Why I don't recommend Dawkins?????

[_Phillip]

Or let me put it this way:

Short of continual direct unambiguous intervention in the world by a God, is naturalism (however you want to define it) falsifiable? Can't almost anything besides God that is typically part of a theistic worldview just be redefined as as a 'natural' phenomonen (say like an immaterial mind, an afterlife, etc.)

[_EAllusion]

I don't know of anyone serious who says nature is uniform because that is the way God wants it or just that uniformity is a brute fact.

I've read theologians who have argued that nature is uniform because God wants his creation to be understandable and predictable to people. That's standard among hard presuppositionalists, in fact. Whether they are "serious" is debatable, but I didn't make that up out of the blue.

I'm not aware of how the existence of God can explain the uniformity of nature without smuggling that in as a brute fact of God's properties. And doing that robs the explanation of any power.

It's been a while since I've read something that argues along the lines of " X is designed, so the designer is God."

It's usually, "X is designed, and only something that is god-like could possibly design X." This is generally a weak inference, but it is fairly standard among design argument proponents.

[_EAllusion]

EAllusion,

Are there any kinds of potential observations about the world or the human person that you would consider as pointing towards the existence of God? Or is God just the kind of thing for which evidence of any sort simply isn't possible. I'm honestly curious what you think. Wouldn't the brute fact approach work for practically any conceivable observation short of God hitting us with a two by four?

I don't think the existence of God as an omnimax being can be supported through observational evidence. I think it is possible to have persuasive evidence of God as some extremely powerful and knowledgeable alien being. While I don't think any are successful, I think a priori arguments could in principle succeed in demonstrating the existence of God in a way that loosely approximates classical theism. I think there are some incoherence issues with the definition of God in classical theism, but you could get close enough.

[_Tarski]

In Classical Apologetics, the goal of these arguments would be to first show necessity, then they would try to establish that this necessary thing is also a creator, with Fine Tuning and Design Arguments.

Seems like a tall order. Perhaps one may as well set out to show that the set of natural numbers cares about my sex life?

[_Tarski]

I'm afraid I'm not much for philosophical arguments, which is why I've tried to stay out of the thread. I'm more interested in arguments grounded in science or history. I know next to nothing about philosophy.

In my opinion, the best formulations of the existence of God, have it constructed as a philosophical question. A project which set out to claim that God’s existence is a scientific question is, well, doomed to failure (if a Theist).

Arguments from history are not much better, but leave more room to maneuver. The best case I can think of off the top of my head would be WLC’s arguments for the resurrection of Jesus. J. P. Holding’s Improbable faith maybe? I’m reaching here.

What, specifically, can it account for, per the supernaturalists?

The contingent universe, the uniformity of nature, the nature of consciousness, other minds, properly functioning cognitive faculties.

meh.
Look, there was a time when the animate aspect of a microbe was thought to be explained by an extra ingredient in the "protoplasm". Indeed, life needed this extra Bergsonian spark of life.
Now hardly anyone thinks that anything more than molecular biology is needed to explain microbial motility.

But lets go back in time to when this kind of thing was supposed to be part of the supernatural package. Did it explain anything at the time??
Not really. Compare to our current view!

Well, I don't think that the supernatural explains anything on that list. Indeed, there is plenty to say about each of those from a naturalist-even a physicalist point of view.

By the way, do we need supernaturalism to explain the contingent nature of my backyard?
If you don't think so, then I have a few things to draw to your attention about the universe.

[_MrStakhanovite]

Seems like a tall order. Perhaps one may as well set out to show that the set of natural numbers cares about my sex life?

Exactly.

[_marg]

Hi Phillip

I started reviewing my history course on the middle ages..didn't get to the part about universities and I believe I have a history of science course which also briefly discusses the start of universities. So I still do want to refresh my memory on that subject.

I do know Richard Carrier has some books out which discusses Christianity and Science...I haven't read them but I think I will download the kindle versions. One is "Sense and Goodness Without God" and the other is "
Not the Impossible Faith".

He wrote some time ago a blog on the issue of whether Christianity was responsible for the progress in science...which I'll simply copy a small portion of it here for you to read. It's quite lengthy so check out the entire post. It certainly will save me time in having to write something up. It seems to me that the argument you are making ...is that without Christianity ..science would never have developed..that there is a cause and effect such that Christianity was a cause for scienc's progress. And that suggestion I think is propaganda.

http://richardcarrier.blogspot.com/2006 ... anity.html

On another blog last month I was asked by some friends to comment on a thread about Christianity's role in the progress of science. Other things were being discussed there, such as whether Martin Luther was a despicable ass or an admirable genius, which I didn't comment on because I know too little about the matter to add anything worthwhile. But the history of science is my Ph.D. field, so I could comment on that with some authority. And I did. What follows is expanded and adapted from what I said, and completely supercedes my comments there as far as I'm concerned. Don't worry, though. My blog isn't always going to be about the history of science.

