Bryan Cross wrote:
>
> Sorry about the double post. Something was wrong with my
> e-mail last night, and I thought the first one had been
> lost.
>
> I appreciate George's answer (and I wish I could have heard
> his defense of MthN based on Christ's cross and resurrection.)
One relevant article is "The Theology of the Cross and God's Work in the World"
(Zygon 33, 221,1998). There will be another in Perspectives sometime in the next year
which will deal more directly with functional integrity and ID.
> He wants to draw the boundary for MthN at the point where
> it posits unobservable entities. I take it by 'unobservable'
> you mean 'unobservable in principle', not due to present
> technological limits. But even so, 'unobservable' is far too
> ambiguous. If we can observe its effects, is it unobservable?
> Is there anything we observe by observing something other
> than its effects? Therefore, by MthN, if we see effects
> that need to be explained, we infer the existence of a
> natural cause.
As I note in a piece of your parallel post attached below, I do not consider
MthN to be a rigid rule for the operation of science. In fact, though, there aren't any
rigid rules for the operation of science. Descriptions of "the scientific method" & all
kinds of claims about how theories can or cannot be verified or falsified are
constructed by philosophers after the fact to clean things up and describe how science
has worked, but they are not recipes that scientists feel that they have to follow. &
the present discussion is to a large extent casting in different language those debates
about verification and falsification, issues about which there are notorious
difficulties.
"Unobservable" is indeed a vague term and I certainly don't want to insist upon
it in a positivistic sense. But suppose someone proposes as a solution to the problem
of violation of time reversal in some particle decays the idea that there is an
invisible entity which sometimes violates time reversal at the required level, & when
asked what else it does replies "nothing." Could we say that that entity was strictly
"unobservable"? No. Would high energy physicists pay attention to the idea? No.
That there are limits to MthN quite apart from any theological considerations is
suggested by Goedel's theorem. The universe as a representation of mathematical pattern
cannot be logically closed.
> Once there are no more effects that need to be explained,
> we stop postulating natural causes. At that point, there
> is no room in our universe for God, for we have now
> posited natural causes for all the effects we used to
> think were caused by Him (in our antiquated days).
> So it seems to me that "unobservable" is a cardboard
> barrier that MthN plows right over.
I would agree that in a carefully defined sense there is "no room in our
universe for God" - the sense being that of Bonhoeffer who spoke of God willing to be
"pushed out of the world onto the cross" as the basis for the fact that the universe is
knowable "though God were not given." This does not mean that God is not in fact
present & active in the universe but that his action is such (because of his kenotic
granting of functional integrity to creation) that it is not necessary to appeal to God
as an element of scientific explanation. Eberhard Juengel (_God as the Mystery of the
World_) deals with the idea that God is "not necessary" but "more than necessary" & its
consequences in connection with a "theology of the crucified one".
> Someone else suggested metaphysical barriers. Christianity
> says God created the world. Therefore, at this point MthN
> must stop. But, if this isn't a "theistic natural science"
> that Doug considers an oxymoron, then why can't atheists
> adopt it? The Christian cosmologist (unlike the Christian
> mechanic), will refuse to posit a natural cause for the
> formation of the universe. At this point, Christianity
> is a 'science-stopper'. So, on this view, there is nothing
> wrong in principle with Christianity being a science-
> stopper. (The debate simply concerns *where* the lines are
> to be drawn, i.e. where science is to be stopped.) If
> MthN should determine what is taught in public schools,
> then multiverse theory should be taught in our high
> schools, because it posits natural causes to explain
> observed effects.
Yes, & good teaching in public schools would include teaching _about_
important religious traditions concerning origins as well.
> Moreover, scientific theories which employ or posit
> only natural causes to explain the origin of all
> religions and religious beliefs, they too should be
> taught in public schools. But in my view, MthN
> can't be the determiner of what should be taught
> in public school science classes, for where one
> draws the boundary for MthN depends upon one's
> metaphysics. (Occasionalists have no room at all
> for MthN; metaphysical naturalists have room for
> nothing but natural causes.)
Again, the teaching of science in public schools should not begin by teaching
that a precisely defined principle of MthN governs the conduct of science because it
doesn't. What should be taught is how science actually works, the content of theories
which have been reasonably successful, & outstanding problems. It would also be
appropriate to point out that science itself can't answer meta-questions like "Why is
there something rather than nothing" & that different traditions have different answers
to such questions.
> MthN is prevented from swallowing up metaphysics only
> if one either adopts a presuppositionalism that stipulates
> a metaphysics (such as Christianity) as an epistemological
> foundation or abandons MthN.
So? "Presuppositionalism" sounds like a disease but if we don't start
with some presuppositions we can't get anywhere in any subject. Metaphysical
naturalism is a presupposition. The grounding of the universe in the God revealed in
Christ is a presupposition. & our fundamental presuppositions can't be evaluated in
terms of some _a priori_ criteria but in terms of the consequences which they produce.
I do not regard _methodological_ naturalism as a fundamental principle but as
a) a reasonable deduction from fundamental theological principles of the general
course of phenomena in the world, and
b) a description of the way scientists, whatever their religious beliefs,
actually work.
......................................
> >I do not consider _methodological naturalism_ to be that rigid. There would, in
> >fact, be no point in making the distinction between the two if methodological
> naturalism
> >were not at least open to the possibility of theistic answers to questions at
> some
> >level.
>
> That does not follow, because there is more than one way to be different. For
> example, the metaphysical naturalist consciously acknowledges that there is no
> God. The methodological naturalist, say, believes in God but practices a method,
> which, when followed to its end collapses into metaphysical naturalism.
> Distinction requires non-identity in one respect; it does not require non-identity
> in every respect.
If MthN is grounded on some more fundamental presuppositions (as I suggested
above) then it cannot become metaphysical naturalism without abandoning those
principles. & of course a person originally holding MthN may do so but that doesn't
mean that one _method_ collapses into the other.
One problem here, of course, is that a lot of people mean very different things
by "methodological naturalism". My interest is primarily in something which could
reasonably be called methodological naturalism on the basis of particular theological
beliefs.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
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