RE: Student perceptions re evolution

From: Alexanian, Moorad (alexanian@uncw.edu)
Date: Wed Aug 27 2003 - 15:22:29 EDT

  • Next message: bivalve: "fact of evolution from RE: Student perceptions re evolution"

    I am not one for understanding jargons or using them. To the question
    "Does God exists?" some say "yes" (theists), others say "no" (atheists)
    and some say "maybe" (agnostics) but all are equally talking theology,
    viz. religion. In addition, all are believers and have faith in their
    corresponding assumptions. This has much to do with human reasoning and
    worldview selections but absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with
    science.

    Moorad

    -----Original Message-----
    From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
    Behalf Of Terry M. Gray
    Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2003 2:35 PM
    To: asa@calvin.edu
    Subject: Re: Student perceptions re evolution

    Brian Harper wrote:

    >
    >This issue does seem to be problematic. Is methodological naturalism
    >really the way of doing science or is it just a way to circumvent ID?
    >If it is (and I agree that it is), then why is it one sided? Why
    doesn't
    >MN also constrain the atheist scientist?
    >
    >This lack of symmetry will continue to provide fuel to the
    >flames of rhetoric until its corrected.

    I'm having some difficulty in this thread understanding why we don't
    think that Dawkins violates MN. (I'm going to leave Gould out--I'm
    somewhat surprised at how hard we're coming down on him--he's a
    totally different beast than Dawkins in my opinion.) When Dawkins
    promotes atheism (or anti-theism) in the name of science, he is NOT
    doing MN. He's not constrained by it because he's not just about
    promoting a science agenda, but also a religio-philosophical agenda.
    (There's this "life is religion" part of me that says that he is
    being more honest and wholistically human about his religious view
    than we Christians and others who encourage the elimination of
    religion-talk from our science-talk.)

    Personally, I enjoy and find myself agreeing with 90% of what Dawkins
    says. For that 90% I suspect he is adhering to MN.

    Don't take this to mean that I'm a support of MN. I don't
    particularly like that way of casting the problem. I'm much more
    inclined to talk about our shared experience in God's created, God's
    normal way of governing the universe, patterns and methods rooted in
    these two ideas--this leads to the practice of science that has
    significant common ground with those who admit that there is pattern,
    regularity, law, etc. but deny the theistic claim as to the origin
    and ontological basis of those things. One radical way of saying this
    is that atheists (even Dawkins) ARE practicing science
    "Christianly"--they just don't know it.

    TG

    -- 
    _________________
    Terry M. Gray, Ph.D., Computer Support Scientist
    Chemistry Department, Colorado State University
    Fort Collins, Colorado  80523
    grayt@lamar.colostate.edu  http://www.chm.colostate.edu/~grayt/
    phone: 970-491-7003 fax: 970-491-1801
    


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