(no subject)

[acroyear]

One criticism of modern science is its similarities with a philosophy reflected in athiesm of "materialistic naturalism", which they (the fundementalist christians) criticise as having no moral value and implies (they never flat-out say it, 'cause then they'd reveal themselves for the liars they are) an athiesm in all its "practicioners", even those who (like the late Pope in defending science and evolution) defend it as being irrelevant to the question of the existence or influence of God.

On a discussion concerning the definition of science (something the ID'ers want to change so their "theory" becomes "scientific" enough to include in public schools. Its a documented part of the Wedge effort), at Panda's Thumb, one chap wrote the following:

I have no problem with a science employing natural causes. It is the a priori exclusion of supernatural causes that I object to.

Engineering excludes supernatural causes and effects a priori.  Do you object to that?  Why not?

Indeed, so does weather forecasting (I’ve never yet heard any meteorologist conclude that “this hurricane followed this track into that cuty because God wanted to punish sinners there”), or accident investigation (I’ve never yet heard an FAA investigator conclude “this airplane crashed because it was the will of God”).  In law, supernatural causes and effects are also ruled out a priori — no lawyer is allowed to argue “my client is innocent of the murder because the Devil made him do it”.  Heck, the rules of baseball don’t mention any supernatural causes or effects either. Utterly materialistic and naturalistic.

Medicine?  Gee, when Mr Finley gets sick, do you suppose he asks his doctor to utilize supernatural methods or non-material cures?  Or does he just ask his materialistic naturalistic doctor to cure his materialistic naturalistic diseases by using materialistic naturalistic antibiotics to kill his naturalistic materialistic germs?

So why is it that IDers get their panties all in a bunch about “atheistic naturalistic materialistic evolution”, but NOT about “atheistic naturalistic materialistic” weather forecasting or accident investigation or law or medicine or rules of baseball?

Or …  DOES “renewing our culture” indeed include forcing DI’s particular brand of theism into all those areas as well … . . ?

This about covers it for me.  I loved the "Medicine?" paragraph, personally.

I respect that Science is not a faith; science is not even, in itself, a philosophy.  Science is a methodology, evolved by experience, that restricts its application to things that we can observe, under the assumption that events are in some way causal (verified by experience for the lifetime of human and pre-human existence on this planet).  Every event has a cause, a sequence of events leading up to it.  This does not, in itself, rule out that the cause may be super-natural.  All science has shown, so far, is that events are either caused by other events in nature, or the cause is unknown.  Science does not, with this unknown, *assume* either way that the cause may or may not be super-natural.  *Scientists* might, being human and all, but science itself is totally neutral.

I make a decision.  I *think* I have free will in this.  Do I?  Science remains neutral.  The electrons move among the neurons in my brain in action representing that decision, but what were they in reaction to?  Other electrons?  Or something else, something that can't in itself be observed but only defined by its effects?

Science has no answers on this.  Yet.  Maybe science will prove that my "soul" really is what did it. Or maybe they'll see more triggers and more triggers and what we call consciousness and the "soul" and "free will" is really just an abstraction for a very complex and deterministic process with so many variables we can't keep track of them all because the variables that are being monitored are part of the machine doing the monitoring, so Hiesenberg Uncertainty reigns rather largely in all this.  No computer, for example, can monitor itself accurately; the act of monitoring itself affects the computer's performance that's trying to be monitored.

So I accept the abstraction. I say I have "free will" and trust that it means something.  I say I have a "soul" and trust that it means something.  Since the soul has not been confirmed to even exist in science, I can, on faith, say it is my unique gift from God that came with the life I am living, as the Catholic and derivative churches (Anglican/Episcopalian) have concluded (for now).

Works for me.  If science comes up with something else, fine.  I don't think they will, but unlike the ID'ers approach, my conclusion (on faith) that they won't doesn't necessarilly "prove" that my view is the ultimate truth or even "fact" by any means.

That's the difference.  The ID supporters don't *think* that science could ever explain a particular something, therefore God HAD to be involved, case closed.

But if its an observable natural fact, one which others can observe and therefore hypothesize about, then science isn't done asking the questions and doing the research.  The case remains open.  If its open forever, fine, I have no problems with that.  But don't close it early and unjustly.

Comments

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

I've been watching these posts with interest, and had been wondering why this is always a fundie Christian thing rather than much with Orthodox Judiaism.

Thought you might find this thread on weirdjews worth a glance, and particularly this link back to Genesis, which in the author's opinion essentially mentions dinasaurs.

There are some very Orthodox folks participating in the thread, but most of them have been responding with their way of reconciling belief in Torah bal Pet (that Torah was dictated to Moses by God) and modern science / evolution.