From: Howard J. Van Till (hvantill@chartermi.net)
Date: Sat Aug 23 2003 - 16:47:40 EDT
From: "Sarah Berel-Harrop" <sec@hal-pc.org>
> Plantinaga states that MN holds that science cannot
> involve religious belief and commitment, following what
> Basil Willey calls "provisional atheism". I think this
> statement is strictly speaking untrue.
Agreed. It is not unlikely that Plantinga's use of the term "provisional
atheism" is intended to play the rhetorical role of associating it with
something that any good Christian would reject. Guilt by association is
often an effective strategy for gaining advantage, but not for elevating the
level of discussion.
> You bring the
> commitments you have to whatever you do. What MN
> *does* is essentially that you procede in a manner
> calculated to produce results that are amenable to
> reverification by people who come to the same data
> set with different commitments. You are not saying,
> "God isn't a factor when I am doing MN". You are
> saying "when I am doing MN I will focus on empirical
> and not revelatory ways of knowing."
Yes, it allows members of the scientific community to focus on what can be
evaluated on a commonly-held set of criteria.
Howard Van Till
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