mt: But neither does it hinder application and discovery, apparently. A lot of discoveries about the natural world, and applications from those discoveries, have been made by those who believe God created the world by miraculous means. Believing special, supernatural creation does not preclude discovery about the natural world — been going on for centuries. Perhaps I misunderstood your point.
amd: It sure seems to hinder an understanding of biological processes, estimation of age of objects artifacts and species, and amazingly enough even acceptance that the Earth orbits the Sun.
In your dreams.....
Tell that to Newton who developed the scientific method based on the reasoning that since God was a God of order, He created an orderly universe which could be examined and investigated by systematic observations.
The claim that believing in a supernatural cause of the universe automatically precludes the use of the scientific method in investigating it, is totally bogus.
The universe is able to be studied by the scientific method because the method works, not because of how the universe got here.
So claims our brother allmendeam.
But I wonder: What could be more "miraculous" than a Universe that did not have a beginning in time and space? How can anything be anything without what the philosophers call a first cause? Even a pure mechanist could appreciate the idea of a first mover to set up the resultant chain reaction of successive causes down the line, a la billiard balls.
In my view, there is no "before" the Beginning; there is no "before" the Big Bang. The singularity may be viewed as instantiating the Logos of Genesis 1. Yet from the scientific standpoint, it is simply pointless to speculate about such things, since the human mind, and all its science, cannot ever go there to see.
I would just like to point out to my dear brother AMD that the Holy Scriptures actually tell us that there was a Beginning, a First Cause, Logos Alpha to Omega.
And that is why we have a "lawful" universe — an absolute prerequisite to any kind of rational thinking at all — scientific, philosophical, theological, religious. FWIW.
Thanks ever so much for writing dear sister in Christ!
His last statement there, that you quoted, is so obviously “begging the question” that I question his self-claimed sense of intellect.
Oh, and as for “if you assume a supernatural event at ANY point in history, then you can’t do science argument”...
Well, either you have to totally repudiate even the CONCEPT of a Creator, or there was a “supernatural event” at some point. The very fact that you CAN predict using laws of science and universal constants and the assumption of uniformity is proof that this universe was not accidental and had a Creator, ie, a “supernatural event” occurred.