Denis
Thanks for your response.
A few instant reactions.
First:
> The tone struck me as a bit spikey, but let that pass.
Yea, it was. Thanks and Sorry.
Actually, I hadn't intended for that to go on the reflector, but by the
end of the post had forgotten that it was at the beginning.
Next:
> can you, Denis, provide support for that historical claim you've made?
Well, I am not totally sure what you are asking.
Nothing underhanded. You had, I thought, made a historical claim about
the origins of PC - a claim which I had some vague suspicions of, and
for which I wanted some further details. My perception was that the view
(and other species of its genus) had indeed originated with people
working directly in the sciences.
Onward:
However, by the turn of this century I don't
believe there was a major work using this paradigm by a scholar in a
world-class university.
That might well be true, although by later in the century I think that
that was in part a sociological artifact. One did not say anthing about
that in one's _works_. But I do know professional university-faculty
biologists who - although not, so far as I know, having hinted about it
in print - take a PC approach (although perhaps privately identifying
themselves as TEs).
Further:
I would be concerned for the skewing of the data, as seen in the Levy
case. If you come to your science with the notion there MUST be
interventions in the origin of life, then you are not doing science.
Don't get me wrong I believe in a God who intervenes (eg miracles). And
I
am willing to consider evidence to suggest He did so in the origin of
life. However, to say I must practise science with the notion that God
did intervene in origins a la PC approach because the Bible says so is
not science, but bad hermeneutics.
Maybe we're at slightly cross purposes here. A PC-er, as I think of it,
may begin with simply an openness to the possibility of intervention -
perhaps on a micro-scale, and perhaps only rarely, and perhaps not even
directly visible to science - and then only subsequently become
convinced - or even just come to suspect - that some intervention has
probably occurred. That need involve no stance that one _must_ find
interventions, that Scripture dictates interventionism, or anything of
the sort. But the upshot would be someone who thought that natural
means were not _wholly_ capable of getting us from there (very
beginning) to here. That would involve no hermeneutic agenda, no
apologetic agenda, and not even necessarily (it seems to me) any
scientific incompetence. One of the things that I was trying to take
issue with in the original post was what seemed to me to be the
underlying presupposition that there was no rationally respectable and
scientifically legitimate route to a PC view. One _can_ of course get
to that position in all sorts of abysmal ways. (And one can, of course,
get to competing positions by such routes.) But that's a different
issue than the one I meant to be addressing.
Onward:
did
Newton use the Biblical text to inform his science as PCs do? I don't
know. And if he did, what's your point?
I can't answer that at the moment, and since I hadn't addressed that
issue, I have no point concerning what if he did. The point I was
making in this context was simply that an underlying apologetic
motivation does not undercut scientific legitimacy, and Newton was
simply exhibit A.
You continue:
I would fear the skewing of data to fit the apologetic program.
That's a legitimate fear, but it is perhaps balanced at least to some
extent by a countervailing tendency to skew theory to fit other agendas.
Adopting a naturalism or even a hard line methodological naturalism
commits one to rejecting any theory - no matter what the data - that
doesn't reduce to either deterministic or indeterministic mechanism. It
isn't clear to me why the risks on the one side are considered to be
more pernicious risks than those on the other.
The exchange continues a bit later:
> But suppose that it _is_ true that PCs accept their interventionist
> position simply because they are convinced that Scripture tilts in
that
> direction. What exactly is supposed to be the conclusion from that?
> That their view is false? That hardly follows.
It would certainly be so, if indeed they err hermeneutically.
I'm not sure that I see why. Suppose that some people think that
Scripture tilts toward intervention, and other people think that
Scripture tilts toward non-intervention. Suppose that in fact, both
sides are reading the relevant passages wrong - that Scripture in the
relevant passages has not intention of even addressing that issue and is
not tilting either way. Both would have mistaken hermeneutics, but
given that either there are or there are not interventions, at least one
side would be right concerning the facts of the matter concerning
intgervention or non-intervention. So again, I don't see why having a
mistaken hermeneutic and basing a scientific theory on Scripture as read
according to that hermeneutic would make it certain that the resultant
theory was mistaken.
Continuing on: I ask if it would follow
> That their view is not
> legitimately scientific?
To which you reply:
It is not scientific, because science does not operate from Biblical
tenets.
I'd like to see a convincing _argument_ for that which did not rest upon
a suspect philosophy of science.
You then ask:
But if a primary tenet of a theory is built on poor
hermeneutics, then what is the sense in going any further?
Well, that would depend, wouldn't it? If the faulty hermeneutic was and
remained the only grounds for the theory, then maybe there would be very
little sense. But the mere fact (if it is so) of a foundation in a
faulty hermeneutic needn't be the final consideration. Early on,
impetus theory was defended on grounds having to do with a particular
doctrine of the sacraments. Impetus theory turned out to be on a
promising track, and a crucial step to later theories of inertia. Had
it turned out that those original doctrines were based on a mistaken
hermeneutic that would not have affected the legitimacy or the
usefulness of the associated theory. Or nearer the present,
creationists were among the first - maybe even the first - to raise
questions about OOL assumptions concerning the earth's early atmosphere.
Their suspicions _may_ turn out to be right. And those suspicions were
based firmly on a hermeneutic you've said is defective.
Again, if a defective hermeneutic was and remaind the only grounds for
some theory, then perhaps the theory should be unceremoniously dumped.
But that is different than a theory springing from a defective
hermeneutic automatically being mistaken, useless, etc.
Enjoying the exchange.
Del