Sean I have been doing some introspection and trying to …

Comment on Science, Methodological Naturalism, and Faith by Pauluc.

Sean I have been doing some introspection and trying to determine why responding to you is so frustrating and brings out the worst in me. It may be the logic that has served me well in science fails in the presence of yours.
I have concluded that you are simply the most accomplished practitioner of the game of “Yes But” (as per Eric Berne) I have ever experienced.

You make statements like;

“..the detection of God’s existence and activity is beyond the realm of what is defined as “science” and beyond what most would define as a “rational” belief (which has led many to conclude that methodologically naturalism rationally leads one to accept philosophical naturalism as well).

Sounds fine but by “most would define as a “rational” belief” and “many to conclude that methodologically naturalism rationally leads one to accept philosophical naturalism as well” you actually mean you and a few fundamentalists, atheist or Christian. I suspect this is because they either have a very woolly idea of what is the domain of science and assume that every logical thought or hypothetical proposition is science irrespective of whether it is magical or not (Christian fundamentalists) or assume that science actually covers everything anyway and there is no such thing as God or the supernatural (atheistic fundamentalists or philosphic naturalists).

If you read down a little further you will find what most scientists do not think as articulated by Judge Jones;
“Expert testimony reveals that since the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, science has been limited to the search for natural causes to explain natural phenomena…. While supernatural explanations may be important and have merit, they are not part of science.” Methodological naturalism is thus “a self-imposed convention of science.” It is a “ground rule” that “requires scientists to seek explanations in the world around us based upon what we can observe, test, replicate, and verify.”

You of course would appeal to Popper as a philosopher who articulates his criteria of falsifiability as the demarcating standard of science and who questioned the scientific nature of evolutionary theory at one stage. You may find solace in his views but his demarcation is never independent of natural mechanisms when you actually analyse the repository of knowledge of science.

You and most literal creationists carefully overlook Poppers later statement
“I have changed my mind about the testability and logical status of the theory of natural selection; and I am glad to have an opportunity to make a recantation” (Dialectica 32:344-346).

You continually ask for evidence but when given for example a list of original research papers relevant to a topic dismiss that as a lazy approach on my part and want a simple quote as if one particular quote can cover a large body of original work. What happened to the idea of consulting the literature of science as a virtuous task. Which is lazy. Asking someone to distil the information and give it to you or actually looking for yourself. Continually asking for explanation as though you have any concern that you have a view that is divergent from most of science is I confess completely disconcerting because I as a teacher of science I naturally assume evidently erroneously that you are genuinely asking for explanation.

You critique me for being inconsistent because I do not believe in magic. I in fact do believe in magic. Any Christian does. But I do not accept it as part of science precisely because I have a limited definition of science that is consistent with the Wiki definition.

“In modern usage, “science” most often refers to a way of pursuing knowledge, not only the knowledge itself. It is also often restricted to those branches of study that seek to explain the phenomena of the material universe.[6] In the 17th and 18th centuries scientists increasingly sought to formulate knowledge in terms of laws of nature such as Newton’s laws of motion. And over the course of the 19th century, the word “science” became increasingly associated with the scientific method itself, as a disciplined way to study the natural world, including physics, chemistry, geology and biology.”

I am completely conventional in accepting this definition of science based on naturalism. I am also completely consistent in that I only accept as scientific hypotheses those that can be tested and explained by natural law or mechanism. Other hypotheses that cannot be tested or do not propose natural cause I accept as real but not part of science.

You are being completely obscurant in suggesting that I have not responded to your endlessly repeated questions on a granite cube. I have answered in detail several times before with comments about artefacts and big brains. What is objectionable is your use of the term intelligent design without at all recognizing or acknowledging that this is simply rebadged literal creationism and is not by definition part of science. It is not a matter of where the question is leading but you have already blatantly advertised that you think ID is the best hope for creationism as science. But what does wiki say

“Intelligent design (ID) is a form of creationism presented by its proponents as the theory that “certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.” It is a version of the theological argument from design for the existence of God that proponents present as “an evidence-based scientific theory about life’s origins” rather than “a religious-based idea”

Sorry as a scientist any discussion of intelligent design is not in my toolbox. I am happy however from a religious perspective to argue about the relative value of ID compared to YLC or YEC or theistic evolution but even here your position is idiosyncratic in that you seem to embrace ID but uncomfortably shoehorn it all into a YLC fundamentalism that is at odds with most at the DI.

As for logic and rationality of belief I admit mine lacks a completely logical trail from science to acceptance of Christ as the revelation of God. This has vexed theologians long before me and I am happy to profit from their thought as I have said several times before. In this alogic I believe we are in the same boat. I think it illogical that you should think that you alone should understand vast amounts of human knowledge to a sufficient level to dismiss the practitioners as all wrong and that you alone should understand science, human history and biblical exegesis to arrive at a YLC position as the only reading of a text bearing remarkable similarity to an antecedent sumerian text.

