Re: [asa] Theological Naturalism - 'The Nature of God' = Naturalism

Gregory wrote:

> "If the designer is deliberately not defined then what use is it for
> apologetics?" - Rich
>
> It is good for raising questions about the origins and processes of life,
> about the source of human consciousness, about complexity and simplicity and
> what concepts like information and mind and reverse engineering might mean, and
> about actually being a scientifically-minded person and also a Christian.
> There's a PhD in the USofA doing a dissertation on the IDM that I just heard
> about yesterday; these things are indeed provoking discussion not just excuses
> for rigorous thinking! The fact that a majority of IDists are OEC, accept
> common descent and some aspects of evolutionary theories is even fun to watch!
>

If the approach is "let's try this methodology and see where it leads us",
this is fine.

The "just so" stories of the scientific method and the introduction of new
ideas is mostly myth. Great people have been destroyed by powerful competitive
mentalities. So I make no claims of the greatness of how consensus is
eventually achieved in science or how the known experts at any time in history have
treated new ideas.

However, there are some things that do make sense to me and I can agree with.
They follow the same principle that is outlined in James when confronting a
brother with sin.

(1) You should begin the study of your new "idea" privately and thoroughly
test that idea with as much distance from your own connection to it as possible.
Of course, because it is your own idea, you can never expect to be 100%
objective about it, but you should certainly try as best you can.

(2) As much as you can do, make sure that you are right, even if it seems
"obvious" and "any dumb fool should know" etc. You should care about the
consequences of hollering "obvious" and "any dumb fool should know" because if you
are wrong, you are the fool. Moreover, if you have mislead people with your
shouts and bravado, it is not only you who goes down, but others with you. The
stress of doing theory is something that can make you loss many nights of sleep
trying to be sure that you are right.

(3) If, after going through (1) and (2), you still can find nothing
substantially wrong with your idea, THEN you go to the journal and the referees (the
peer review process). Here, the process can be very ugly. The referees can be
brusque and may treat you very badly and even cowardly, shame on them, but if
they cannot find anything to actually claim on you, their taunts are just gas.
You just keep going on. I few charitable words for it, but it is true that
the "fire" helps separates the gold from the dross. There are at least some
people who don't have a problem of some kind, so somehow, though exceedingly
wasteful, your work gets through (as long is it stands tall in the fires).

(4) Eventually, an idea that is right defeats long since outdated theories
because scientists eventually recognize that the new idea works better. Often
an experiment is needed to finally put to rest these outdated ideas from
ossified senior scientists. Certainly, along the way, it can even be dangerous to
oppose these people, but if science is about truth and the truth matters, one
has to consider the price of cowardice there too.

To be fair and charitable to those senior scientists who have over history
fallen short of their duties, it is hard to recognize a new idea as good or bad:
particularly when it is way ahead of its time. I think this is the misery
Boltzmann endured, for example. So those who suffer under this system should
also learn some charity. We should learn to become better through suffering,
absorbing the lesson and not the policy. The hard lesson is that the humility
switch should always be set to the on position in a scientist's heart; hardly a
stance that the world encourages.

But you see, in all this process, we first went to the brother in private and
raised the issue of sin. Later we bring two or three brothers there. Only at
the last stage, if the brother refuses to repent, is he publicly denounced
before the congregation. So this part of science and the way science is done is
right I think.

Now how has ID proceeded so far? First they came up with the idea. Fine,
that was OK. Then Johnson made the press announcement "where going to pound the
spam out of you clowns (materialists)!". ___Then___ they started gathering
their facts. The most important steps (2), (3) and (4) were all reversed!

So the first problem with ID is that its public image has been mostly
bravado, possibly hubris, and (at least up to now) lacking in significant substance.
The latter issue can be the case with a new idea, and so I can grant the ID
folk grace there. But a scientist doesn't make the press release and then find
the discovery. They (the ID group) should have checked their work carefully,
engaged discussion privately with other scientists who disagreed with them,
worked out the rough issues, and kept working on the problem diligently until
either they found something or recognized that there was not much there. Mind
you, I am not saying there isn't anything there, I don't know, but presently it
still looks doubtful.

At one time, I also was interested in ID. The problem I eventually confronted
was this: when I considered how I would apply the ID proposals (the Design
inference for example), as they stand, they were not sufficient to show that
evolution could not happen. I'll perhaps grant that it may be murky with some
issues such as the eye (Darwin's Black Box), but it is not clear because there
is so little we understand about biology. That was the hard lesson; "so little
is understood in biology". To make the eye, evolution etc. an issue by which
belief in God and Christianity stands or falls is utterly foolhardy in my
opinion. What if you are wrong?!?!?!?!?

As of yet, I see no solid evidence indicating that there is really some jump
that could never be explained by any scientific approach. If there is no
provable evidence of God's intervention, what are you going to do?!? Most of the
time, we do not set off developing new ideas for things unless we have to. We
usually go with existing ideas because they are more certain to have been
tested.

If the process is evolution, and there is no __obvious__ intervention, then
we have to accept a different model. So I find George's point about God being
hidden a good one. God does not make it __obvious__ to those who don't want
to hear it. There is enough there that we can believe if we are willing, and
every infinitesimal unit of time, we depend entirely on God's Grace that we
have yet another infinitesimal unit of time to go on. If God gets sick of this
nonsense, we can do nothing. But if you want solid proof, I suspect (though
maybe I am wrong), ID will disappoint you in the end, as it did me. Proof (by
science) for your faith is something you should not expect or count on.

by Grace we proceed,
Wayne

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Wed Jul 25 21:13:35 2007