Re: [asa] God as Cause

Just a note on 1 section of Plantinga's article snipped below. Christian opponents of MN & proponents of ID (they are often the same of course), in arguing against MN, almost always ignore distinctive Christian arguments for MN. Plantinga below & the Appendix in Dembski's Intelligent Design are good examples. (& in fact I don' t know any counterexamples, but I haven't read anything. The article I noted yesterday at http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2001/PSCF3-01Murphy.html is an example of such a distinctively Christian pro-MN argument, though there are plenty of others.

My point now isn't that such arguments must be accepted, but that anti-MN folks ought at least to acknowledge that they can be made, & should try to deal with them.

& please note - I'm not saying that Plantinga et al ignore all pro-MN arguments by Christians but that they ignore distinctively Christian arguments. The quote below from McMullin has no distinctively Christian elements, e.g., though McMullin is a Christian.

Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Janice Matchett
  To: Jon Tandy ; asa@calvin.edu
  Cc: 'Bill Hamilton'
  Sent: Friday, January 05, 2007 9:26 AM
  Subject: RE: [asa] God as Cause

  .............................

  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

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Received on Fri Jan 5 09:59:11 2007