I appeal to the scriptures and Jesus Himself when he talked about the new birth. Is that logical and scientific? His audience didn’t think so. But of course it is real. Can it be tested as a naturalistic hypothesis? Possibly some part of it by fMRI.

I prefer the religion of Jesus and Paul to your appeal to some “science” or empiricism as the sole basis of faith.

For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 1Cor 1:18
For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. 1 Cor 1:20
but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, 1 Cor 1:23
Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. 1 Cor 1:25
But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. 1 Cor 2:14
For the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God. For it is written, “He is the one who catches the wise in their craftiness”; 1Cor 3:19

Really doesnt sound to me like Paul was trying to make Christian belief part of the logic of Greek thought. Christianity is always other-worldy. Why do we want to make it derivative of some scientific or empirical process. Something that is “rationally tenable” if you will.

Pauluc Also Commented

Science, Methodological Naturalism, and Faith

Bob Helm: this fallacy may have delayed the development of treatments for congenital diseases.

You are absolutely reaching now. “May” indeed. Tell me the mendelian congenital disease for which treatments are now available? I need to get your statement into context.

How to you think positional cloning was done? How do you think Francis Collins first identified and cloned the CFTR gene. How would the development of SNPs and association mapping of disease genes have progressed if there was no understanding of gene deserts or repetitive elements, retroviral insertion?

If you had bothered to read the ENCODE papers you would see that they were contingent on and derivative of the preceding mapping of the human genome. That this could be done at anything like an affordable cost depended on the underlying technology; phage and BAC cloning, shotgun cloning, high throughput sequencing and supercomputers not on some abstract theory of function of junk DNA. What do you think Blue Gene was for?
Arriving at an understanding of intergenic regions did not come and would not have come any earlier by arm-chair critics like Sean Pitman and Stephen Meyers proclaiming their teological message that God must have put it there for a purpose and how dumb must be those geneticist. It came because of the standard methodological naturalistic approach of conventional molecular biology and genetics.

This is almost as revisionist as your statement

Bob Helm: Seventh-day Adventists have held that they were raised up by the Holy Spirit to combat Darwinism

Where has this been articulated in Adventism before Clifford Goldsteins Jihad?

I cannot even find any reference to Darwin in the writings of EG WHite


Science, Methodological Naturalism, and Faith
@Bob Helm:
This is where we disagree. You have rejected methodological naturalisms as a process of understanding religion (as have I) but want to retain or introduce religion into the process of science. You have not at all produced evidence that medical science nuclear physics telecommunications or biology would be any different if we had not has a the methodological naturalism we have at present. It is much better to have criteria for both our approach to science and religion and stick to them. This I will continue to do until it is clear that the basis of science has changed. I cannot at this stage see any justification to change the basis of science so any more than I can see that the Jesus seminar approach should be normative in religion and theology.


Science, Methodological Naturalism, and Faith
@Bob Helm: As can all of us particularly when we think that our very existence depends on believing a certain way

Newton had a lot of ideas beyond alchemy that would be considered heretical as you well know. Who would stick silver needles through his eye sockets to see what it did? How do you in the 21st century know which where right and which were wrong? I will stick with the process of science as a progressive process of understanding by methodological naturalism a product of his adherence to laws of nature and with a faith that has been progressively developed by the people of God over the last 2000 years.


Recent Comments by Pauluc

Avondale College Arguing in Favor of Darwinian Evolution?

Bob Helm: With that said, I find your views to be spiritually dangerous and often scientifically weak. I detect a lot of smoke in your posts, but very little light. I hope you will continue to ponder these issues and try to have an open mind.

You are most welcome to your opinion and I know you would like nothing better than that anyone who takes Christianity and the Bible seriously but not literally to just go away. It is much better not to know of any possible problems with one current views. It very hard to get to the science when we cannot even agree on what is science. What passes as science on this site is so completely dismissive of its methodological basis and history and is entrained in a specific supernatural world view that allows arbitrary acceptance of any observation as miraculous. I think Roger’s paper may well be relevant to Adventist that believe that Christianity has and must respond to a careful study of physical reality by reconsidering its interpretations of the word of the Lord, but as Sean has indicated you are exception to that characterization. I still do not really understand why you should be interested at all in any science. It seems a bit messy to worry about facts. It really seems an unnecessary bother to argue whether the precambrian/cambrian boundary or the upper cenzoic (is that really what you meant?) as the evidence of a divine intervention.

Dont worry I do have an open mind which is why I still peruse this site to see how more knowledgable fundamentalist Adventists think. I wont worry you further.


Avondale College Arguing in Favor of Darwinian Evolution?

