Ian wrote as follows (in part):
" First of all, I am assuming that as ASA is a group that stands for
fidelity to the bible, that most people here don't have a problem with,
say the miracles of Jesus. But I would maintain that scientists are
trained to look for naturalistic causes of things; to push out the
supernatural in favour of the natural."
You had a lot more in that post, and I appreciate it. The "miracle" story
you related is almost unique. It is a great
story. Someday we will understand it!
Thanks for your comment on the story in my web site. For some reason it
has disappeared
and I'll have to get up there (out there?) to see what happened.
I was thinking more about what you wrote. As scientists, we pretty much
adhere closely
to William of Ockham's "razor" principle, and I think I respect that. For
me, that is because my
training (physics -- Carnegie Tech -- 1950s) seemed to have left me with
a couple of guiding
principles which still seem "bedrock" to my thinking:
1. The principle of methodological naturalism foe any scientific
investigation
2. The principle that science is a search for what works, not a search
for "truth."
Richard Dickerson, in an issue of PERSPECTIVES some years ago, suggested
that these two
principles (he was not being pejorative) mean that science is really a
"game," a game in which
we assume natural causation only and see how far we can go with
explanatory and predictive theories.
At first I did not like this idea, but eventually I've come to embrace
it. The word "game"need not be
a pejorative term. The "game" concept also allows me to understand the
razor principle
as a bedrock concept.
Recently, Plantigna has suggested that the above is more a definition of
science than
anything very basic, and he may have a point there. But, then, he is a
philosopher, not
a scientist himself.
Elsewhere I've commented to George Murphy on the Kingsley quotation, so
I'll refer you to that
post. Is the universe we inhabit a "finished thing" (Van Till's ideas) or
is it more
like a violin on which God sometimes plays a tune. The fact is that we
know that God
has "played a tune"on it on occasion -- the Cana wine is my favorite
example. I do not
see that "playing a tune" makes his attributes any less wiser (Kingsley)
than if he had
"fully endowed" the universe from the start. Indeed, I have a difficulty
admiring the God Van Till
and Kingsley propose as much as one who gets involved with us more often.
Burgy (John Burgeson)
www.Burgy.50megs.com
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