Glenn Morton writes:
>I don't think that is sufficient Walter. You failed to even quote your
>dictionary and you failed to give the full reference for your dictionary (
>publisher, the year etc) I would like to look it up myself. All I see is
>your statement that your desktop dictionary says nothing about naturalism.
Dictionary references?
... ??? ... ??? are you serious? ... ???
Okay, you asked for it. There's nothing special about my dictionary. It's
just the one I happen to have. It's the _Webster's New Collegiate_, 1980,
G. & C. Merriam Co., Springfield, Mass.
There!!! Take that! ...
> Bookshelf 95 which has an online dictionary says this:
Bookshelf 95? ... Hmmmmmmmm. Is that one put out by Microsoft? The same
folks who just gave Dawkins a million dollars to fight creationism? If so,
then I'm not surprised that one of their definitions (#b) is slanted to
favor naturalism.
<snip>
>If you try to say that [in] modern science ... the supernatural
>is not excluded, then what experiment can you carry out which
>proves the intervention of the supernatural?
Let me pose it this way, briefly. Scientific explanation must meet these
requirements:
1) It must explain real observations. Scientific explanations are not
flights of fancy, they must explain the real world.
2) It must be logically self-consistent, it must not contradict itself.
3) It must be vulnerable (testable, falsifiable) to observations. It must
expose itself to empirical risks.
Those three are required. NOT naturalism. Science is not inherently
naturalistic. Instead, it is inherently empirical and observational. As I
keep pointing out, science ALEADY accepts intelligent designers (for
example, in the Piltdown explanation, or the SETI research), so
evolutionists cannot arbitrarily keep out other intelligent designers.
That cleared away. Evolutionists then object to supernatural designers, not
just any old vanilla designer. Evolutionists object to the supernatural.
My contribution to the philosophy of science is this. I show that, when
approached the right way, some elements of the supernatural can meet the
above three criteria, including the requirement for testability. The key is
item #2, the requirement for self-consistency. That requirement has
powerful implications, as Godel showed. Godel showed, within the fabric of
logic and formal mathematics, that the requirement for self-consistency
sometimes *forces* us to accept some element of the 'supernatural'. In his
classic book, _Godel, Escher, Bach_, Hofsteder (he's no creationist),
accepts what he calls "supernatural theorems". I clarify the idea, and show
that it goes way beyond mathematics to impact the philosophy of science
itself, the origins debate especially. I give examples of it.
I hope this piques your interest, or that is satisfies your curiosity.
Because I can't re-write my book for folks all the time. And in either
case, it is logistically only a small part of my book and my theory. If it
pleases you, you can think of it as just an intelligent designer, whose
capabilities we read (like those of the Piltdown designer) from clues within
the designed objects themselves. But by the end of the book you will
recognize evidence that the designer had some, shall we say, remarkable
capabilities.
In other words, I ask you to apply the criteria of science consistently.
Apply them to mine, and to evolution, and to your daily living.
Walter ReMine
P.O. Box 28006
Saint Paul, MN 55128