[Taraz]

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If we believe that God did these things and that there is no natural explanation for them, then scientific discoveries infringe upon who God is.


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Again, and again, what I said about Newton and gravity.

Augustine, in the 4th century AD warned Chrisitians about using the Bible to support attacks on things non-Christians believed and that were either obviously true or not obviously supported by Scripture. At the time I believe the specific controversy had to do with the weight of the 4 elements(earth,air,fire,water) and whether the Bible contradicted the current (Greek) position. Augustine said the Bible doesn't speak to that issue so Christians shouldn't try to make the Bible into a science text book(paraphrase). Quite obviously from that you can infer that at least since Augustine Christianity has recognized the existence and validity of natural law and in no way does our faith depend on the ongoing activity of God to the exclusion of natural law. Neither Augustine nor any mainstream theologian since his time would be the least bit upset to find natural law explanations for most natural phenomena - nor would they say such explanations have any bearing on the question of God's existence. Calvin said something like (loosely paraphrased) , if you want to know about nature go to the scientists, if you want to know about spiritual things go to the Bible. And at least since Augustine there has been the concept of two books, the book of Nature and the Scripture - and most theologians agree that true science reveals something about God, and in ways not stated in Scripture. The Bible is for spiritual knowledge and salvation, nature shows how God designed His creation - and the two are complementary, not contradictory. But both books have to be read correctly, something man sometimes has difficulty achieving.

I haven't traced out the complete history but I'm aware of the argument that modern science owes its very existence to theism. Because Christianity teaches that God is a God of reason and order, and that since He created the universe the universe is orderly, investigation of nature through empirical study and experimentation has good prospects of success. Other cultures, such as the Greeks, who didn't believe in order in the cosmos or a reasonable Creator, never made much effort to advance the scientific method. Why perform experiments if Zeus is just going to do something arbitrarily? If all is flux, why look for laws that can't exist by definition?

Ask yourself this question - if Newton thought God was the only cause and only explanation for gravity, why would he try to express gravity in terms of science and mathematics?

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I really feel like you cherry-picked my post. I was agreeing with you. You are describing one Christian position. There are other Christians who would disagree with you. I was trying to say that for some theists, these scientific discoveries actually DO infringe on God. Atheists see these people as representative of all religious thought and so the fight continues.

In your post you also seem to imply that Christianity has had a unified front throughout history. This is clearly not true. There is a huge diversity of views within the religion. I believe that the atheist argument actually does rebut the claims of some, but they somehow believe that they have dealt with all religious viewpoints.