Re: [asa] Natural Agents - Cause and Effect, Non-Natural Agents

There's a lot that could be said about this but let me cut to the chase. In
order to study God scientifically we would have do do experiments on God. &
this runes full face into the prohibition of Dt.6:16: "You shall not put the
LORD your God to the test".

Shalom
George
http://home.roadrunner.com/~scitheologyglm

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bill Powers" <wjp@swcp.com>
To: "George Murphy" <GMURPHY10@neo.rr.com>
Cc: "Keith Miller" <kbmill@ksu.edu>; "AmericanScientificAffiliation
Affiliation" <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Sunday, April 12, 2009 6:51 PM
Subject: Re: [asa] Natural Agents - Cause and Effect, Non-Natural Agents

> George:
>
> When I said that we study God all the time, I didn't mean to say that
> everyone consciously does. What I intended to indicate was that it is
> possible to study God, as well as humans, scientifically inasmuch as both
> exhibit behaviors that give rise to regularities.
>
> If this is the primary objective of science, it would seem that
> non-natural, even supernatural beings can be studied by science.
>
> Before speaking of a study of God, let's consider the study of humans.
> What I am particularly interested in is the study of the willful aspects
> of human behavior. When we make theories concerning such willful behavior
> we may say something like, "humans when confronted by uncertainty tend to
> first withdraw to reconsider their situation." One might consider this a
> covering law or more appropriately a ceteris parabus law, not unlike
> Snell's law. As such, it expresses a causal disposition, one not,
> however, universal. One might say that it is not much of an explanation
> (even if it fits the D-N) model. And that is true. Nevertheless, one
> might be satisfied that something of a scientific nature was given here.
>
> It seems to me that such a ceteris paribus law is valuable and
> appropriately scientific despite the fact that the individuals involved
> may have non-combatibilist free will. If this is appropriate science,
> what makes it "natural"? The entities associated with the law are mental
> states of humans and perhaps an observable behavior. Are these natural?
> Despite our ability to describe mental states or grasp entirely their
> ontological status, I doubt that hardly anyone, but DesCartes, would deny
> that they are natural. Frankly, I'm not sure, but surely everyone would
> accept that they are appropriate scientific objects of study.
>
> If this is accepted, the step to studying God seems similar. It is
> possible, it seems, for an entity to be investigated in which not everyone
> believes exists. This has been true of every fundamental "particle" of
> which I am aware. While some may be studying Nature's regularities,
> others may be studying God's regularities. Tell me the difference.
>
> The MN position appears to be something of a gentlemen's agreement to
> speak only of Nature, permitting some, under their breath, to think of
> Nature as God's creation, even the manifestation of His Will.
>
> We study the behavior of all sorts of "things." We say that in doing so
> we know something of their "character." We study humans and even
> individual humans, and by their behavior under varying circumstances we
> say that we come to know them.
>
> Is it possible to say this also of God? Science began, at least in the
> West, under the presumption that the Creator's character was known, at
> least in part. Why not say then that by studying His Creation, we come to
> know something of the Creator. Now this knowing can never be the kind of
> knowing that we have of another human. Indeed, should we ever meet an
> alien creation, they will likely seem as incomprehensible to us as bats.
> They same must surely be true in spades for God. Still something is
> learned in this study of God. It seems to me that nothing prevents this
> study from being scientific. What fails is in making theories that go
> beyond laws. What is interesting here is that just as we would argue that
> such theorizing on the workings of God's Mind would be metaphysical or
> theological, it is not so very different from what is normally done in any
> theorizing: a speaking of unseen entities and laws. We perhaps come to
> trust this dark speculation because it may prove to be fruitful, even
> suggesting visible consequences. Yet I do not know that the same might be
> said of God. There are certain presumptions made about "Nature"
> especially in high energy physics which smack of just such an
> "understanding" of "Nature's character."
>
> Well, enough said. It's been fun.
>
> bill
>
> On Sat, 11 Apr 2009, George Murphy wrote:
>
>> Brier responses (since I got home late from the vigil):
>>
>> 1) "Predictability" needs to be understood in a statistical sense. I'd
>> rather say "regularity" (if that doesn't make it sound like a laxative
>> commercial!) You get to this near the end.
>>
>> 2) There's not a one-to-one corrsepondence between refusing to use God
>> as an explanation & belief in the regularity of phenomena. OTOH, simply
>> eschewing appeals to God (or the gods) doesn't necessarily imply that
>> there is such regularity. OTOH it is belief in a God who created a
>> rational world that provides one reason for thinking that phenomena will
>> display some sort of order. Empirically, of course, there's little point
>> in trying to do science if you don't think, or at least hope, that you
>> can make some sense of phenomena.
>>
>> 3) It's misleading to say "We do study God scientifically all the time".
>> What we study scientifically is the character & interactions of things in
>> the world. As Christians we believe (if we have a decent theology of
