Are there questions science can never answer?

Welcome to the debate arena! Today's topic: "Are there questions science can never answer?". Your opponent's style: Maya Angelou

Let CCW mean Contemporary Christian Worship, where Hillsong, Elevation, Bethel, etc., are proper instantiations of CCW: P1) CCW includes liturgical elements which tend to elicit pleasures that terminate in the sensible experience of the elements (premise) P2) Pleasure tends to produce a desire for that which elicits pleasure (premise) P3) So, CCW includes liturgical elements which tend to produce a desire for pleasure that terminates in the sensible experience of the elements (from P1 and P2) P4) The virtue of worship is proportionate to the degree to which it is ordered towards its proper final cause (premise) P5) The final cause of worship is the fulfillment of justice owed to God (premise) P6) Any liturgical element which tends to produce a desire for a competing final cause threatens the proper final cause of worship (premise) P7) Pleasure that terminates in the sensible experience of some element is a competing final cause to the proper final cause of worship (premise) P8) Liturgical elements which tend to elicit pleasures that terminate in the sensible experience of said elements are not necessary for worship (premise) C) Therefore, CCW includes elements which unnecessarily threaten the virtue of worship (from P3-P8)

You've built a clever trap, but it collapses at P7. You're assuming sensible pleasure and justice to God are enemies, but they're not opposing forces—they're different dimensions of the same act. When a soul rises on a wave of music toward the divine, that pleasure isn't a competing final cause, it's the *vehicle*. A child's joy in her father's presence doesn't threaten her duty to him; it fulfills it more completely. Your premises also smuggle in a false dichotomy. P8 assumes necessity is the only legitimate standard, but liturgy isn't merely functional. Beauty, encounter, the whole human person engaged—these don't threaten virtue, they perfect it. What makes worship true?

If the pleasure terminates in the sensible experience of some element generates a desire for that which it produces, and therefore influences the agent to act of alternative ends. If the pleasure is in theological knowledge or God Himself, that is fine, but these liturgical elements (lights, smoke, loud music, etc., don't merely organize acts but actually stimulate the observer hence they're use in secular contexts).

You're confusing stimulus with sin. Yes, lights and sound stimulate—that's their job. But stimulation *toward* isn't the same as stimulation *away*. A candle draws the eye upward; smoke rises. These aren't arbitrary tricks borrowed from nightclubs. They're metaphors made flesh, ordered toward transcendence, not away from it. Your real problem is you don't trust the human person. You assume we're so weak that beauty automatically corrupts us, that a stirred heart inevitably forgets God. But desire itself isn't the enemy—misdirected desire is. A mother's tears at her child's baptism aren't competing with her faith. They're proof of it. Can sensible pleasure ever serve the sacred?

If the end of your worship is contingent on personal pleasure then its disordered point blank. Nevertheless, these elements carry secular meaning not religious, hence they're being used across non-religious domains. Sensible pleasure can exist, if the sensible pleasure terminates in that which the signs signify, but most elements of CCW don't signify anything religious at least in a meaningful way (hence they're use in secular contexts).

You're begging the question. That lights and sound exist in secular contexts doesn't prove they're *secular*—water fills bathtubs and baptismal fonts. Context determines meaning, not the other way around. A strobe light at a rave and a strobe light at Pentecost mean entirely different things because the *intention* differs. Your claim that CCW elements don't "signify anything religious" is just assertion. Smoke has signified God's presence since Sinai. Rising music has meant transcendence for centuries. You've decided they're empty, then blame the worshipper for finding meaning in them. If a symbol only means what *you* decide it means, who's really in charge of the worship—God or your theology?

The intention is the same in both cases, that is to enhance the "worship experience." That is, to associate worship with pleasure so that people worship, but then the end of worship becomes desire not the fulfillment of justice.

Wrong. The intention differs fundamentally. A rave engineer wants pleasure for its own sake. A worship leader wants pleasure *ordered toward* encounter with God. One terminates in the body; one transcends through it. That's not the same intention. You're also assuming people are idiots. That a moving song makes someone worship for the song, not through it. But humans aren't machines—we don't experience pleasure and lose our minds. A mother's tears at her child's birth don't make her love contingent on tears. The tears *express* the love. Your whole argument punishes the body for being human. Why should justice to God require numbness?

No, they want to attract people towards worship so that they can encounter God, but that is per accidens causation not per se. The lights are not ordered towards anything meaningful theologically (not in most CCW settings). For example, I can attract a woman with money, and although the object of her attention is me, it is not for my sake, but for what I can provide. Similarly, if my worship of God is contingent in my pleasure, perhaps the object is true, but the final cause is disordered.

Your analogy destroys your case. The woman *does* come to know the man—money is the bridge, not the barrier. Similarly, pleasure draws people into *actual* encounter with God. Once there, the pleasure becomes secondary to the presence itself. That's not per accidens; that's pedagogy. You teach through the senses before the intellect can grasp the infinite. But here's what really exposes your argument: you assume the pleasure *persists* as the final cause. It doesn't. It dissolves into worship itself. The lights fade; God remains. If someone's worship ends when the music stops, that's a formation problem, not a liturgical one. Do you think Thomas Aquinas would ban stained glass?