Re: [asa] Creation and Incarnation

David Opderbeck wrote:

> I just today came across an interview with Del Ratzsch, which
> crystalizes some of the things I've been bumbling over here in my
> lawerly way (text here: http://galilean-library.org/
> ratzsch.html ). I like Ratzsch's point about the death of old-
> style foundationalism and the prospects for Reformed Epistemology.
> Here is how Ratzsch ties his epistemic perspective to the question
> of MN. He says that "methodological naturalism is a useful -
> perhaps even essential - provisional strategy, and one not lightly
> to be overridden" (emphasis in original). But, he says (quoting
> from an article of his in Faith and Philosophy),
>
> The basic problem with pre-stipulated conceptual/theoretical
> boundaries is that if reality itself happens to fall outside those
> boundaries, theorizing within the confines of those boundaries will
> inevitably generate either incompleteness or error....<snip> But
> even if one merely situplates methodological naturalism as esential
> to science, then assumes only that science is competent for all
> physical matters, or that what sicence (properly conducted in the
> long run) does generate concerning the physical realm will in
> principle be truth, then if the truth of the specific matter in
> question is non-natural, even the most excruciatingly proper
> naturalistic scientific deliverances on that matter may be wide of
> the mark, typically in exactly the way a science built on
> philosophical naturalism would be. For practical purposes, that
> comes close to importing philosophical naturalism into the
> structure of science. (Emphasis in original.)

Here is a statement that I have posted before, that addresses this.

If God acted in creation to bring about a particular structure in a
way that broke causal chains, then science would simply conclude that
-- "There is presently no known series of cause-and-effect processes
that can adequately account for this structure, and research will
continue to search for such processes." Any statement beyond that
requires the application of a particular religious worldview.
Science cannot conclude "God did it." However, if God acted through
a seamless series of cause-and-effect processes to bring about that
structure, then the continuing search for such processes stimulated
by the tentativeness and methodological naturalism of science may
uncover those processes. Furthermore, how would a gap in the causal
chain be discovered unless continuing effort was expended in
searching for possible "natural " causes? Thus even the verification
of gaps requires research conducted using MN assumptions.

Keith

Keith B. Miller
Research Assistant Professor
Dept of Geology, Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS 66506-3201
785-532-2250
http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~kbmill/

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Tue Aug 22 11:18:55 2006