On Sat, 12 Jun 1999 10:55:47 -0700, Chris Cogan wrote:
[...]
>SJ>Thanks to Susan for confirming my point! Methodological naturalism *in
>>the case of origins* is really *metaphysical* naturalism. Behind it is the
>>*metaphysical* assumption that God is imaginary, like "fairies"
>CC>No, behind it is the assumption that fairies (and God) are simply outside
>the scope of the method of science. Science is simply a LIMITED method; it
>doesn't have the MEANS to deal with fairies or Gods. Arguing that science
>should study fairies and God is like arguing that one should use a
>microscope to study mathematics, or perform chemistry experiments to test
>the laws of logic, or that one should use introspection to determine the
>exact chemical make-up of a planet in the next galaxy-cluster.
Chris is here just setting up a special definition of science to protect his
materialist-naturalist philosoiphy. There is no reason why science should
not study the natural world to see if they reveal the *effect* of an
Intelligent Designer.
>>SB>Science is a method of inquiry. Science is always provisional
>>>pending new evidence.
>SJ>Except that in the case of *origins*, the "inquiry" rules out God
>>*absolutely* before the "evidence" is even considered! This is metaphysical
>>naturalism.
>CC>No, it's a scientific method requirement, because the scientific method is
>not applicable to fairies or Gods. Metaphysical non-naturalism is a
>PHILOSOPHICAL position, and it is basically not subject to scientific
>method, that's all, except when it makes predictive claims about empirical
>facts not yet empirically determined.
Again this is just materialist philosophical dogmatism. There is no reason
why the scientific method is not applicable to the work of an Intelligent
Designer. The scientific method is applicable to the work of human
intelligent designers (eg. archaeology, forensic science) and even alien
intelligent designers (eg. SETI).
>>SB>"Divine feet" tend to be pretty final.
>SJ>So does ruling "Divine feet" out *absolutely* "tend to be pretty final"!
>CC>Scientific method doesn't rule them out of existence, merely out of SCIENCE.
>Please TRY to understand this distinction.
There is no "distinction". Chris is just arbitrarily setting the limits of science
so it rules out Intelligent Design.
>>SB>The earth can cease to rotate for a time. "The Bible says it, I believe
>it.
>>>Period."
>SJ>Again thanks to Susan for illustrating how MN, when applied to the Bible,
>>strips it of all its supernatural claims, as Phil Johnson pointed out in a
>>message to the ASA Reflector on 25 Mar 1998:
CC>Again, this is a result of the METHOD of science. If a scientist believes in
>a metaphysical non-naturalistic view of the Bible, he can do so, but simply
>not as a SCIENTIST.
See above. Chris is defining "science" and "scientist" in a special way to
eliminate Intelligent Design as a competitor:
"The deployment of flawed or metaphysically tendentious demarcation
arguments against legitimate theoretical contenders has produced an
unjustified confidence in the epistemic standing of much evolutionary
dogma...If competing hypotheses are eliminated before they are evaluated,
remaining theories may acquire an undeserved dominance....Theories that
gain acceptance in artificially constrained competitions can claim to be
neither "most probably true" nor "most empirically adequate." Instead such
theories can only be considered "most probable or adequate among an
artificially limited set of options." (Meyer S.C., "The Methodological
Equivalence of Design & Descent: Can There be a Scientific `Theory of
Creation'?" in Moreland J.P. ed., "The Creation Hypothesis," 1994,
pp100,102)
[...]
>>But actually the Bible doesn't say that "The earth can cease to rotate for
>>a time." What the Bible it says in Josh 10:13 is that "the sun stood still,
>and the moon stopped..." While I have no problem if God did cause the earth to
>>"cease to rotate for a time", it is possible to legitimately interpret this
>>passage literally that the sun and moon only *appeared* to Joshua to stand
>>still. Ramm points out that there are at least four possible
>interpretations of this passage...." (Ramm B.L., "The Christian View of
>>Science and Scripture," 1967, pp107-108).