It is becoming popular now to claim Christianity "responsible" for the scientific revolution (Stark, Jaki, etc.). My dissertation will refute much of that thesis, in about two chapters altogether. But we need to keep distinct the claim that Christianity did not actively oppose science (which is sometimes true, depending on how you define "oppose") and the claim that Christianity was necessary for the scientific revolution (which is certainly not true), as well as various claims in the middle--like "Christianity wasn't necessary, but helped," which again depends on how you define "helped"; or "all theologies can find a compatible incentive towards science, and Christianity is a theology like any other," which is true, depending on how you define "Christianity" and "theology"; and so on. Likewise "our concept of science is an outgrowth of Christian theology" is no more true than "our concept of science is an outgrowth of pagan theology." Modern science grew up in a Christian context, but only by re-embracing ancient scientific values against the grain of the original Christian mindset. In turn, those ancient scientific values grew up in a pagan context. As with Christianity, that's not causality, it's just circumstance.

However, in all this the one claim that cannot be sustained is that Christianity "encouraged" science. Had that been the case, then there would not have been almost a thousand years (from roughly 300 to 1250 AD) of absolutely zero significant advances in science (excepting a very few and relatively minor contributions by Hindus and Muslims), in contrast with the previous thousand years (from roughly 400 BC to 300 AD), which witnessed incredible advances in the sciences in continuous succession every century, culminating in theorists whose ideas and findings came tantalizingly close to the scientific revolution in the 2nd century AD (namely, but not only, Galen and Ptolemy). You can't propose a cause that failed to have an effect despite being constantly in place for a thousand years, especially when in its absence science had made far more progress. Science picked up again in the 1200's precisely where the ancients had left off, by rediscovering their findings, methods, and epistemic values and continuing the process they had begun.

Sure, this was done by Christians, but only against the dominant grain, and at first only very slowly, and only by redefining what it meant to be a Christian in a way that would have been nearly unrecognizable to the Christians of the first four centuries, and was diametrically the opposite of what Christians of the early middle ages would have tolerated. A fair example is the treatment of John Philopon in the 6th century, possibly the only innovative "scientist" (if he can be called that) in the whole of Christian history before the 13th century: he was branded a heretic and everything he did in the sciences was effectively ignored. Though he wasn't condemned for being a scientist, he was condemned for thinking for himself in matters of theology, precisely in his effort to make science and religion compatible. But by opposing exactly that process, the Church killed any prospect for science under its watch for nearly ten whole centuries. You can call it collateral damage, but it's damage all the same. An accidentally dead Iraqi is still a victim of war, and so was medieval science a victim of Christianity.

[_Phillip]

Marg,

I hope you don’t mind my long-winded posts on this topic, but it’s one that interest me and one that I have wasted too many hours on. I think writing on this subject is often distorted by one’s attitude towards religion in general and Christianity in particular, whether positive or negative. Just as a Christian apologist has an incentive to present the relationship between Christianity and science in the best light possible, persons hostile towards Christianity/religion too often try to portray it as one of unending and inevitable conflict. It was this latter attitude that drove much of the scholarship from the Enlightenment era and into the early twentieth century. In the twentieth century however, scholarship began to move in the other direction. While not discounting the actual tensions, it has tended to reject the more polemical views of earlier writers and acknowledges the often positive role that religion and the church played in the development of modern science. And I probably have my own biases as well, although I’m not consciously trying to distort the relevant history.

I deliberately chose to quote two professional historians who are not apologists and but also do not apparently have an axe to grind (if you want to read some more explicitly apologetic works let me know). Lindberg and Grant are two of the most respected historians of early science. From their Wikipedia articles:

“David C. Lindberg (November 15, 1935—) is an American historian of science. His main focus is in the history of medieval and early modern science, especially physical science and the relationship between religion and science. Lindberg is the author or editor of many books and received numerous grants and awards. He also served as President of the History of Science Society and, in 1999, was recipient of its highest prize for lifetime scholarly achievement: the Sarton medal.”

“Edward Grant (born April 6, 1926) is an American historian. He was named a Distinguished Professor in 1983. Other honors include the 1992 George Sarton Medal, for "a lifetime scholarly achievement" as an historian of science.”

Lindberg’s ‘The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, Prehistory to A.D. 1450’ is arguably the best single volume on the subject that covers not only science in the Christian Middle Ages but also Greek and Islamic science. Another quote from his book:

“Natural philosophy, like philosophy more generally, was to serve handmaiden functions [to theology].

