From: Howard J. Van Till (hvantill@chartermi.net)
Date: Wed Sep 24 2003 - 15:09:29 EDT
>From: "Steve Petermann" <steve@spetermann.org>
>
> I would suggest that the <fruitfulness as a working assumption> is exactly
> why science should take an interest in ID. Seems to me that what the RFEP
> assumption did was not contribute directly to specific advances in science
> but instead promoted the continued search for natural causes to phenomenon
> instead of attributing some anomalous data to the supernatural. What RFEP
> did in affect is continually drive science to challenge itself and
> investigate further. At this point in time this is also what ID concepts
> are doing. What ID says to scientists is, when confronted with problems of
> causation in biology, don't just assume natural causation and stop. Look
> further.
You're welcome to pursue the ID research program if you like, but something
like it has already been done. It was an important chapter in the history of
science that need not, in my judgment, be repeated. Following is what I said
about it in my December, 2002, article in PSCF (references failed to come
through in the cut & paste).
Howard Van Till
*********************************************************
3. Why does the scientific community judge that the universe satisfies the
RFEP?
The vast majority of scientific investigation, especially of the universe¹s
formational history, is conducted in the context of a working assumption
that the universe does indeed possess a robust formational economy‹that all
manner of physical structures and life forms have been actualized in time by
the employment of the universe¹s formational capabilities to organize its
resources into new configurations that were potentially achievable from the
beginning. How did this approach come about? On what basis did the
scientific community come to accept the RFEP as a working principle?
Many Christian critics have charged that this situation is nothing other
than a clear indication that the "scientific establishment" (whatever that
means) has sold its soul to a God-denying, naturalistic worldview. In my
judgment such a charge is both profoundly inaccurate and grossly unfair.
Maximal naturalism (the view that Nature is all there is and it needs no
Creator to give it being) has no substantive claim to ownership of the RFEP
and Christians seriously err, I believe, when they reject the RFEP in the
fear that accepting it would weaken their apologetic engagement with
atheism.
Is the scientific community¹s acceptance of the RFEP then merely a
convenient presupposition "pulled out of thin air"? Certainly not. On the
contrary, it is a reasonable judgment reached on the basis of the cumulative
experience of the natural sciences. Three centuries ago geology could
seriously entertain the theory that a global flood within human
history‹initiated and directed by supernatural intervention‹contributed in a
major way to the formation of numerous terrestrial features. However, in the
face of both empirical and theoretical considerations, the enterprise of
flood geology based on that concept failed to provide adequate explanations
of actual geological data and was abandoned because of its scientific
inadequacy.
Similarly, there was a time (from approximately mid-18th to mid-19th
century) when biology could seriously entertain the theory that each species
(later revised to genus, then order) was independently formed by the direct
action of a Creator. But this concept of special creation‹a working
biological theory that was rooted more deeply in Platonic idealism than in
biblical or theological requirements‹failed to hold up under the weight of
empirical evidence. In light of the observational evidence gathered by
Darwin and many others, the scientific community came to the realization
that the theory of special creation failed to provide adequate explanations
for the biological data and, like flood geology a century earlier, had to be
abandoned for its scientific shortcomings.
In both geology and biology, scientific theories in which occasional
episodes of supernatural, form-conferring intervention played a central role
were given full opportunity for scientific success, but they failed
nonetheless. In contrast, theories founded on the premise of the RFEP were
demonstrated to be far more fruitful in accounting for an immensely broad
range of empirical data. Similar experiences could be recounted in the
arenas of astronomy and cosmology in their endeavors to craft theories
pertaining to the formational histories of stars, planets, galaxies, the
elements, and even space itself. The RFEP is now generally accepted by the
scientific community, not out of an anti-theistic prejudice or by arbitrary
presupposition, but as the outcome of an extended historical process of
evaluating scientific theories and the meta-scientific principles (like the
RFEP) on which specific theories are built.
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