Creationist alleges religion and science mix, for five articles, here's number four.

 https://shenviapologetics.com/science-and-religion-part-iv/

In general, attempts to "combine religion and science" are basically just looking at alleged holes in science, and then asserting that, instead of using philosophy, we just regurgitate religion and shoehorn it. Shenvi might try to make a point here on in his other articles, but I doubt he succeeds.

First, let’s consider the mathematical structure of the universe itself. Nobel Laureate Eugene Wigner wrote a very famous paper entitled “The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences” [Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics, vol. 13, No. I (1960)] in which he observes that the remarkable success of mathematics in describing the physical world is actually very surprising. Mathematics He repeatedly uses the words miracle and miraculous to describe this phenomenon. After all, it is not metaphysically necessary that the universe is the way it is. We could conceive of a universe that was wholly chaotic, described by no underlying mathematics at all. We could conceive of a universe that was just partially chaotic, with temporal and spatial regularity sporadically interrupted by chaos. Perhaps the laws of nature in one laboratory are different than in another laboratory. Perhaps the laws of nature on one planet are different than what they are on another planet. But instead, we observe a universe with a deep and beautiful underlying mathematical structure.

And just why do I have to assume that the physical world is rebelling against math? Why do I have to assume a deity is enforcing the laws of math rather than math just being efficient in itself? Especially since math is the study of quantity rather than something alien.

https://www.tntech.edu/cas/math/what-is-mathematics.php#:~:text=Mathematics%20is%20the%20science%20and,appropriately%20chosen%20axioms%20and%20definitions.

But in addition to the mathematical structure of the universe, there is another surprising observation: that we are able to perceive and understand this structure. This fact is also quite surprising. After all, while one might argue that evolution could select for enough intelligence to escape sabertooth tigers or to avoid falling off cliffs, why exactly are human beings -and human beings alone- able to comprehend quantum mechanics or molecular biology? Surely, that didn’t confer any reproductive benefit to our ancestors, who would have been far better served by sharper teeth than by the (unused) ability to understand string theory. After all, chimpanzees and dolphins are both very intelligent but have nowhere near the capacity for abstract thought that humans do. Why should we expect human beings to understand science any better than them? As Einstein said: “the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.”

It's entirely possible that thinking in abstracts allowed people to form more stable societies and prolong their lives better than others, or at the very least thinking abstracts helped better identify predators, like pareidolia. And the evolution of the human mind has been studied.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2409100/?utm_source=pocket_saves

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neuroanatomy/articles/10.3389/fnana.2011.00029/full?utm_source=pocket_saves

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5624727/?utm_source=pocket_saves

And the reason why humans have big brains is suggested to have come from food.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-56544239#:~:text=Prof%20Carmody%20and%20her%20colleagues%20believe%20the%20extra%20energy%20it%20reliably%20gave%20us%20allowed%20us%20to%20evolve%20the%20small%20colons%20and%20relatively%20large%20energy%2Dhungry%20brains%20that%20distinguish%20us%20from%20our%20primate%20cousins.

Additionally, even monkeys are starting the domestication of wolves.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27675-monkeys-cosy-alliance-with-wolves-looks-like-domestication/

https://www.businessinsider.com/are-these-monkeys-domesticating-wolves-2015-6

So the alleged gap here is neither odd, nor really large in itself.

So we have a conjunction of two very surprising phenomena: a deep, beautiful mathematical structure that pervades the entire universe and the remarkable ability of human beings -alone, uniquely- to comprehend this beauty. What explains this conjunction? It is hard to explain why either of these two phenomena would exist in a purely naturalistic universe. But both phenomena fit quite naturally into a universe created by an infinitely wise God who uniquely created human beings in the divine image to perceive and appreciate the world He had created.

Beautiful is an aesthetic thing, it exists solely in the mind. And humans are the only ones with the selective evolutionary pressures to become human, with other great apes becoming close and other animals (crows, octopi) also having great intelligence that theoretically could be expanded upon.

Second, the vast majority of modern astronomers now believe that the universe is not eternal; instead, they believe it had a beginning about 14.3 billion years ago in an event known as the Big Bang. What most people aren’t aware of was that this model was resisted for decades because it contradicted the prevalent belief of physicists that the universe was eternal (which went back at least as far as the ancient Greeks). 

No citation of any of this. Also, there's at least some preference for eternalism.

Some examples include:

Brian Green

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1WfFkp4puw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9AiPuIsqck/

Julian Barbour

and others.

