Re: The Terms of Debate in Kansas

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Keith Miller
  To: asa@calvin.edu
  Sent: Tuesday, May 17, 2005 9:43 AM
  Subject: Re: The Terms of Debate in Kansas

  Dave:

    I have to object to your last sentence. I don't see how any person can be a black box. As I understand the label, a black box gives a consistent output for a specific input. But I cannot expect so direct a response from a person, although there are some social constraints. Even lesser creatures are not altogether predictable. I recall running across the Harvard Law of Animal Behavior, something like: If a laboratory animal is placed in a defined experimental situation and a measured stimulus is applied, the animal will respond exactly as it pleases. An entity with an infinite number of degrees of freedom is hardly a black box.

  No, that is not at all what I meant. What I meant by supernatural action as a black box, is that it is completely unconstrained. A supernatural agent can do anything at anytime. It's actions are unpredictable. I was simply making a play on Behe's use of the term. An appeal to the supernatural as a scientific explanation is an appeal to current ignorance -- a box that we cannot see into or open.

  Keith

  A literary parallel which I think sheds some light on this is the fact characters with supernatural powers, & especially unnatural supernatural powers, are poor plot devices in works of fiction. The character "Q" in Star Trek: Next Generation is a good (or bad) example. Once anything is possible then there are no rules, no need for consistency &c. Hamlet doesn't have to stay dead, Oedipus gets his eyes back &c. It may be largely a matter of taste but stories in which things like that are allowed to happen all over the place just aren't very good.

  & even when miracles & magic are understood to be part of the fictional world they should be kept to a minimum. It was in connection with the Arthurian romances that C.S. Lewis said, "One magician is better than two magicians."
  Once you introduce miracles into a scientific theory you no longer have a scientific theory: Natural processes plus a miracle equals a miracle. (Rather as X + infinity = infinity for all X.) That is, z.B., why Humphreys' cosmological model is bogus.

  Shalom
  George
  http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
Received on Tue May 17 11:15:34 2005