more mysterious than exotic dark matter. Although it makes up seventy percent of the energy density of the universe, it was only first positively detected as recently as 1999.

Module 8 • The twentieth century has seen belief in the rigid deterministic clockwork operations of nature (the sixteenth- to nineteenth-century viewpoint) replaced by belief in a more open future, governed by God who rules in a way consistent with the laws of nature that have been implemented by him, but laws that exhibit some inherent openness. • The objective of the social sciences is to seek human flourishing by understanding the social behavior and phenomena of humanity through scientific methods. Thus social scientists use observation, experiments, and hypotheses to understand and interpret social phenomena and human behavior.

Module 9: Ethical and Bioethical Issues

Module 9 • Evolutionary ethics is the attempt to provide an evolutionary explanation for the moral sensibilities of human beings and any other animals with highly developed social instincts. • Christian ethics is a blend of virtues and principles. It is strongly deontological (principle-based) because of its emphasis on God’s commands and biblical principles. However, it also is significantly virtue-oriented, as virtues provide the proper Christian emphasis on a person’s character, as opposed to focusing solely on a person’s actions.

Module 9 • The instrumental value of nature is probably the most widely understood and embraced purpose for creation among Christians, as there is much support for this view throughout Scripture. • The intrinsic value of nature ascribed to creation beyond human utility is generally connected to the idea that living things have an intrinsic right to exist and to pursue ends and interests of their own. • This philosophy is manifested in the New-Age–related deep ecology movement, which posits that the whole of nature is in a balanced interrelationship, with no part (e.g., humankind) having any more importance than any other.

Module 9 • Bioethics is an interdisciplinary endeavor primarily involved in the study of moral issues in health care and the life sciences for the purpose of providing ethical guidance for practitioners in clinical and research settings. • The research of the Human Genome Project, which mapped the entire human genetic blueprint, has spawned new hopes for the genetic manipulation of humans, not only to eradicate diseases, but to extend the human life span.

Module 9 • Recent efforts are under way to synthesize life. Using the tools of synthetic biology, researchers are attempting to create novel life forms through genetic recombination. • There are potentially valuable prospects for biomedicine and bioenergy through synthetic biology, including cleaner energy sources, customized vaccines, targeted medicines, environmental cleansers, and hardier crops. There are also troublesome ethical, legal, and social questions raised by this new arena of experimentation.

Modules 10-11: Philosophy of Science and Christian Faith, Parts 1 and2

Modules 10-11 • The belief that God exists continues to be widely held among both academics and nonacademics, among scientists and laypersons. Many reasons and arguments for the existence of God have been propounded, including advanced scientific ones. • The most easily overlooked limitation of scientific inquiry involves the basic presuppositions that make such inquiry possible. Perhaps the least recognized of these presuppositions is that truth exists. The kind of truth the sciences seek is provisional in the sense that it is conditioned by what is currently known.

Modules 10-11 • Critical realism is a philosophy of science with special application in three primary areas: philosophies of perception, the science and religion movement, and efforts to balance positivism in sociological scholarship. • According to critical realism theorists, there is an objective reality “out there” that can be known by human observers, even if we may not be able to know it exactly. Mental construction and imaginative activity allow us to form theories, and some of these conform to observations better than others because events have an objective pattern.

Modules 10-11 • Teleology is the study of goals, purposes, perfections, ends, and functions. There are three basic accounts of teleology: the agent account, the nonreductive Aristotelian account, and the reductive account. • Intrinsic or immanent teleology refers to things that, in virtue of their intrinsic principles, tend to an end, such as the wing of a bird existing for the purpose of flight. • Extrinsic teleology refers to things that, in virtue of outside sources, tend to an end, like seed existing for the sake of nourishing birds.

Modules 10-11 • Throughout most of the history of Western philosophy, epistemological debate has concerned the sources of knowledge, with philosophers tending to opt either for rationalism (Plato, René Descartes, and Baruch Spinoza) or empiricism (Aristotle, John Locke, and David Hume). • The most widely known and used theodicy was crafted by Augustine (354–430 AD). Augustine argued that God is perfect in goodness, and the universe, God’s creation, is thus also good. Since all things are good, evil must not represent the positive existence of any substantial thing. Evil must rather be a metaphysical privation of the good.

Module 1: Foundational Terms