Whether this represents a blow against the scientific enterprise or modest, but welcome, support depends largely on the attitudes and expectations one brings to the question. If we compare the early church with a modern research university or the National Science Foundation, the church will prove to have failed abysmally as a supporter of science and natural philosophy. But such a comparison is obviously unfair. If instead we compare the support given to the study of nature by the early church with the support offered available from any other contemporary social institution, it will become apparent that the church was the major patron of scientific learning. Its patronage may have been limited and selective, but limited and selective is a far cry from opposition.

However, a critic determined to view the early church as an obstacle to scientific progress might argue that the handmaiden status accorded to natural philosophy is inconsistent with the existence of genuine science. True science, this critic might maintain, cannot be the handmaiden of anything, but must possess total autonomy; consequently the ‘disciplined’ science that Augustine sought is no science at all. In fact, this complaint misses the mark: totally autonomous science may be an attractive ideal, but we do not live in an ideal world. And many of the most important developments in the history of science have been produced not by people committed to autonomous science, but science in the service of some ideology, social program, or practical end; for most of its history the question has not been whether science will function as a handmaiden, but which mistress it will serve.”

[_Phillip]

A couple of other things. Could we agree that during the latter part of the Middle Ages, say from the 10th or 11th century to the 15th century, Western Europe created a vigorous intellectual culture that was institutionalized in its universities? I don’t think that this would be too controversial.

About late antiquity and the early Middle Ages I would disagree with the assessment of the author you quoted. To me its unjustified to claim that the Greco-Roman world was on the brink of a Scientific Revolution (comparable to that of the 16th and 17th centuries) until Christianity came along. First, the pace of scientific progress was already slowing long before Christians achieved political dominance in the 4th century, and second Christians generally tried to preserve Greek learning not destroy it (though there are always exceptions, but they are exceptions). Already by the early Roman period intellectual efforts were moving in the direction of preservation and interpretation of existing knowledge rather than the creative energy that had characterized earlier Greek thought. And compounding this shift was the decline of Roman imperial system. From Lindberg:

“Toward the end of the second century A.D., the conditions that had favored scholarship and learning began to weaken. Two centuries of peace and stability gave way, after the death of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius (180 A.D) to political turmoil, civil war, urban decline, and eventual economic disaster.”

Political turmoil and economic disruptions were even more profound in the early medieval period when the Roman system finally collapsed in the West. First it was the Goths and the Franks, then the Huns, Magyars, Vikings, etc. Sustained progress in learning is almost impossible in those circumstances. It was not Christianity that somehow killed learning in West European – it was the collapse of the political and economic foundations of classical Mediterranean civilization. In the Christian Eastern Empire, where the disruptions were less severe, we see a correspondingly greater continuity with the achievements of Greek learning (speaking Greek rather than Latin didn’t hurt either). That’s why when the Muslims conquered much of the Byzantine East in the 7th and 8th centuries they found a living intellectual tradition and so were able to translate much of that Greek science into Arabic, which translations in turn ultimately ended up in the Latin West of course. But at the same time it has to be admitted that many of the best minds of the period turned their intellects not to natural philosophy but rather to the understanding of the mysteries of the Christian faith. To that extent Christianity could be said to have been a distraction from secular learning.

From Lindberg again:

“There is no question that knowledge of Greek natural philosophy and mathematical science had fallen off precipitously, and few original contributions to it appeared in Western Europe during the early centuries of the medieval period (roughly 400-1000). If we are looking for new observational data or telling criticism of existing theory, we find little of it here. Creativity was not lacking, but it was directed to other tasks – survival, the pursuit of religious values in a barbaric and inhospitable world, and even (on occasion) exploration of the extent to which knowledge about nature was applicable to biblical studies and religious life. The contribution of the religious culture of the early Middle Ages to the scientific movement was thus one of preservation and transmission. The monasteries served as the transmitters of literacy, and of a thin version of the classical tradition (including science or natural philosophy) through a period when literacy and scholarship were severely threatened. Without them, Western Europe would not have had more science, but less … They [Isidore and Bede] provided continuity through a dangerous and difficult period; in doing so they powerfully influenced for centuries what Europeans knew about nature and how Europeans thought about nature. Such achievement may lack the drama of, say, discovering the law of gravitation or devising the theory of natural selection, but to affect the subsequent course of European history is no mean contribution.”

[_marg]

Phillip,

Ok I'm going to have to review a course I have on history of science. Tomorrow I'm busy, so I'll estimate I won't get back to you before Sunday. The only question I have for you right now is..assuming you read R. Carrier's blog page I linked to, was there anything in it that you disagreed with and if so what (please quote it) and why.