Additionally, Shenvi is trying to monopolize timelessness for theism, which is odd as Sean Carroll also criticizes Timelessness while remaining an atheist.

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2009/06/17/timelessness/

Also, him Shevni trying to use astronomers against physicists is like trying to use medical doctors against virologists or epidemiologists. Just because the fields are similar doesn't mean one has as deep an understanding as the other. It's entirely possible the physicists noticed something the astronomers missed since physics involves the interactions of quarks and subatomic particles rather than macroscopic objects like planets.

Indeed, as recently as 1989, John Maddox the editor of Nature magazine -one of the most prestigious scientific journals in the world- wrote that the Big Bang is “philosophically unacceptable” and that “Creationists and those of similar persuasions seeking support for their opinions have ample justification in the doctrine of the Big Bang” [“Down With the Big Bang”, Nature, 340 (1989)]. And you can see why the Big Bang was problematic to naturalists. If the universe was eternal, then there was no need for it to have a cause. But if the universe began to exist, wouldn’t something or someone have to have caused it to come into being? And if the all of time, space, matter and energy came into being at the Big Bang, then wouldn’t the cause of the Big Bang have to be immaterial, outside of time, and outside of Nature? While this observation doesn’t prove that the cause of the universe had to be God, it certainly seems to be suggestive.

And once again Christians are shoehorning not only a deity out of a need for some explanation, but their specific deity instead of deism. Not only is Shenvi trying to retroactively claim the Jesus was somehow not a Jewish heretic but the argument for "there needs to be something there" isn't monopolized by theism.

https://secondwaveatheism.blogspot.com/2024/04/gravity-isnt-force-and-new-view.html

Not only has the origin of the universe furnished suggestive evidence for theism, but the recently discovered fine-tuning of the universe has provided even more suggestive evidence. The standard model of physics is our best working model describing the interaction of fundamental forces and subatomic particles. However, this model includes a number of independent parameters -like the ratio of the gravitational force to the strong force or the cosmological constant- that must be obtained from experiment. Right now, they cannot be obtained from other more fundamental equations; they are simply inputs to the model. What physicists have recently discovered is that a number of these constants appear to have been exquisitely finely-tuned to allow for the existence of intelligent life in the universe. If some of these constants had been changed even a fraction of a percent, life would be impossible.

The most dramatic example of fine tuning is found in the cosmological constant, which is finely tuned to one part in 10^120, which is 1 part in 1 trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion. This is just one example of fine tuning among the fundamental constants and parameters that determine our universe, which is why it is widely recognized by both Christian and non-Christian physicists to be a real phenomenon. Reflecting on these discoveries, renowned British astrophysicist Fred Hoyle said: “A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.”

This is trying to say that complexity somehow needs a designer. As if complexity can't form organically, as if improbability is a firm preventative rule rather than the inability to count on something the vast majority of the time.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Argument_from_fine_tuning

So what is the most popular non-theistic explanation for fine tuning? Currently, many atheists posit the existence of an infinite number of undetectable parallel universes. In each of these parallel universes, the fundamental constants are all slightly different. As a result of this variation, every possible value is sampled somewhere in the infinite multiverse; we just happen to be the universe that got lucky. Now there are physical objections to this explanation, but right now, I want to focus on just one practical objection. Many atheists say: “I could never believe in God; it takes too much faith.” But surely, it takes at least a little faith to believe that there exist an infinite number of undetectable parallel universes. After all, if an infinite multiverse does exist, then there are actual universes out there in which pink unicorns exist. There is some universe out there composed entirely of Gorgonzola cheese. If God’s existence seems implausible to you, surely these ideas are at least as implausible!

Well this is a false equivalence. The weird stuff is at least actually a consequence of their notions. The theism you posit is still a stretch because it assumes that complexity is impossible by improbability being some wall instead of a lack of guarantee. If the non-theistic idea has math, it uses math as evidence in itself instead of just as something that looks pretty and somehow needs a deity to enforce. Also, by your own logic, those other universes falter and fail, so it's likely that atheists don't have to believe in extradimensional pink unicorns.

Let me list two well-accepted features of quantum mechanics that are surprisingly not well-known to most non-physicists. First, quantum mechanics makes it extremely hard to identify inviolable “laws of nature.” According to quantum mechanics, while events may be extremely improbable, very few events can be ruled out as absolutelyimpossible.

This is a stretch. For one thing, why does something so improbable justify any religion, let alone everything that can be criticized against Christianity? Especially after you lambasted the universe as improbable? Secondly, since they're so improbable, there are still default rules to the universe and how things work.

