RE: [asa] God as Cause

At 09:00 AM 1/5/2007, Jon Tandy wrote:

>..Also a thought about Steven J. Gould's "non-overlapping
>magesteria" concept: it seems to me that this dichotomoy exists more
>in the mind of the observer than in the reality itself. If one
>_chooses_ to see clinical depression, or healing, or creation, as
>either natural or spiritual (but never both, and with no
>relationship between the two), then the non-overlapping magesteria
>is merely a function of the observer's bias -- if in fact the truth
>is, "it's both". ~ Jon Tandy

@ Exactly.

"What the Christian community really needs is a science that takes
into account what we know as Christians. Indeed, this seems the
rational thing in any event; surely the rational thing is to use all
that you know in trying to understand a given phenomenon. But then in
coming to a scientific understanding of hostility, or aggression, for
example, shouldn't Christian psychologists make use of the notion of
sin?" ~ Alvin Plantinga

"Science must be open to all truth. Even if science and religion can
be sharply distinguished, which I deny, it is important to understand
what is involved in the "openness" of science to truth. Let's imagine
that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, and that in that book God
speaks on some matters of importance to science. Now in the current
discussion this possibility would be dismissed as an encroachment of
religion on science. But, whether Scripture is religion or science,
at least its believers claim that it is a source of truth. If it is a
source of truth, how can scientists justify ignoring or denying
it? Of course, many scientists deny that the Bible is the inerrant
word of God. But if it is, those scientists are missing out on
something important, just as if they neglected important data in a
study of the effect of a drug. So the question of whether the Bible
is true is a question of importance to science, as well as to all
other studies." ~ John Frame

More:

"..The theist knows that God created the heavens and the earth and
all that they contain; she knows, therefore, that in one way or
another God has created all the vast diversity of contemporary plant
and animal life. But of course she isn't thereby committed to any
particular way in which God did this. He could have done it by
broadly evolutionary means; but on the other hand he could have done
it in some totally different way. For example, he could have done it
by directly creating certain kinds of creatures--human beings, or
bacteria, or for that matter sparrows13 and houseflies--as many
Christians over the centuries have thought. Alternatively, he could
have done it the way Augustine suggests: by implanting seeds,
potentialities of various kinds in the world, so that the various
kinds of creatures would later arise, although not by way of
genealogical interrelatedness. Both of these suggestions are
incompatible with the evolutionary story.

A Christian therefore has a certain freedom denied her naturalist
counterpart: she can follow the evidence14 where it leads. If it
seems to suggest that God did something special in creating human
beings (in such a way that they are not genealogically related to the
rest of creation)15 or reptiles or whatever, then there is nothing to
prevent her from believing that God did just that. Perhaps the point
here can be put like this: The epistemic probability of the whole
grand evolutionary story is quite different for the theist and for
the naturalist. The probability of this story with respect to the
evidence together with the views a theist typically holds, is much
lower than its probability with respect to evidence together with the
views the naturalist typically holds. So the way in which the theory
of evolution is not religiously neutral is not, as with Simon's
explanation of Mother Teresa, that it is straightforwardly
incompatible with Christian teaching; it is rather that the view in
question is much more probable with respect to naturalism and the
evidence than it is with respect to theism and that evidence. ...

Weak Arguments for Methodological Naturalism

Now in view of these examples and many others like them (together
with broader Augustinian considerations), the natural thing to think
is that (in principle, at any rate) the Christian scholarly community
should do science, or parts of science, in its own way and from its
own perspective. What the Christian community really needs is a
science that takes into account what we know as Christians. Indeed,
this seems the rational thing in any event; surely the rational thing
is to use all that you know in trying to understand a given
phenomenon. But then in coming to a scientific understanding of
hostility, or aggression, for example, shouldn't Christian
psychologists make use of the notion of sin? In trying to achieve
scientific understanding of love in its many and protean
manifestations, for example, or play, or music, or humor, or our
sense of adventure, shouldn't we also use what we know about human
beings being created in the image of God, who is himself the very
source of love, beauty and the like? And the same for morality?
Consider that enormous, impressive, and disastrous Bolshevik
experiment of the twentieth century, perhaps the outstanding feature
of the twentieth century political landscape: in coming to a
scientific understanding of it, shouldn't Christians use all that
they know about human beings, including what they know by faith?