>CC>>This all seems irrelevant. The Bible DOES claim miracles, whether it claims
>that the Earth stopped rotating or not. Susan's point was that the Christian
>approach is to take whatever the Bible is believed to say as essentially
>unquestionable truth, to be ACCEPTED, period. Since many people take the
>Bible to be claiming that the "Sun stood still," they believe it absolutely.
Not really. Christians believe the Bible is true, but that does not mean that
they do not question what it means. The fact that there at least four
possible interpretations of the above passage in Joshua demonstrates that.
And what about Chris' "unquestioned truth" that science necessarily excludes
Intelligent Design?
>SJ>And even if the Christian does say "The Bible says it, I believe it.
>Period" what is wrong with that?
>CC>You mean, aside from the fact that it's unbelievably stupid?
This is just materialist prejudice. If the Bible *is* God's message to man,
then it is *wisdom* to believe it, and "unbelievably stupid" not to.
>SJ>The vast majority of Christians haven't got the
>>ability or training to decide what in the Bible should be accepted and
>>what rejected. In those circumstances, the soundest approach, in the first
>>instance, is to accept it all on face value, and then work at increasing
>>one's understanding and resolving difficulties. This is in fact analogous to what
>>scientists do.
>CC>No. The soundest approach is not to accept ANY of it initially that one does
>not already have good reason to believe, and then incrementally accept any
>of the rest of it that stands up to criticism. THIS is in fact analogous to
>what scientists do.
This is just a myth. Scientists when they start studying science as students
in school accept the whole corpus of science on faith. It is only many years
later, if at all, that they subject it to criticism in any fundamental way. If
scientists were to work from the bottom up, as Chris suggested, they
probably would not even pass science subjects at school and so would
never get to be scientists!
Besides, in the case of evolution, it is not subject to much criticism at all.
What Edwin G. Conklin, late professor of biology at Princeton wrote in
1943 is still true: "The concept of organic evolution is very highly prized by
biologists, for many of whom it is an object of genuinely religious devotion,
because they regard it as a supreme integrative principle. This is probably
the reason why severe methodological criticism employed in other
departments of biology has not yet been brought to bear on evolutionary
speculation." (Conklin E.G., "Man Real and Ideal," 1943, p147, in
Macbeth N., "Darwin Retried: An Appeal to Reason," 1971, pp126-127)
CG>If we had to accept the entirety of every book we come across on face value,
>which is effectively what you are claiming we should do, we'd have to
>believe so many contradictions, and our minds would be so bogged down in
>internal gibbering, that we would no longer be able to walk, recognize our
>relatives, or visually track moving objects. ;-)
Actually that is *exactly* how all normal people operate in the real world. They
believe things are true unless they have good reason to believe otherwise.
Swinburne calls this the Principle of Credulity:
"It is a basic principle of knowledge, which I have called the principle of
credulity, that we ought to believe that things are as they seem to be, until
we have evidence that we are mistaken. If it seems to me that I am seeing a
table or hearing my friend's voice, I ought to believe this until evidence
appears that I have been deceived. If you say the contrary-never trust
appearances until it is proved that they are reliable, you will never have any
beliefs at all. For what would show that appearances were reliable, except
more appearances? And if you can't trust appearances, you can't trust them
either...the rational man applies the principle of credulity before he knows
what other men experience. You rightly trust your senses even if there is no
other observer to check them. And if there is another observer who reports
that he seems to see what you seem to see, you have thereafter to
remember that he did so report, and that means relying on your own
memory (again, how things seem) without present corroboration....It is
basic to human knowledge of the world that we believe things are as they
seem to be in the absence of positive evidence to the contrary." (Swinburne
R.G., "The Justification of Theism", Truth: An International, Inter-
Disciplinary Journal of Christian Thought, Volume 3, 1991.
http://www.leaderu.com/truth/3truth09.html).
