Re: [asa] JDEP

On 8/31/06, David Opderbeck <dopderbeck@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Query for the anti-ID folks here (honest query, not "fighting
> words"): should scripture be approached with the presumption that its
> apparently supernatural aspects have "natural" or "human" explanations?
>

No, because Scripture, and the miracles described in Scripture are how God
revealed Himself to humankind.

> If not, why should we presume differently concerning "general" revelation?
>

I don't think it's a question of "presumption" here. There are unsolved
problems in science, e.g. how certain apparently irreducibly complex
structures evolved, how life got started in the first place, etc. Maybe it
is the case that God directly intervened and "Intelligently Designed" all
this. Certainly God is capable of creating exactly how He chooses.

However, to plump for that explanation, it seems to me is to cop out of
looking for a scientific explanation. It is the job of science to _look_
for natural explanations, because a naturalistic theory, if correct, enables
useful predictions to be made. However, if you come across something you
can't explain, and say it's too complex to have evolved, then if you invoke
a supernatural explanation for it at that point, you've given up looking.
It's like you have an equation that you can't balance, and you put in a
magic fudge factor S (for "Supernatural") whose value is precisely that to
make the equation balance. However, the value of S only works for that
equation and doesn't make any other useful predictions. Hence it neither
predicts, nor can be falsified, and therefore is not a scientific theory.

So I'd say, if you're a scientist, you HAVE to keep looking. It's not that
you've presumed there can be no supernatural intervention, it's just that
when you say that it is supernatural, then you're no longer doing science.

Iain

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Received on Thu Aug 31 15:16:49 2006