Re: Fwd: [asa] Creation and Incarnation

Gregory

You talked yourself into a corner and that was the purpose of my deadly serious, yet humorous comments.

There is a sense that culture is very natural.

Michael
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Gregory Arago
  To: David Opderbeck ; Michael Roberts
  Cc: Gregory Arago ; David Campbell ; asa@calvin.edu
  Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2006 6:35 PM
  Subject: Re: Fwd: [asa] Creation and Incarnation

  Please forgive, Michael, that I am not currently in the U.K. and perhaps don't recognize if you are joking are not. Can you not conceptualize/perceptualize anything 'non-natural' which a person may study? Is everything natural to you - everybody studies 'the nature of things'? This perhaps sounds like a natural-science-theology club that can be used against all other non-natural science-theology discplines in the academy (see ASA statement below). Perhaps you think that 'society,' 'culture' and 'civilization,' for example are all purely natural things?

  As for your collie puppy, do you think she has a soul? It wasn't my intention to speak about her, but then a thought came to me that animals are not just machines and that it would seem rather absurd (or perhaps just strangely fixated) with one's computer to call it a 'him' or a 'her.' In any case, I was speaking 'social' as in human-social, if that helps to clarify the meaning.

  The spiritual intervention of human beings into nature's processes, as you call them, appears to be a live issue for many people, many Christians and even many scientists (the language I operate in interchanges the word 'scholars' sometimes for scientists - i.e. not anglo-saxon tradition). Should we just blame the French philosophers and not think about it?

  Cheers,

  Arago

  "Science is interpreted broadly to include anthropology, archeology, economics, engineering, history, mathematics, medicine, political science, psychology, and sociology as well as the generally recognized science disciplines. Philosophers and theologians who are interested in science are very welcome." - ASA

  On 8/22/06, Michael Roberts <michael.andrea.r@ukonline.co.uk> wrote:
      What do you study which is not natural?

      Are you studying the paranormal?

      Michael

        Gregory Arago wrote:

        Could the following tag be added to your statement: 'Everything is explicable by natural laws, except for what is not natural.' It may seem trivial or just unscientific to you. But I happen to study and research in a field that doesn't study only natural things, and yet it is counted as 'scientific' by the ASA mission statement.

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Received on Wed Aug 23 18:11:10 2006