The opposite principle of believing everything is false, until it is proved true, like
Hume tried to do, even the atheist Russell says is bankrupt:
"Hume's philosophy, whether true or false, represents the bankruptcy of
eighteenth-century reasonableness. He starts out, like Locke, with the intention of
being sensible and empirical, taking nothing on trust, but seeking whatever
instruction is to be obtained from experience and observation. But having a better
intellect than Locke's, a greater acuteness in analysis, and a smaller capacity for
accepting comfortable inconsistencies, he arrives at the disastrous conclusion that
from experience and observation nothing is to be learnt There is no such thing as a
rational belief: 'If we believe that fire warms, or water refreshes, 'tis only because it
costs us too much pains to think otherwise.' We cannot help believing, but no
belief can be grounded in reason. Nor can one line of action be more rational than
another, since all alike are based upon irrational convictions. This last conclusion,
however, Hume seems not to have drawn...In fact, in the later portions of the
Treatise, Hume forgets all about his fundamental doubts, and writes much as any
other enlightened moralist of his time might have written; he applies to his doubts
the remedy that he recommends, namely 'carelessness and inattention'. In a sense,
his scepticism is insincere, since he cannot maintain it in practice. It has, however,
this awkward consequence, that it paralyses every effort to prove one line of action
better than another." (Russell B., "History of Western Philosophy," 1993, pp645-
646)
>SJ>Indeed, despite the other scientific myth about the `argument from
>>authority'implied in Susan's words, as Richard Lewontin points out, even scientists
>>accept things that are outside their area of expertise on authority:
>>
>>"...Who am I to believe about
>>quantum physics if not Steven Weinberg, or about the solar system if not
>>Carl Sagan?" (Lewontin R., ... New York Review, January 9, 1997, p30)
>CC>The way to deal with such things is to hold them provisionally, loosely, and
>NOT believe Steven Weinberg OR Carl Sagan, except in a vastly weaker sense
>of "believe." This is NOT what Christians do with respect to the Bible.
Chris simply does not know what all " Christians do with respect to the
Bible." From my experience of 30 years a Christian, most Christians start
off believing the Bible provisionally and they become firmer in their belief
as the evidence (external and internal) for it grows. That is how I
approached it. Probably the Christians who Chris has encountered who
believe the Bible strongly are *mature* Christians who have in fact
questioned the Bible and are now satisfied beyond resonable doubt that it is
true.
And from my observation, there is no evidence that geneticists like
Lewontin believe any less firmly what cosmologists like Weinberg say
about cosmology, than most Christians believe about the Bible. If they did
disbelieve it, they would have to believe what some other cosmologists
says.
>SJ>>Given the Christian's original premise that the Bible is the unique written
>>revelation from God, it is reasonable that it should be believed to be
>>true, even if not everything is understood in it and every difficulty is not
>>resolved. In particular it would be unreasonable to reject the Bible
>>because it contains records of supernatural interventions by God. In fact, given
>>what the Bible claims to be, a unique revelation from God, it would be
>>strange if there were no records of supernatural interventions by God in
>>the Bible!
>CC>That's GIVEN that original premise. Of course, that begs the question, by
>ASSUMING metaphysical non-naturalism.
That goes without saying. If one assumes as one's first principle,
metaphysical naturalism, then one cannot *ever* believe that there is a
God, let alone that the Bible is His unique written revelation. The Bible
itself makes this plain in Hebrews 11:6:
"And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who
comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who
earnestly seek him."
Steve
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"Any living being possesses an enormous amount of "intelligence," very
much more than is necessary to build the most magnificent of cathedrals.
Today, this "intelligence" is called "information," but it is still the same
thing. It is not programmed as in a computer, but rather it is condensed on
a molecular scale in the chromosomal DNA or in that of any other
organelle in each cell. This "intelligence" is the sine qua non of life. If
absent, no living being is imaginable. Where does it come from? This is a
problem which concerns both biologists and philosophers and, at present,
science seems incapable of solving it." (Grasse P.-P., "Evolution of Living
Organisms: Evidence for a New Theory of Transformation," Academic
Press: New York NY, 1977, p2)
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