Indeed, if the SETI program were to obtain signals from other worlds that
are conclusively from a personal intelligence, they would count if as a
scientific discovery, and I don't think that the NSF would revoke their
funds for publishing a result that is non-scientific. I see no problem
with personal agency being used as an explanation in science, whether
natural or supernatural, if that is the way the event happened and the
evidence is obtained by objective evidence gathered by scientific means
(which I think anthropology gives an example of).
Jeff
On Fri, 8 Mar 1996, Garry DeWeese wrote:
> Recently Bill Dozier, Paul Arveson, and others, have lamented the
> tendency of some Christians to hold out for explanatory gaps which they
> assume God must fill. The motivation seems to be (i) a desire to keep
> something on God's job description; and (ii) a desire to keep an apologetic
> foot in the naturalists' door.
>
> Rather than look for a gap in the scientific account, perhaps
> what is needed is openness to another kind of causal explanation, viz.
> agent causation (or "personal explanation"). Certainly archaeology is a
> science where persoanl explanation features large in explanatory
> accounts. And as Doug Geivett argues in _Evil and the Evidence for God_
> (Temple Univ. Press), personal explanation can play a large role in
> natural theology. While not philosophically uncontroversial (what is?),
> agent causation/personal explanation would seem to be a non-naturalistic
> kind of explanation which is perhaps too often overloked in the natural
> sciences.
>
>
>