Re: [asa] Natural Scientific Naturalism, Philosophy and Anthrospeak

"[I]t seems to me that the supernatural gets cabined off from human experience or gets naturalized." - David Opderbeck

There are several cross-over writers between the sciences and theology who incorporate the language of both natural and supernatural. Just recently I finished a book by Polkinghorne as well. The cabining off that David speaks about, however, is real, even if some hard-headed scientist-philosophers would simply repeat the 'science can't study the supernatural' or that 'supernatural beings may be part of the created order, but science has nothing to say about them,' as if that makes everything o.k. and people should stop worrying about it.

One of the problems is that science's voice is so loud (c.f. Reason and Progress) that even saying science can't study something doesn't actually do anything to promote those areas which do have something important to say about what is more (or less) than natural. Other categories are extra-natural or non-natural, but they don't seem to make much sense for a natural scientist to acknowledge if they are interested solely in natural causes and effects.

There would need to be a re-balancing of priorities away from nature to things like society, culture or transcendence in order to convince natural scientists that those who do not study 'nature' per se can still contribute to what counts as socially important knowledge. If 'doing science' means that all things that are not natural simply are not worthy of study as if they cannot be proven to be real, verifiable, testable or measurable, then this is a great misfortune for science to overcome. Thankfully, there are some at ASA who engage the tough questions and recognize that when science's voice ends, there are other voices that matter also and should be highlighted accordingly.

However, as this thread shows, most scientists, even Christian ones, are reluctant to speak about things that don't fit into the old science paradigm. When the new science is already on the way, the partitioning of human experience and absence of hermeneutics and reflexivity on behalf of natural scientists is especially telling. Yet there is still hope for cooperation and collaboration of voices where interdisciplinarity and synthetic accounts are sought.

Anyone want to suggest what 'anthrospeak' might mean?

Arago

David Opderbeck <dopderbeck@gmail.com> wrote: Anthrospeak
Sender: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu
Precedence: bulk

*Nature is not the only reality - does it even sound somehow 'unnatural' (or uncomfortable) for me to say that?*

Here is something that strikes me in the more sophisticated faith-science stuff I've read (e.g., Polkinghorne) -- what is the place of the supernatural in relation to the natural? Probably it's because I haven't read enough yet, but it seems to me that the supernatural gets cabined off from human experience or gets naturalized. Reading Pelikan's history of doctrine on the train last night, I was struck by the how important the "supernatural order" was in the life and faith of the early Church.
Yet, Pelikan notes, the early Church was exquisitely careful in its proclamations
to affirm that angels and demons are created beings, not gods as supposed in the pagan faiths. It seems to me that any conception of the faith-science relation from a Christian perspective has to acknowledge that "supernatural" beings are part of the created order and that such beings can act immanently as agents within the created order. Anyone know of good papers etc. that explore this?

                 
---------------------------------
 All new Yahoo! Mail -
---------------------------------
Get a sneak peak at messages with a handy reading pane.

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Sat Nov 4 04:25:34 2006