For instance, when physicist Alvaro de Rujula was asked whether the LHC, a particle supercollider, has the potential to destroy the world, he replied: “the random nature of quantum physics means that there is always a minuscule, but nonzero, chance of anything occurring, including that the new collider could spit out man-eating dragons” [Dennis Overbye, “Gauging a Collider’s Odds of Creating a Black Hole”, NYTimes, 4/15/08]. He was making a joke, but he was also technically exactly correct. Almost anything is technically possible under quantum mechanics. As a result “miracles” can no longer be dismissed as impossible. And if God decided to intervene in the universe, he could do so without violating any of the natural laws he created.

This is like saying that because I have a knife and thus the ability to kill, then I have definitively killed someone. The only difference being that I can point to myself as being alive and my genetics as being from my parents, while a deity is just something you assume to be the sole creator of everything.

Second, quantum mechanics dictates that there are some entities that will never be accessible to observation. In contrast to a Newtonian universe in which every entity can theoretically be measured, quantum mechanics presents us with a universe in which the most basic description of reality, the wavefunction, cannot be measured even in principle. This idea may be a bitter pill to swallow for many proponents of scientism and perhaps even naturalism, because it implies that there are hidden, unknowable entities that are fundamentally inaccessible to science.

And again, this isn't proving anything, this is you saying "oh you can't say I'm wrong." I can play this game too. There is no god because the god eating stone would eat one where it would be. Potential doesn't mean actual, as I said earlier. You aren't giving me a reason to believe in religion, you're making excuses for a deity that seems to be hypothetical more than anything else.

Finally, although I can’t go into detail, many of the founders of quantum mechanics, such as Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner and John von Neumann, held that quantum mechanics demonstrates that consciousness plays a role in the universe distinct and different from matter. Now their view is only one interpretation and is not held by all modern physicists, but it remains popular. I think that a conservative assessment would affirm that quantum mechanics makes the possibility of mind-body dualism far more plausible than it would have been on a Newtonian view of physics. So while quantum mechanics doesn’t provide direct evidence for God’s existence, I think it does challenge naturalistic ideas about reality in at least three areas: the possibility of the miraculous, the fact that not all entities are accessible to science or observation, and the possibility that mind is distinct from matter.

This is a half-baked attempt at credentialism since it relies on them saying it rather than why, except he admits that even modern physicists find it speculative. Especially since consciousness as can be ascertained by any real attempts to actually identify what it is instead of just speculating show it to be electricity going through neurons. Why should that hold any weight instead of the tools measuring the electrons themselves?

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Observer_effect

Ignoring the actual criticisms that can be hurled against quantum consciousness, an actual reason to link quantum mechanics and consciousness for reasons more than "well maybe we can if we wanted to!"

https://www.reddit.com/r/RationalRight/comments/1celc1h/first_pic_is_an_article_from_a_psychiatrist/

Finally, I want to ask what the search for truth itself can tell us about God’s existence. One prerequisite for the entire scientific enterprise seems to be the assumption that truth is intrinsically good and that we ought to seek it. If truth is not intrinsically good, then why seek the truth at all, either through science or some other means?

Because wanting to know about the true nature of the world around us means nothing and why it works that way, it has to be about truth being "good" somehow. Personal curiosity doesn't exist.

Any worldview which cannot explain why we ought to seek the truth is going to undercut the very foundations of the scientific enterprise. So let’s ask the question: is truth intrinsically good and should we seek to know the truth? The difficulty arises when we try to explain why truth-seeking is intrinsically good and morally obligatory if naturalism is true, if Nature is all that exists.

And just why does it need to be "intrinsically good and morally obligatory"? Why can't it just make life easier to know the answer to any question you might have? Why can't anything just be neat?

Most naturalistic theories of morality tend to equate ultimate value and moral goodness with human flourishing.

And theistic arguments for morality involve listening to a deity we have to assume is omniscient and omnibenevolent solely because it has great power. Morality is just shaky since it doesn't have default enforcement or any grounded principles beyond human disgust.

So if we wanted to try to explain why truth is good on naturalism, we could say something like “Truth is good because it promotes human flourishing. Scientific truth enables us to cure diseases and feed the hungry. That is what makes it good.” Unfortunately, this approach doesn’t work in this case because it makes truth an instrumental good not an intrinsic good. What do I mean? An intrinsic good is something that is an end unto itself. It is good because of what it is. An instrumental good is a means to an end. It is good only insofar as it leads to some other, ultimate good. So why does it matter that naturalism makes truth an instrumental good rather than an intrinsic good? It matters because truth-seeking and human flourishing are often in deep conflict.

