1 / 5

Discipleship: An Introduction to Systematic Theology and Apologetics

In this introduction to systematic theology and apologetics, explore the doctrine of creation and the scientific method. Learn about God's revealed and secret will, the principles of induction and deduction in science, and the limitations of scientific method in exploring phenomena beyond empirical and repeatability. Discover the interplay between faith, reason, and evidence in understanding the origins of the universe and climate change. Presented at The Heights Church on March 6, 2016.

rbower
Download Presentation

Discipleship: An Introduction to Systematic Theology and Apologetics

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Discipleship: An Introduction to Systematic Theology and Apologetics The Doctrines of Creation: The Heights Church March 6, 2016

  2. What is the Doctrine of Creation? General Principles to follow: • As we proceed we must remember that the primary(absolute) cause of everything that happens is governed by God. • God has a Revealed will as expressed in the Bible and to some extent in General Revelation through the “Laws of Nature.” • God also has a Secret will so many things that happen are not governed by discoverable immutable Laws. God often brings these about by working through secondary causes of human free agency. • Occam's razor: Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.

  3. What is the Doctrine of Creation? What is Science (Scientific Method)? Acquire sufficient applicable data for the phenomenon being studied. Form a hypothesis to explain the data. Prove the hypothesis is true by consistent, empirical, independent experimental results.

  4. What is the Doctrine of Creation? What is Science (Scientific Method)? • The three steps are called induction (to reason from specific cases to a general result). • Once the general result is established as a LAW we can deduce what will happen in a unknown new situation. This is called deduction. • Pure science is induction. Deduction is engineering. • Usually LAWs are discovered in the process of trying to solve a specific problem. Aerodynamics results from inventing the airplane rather the airplane resulting from the pure science of aerodynamics. • Sometimes a LAW works well only within specific boundaries. If a case arises where the LAW is not true the Law must be modified to account for the new anomalous case. For example, Newtonian physics works well as long as speed is much less than the speed of light (approximately 186,000 miles per second!)

  5. What is the Doctrine of Creation? What are the limitations of Scientific Method? • The Fall: human fallibility and sin. • Science can only deal with empirical and repeatable phenomenon. Thus the supernatural cannot be studied by scientific method. • Many things are not governed by a “natural law” but by free agency. (Dow Jones Industrial average) • It is very difficult to gather sufficient data for complicated phenomenon. This leads to an inability to duplicate results. (medicine) • Scientific method is routinely applied to subjects for which it is impossible by empirical experimentation to prove that the hypothesis is true. (Origin of the universe or climate change) • Computer models are only valid if they have been empirically verified.

More Related