Re: Signs of Scientism

--- David Opderbeck <dopderbeck@gmail.com> wrote:

> *This immediately sets up scientific and theological issues as though they
> are competing claims of the same kind, addressing the same kinds of
> questions. They are not. Theology and science are complementary ways of
> knowing.*
>
> For some reason this isn't very satisfying to me. So we really can't "know"
> anything? We can only look at things from various "perspectives," each of
> which have their own methodological limitations, and arrive at a sort of
> bug's-eye pastiche that may or may not cohere?
>
It's also unsatisfying to me -- even though I would have given the same answer
to the same question. 15 years or so ago when I was emerging from YEC, it would
have been far more disturbing. I wanted all knowledge to be unified -- to fit
together neatly. But it doesn't. However, it's important to keep in mind that a
large part of the reason scientific knowledge and what we know from the
Scriptures and theology don't neatly fit together with what we know from
science is due to the self-imposed limitations of science. Science has to limit
the problems it studies, and to the average layperson, the problems scientists
study might consequently seem to be "toy" problems.

Bill Hamilton
William E. Hamilton, Jr., Ph.D.
586.986.1474 (work) 248.652.4148 (home) 248.303.8651 (mobile)
"...If God is for us, who is against us?" Rom 8:31

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Received on Fri Jan 20 17:08:14 2006