Okay, is that really a problem? Again, why can't things just be neat? And why is something being practical not enough of a reason? We're discussing human wills, and we both know humanity is flawed because of cognitive biases, optical illusions, mental illness, fallacies, and just numerous faults. The only difference between us is that you assert original sin because supposedly the first cause that you insist needs to exist someone couldn't have just been a form of noncontingent energy.

For instance, let’s imagine that you are an atheist and your Christian grandmother is dying; her only comfort is that she believes that she will soon be in the presence of Jesus. She says “I’m sad that I’m dying, but I’m so happy that I’ll soon be face to face with Jesus, that I’ll be reunited with my husband and my little son who died when he was young.” Do you urge her to seek the truth? No, because it will diminish her flourishing.

She is not flourishing because of the Christian belief system. A. This whole article demonstrates the casual leaps it makes to support itself. B. She's dying. We don't rub it in to "diminish flourishing", we shut up so she'll be happy for her last few minutes, and we don't want are last memories of her to be an argument. I have to ask, can Christian truly not consider any other framework from their own? I have heard of the excuses about "atheists just want to sin" or "atheists hate God and so believe in him". But a Christian chemist still insisting upon a Christian view of things being the only possible ones because "we assert that everything has meaning even when unnecessary" means that other people just don't have other frameworks to work in their lives. As if because Christians are slaves that the rest of the world has to be, either to their own hobbies because somehow, Christianity is the only possible mindset.

Or perhaps atheists like Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre are right in their assessment that atheism is a terrible, miserable, agonizing truth. So what if it turned out factually that most people would be happier believing religious delusions rather than believing the truth of atheism? In that case, a commitment to human flourishing as the ultimate good would require us to promote religious beliefs, even if they are obviously false, because we’re ultimately committed to human flourishing, not to truth.

Or maybe someone on their deathbed doesn't have the time to make their lives worthwhile without religion, so we want to make the best of a bad situation? For Fuck's sake Shevni, you got a doctorate, how do you not know what an exception is?

So it doesn’t seem that naturalism can furnish us with any reason to think that truth is intrinsically good or that truth-seeking is morally obligatory. And that inability tends to undercut the entire scientific enterprise. So can any worldview explain why truth is intrinsically valuable and why truth-seeking is morally obligatory? Yes.

Yes Shevni, because you inflexibly assert an all-or-nothing mindset, you have proven truth-seeking worthless unless it's a duty and Christianity good because it makes dead women happy.

If a truth-loving God exists and commands us to seek the truth, then we can explain why truth-seeking is good and obligatory. We can even resolve the tension between truth-seeking and human flourishing because -if Christianity is true- then the truth will ultimately lead to our eternal flourishing. Jesus Christ claimed that he himself was “the way, the truth, and the life” and said: “You will know the truth and it will set you free.” So no matter what hardships or difficulties or miseries attend truth-seeking here, there will be no ultimate conflict between the truth and our joy.

None of the commandments are "seek truth", there is more importance of decrying idolatry in the Bible than there is to studying the world. And the Church has often stood in the way of truth if it was deemed heretical like heliocentrism (cry about Gallileo somehow having holes in his ideas, that wasn't a capital offense) or evolution. Also, "the truth will set you free" is a code word for "kneel and be a bride of God because our dogma is what you have to accept as truth".

So we have a very odd paradox. Atheists, who tend to rightly value truth very highly, have no way to explain why it is valuable.

It is one thing to be true and pointless, it's a whole other thing to be false and pointless. Best of a, not even a truly bad situation, just a less than idyllic one.

Moreover, if an atheist approaches a Christian and says “You ought to abandon Christianity and seek the truth of atheism,” I think that the Christian is well within his rights to ask “Why? If you are right and atheism is true, why should I seek to know the truth? Is truth intrinsically good? Am I obligated to seek it?”

Because then you would be owning your life in your own way, you wouldn't be humbling yourself or being needlessly cruel and self-righteous to others, you would actually be reflecting the world as it is instead of trying to make it into the standard you have fetishized as the ideal one.

On the other hand, Christians can always urge everyone to seek the truth because the truth is intrinsically good and because God commands us to seek it. So Christianity provides a foundation for truth-seeking and for the entire scientific enterprise not available to atheists.

Christians are still fanatical, don't let anyone tell you otherwise.