True: there could be practical obstacles standing in the way of doing
this; but in principle, and abstracting from these practical
difficulties (which in any event may be more bark than bite), the
right way for the Christian community to attain scientific
understanding of, say, the way human beings are and behave, would be
to start from what we know about human beings, including what we know
by way of faith. Hence the sorts of hypotheses we investigate might
very well involve such facts (as the Christian thinks) as that we
human beings have been created by God in his image, and have fallen
into sin. These 'religious' ideas might take a place in our science
by way of explicitly entering various hypotheses. They might also
play other roles: for example, they might be part of the background
information with respect to which we evaluate the various scientific
hypotheses and myths that come our way.

I say this is the natural thing to think; oddly enough, however, the
denial of this claim is widely taken for granted. As a matter of
fact, it has achieved the status of philosophical orthodoxy. Among
those who object to this claim are Christian thinkers with impressive
credentials. Thus Ernan McMullin:

But, of course, methodological naturalism does not restrict our study
of nature; it just lays down which sort of study qualifies as
scientific. If someone wants to pursue another approach to
nature--and there are many others--the methodological naturalist has
no reason to object. Scientists have to proceed in this way; the
methodology of natural science gives no purchase on the claim that a
particular event or type of event is to be explained by invoking
God's creative action directly.

Part of the problem, of course, is to see more clearly what this
methodological naturalism is. Precisely what does it come to? Does it
involve an embargo only on such claims as that a particular event is
to be explained by invoking God's creative action directly, without
the employment of 'secondary causes'? Does it also proscribe invoking
God's indirect creative action in explaining something
scientifically? Does it pertain only to scientific explanations, but
not to other scientific assertions and claims? Does it also preclude
using claims about God's creative action, or other religious claims
as part of the background information with respect to which one tries
to assess the probability of a proposed scientific explanation or
account? We shall have to look into these matters later. At the
moment however, I want to look into a different question: what reason
is there for accepting the claim that science does indeed involve
such a methodological naturalism, however exactly we construe the
latter? I shall examine some proposed reasons for this claim and find
them wanting. In Part III, I shall then argue that, nevertheless, a
couple of very sensible reasons lie behind at least part of this
claim. These reasons, however, do not support the suggestion that
science is religiously neutral.

Well then, what underlies the idea that science in some way
necessarily involves this principle of methodological naturalism?
First, and perhaps most important: this conception of science is an
integral and venerable part of the whole conception of faith and
reason we have inherited from the Enlightenment. I don't have the
space to treat this topic with anything like the fullness it
deserves; but the central idea, here, is that science is objective,
public, sharable, publicly verifiable, and equally available to
anyone, whatever their religious or metaphysical proclivities. We may
be Buddhist, Hindu, Protestant, Catholic, Muslim, Jew, Bahai, none of
the above--the findings of science hold equally for all of us. This
is because proper science, as seen by the Enlightenment, is
restricted to the deliverances of reason and sense (perception) which
are the same for all people. Religion, on the other hand, is private,
subjective, and obviously subject to considerable individual
differences. But then if science is indeed public and sharable by
all, then of course one can't properly pursue it by starting from
some bit of religious belief or dogma.

One root of this way of thinking about science is a consequence of
the modern foundationalism stemming from Descartes and perhaps even
more importantly, Locke. Modern classical foundationalism has come in
for a lot of criticism lately, and I do not propose to add my voice
to the howling mob.36 And since the classical foundationalism upon
which methodological naturalism is based has run aground, I shall
instead consider some more local, less grand and cosmic reasons for
accepting methodological naturalism." ~ Alvin
Plantinga Philosophical Analysis Origins & Design 18:1
Methodological Naturalism?

http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/arn/odesign/od181/methnat181.htm

~ Janice

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Received on Fri Jan 5 09:27:10 2007