Re: The demise ofa fiction

Methodological naturalism is not a "fact" but a procedural rule of science. We can violate it and make statements about God's action in the world which are true, but they are simply not useful scientifically.

& although it sometimes isn't acknowledged, methodological naturalism implies a limitation of the competence of science. Most obviously, a science limited to natural causes cannot explain how nature itself came into being. When we confront that limit, the thing to do is simply to recognize that that limit has been encountered & to look to religion if we want to go beyond it. It only confuses matters to call that religion "science," as the Kansas school board wants to do.

Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Vernon Jenkins
  To: asa@calvin.edu
  Sent: Monday, January 09, 2006 5:54 PM
  Subject: The demise ofa fiction

  Reading the recent exchanges between Bill Green and David Campbell it occurs to me that the claim to be both Bible believer and committed methodological naturalist is a contradiction in terms; for how can one who accepts the possibility of supernatural intrusion into our domain of space and time seriously claim immunity for the scientist? Obviously, to practise science _with confidence_ one needs either to reject belief in the supernatural, or to assume that (by some kind of unwritten agreement) it remains outside the laboratory door. But, desirable as this hope may be, how can the Christian assume that it _must_ be so? Isn't God sovereign? - His 'own man', so to speak? Doesn't He 'call the shots'? Who are we to happily collaborate with those who - for their own atheistic ends - have so deified the _hypothesis_ of methodological naturalism that it is now widely acclaimed as unassailable fact?

  Of course, it requires but one proven instance of supernatural activity (as determined using those time-honoured principles familiar to scientists) to demolish this fiction. Such an instance is now before us, viz the coordinated structure of numerical geometries that we find indelibly associated with the Bible's opening Hebrew Words.

  Vernon
  www.otherbiblecode.com
Received on Mon Jan 9 19:19:33 2006