Re: [asa] God as Cause

At 01:00 PM 1/5/2007, George Murphy wrote:
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. ...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: [snip] ~ Janice
>
>1st, I did not say "Christian" but "distinctively Christian"
>arguments. The difference is non-trivial. There are plenty of
>theistic arguments that can be made by Jews, Muslims & others as
>well as by Christians, but that's not what I'm talking about. ....
>3d, Plantinga may indeed reject the arguments to which I refer. I
>made a point of saying that he & other anti-ID folks might indeed do
>so, & that my objection to their procedures was that they didn't
>even try to deal with them. 4th, __in the material you quote below
>from Plantinga__ he does not respond to any of what I have called
>"distinctively Christian" arguments. ~ George

@@ Your objection makes no sense.

Plantinga maintains that the distinctive Christian arguments on
which methodological naturalism is based are ship-wrecked. That
means that he hasn't "ignored" their existence, as you claim. On
the contrary, he had previously considered them and rejected them.

You complain that in "the material" I quoted from Plantinga he
doesn't respond to each of what you have called "distinctively
Christian" arguments, but he plainly said that he wasn't going to add
his voice to those criticizing modern classical foundationalism
arguments other than to say that those arguments have "run
aground". Read it again:

"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 ..... "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." ~ Alvin Plantinga

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Received on Sat Jan 6 10:46:06 2007