Re: [asa] Creation and Incarnation

David Campbell wrote:
  "the fact that one can combine printing articles in the ordinary fashion with prayer and God's work shows that use of natural methods is not inherently atheistic. / Attacking MN is a red herring."

  Please excuse if I didn't quite understand your message. I think I agree. But I'm not sure what you mean by 'natural methods.' Is printing considered to be a 'natural method' or is prayer a natural method? It seems that some people define printing presses as 'artificial' and prayer as 'natural' (or characteristic) only to believers and whatever they are praying to.
   
  Thanks for clarifying/contextualizing the often unclear MN discourse.
   
  Gregory
   
  
David Campbell <pleuronaia@gmail.com> wrote:
    On 8/11/06, David Opderbeck <dopderbeck@gmail.com> wrote:
      YEC and intelligent design advocates use MN all the time. They print articles instead of assuming that their views will be miraculously revealed to all true believers. They assume that things around them will behave according to the laws of nature. They only reject it when the evidence goes against their views.
   

    I don't think I'd totally agree with this characterization. They would also believe, I'm sure, that God uses the articles they print to work in people's hearts and minds in ways they would characterize as miraculous or at least not explainable by natural laws, and they also I'm sure would believe that things around them sometimes do and sometimes don't behave according to natural laws -- for example when someone in their church fellowship is healed from an illness or blessed in some other way that seems to be God working directly merely than simply natural laws. And all of us would probably believe the same things as well, OEC, TE, or whatever, so "they" could just as well say of "us," "they believe the supernatural intervenes in the natural in other areas of life -- why can't they believe it happend in natural history too?"

   
  "All the time" is ambiguous and I should have made it clearer. Everyone uses MN all the time in the sense of using it every day and arguably every second (depending on whether you count ongoing assumptions such as that the atmosphere, furniture, buildings, etc. will continue to behave in a normal fashion). However, neither YEC, nor OEC, nor TE hold that MN always covers every aspect of everything.
   
  Some YEC and ID advocates label MN as inherently atheistic. The fact that everyone uses it all the time highlights that this is a thoughtlessly hypocritical way to slander the faith of anyone who disagrees with you rather than a valid claim. E.g., claiming that MN invariably leads to philosophical naturalism. Likewise, the fact that one can combine printing articles in the ordinary fashion with prayer and God's work shows that use of natural methods is not inherently atheistic.
  Attacking MN is a red herring. Even if I assume that God worked miraculously in a particular situation, that doesn't change the fact that the physical evidence contradicts many YEC and ID claims.
  (any newcomers-Methodological Naturalism, Young Earth Creationism/ist, Old Earth Creationism/ist, Theistic Evolution/ist, Intelligent Design sensu the ID movement)

                                 
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Received on Fri Aug 18 09:57:04 2006