Re: Signs of Scientism

Bill Hamilton wrote:

>--- 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
>
>
>
To call things "complementary ways of knowing" is not necessarily to say
that those subjects so known have no overlap or unity. Both theology
and science are human constructs to help us apprehend truth. Probably
most of us in this forum would freely accept that there is one large
seamless unified truth if we could just have that all-encompassing
"God's eye" perspective. But meanwhile from our fragmented perspectives
we develop different disciplines to tackle different aspects of that
larger truth, and we do well to recognize that those disciplines (i.e.
science, theology, etc. ) have limitations. (Blind men probing the
elephant analogy)

--merv
Received on Fri Jan 20 17:55:37 2006