Isn't it nice to be able to determine the motives of others? The latest
studies I've encountered seem to demonstrate that we do a poor job
recognizing our own. We react to claims according to our biases.
Consider two individuals, a deist and a theist, investigating a
phenomenon. The deist thinks that the event occurs because that's the way
God created it to work, and it does so automatically until God intervenes
at the last judgment. The theist thinks that that's the way Providence
maintains the universe. But, in investigating the phenomenon, both have
to pay attention to the natural sequence--that is, both adopt
methodological naturalism. Their philosophical and theological
assumptions are different, but their scientific practice is the same.
Unless they can control the divine input (A happens when God acts, not-A
when God doesn't act), they cannot have a nonnatural methodology. I know,
somebody will say that human personality cannot be measured that way. I
note that studying /Homo/ involves some kind of repeatable measure that
can be manipulated statistically--not as simple as physical measurements,
but applicable to human nature.
Consider the two faced with something as unexpected as a water becoming
wine. One of the aforementioned pair will say simply that it's not
understood; the other, it's a miracle. But this is not a scientific
evaluation.
It is possible to determine the orientation of an author from
nonscientific matters noted. But can there be a different chemical
equation or description of a fossil because someone is agnostic,
atheistic, deistic, pantheistic, theistic, etc.? One's orientation may
affect the choice of a field or topic, but other proclivities may have
equal or greater influence.
Going back to Newton, he did a remarkable job explaining Kepler's laws,
even inventing a new mathematical calculus in order to derive the correct
answers to the kind of problems that could not be solved earlier. But, as
the pioneer, he saw a problem with his results--gravity should smash all
the planets together. His answer, based on his ignorance, was that God
had to intervene from time to time to push planets back into place. A
more sophisticated application of what Newton worked out showed that
divine intervention was not needed. Recent work in complexity theory
makes it clear that Laplace's version was also too simple. Is there any
reason to go back to nescience?
Dave (ASA)
On Sun, 15 Jul 2007 16:44:43 -0400 "David Opderbeck"
<dopderbeck@gmail.com> writes:
Science is not restricted to naturalism for religious reasons but
rather for methodological reasons.
Pim, I think you're missing the point. It seems Hunter is arguing that
the roots of MN lie with the a particular notion of God -- the Deistic
God of the Enlightenment. Thus, MN has "religious" reasons at its root.
I think this is a very interesting point that probably has significant
historical support. Jefferson's God leads to a God who can be elided
from "empirical" history and left to the "emotive" side of life. This
paved the way for empiricism to morph into positivism and pragmatism --
which are hand-in-glove with atheism -- as well as for the contemporary
epistemological crisis. What we call "methodological" reasons today are
better called "pragmatic" reasons -- which helps us see that MN today is
rooted in pragmatist epistemology, a view not conducive to Christian
faith.
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Received on Sun Jul 15 19:27:49 2007
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