James Behnke says,
>None of us in the science departments here at Asbury have
>been able to think of a "God meter" that would serve that
purpose.
What about the healing of the lame man in Acts 3? Do you have any
doubt that the intention (by God) in doing this was to make it clear, on
everyone's personal God-meter, that a miracle had occurred?
>The only type of analysis that would lead to the conclusion of
God's
>involvement in a particular result is a God-of-the-Gaps
argument, i.e.
>we don't know of another explanation, therefore God did it.
In Acts 3, when you say "God of the Gaps" you would be referring to
Peter when he says (in Acts 3:16) that "By faith in the name of Jesus,
this man...was made strong." So Peter is using "gaps" logic because he
didn't "know of another explanation, therefore God did it." Isn't this
the way we recognize (and define) all miracles? What is wrong with this
definition, and why should it be criticized?
I am not sure we use the same criteria in doing science as we
use in everyday life. I think that you may be mixing methodological and
metaphysical naturalism, too. It is unclear to me at what point I am
willing to assert that a particular event was "God caused." I use an
example with my students of prayer for healing of an illness and the
sick person recovering. When do I assert that "God did it"? When my
child has a bad cold, we pray for him and he recovers, when he broke his
arm, when he needed surgery for a cyst, when he had childhood leukemia,
when he was in a coma for 6 months from an automobile accident (These
are hypothetical situations.)? God was involved in each of these events.
When does it become a sign or miracle. The flavor of evangelicalism that
I have been involved with for years tends to say that if it wasn't a
miracle, God wasn't involved.
>I'll bet even Mike Behe uses mn when he
>does his experiments. He doesn't add 2 microliters of God to
each
>microfuge tube, nor does he detect a God band on his gels or
gradients.
>We can do science just fine the way it is.
MN says we should ALWAYS use natural explanations; there is NEVER any
alternative, no matter what a logical analysis of empirical data might
indicate. {science would explain Acts 3 by saying ___} A non-MN view
says that we should use natural explanations when this seems to be the
most appropriate (which is USUALLY or even ALWAYS), but we should be
open to the possibility of a non-natural explanation. Therefore, your
examples are not applicable. In fact, Behe explicitly agrees with you;
at one place in DBB he says that he would not accept an explanation from
a student that "the angel of death" killed a bacteria culture.
Methodological naturalism that I refer to concerns doing
science. Science can draw no conclusions about the healing in Acts 3.
People tend to give Science god-like characteristics, "Science says".
The conclusion that this healing was a demonstration of God's power is
not a scientific conclusion, but a philosophical one. See Peter van
Imwagen's answer to a question about cave paintings in the same book
Phil referred to above.
>Even if we could detect
>God's influence on the results via a "God meter", the
background noise
>would be so tremendous (God is involved in all things) that I'm
not sure
>we could detect extra activity by God at certain times.
Can you apply this to Acts 3?
That depends entirely on your philosophical and theological
presuppositions. Personally, I don't think God was significantly more
involved in performing the miracle than he is the rest of the time, but
I am willing to be taught otherwise.
Jim Behnke
I will be at the ASA meeting for the rest of the week.