On Mon, 1 Apr 2002, Keith B Miller wrote:
> I think that Shuan's summary of the nature of science is expressed well.
> It is very close to how I present the issue. One possible way that this
> "two ways of knowing" approach can be misunderstood, is that they can be
> seen as being Hermetically sealed off from each other. This can end up as
> Gould's "Non-overlapping Magisteria" idea. But just because science and
> theology (I prefer the term theology to religion) have distinct ways of
> knowing does not mean that they cannot or do not influence each other.
I also liked Shuan's summary and Keith's addition.
I think the following point is worth adding:
Scientific knowledge and religious knowledge are just two kinds of
knowledge amongst many kinds of knowledge.
For example:
--There are historical methods for obtaining reliable knowledge about
historical events.
--There is personal knowledge you can gain (e.g. about another person's
character) through personal experiences.
--There is "social knowledge", that is, reliable knowledge based upon not
your own personal experiences, but the experiences of people whose
testimony you trust. (Journalism at its best gives us this sort of
knowledge.)
And so forth.
There are similarities amongst these various ways of obtaining knowledge,
and also appropriate differences amongst these methods.
I make this point because, in my experience, if you only talk about just
two kinds of knowledge (scientific and religious), people will start to
play an either/or sort of game. They will focus on the differences rather
than the similarities between them, and some will be tempted to see one
form of knowledge as always better, always more reliable than the other.
Loren Haarsma
Calvin College
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