Reflectorites
This is my last post on this thread. Apologies for it being rushed.
--Original Message Text---
From: Chris Cogan
Date: Thu, 07 Dec 2000 20:06:56 -0600
>SJ>>I don't say "science doesn't know X therefore my religion is true!" I have
>>stated many times that I would have no problem with my religion if
>>evolution was true. In fact for about 15 years as a Christian I believed that
>>evolution was probably true and just God's means of creating.
>CC>No, you say, "if science *does* know X, then my religion *isn't* true,"
>which, in practice, is nearly the same thing.
No, I don't say this at all.
CC>That is, *your* religion can
>*only* be true if naturalistic evolution is false, so it *absolutely* depends
>on science not knowing that it *IS* true.
No. See my post to Susan in this session.
CC>It is a fundamental and absolutely
>crucial mistake to make your religious belief dependent on whether some
>purely scientific theory is true *or* false.
Agreed. I don't do this.
CC>In *general*, it is a mistake to
>make *any* critical philosophical premise dependent on whether any such a
>theory is true or false
See above.
CC>In other words, *if* it is possible for science to
>resolve a question, then any particular supposed answer to *that* question
>should *not* be part of your *philosophical* system
Maybe for philosophy. Not for Christianity. The science of archaeology can
any day dig up a 1st century grave marked "Jesus of Nazareth" and Christianity
would be falsified.
CC>Why? Because it is then *not* a primarily philosophical question. It is a
>*scientific* one
See above.
CC>And, *because* it is scientific, it *cannot* have the kind
>of foundation that a strictly philosophical proposition can have, and it is
>subject to empirical falsification
See above.
CC>Philosophical claims are of such fundamentality that they cannot come in
>conflict with genuine empirical fact and genuine scientific theory (this is
>one of the reasons why the indeterminism of the "Copenhagen
>Interpretation" of Quantum Mechanics is not scientific; it is *not*
>resolvable, even in principle, by empirical observation *except* by being
>empirically *falsified*)
See above.
CC>Your *religion* absolutely requires you to reject naturalistic evolution
>*regardless* of the empirical facts. That's a bad, bad, *bad* mistake, in
>*any* religion.
I agree, but I don't do that. See my post to Susan on this veru question
in this session.
Thanks to Chris for this post.
[...]
Steve
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Stephen E. (Steve) Jones ,--_|\ Email: sejones@iinet.net.au
3 Hawker Avenue / Oz \ Web: http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
Warwick 6024 -> *_,--\_/ Phone: +61 8 9448 7439
Perth, Western Australia v "Test everything." (1 Thess. 5:21)
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