Re: [asa] lock-picking tools

james000777@bellsouth.net wrote:
> I don't necessarily think that is a contradiction, but a semantic issue. The point is that, at the "wall" science fails to penetrate. The experiments being done and the hypotheses being tested "fail" to provide answers that meet the expected answers.
>
> I think abiogenesis is the perfect example. Just today a read a news story about Miller-Urey's experiments providing "New Hints on the Origins of Life". The typical naturalist reply to the abiogenesis question is "we don't understand it yet". And that "yet" will always be a "yet", because they refuse to think outside the methodological naturalism box. Were they to do so, they would see a wealth of data that points right at God. Much of it published in scientific journals too!
>
snip...
> Taken all together, that is a wall. Sure, EC's can keep pecking at it. And they should. However, if the hypothesis that "God did it" is true, then naturalism will continue to fail.
>
snip...
> The best reply for the GOTG fallacy in the case of a wall is the No-GOTG fallacy. Positing a natural explanation in the face of overwhelming evidence for design requires more faith (in naturalism) than faith in God.
>
> Just positing that God did it does NOT mean that we have to stop experimenting and trying to figure out how God did it...and this is what most naturalists think we think, to their detriment.
>
> My 2 cents.
> James Patterson
I interpret at least part of what you say here (in the upper paragraph)
to be the classic ID approach. The "wealth of data that points right at
God" that you see in scientific journals, would, on the acceptance of
that conclusion, lead into our posited "God-room". But then you state
in later sentences (if I may paraphrase) that our "God-room" can have
more doorways for further scientific (naturalistic) exploration. (Here
you move closer to EC thought.) But I gather that IDists take
naturalistic explanation of a phenomenon to be mutually exclusive with
evidence of "design". So the IDists would insist that, if they have
really arrived at their objective, their destination room must be a
terminating enclosure with no more doors amenable to any naturalistic
exploration. At that point the semantics you mention come to bear and
we can all argue about what science properly includes.

 From your later sentences, you seem to imply that we should all find
the perpetuated mantra: "haven't found it *yet*" to be an objectionable
attitude. Call it faith if you want (I agree that it is), but I would
call it more of a chosen operational presupposition that theologians, or
others thinking about science from the outside are free to view as a
voluntary self-limitation on science. And scientists from within are
free to chisel away forever (and fail forever) if they encounter
something that is unmediated divine action. EC thought (or MN) doesn't
allow that evidence pointing at God can originate purely from within
science [I know --them's fightin words to Timeaus & Co.]. It must
originate in revelatory (by Spirit and/or Scripture) and experiential
faith. And THEN on that foundation, we look at nature and praise God for
ALL the opened (and as yet closed) rooms whether they have been or can
be naturalistically explored or not. That is my take on the true
antidote to the "God of the Gaps" fallacy.

--Merv

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Received on Sat Oct 18 09:37:41 2008