>> creation) that God is somehow acting with & through those things but that
>> is a theological contextualizing of our science. A person can do exactly
>> the same science with no such belief. If - to use what I think is a good
>> metaphor - worldly entities can be seen as the instruments through which
>> God works, then what science studies is those instruments, not the one
>> who works with them. & the rare cases in which God "takes the gloves off"
>> & acts directly, without intermediaries (if indeed that evebr happens)
>> are cases in which science fails precisely because they cannot be
>> explained without reference to God.
>>
>> Shalom
>> George
>> http://home.roadrunner.com/~scitheologyglm
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bill Powers" <wjp@swcp.com>
>> To: "Keith Miller" <kbmill@ksu.edu>
>> Cc: "AmericanScientificAffiliation Affiliation" <asa@calvin.edu>
>> Sent: Saturday, April 11, 2009 5:29 PM
>> Subject: Re: [asa] Natural Agents - Cause and Effect, Non-Natural Agents
>>
>>
>>> This is getting interestingly involved. For my own sake, let me start
>>> at a beginning.
>>>
>>> Methodological Naturalism is rejecting the use of gods or God (a la
>>> Murphy) in any "scientific" explanation. Historically, this entailed
>>> the acceptance of something like a mechanistic description (metaphor)
>>> for the workings of the universe, or at least in our theories
>>> (explanations, or stories). More broadly it entails, I think, the
>>> rejection of unpredictable behavior. I don't want to say that it need
>>> be lawful, but it wouldn't be viewed as science, I think, if it did not
>>> entail some regularity. Such a notion follows according to our classic
>>> understanding of what knowledge is about, while if not universal, at
>>> least predictive under certain conditions (e.g., Snell's law, or even
>>> economic laws or regularities).
>>>
>>> What in this description makes it "natural" and not god-like?
>>>
>>> Consider economic laws or sociological theories. These are theories of
>>> groups of individuals, even freely acting individuals. Nonetheless they
>>> have dispositonal properties, esp. as a group. Freedom does not entail
>>> the absence of dispositional properties. Such properties are incapable
>>> of describing the complete behavior of freely acting individuals, but
>>> they are capable of describing ceteris parabus properties of such
>>> individuals under restricted aspects of their behavior.
>>>
>>> What is natural here? I have presumed in this instance of economic and
>>> sociological theory that the individuals involved are freely acting,
>>> indeed the theories likely presume that, for otherwise they may not be
>>> free to express their dispositional natures. So it appears that their
>>> free wills, even taken in an incompatabilist sense, does not prohibit
>>> them from being the subjects of a "naturalistic" science.
>>>
>>> It would seem that incompatabilist free will cannot be the subject of a
>>> "natural" science because, while its behavior my indicate a certain
>>> regularity, the very notion of such a freedom entails a capability of
>>> violating that regularity, and even acting arbitrarily, despite the
>>> great majority of our actions are not arbitrary.
>>>
>>> However, as I have noted previously, our notion of what is "natural" has
>>> changed over the course of science's history. Why might monads not be
>>> "natural"? Why not permit non-combatabilist free will as "natural"? It
>>> appears to me that nothing prohibits it. Indeed, why not permit gods to
>>> be "natural"?
>>>
>>> The ulitimate objection, it seems, is not whether they are "natural" or
>>> not. It is, instead, that we cannot make a science, a knowledge, or
>>> regularity of them. We can know the character of a freely acting agent,
>>> and as such make rough predictions of its behavior. But inasmuch as it
>>> is a free agent, it is not bound by that character, or perhaps that its
>>> character does not determine its behavior (e.g., witness the difficulty
>>> of determing a Good and All-Powerful God's specific behavior).
>>>
>>> If this makes sense, I suggest the following.
>>>
>>> 1) We do study God scientifically all the time. Indeed, this is just
>>> what we mean by science. We study God under certain aspects and
>>> constraints. Our science reflects a predictable behavior of God. But
>>> science is unable to investigate God in His totality. Fortunately,
>>> God's behavior in many of these aspects is expressible in a lawful, and
>>> even mathematical manner.
>>>
>>> 2) The same goes for the study of humans. Scientific explanations of
>>> much of human behavior requires no mention of wills (e.g., the nervous
>>> system), but this is not true of all human sciences. Some presume the
>>> existence of wills, even free wills (perhaps in a combatabilist sense).
>>> Are wills natural? As long as the behaviors associated with aspects of
>>> that will are somewhat predictable.
>>>
>>> 3) Simply put, science, inasmuch as it is to remain a science, studies
>>> the regular aspects of the world. Natural simply entails regularity or
>>> law-likeness.
>>>
>>> 4) Hence, MN simply entails that our explanations involve predictive
>>> features and entities (even gods if aspects of their behavior is
>>> predictable). I think we have to say this in order to include humans as
>>> subjects of science. That is, humans need not be machines in order to
>>> be
>>> proper subjects of science, but they must possess dispositional
>>> properties, something that God or gods likewise possess.
>>>
>>> Well, that was my run at it.
>>>
>>> God bless,
>>>
>>> bill
>>>
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>>>
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Received on Sun Apr 12 20:56:38 2009