Re: [asa] Anti-Creationist Psychobabble On the Web

How about this for a sweeping historical summary:

O.T. & ancient times: Ascribe just about everything to the gods (or God).

along come a few savvy Greeks: "ascribe nothing to the gods."

..eventually given a Christian nod by Francis Bacon himself:
      "don't resort to supernatural explanations."
           (I can't remember exact quote.)

..but other growing enthusiasts of the fledgling modern science went
in a different direction: "nature is all there is; science is all we need;
just drop all the religion and Scripture hocus pocus."

..not to be outdone, others objected: "Not only is our religion NOT hocus
pocus, but we will prove it to you using science, since nature is, after all,
God's creation and so can't possibly be "Untrue". (birth of creation science)

..Others (including Christians) were also there who would effectively respond:
 "as exciting as this latest peeing contest has become, science really doesn't
have a clue or a method to judge any of this." So let's get back to the earlier
wisdom of "ascribe nothing to the gods ---and furthermore don't pretend you can
conclude anything about them one way OR the other from science." (an
acknowledgment of what would later be called methodological naturalism.)

But it was too late, and now folks had some large axes to grind. And these axes
get brought to class, and science teachers try to ignore them or make students
leave them at the door, but soon discover that this is an impossible job. And
to complicate matters, science itself stands accused by some of being an axe.
So who gets to play referee and say what's allowed? Bringing us to all our
present fun and axe-grinding right here. Do I hear math teachers chortling
somewhere?

--Merv
  

Quoting John Walley <john_walley@yahoo.com>:

>
> This argument goes both ways. You could more logically say that the need for
> it was born in response to specious creationist claims.
>
> JOhn
>
>
> --- On Fri, 4/3/09, mrb22667@kansas.net <mrb22667@kansas.net> wrote:
>
> > From: mrb22667@kansas.net <mrb22667@kansas.net>
> > Subject: Re: [asa] Anti-Creationist Psychobabble On the Web
> > To: "David Clounch" <david.clounch@gmail.com>
> > Cc: "asa" <asa@calvin.edu>
> > Date: Friday, April 3, 2009, 3:18 PM
> > I think the view below -- that this wasn't needed until
> > we needed to discuss
> > religion ... etc. -- has a good bit of truth in it. If
> > the whole world is and
> > had always been atheist, then "atheist"
> > wouldn't even be word as there would be
> > nothing to talk about. Until people started trying to
> > abuse science to make
> > claims like "God does not work in our world", we
> > had no reason to clarify:
> > "wait a minute --let's separate out your valid
> > thought & process from the
> > illogical leaps" & hence was born the need to
> > distinguish. But this was NOT the
> > birth of the "valid process" itself which is only
> > now so elegantly described by
> > the phrase "MN". If nobody had ever driven at
> > unreasonably fast or unsafe
> > speeds, there would never have been any signs posted or
> > speed laws made.
> >
> > --Merv
> > p.s. There is no term equivalent "mathematical
> > methodology..." because nobody
> > has yet tried to abuse math towards conclusions where math
> > can't really go. But
> > if they did --in a big enough way, the term would be born.
> > But not the limits.
> > Those already existed from the beginning.
> >
> >
> >
> > Quoting David Clounch <david.clounch@gmail.com>:
> >
> > > On Fri, Apr 3, 2009 at 12:22 PM, D. F. Siemens, Jr.
> > > <dfsiemensjr@juno.com>wrote:
> > >
> > > Dave,
> > > One problem I have is I don't know what teacher A
> > does differently by
> > > teaching MN than teacher B who does not. It makes no
> > difference.
> > >
> > > Until you have a religious student to whom you feel
> > the need to try to
> > > explain something. BINGO! This trips over the Lemon
> > test (and some other
> > > things). IMHO. :)
> > >
> > > To those who are completely secular there is nothing
> > to talk about. To those
> > > who are concerned with religion then MN is needed.
> > >
> > > An analogy (all analogies are flawed of course):
> > > If I go to the store and buy meat I don't need to
> > know that its
> > > "methodologically natural" (even though
> > someone may believe it might be).
> > > But if I go to the store and ask for Kosher meat, then
> > religion comes into
> > > it. MN is like that.
> > >
> >
> > To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
> > "unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the
> > message.
>
>
>
>

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Received on Fri Apr 3 17:17:33 2009