Re: Cobb County

>>
>So, if God did supernaturally acts, then the assumptions of
>methodological naturalism are false and the foundations on which
>scientific discoveries are based are nonexistent.  If God does or did
>act in the events of the universe in a supernatural way and science
>assumes a priori that such actions are not present, then if they are
>present, science will always miss describing the universe or its history
>accurately.
>
[large snip]
>
>If we a priori exclude the possibility of discovering supernatural
>signatures in science, is that really science? How can one claim that
>certain types of evidence will always be ignored or interpreted to mean
>something else just because of a presupposition of methodological
>naturalism?

If you can propose a testable mechanism in which the supernatural
can interact with this world, and you can demonstrate it in such
a way that all people in the world can test it for themselves and
verify it (with at most the proviso of some piece of equipment that
can at least in principle be made by _anyone_), then you can also
propose tests for when God acted by supernatural mechanisms.

But in some respects, does it actually matter how God carries out
his activities in the world? Even in the Bible in Judges for
example, there are accounts where battles were essentially won
by dumb luck (with God's blessing of course). It was God's effort
to show them that they had to believe. Why must it be that
God must make a grand fireworks display before our eyes to
believe.

Maybe that is exactly why the Isrealites were so quick to
doubt Moses and why Pharoah didn't listen to Moses. Indeed,
if Jesus had really jumped down from the temple, he would have
floated into the center of the temple in the grand display we
all love and expect for God and his angels (in our fairy tale
books and imagination), no one would actually have to _believe_
Jesus anymore would they? It would be plain and simple fact
(at least as long as they couldn't find any sky hooks anywhere).
For whatever reason, God wants our faith, not our acceptance of
mere facts! Facts are facts and don't require faith anymore.

_Why_ must our coming into the world be some grand display?
Isn't that a sign of our own lack of humility? Who are we
to expect anything?
  
But back to my main point, the issue of science is the testability.
If science cannot explain who fish became frogs, and moreover, if
there is not plausable way it could have happened, then science would
simply have to give up. You have to let it try, and if at some point,
it really does get stumped, then _maybe_ (with a very heavy emphasis
on the conditionalness of that "maybe"), maybe that could be called
your "supernatural event". Maybe some form of ID would help here, but
I am reluctant to put much faith in that without considerable scrutiny.

Thus, without a probe to measure the supernatural, and an unlikely
way to make such a device (since we only have natural things
avaliable to make it with), I think we are all are largely out of
luck. We can only turn to our faith.

It does not mean that you are not allowed to _infer_ that God
may have acted (or did act), but it can only be a private
interpretation, not one we can teach in the classroom. Not
because I don't believe you, but because your private
interpretation cannot be tested by a independent method.

We all understand your concerns, but it is unlikely that
science can be used for testing issues of faith because
it would not require faith anymore if that was so. And
the fact that God seems to do a lot of things in the
world in a hidden way, we just cannot lord the Bible over
people's heads. We have to do things the hard way of
persuasing them to believe and to have faith. But it
does seem that it has always been this way because the
Bible has plenty of examples of that too.

by Grace alone we proceed,
Wayne
Received on Sun Jan 23 20:55:14 2005