Signs Of Second Coming.....tsunami

[Guest TheProudDuck]

Speedo,

are apologists intelectually dishonest? because they're always searching for ways, researching ways, using the scientific method to come up with ways, to prove what once seemed wrong as right, are they being dishonest?

No, apologists aren't being intellectually dishonest. They're just not truly "using the scientific method" if they start out with the answer already in mind. Conducting proper science requires you to consider all the evidence -- not to sift and discard that which doesn't support a preordained conclusion.

That's not to say apologists aren't nice guys -- but what they're doing isn't science, any more than what "creation scientists" do is. You do the research and let the chips fall where they may.

As for ancient American horse bones, they're prehistoric, not from Book of Mormon times.

that believes science first and then scripture, if science backs it up

That's not an accurate statement of my approach. Generally, the things science and scripture teach deal with separate spheres, with science usually unable to pronounce one way or the other on the big questions like whether God exists and what his will is. Although the scriptures also contain historical accounts, and though history tries to act like a science, generally, the events documented in scripture are often so poorly documented elsewhere, or so far in the past, that science can't really prove or disprove them. So no, I don't only accept scripture "if science backs it up." Science usually can't.

However, when science does conflict with scripture, I need to be very careful in deciding to reject the scientific conclusion, because I use the fruits of scientific research in making other decisions. For example, if I were called to serve on the jury of a murder trial, I might be presented with DnA evidence of the murderer's guilt. I can't vote to hang a man based on that evidence, on the one hand, and then take the position in matters of religion that DnA evidence that the principal ancestors of the American Indians were not Hebrew should be ignored. (That evidence is pretty ironclad, by the way; it's still theoretically possible that the DnA of Lehi's group might have gotten lost in the shuffle of their mingling with a larger, pre-existing Indian population -- that's the founder effect and genetic drift that FARMS apologists talk about.)

I wouldn't reject a scriptural teaching based on just any scientific theory; much of cutting-edge science is based on less than perfect evidence and may be wrong. (Or it can actually be prejudiced by the ideology of its practitioners, which is another story altogether; scientists aren't always impartial.) But some things -- like geology's conclusion that the whole earth wasn't flooded a few thousand years ago, or that species evolve from others -- are so well established, and the evidence for them are so convincing, that I would be hypocritical if I enjoyed the fruits of these scientific discoveries (in medicine, say, or in engineering) while saying that I rejected the science itself. Actions speak louder than words; whether you undergo gene therapy for a disease says a lot more about whether you believe in the science underlying it than if you say you don't think DnA tracing has any value for identifying the ancestors of a population.

So to sum up, on the big questions, I'm confident that science and scripture will never conflict; they can't, because they deal with separate spheres. On the occasions where scripture has poached onto science's territory, and the two conflict, if there is a strong showing that the science is right, science prevails and I conclude that the author was speaking as a man.

[speedomansam]

you explain yourself very well. i don't think there's much more to be said in either regard. although how is enjoying modern conveniences connected to historical research?