Re: [asa] JDEP

*No, because Scripture, and the miracles described in Scripture are how God
revealed Himself to humankind.*

But God also revealed Himself to mankind through creation. The notion of
the "two books" of revelation is one of the reasons we can use
extra-Biblical evidence to help interpret scripture. So I don't think you
can distinguish nature and scripture merely by saying nature isn't
"revelation."

*However, if you come across something you can't explain, and say it's too
complex to have evolved, then if you invoke a supernatural explanation for
it at that point, you've given up looking.*

I don't think this is necessarily so. It certainly isn't how science works
with respect to natural explanations. Rarely is any area of inquiry
considered "closed." Instead, we have explanations that seem more likely
than others based on available evidence, but that remain subject to
investigation and revision over time. I don't see why "this phenomenon
seems to complex to have evolved by natural processes and appears to bear
the marks of design" should close off further inquiry into other causes of
the phenomonon, natural or otherwise.

I *can* see the danger that a political authority, if too closely allied
with a religious authority, might censor further inquiry if it favors a
"divine" explanation. But that's a political question, which was dealt with
in western democracies through the development of constitutional processes
in the eighteenth century. Regardless of what anti-religious bigots say,
the prospect of this kind of theocracy in the U.S. or Europe is beyond
remote.

*It's like you have an equation that you can't balance, and you put in a
magic fudge factor S (for "Supernatural") whose value is precisely that to
make the equation balance.*

But it doesn't necessarily have to be a "magic fudge factor," any more than
"natural selection and genetic drift" are "magic fudge factors." If we
presuppose the possibility of direct divine action in the universe, we have
a record of direct divine action in scripture, we have historic and current
experience of direct divine action in our individual lives and in the life
of the Church, and we have noetic equipment provided to us in part so that
we can understand something of what God has done in history and relate to
Him on that basis, why in principle can't we establish a more robust set of
criteria for factor S? After all, our only bases for using factor N (for
"Natural") to explain the seemingly unexplainable, instead of factor S, are
human perception, human reason, and human experience -- the same bases that
could support factor S.

*However, the value of S only works for that equation and doesn't make any
other useful predictions. Hence it neither predicts, nor can be falsified,
and therefore is not a scientific theory.*

I'm not sure this is so if S is defined robustly. Let's take it out of the
heated realm of what consitutes a "scientific" theory. I've been a leader
in a local church. Over time, the church leadership has come to some
understanding of how God works in the lives of people who are being prepared
by God for leadership roles. You can see some typical patterns of people
who have been humbled by some circumstances, who have had some time of
sustained reflection on God's purposes for their lives, who have made some
kind of internal and external commitments to serve, and who have been tested
in preparatory roles. You can predict -- not unerringly or perfectly, but
with some degree of confidence -- that such a person is called and ready for
a greater leadership role, and on that basis you can entrust the person with
leadership. Leadership theorists such as Robert Clinton have written
volumes about patterns like this concerning spiritual leadership. In other
words, we can indeed build theories that help us discern evidence of the
"supernatural" at work in the "natural."

On 8/31/06, Iain Strachan <igd.strachan@gmail.com> wrote:
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> On 8/31/06, David Opderbeck <dopderbeck@gmail.com> wrote:
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> > Query for the anti-ID folks here (honest query, not "fighting
words"): should scripture be approached with the presumption that its
apparently supernatural aspects have "natural" or "human" explanations?
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> No, because Scripture, and the miracles described in Scripture are how God
revealed Himself to humankind.
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> >
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> > If not, why should we presume differently concerning "general"
revelation?
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> I don't think it's a question of "presumption" here. There are unsolved
problems in science, e.g. how certain apparently irreducibly complex
structures evolved, how life got started in the first place, etc. Maybe it
is the case that God directly intervened and "Intelligently Designed" all
this. Certainly God is capable of creating exactly how He chooses.
>
> However, to plump for that explanation, it seems to me is to cop out of
looking for a scientific explanation. It is the job of science to _look_
for natural explanations, because a naturalistic theory, if correct, enables
useful predictions to be made. However, if you come across something you
can't explain, and say it's too complex to have evolved, then if you invoke
a supernatural explanation for it at that point, you've given up looking.
It's like you have an equation that you can't balance, and you put in a
magic fudge factor S (for "Supernatural") whose value is precisely that to
make the equation balance. However, the value of S only works for that
equation and doesn't make any other useful predictions. Hence it neither
predicts, nor can be falsified, and therefore is not a scientific theory.
>
> So I'd say, if you're a scientist, you HAVE to keep looking. It's not
that you've presumed there can be no supernatural intervention, it's just
that when you say that it is supernatural, then you're no longer doing
science.
>
>
> Iain
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Received on Fri Sep 1 14:09:37 2006