> From: SteamDoc@aol.com
> Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2000 20:01:22 EDT
> To: asa@calvin.edu
> Subject: Re: Atheistic portrayal of science in popular culture.
>
> In a message dated 6/15/00 11:24:36 AM Mountain Daylight Time,
> lhaarsma@calvin.edu writes:
>
>> 5) Whenever people believe a theological or spiritual premise (for
>> example, the premise that "God created human beings"), they almost
>> always attach some assumptions about mechanism (e.g. they have in mind
>> some hypothesis about _how_ God created human beings). If and when the
>> findings of science disagree with the _mechanism_ that they pictured,
>> they interpret this as science attacking their _theological_ belief.
>
> I found this one particularly perceptive.
>
> I saw a great example of this a few months ago when John Wiester spoke at our
> local ASA meeting. He made a big point of saying that the 3 major issues
> with regard to "evolution" for Christians were (parodying the old real estate
> line) "mechanism, mechanism, and mechanism." For Wiester, a mechanism that
> referred only to natural processes without any gaps for God to act in was
> unacceptable.
You raise a valid point about interpreting what we all read, including
students. Would you say that naturalism and secular humanism are both
mechanisms with no theological implications?
Our assumptions can be either mechanistic or theological. If we omit any
reference to God in our assumptions, is this not still an inferred
assumption of non-existence? Is this the desired gap for God to act?
Yet, some scientists are making spiritual hypotheses that they hope to test.
Chris Floyd in "Science & Spirit" magazine in an article: Daniel Dennett's
Darwinian Mind says, "There are no factual assertions that religion can
reasonably claim as its own, off limits to science". You can read the
article at www.science-spirit.org/homeforum/index.cfm.
In another article of the same issue, Eugene d'Aquili and Andrew Newberg ask
if religion and spirituality can be considered solely from the perspective
of neuropsychology? It presumes that all spiritual feelings simply emerge
from a self-referenced system-- the physical brain.
>
> I seem to mention this often, but the root question here is whether natural
> explanations automatically exclude God, or whether God can do his work via
> his sovereignty over nature. Applying it to this issue, what does evolution
> "mean"? Richard Dawkins gives us a metaphysics where a natural explanation
> like evolution means God is absent and there is only room for God in the
> unnatural. Wiester and Phil Johnson seem to have adopted Dawkins' basic
> view; they just differ from him as to whether the number of unnatural
> interventions in natural history is zero or not. As long as Christians are
> accepting such unChristian ideas of what natural explanations "mean," we will
> continue to have big problems in this area. So I'd submit that Wiester
> should have said the 3 biggest issues for Christians with regard to evolution
> were "meaning, meaning, and meaning."
>
Indeed, what we mean becomes critical in all our discussions. How can we
present consistent meanings to students when so many science texts are
slanted with theological implications?
Jim Stark
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