Re: [asa] AAAS President Keynote Address

OK. I was on the committee that drafted the current statement (as was Jack Haas). I don't think we were trying to narrow in on any specific epistemology, but the statement that "God has endowed [the universe] with contingent order and intelligibility" does say something about how the world is - and isn't knowable. The world is not just ordered but its order is contingent. (Theological emphasis on this idea of the contingent rationality of creation is due especially to Thomas Torrance.) I.e., it could have been ordered in a different way. That means, inter alia, that the world cannot be understood by pure thought but that we have to observe the way the world actually is - we need not only theory but observation, including experiment. That may seem obvious now but it wasn't until people like Bacon & Galileo emphasized it.

Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: David Opderbeck
  To: George Murphy
  Cc: Rich Blinne ; Janice Matchett ; asa@calvin.edu
  Sent: Wednesday, February 21, 2007 11:32 AM
  Subject: Re: [asa] AAAS President Keynote Address

  Thank you; yes, I meant it rules out such a belief.

  On 2/21/07, George Murphy <gmurphy@raex.com> wrote:
    Do you mean to say that the statement that the universe is "intelligible" rules out "some kind of eastern-new age belief that life is nothing but an illusion"? The claim that it "implies" that makes no sense.

    Shalom
    George
    http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
      ----- Original Message -----
      From: David Opderbeck
      To: Rich Blinne
      Cc: Janice Matchett ; asa@calvin.edu
      Sent: Wednesday, February 21, 2007 10:59 AM
      Subject: Re: [asa] AAAS President Keynote Address

       
      We believe that in creating and preserving the universe God has endowed it
> with contingent order and intelligibility, the basis of scientific
> investigation.....

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Received on Wed Feb 21 20:53:29 2007