Re: [asa] God as Cause

At 09:58 AM 1/5/2007, George Murphy wrote:

>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>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. ~ George

@ I suspect that Plantinga would reject what you might want to
call, "Christian" arguments:

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

There is that little question of, "what is the 'rational' thing to
do?," however:

"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."

~ Janice

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Received on Fri Jan 5 11:29:41 2007