Sean Pitman: So, you do see the need for a police force and a military to maintain civil society, but somehow Christians should not provide what is an otherwise necessary part of that civil society? I’m with Abraham Lincoln on this one when he noted the inconsistency of such a position – like Orthodox Jews paying others to turn their lights on for them on Sabbath

On that logic you should not have any issue with working on Sabbath in any profession serving 24/7. Be that computer support, utilities firefighters. Those giving up those jobs because of inability to have sabbath observance were all deluded. They as Christians should be prepared to “provide what is otherwise a necessary part of civil society”

You cant have it both ways. You cant because of a moral postion claim that Adventists should have exception from working on Sabbath and at the same time deny me the right to consider immoral some occupations that may be very utilitarian in a world full of selfishness and the human acts of evil that comes from that.

Lets for a moment step back from lala land. Where are we and where did we come from on this thread?

1] You posted a rehash of all your usual arguments in response to an article about the more mainstream Adventist positions that may impact the way Adventism reacts to conventional science. All very straight forward.
2] The contention was that Adventism has accepted process for the orgin and evolution of the inanimate world. The birth and death of galaxys and stars and planets in black holes supernova and impacts of spiralling planets. This is where it gets really strange.
3] You contend that Adventism has always accepted the conclusions of that process but then expand on your view of the process which involves a little bit of order and natural law but large amounts of magic. God waited a few billions years until the interstellar material generated by the big band condensed into planets onto which God created life mature and complete. This included Heaven the place of his throne-room which he populated with physical being angels which it is implied have both mass and composition and metabolism.
4] When it was suggested that the same processes and natural law resulted in life on this planet this was claimed inconceivable and would never be done by any process involving life and death. Instead the life we see now is in reality designed to live for ever and has be chemically changed because it is deprived of a particular form of nutrient from a tree that existed on the Earth some 6000 years ago.
5] The inconguity of practicing medicine by the principles of process of natural law and the technology resulting from both the processes of the innanimate and the animate world rather than accepting the much more important process of divine intervention seems to be completely obsure.
6] When someone says that the process of life and death that gave us the physical substance of our universe is also the basis of the creation of life here he must be animal hating sadistic psychopath who cannot belieive in a God of love and grace and is lying when he says that non-violence characterizes the children of the heavenly father for one must always recognize that peace and freedom are only obtained over the bodies of 1/3 of the angels of heaven and the eternal physical and violent struggle against those who would practice violence.

I really cannot understand you Sean. Your ways are way beyond me. I am just sorry that Bob seems to be drawn into your twighlight zone.

Grace


Avondale College Arguing in Favor of Darwinian Evolution?
@Sean Pitman: sorry but your curious amalgam of magic and biology is not really comprehensible to me as a biologist or as a Christian . it. is neither logical or biologically feasible


Avondale College Arguing in Favor of Darwinian Evolution?

Sean Pitman: However, according to the Bible and Ellen White, before the Fall God specifically directed nature so that all sentient life was protected in a manner that there was no suffering or death. By eating from the “Tree of Life” God provided constant renewal and regeneration that worked against what would otherwise be inevitable entropic changes, decay, and death. It was by deliberately stepping away from the true Source of eternal life that mankind stepped away from God and into the full workings of mindless natural law alone – which does in fact inevitably lead to suffering and death.

And this interpretation is precisely why you need a theodicy. Where is the justice in killing all for the sake of the sins of one woman+man? It makes no sense logically. If they were conditionally immortal because of eating of the tree of life then did all the animals in all the world congregate around this tree like beasts around a water hole on the serengeti. how exactly do you as you are wont to do translate the account into a literal reality. And which beast had to come and eat. Or was it symbolic? Oh now that’s a thought.


Avondale College Arguing in Favor of Darwinian Evolution?

Sean Pitman: Come on now. Even I can imagine limitations to reproduction or the turnover of sentient carbon-based life. Surely you can at least imagine something similar? I know God can since such a world is described in the Bible and in the writings of Ellen White. Think about it…

Of course I have. This is not simply about reproduction. That is trivial. This is about metabolic process. Show me a carbon based life form that does not grow or metabolize anything and I will show you an organism in stasis as a spore “living” millions of year in amber. That is; effectively dead.

Real life cannot exist without metabolic process in a carbon based world and God has sanctified all this by a process of making good out of evil from the death of one comes life for others. Just as in the biological world so in the spiritual. By his death we have life. Just as God sanctified the practice of sacrifice of appeasement practiced by most cultures for thousands of years before and showed that in the Judeo-Christian tradition these same acts of sacrifice were emblematic of a monotheistic God that would become incarnate and bring life from death. So also he took the preceding accounts of creation derived as they were of the mesopotamian valley and recast it as an account of the monotheistic God who is above all but comes and dwells among us to become one of us. Participating in our life and death but showing us the importance of the transcendent life of the spirit that supercedes carbon based life and its inherent death. It is no fairy tale of 6 impossible things before breakfast. It is not pie in the sky by and by. It is rooted in a real world and it is about the transcendence of love and grace that is acted out in a real physical world by the incarnate God and us as we follow as His disciples.

That is the message I get from the images and visions of the Canon and EG White. But of course I read it for the message that it conveys not as a scientific text. That is where we fundamentally differ.