SteamDoc@aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated Tue, 1 May 2001 2:03:42 PM Eastern Daylight Time, "Lawrence Johnston" <johnston@uidaho.edu> writes:
>
> <<
> Phil's complaint is that sometimes when discussing biology with Christian
> Biologists at Christian Universities, they say they are Methodological
> Naturalists. But then they insist on limiting the Bio-discussion to natural
> causes, ie. Natural selection. In that case I think they are clearly behaving
> as Philosophical Naturalists, and should be willing to recognize this.
>
> So maybe Phil should choose a new name for such scientists , rather than saying
> that the two terms mean the same thing. Maybe Crypto-Philosophical
> Naturalists?
> >>
>
> So what if Phil as a lawyer is discussing a legal case solely in terms of natural explanations (as opposed to bringing in explanations like "a demon put the victim's wallet in my pocket")? Does that make him effectively a Philosophical Naturalist? Or what if a physicist discusses star formation in terms of the natural processes of gravity and nuclear physics? Is that physicist a crypto-Philosophical Naturalist? If not, please explain what is fundamentally different about biology that makes you (and Phil) apply a different standard to biologists than to other disciplines.
Allan here puts his finger on a basic error of the ID movement, and of anti-evolutionists in general - the idea that while the origins of things like stars may be understood in terms of natural processes, the origin of living things cannot be so understood. There is no theological reason at all to believe that. If anything, the mediated character of the creation of living things in Genesis 1 points in the opposite direction.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
"The Science-Theology Interface"
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