In a message dated 7/3/00 2:08:28 PM Mountain Daylight Time, crossbr@SLU.EDU
writes:
> Apparently you think that methodological naturalism is compatible with the
> doctrine
> of divine providence. Well, lets spell it out. The methodological
naturalist
> *always* seeks for, insists upon and presumes the existence of (even
without
> any
> supporting evidence) a natural cause. The methodological naturalist does
not
> make
> exceptions, for then he (or she) is not a methodological naturalist.
> Therefore,
> there is no room for divine causation of any sort, not even providential.
> Creation,
> revelation, etc., the methodological naturalist will pursue natural causes
> for them
> all. The result is that God and providence are eventually shaved right out
> of the
> picture, or, more accurately, natural causes are posited to explain why we
> ever believed in them in the first place. This sort of naturalistic
> deconstruction has already been done with ethics, free will, afterlife,
> religion, consciousness, altruism, etc. Methodological naturalism is
> a universal acid; you can't contain it behind barriers of any sort.
> Once you let it in, it eats up everything.
Three quick points:
1) Methodological naturalism seeks natural causes (for physical phenomena),
but it does not insist that such causes always be there. A methodological
naturalist can accept Jesus walking on water, for example, without insistence
that there must be some "natural" explanation. The methodological naturalist
would just insist that such an event could not be considered a part of
science, since science is concerned with the study of natural phenomena. It
is only the metaphysical naturalist who asserts that science exhausts all
knowledge.
2) Your statement that finding natural causes for things shaves God and
providence out of the picture strikes me as an example of the sort of "God of
the Gaps" negation of providence we have been talking about with respect to
Phil Johnson. Has finding the natural causes of mountain formation "shaved
out" God from being the Creator of mountains? If some people, encouraged by
metaphysical naturalists like Dawkins, come to such conclusions, our response
should be to oppose the unjustified metaphysical extrapolation of the
scientific results. Johnson (and perhaps you, judging by the above quote),
if he were consistent, would have us oppose plate tectonics as a corrosive
attempt to squeeze theism out of society.
3) I could be more sympathetic to "theistic science" that did not use MN if
its practitioners affirmed that it is OK for God to create by "natural"
processes (providentially) and disavowed gap-based apologetics. The real
harm comes not in the search for scientifically detectable fingerprints of
God, but in the propagation and encouragement of the theological abomination
(shared by Dawkins and too many in the Church) that the truth of theism
depends on the existence of such fingerprints.
Once you let God-of-the-Gaps theology in, it eats up everything :-)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Allan H. Harvey, Boulder, Colorado | SteamDoc@aol.com
"Any opinions expressed here are mine, and should not be
attributed to my employer, my wife, or my cats"
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