Re: [asa] Empiricism, Faith and Science

David Opderbeck wrote:

>
>
> But here is my biggest concern vis-a-vis TE. The author says:
> /Scientific "truths" are empirically supported observations agreed on
> by different observers. Religious "truths," on the other hand, are
> personal, unverifiable and contested by those of different faiths.
> /The epistemology behind this seems to me appallingly simplistic and
> wrong -- it's just old-school positivism. I can't see how anyone
> committed to an authentic Christianity can accept this epistemology.
> But isn't this epistemology implicit in a TE position that promotes a
> rigid methodological naturalism? Even though the TE's MN is couched
> in pragmatic terms, isn't the philosophical underpinning a belief that
> there really is no "empirical" knowledge of religious truths?
>

I agree that the author's statement in italics is based on an
positivistic epistemology that is simplistic and wrong. But implying
that the same goes for a TE plus MN position is not warranted. Rather,
MN is compatible with a critical realism position . For me, MN is the
basis of science, but science is limited -- it can only give us an
approximation of the truth.
Don

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Received on Thu Sep 14 22:57:57 2006