--- David Campbell <pleuronaia@gmail.com> wrote:
> Some distinction is needed between what we call the following three
> assertions:
>
> Everything is, in principle, fully explicable by natural laws.
>
> Natural laws provide adequate physical descriptions of what happens in the
> vast majority of situations, and it is a reasonable assumption to think that
> they apply to a given situaiton unless there is strong evidence to the
> contrary. This says nothing about what role supernatural agents might play
> in the operation of natural laws.
>
> Science refers to the process of investigating and explaining the physical
> world using natural laws. If phenomena exist that do not follow such laws,
> they are not amenable to scientific examination. This does not mean that
> those other methods are less valid, just that they fall outside the
> definition of science as adopted here.
>
> (Natural is used in contrast to miraculous, rather than to artificial, so
> human activities that obey the laws of physics count as natural. The
> contrast to miraculous again is not very good wording, as Christianity and
> many other viewpoints hold that supernatural agents are at work in things
> that obey natural laws as well as in occasions when they are set aside. )
>
> The first of these is more or less equivalent to scientism. The second is
> what I think is usefully labeled as methodological naturalism. The third is
> an assertion that methodological naturalism is the approach used by
> science.
>
> I would take slight exception to the third assertion, in that purported
> regularly predictable supernatural actions can be investigated by science.
> Astrology, parapsychology, etc. claim that anyone ought to be able to
> observe a certain set of results in a given circumstance. In contrast, it's
> impossible to get a statistically meaningful data set on whether Jesus will
> rise again after being executed.
>
It seems to me that an adequate definition of MN as it should be practiced by a
Christian working in the sciences could be constructed from the second and
third definitions above. I think it's important to include the caveat that just
because a phenomenon can't be investigated by scientific methods doesn't make
that phenomenon irrelevant -- which I think is the objection of many YECs to
MN.
> Most scientists are not philosophers and don't think about the philosophy of
> science very much, if at all.
Engineers are worse :-).
>
>
> --
> > Dr. David Campbell
> > 425 Scientific Collections
> > University of Alabama
> > "I think of my happy condition, surrounded by acres of clams"
>
Bill Hamilton
William E. Hamilton, Jr., Ph.D.
248.652.4148 (home) 248.821.8156 (mobile)
"...If God is for us, who is against us?" Rom 8:31
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Received on Mon Aug 21 21:23:18 2006
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Mon Aug 21 2006 - 21:23:18 EDT