Comment on Science, Methodological Naturalism, and Faith by pauluc.
Bob Helm: In contrast, for most Seventh-day Adventists, faith is primarily a left brain activity. Yes, we recognize that there are true mysteries in Christianity, but historically, we have put a premium on correct doctrine and discerning truth – which involve the left brain. Not everyone approaches Christianity this way. There are those who approach Christianity purely from the standpoint of warm feelings and a subjective sense of beauty. These people tend toward existentialism. They don’t care whether there is obective evidence for Christianity, as long as they have that sense of a present, subjective encounter. Perhaps I am not describing Paul’s faith in the correct way, and if so, I apologize. But that’s the sense I get. In contrast, most Seventh-day Adventists appreciate warm feelings, but we want something more. We also want objective truth.
I am happy to have you disagree with me since without diversity there is no ability to change. I do however feel compelled against my better judgement to offer a couple of parting comments.
1] I have read every word you have written here and have tried to understand how and why you and Sean think as you do. I appreciate that you are educated in theology to masters level I suspect at Andrews and now have a pastoral role in Indiana.
2] If you had read what I have written here in the past you will know that my concern are not that there is diversity of opinion or that some people have fundamentalist perspective but that militant actions flows from a dualism that sees self as entirely and absolutely right and the other as the devil incarnate. This site is harmless as long as it restricts itself to intercine argument on the esoteric. As I have said before this site is dedicated to rabble rousing to attacking heretical science at La Sierra and beyond. I still do not know if you support this. Do you?
3] For more than 35 years I have been funded mostly through peer reviewed grants to pursue various aspects of medical science including research and teaching. I am clearly committed to the proper conduct of science and have formed some opinions of what science is and is not. Having that commitment unfortunately I find it difficult to not respond to what I think is misinformation and denigration of a process I see as both utilitarian and intellectually stimulating.
4] I have no issues with my Christianity and science precisely because I understand science as a very restricted process of understanding the natural world by natural process or methodological naturalism, what in earlier times was considered natural law. I do not accept that there is nothing beyond the natural precisely because I do not accept that science is defined simply as a process of logical thought and a scientific hypothesis testing approach to life. To reiterate yet again it is method that accepts only natural process, that accepts hypothesis driven experimentation and accept that it must be documented in the literature of science. My 3 criteria of science are articulated precisely to avoid the drift into philosophical naturalism which Sean accepts as inevitable and attempts to avoid by redefining cause and expanding the method to include even logical problem solving by children and accepting that there is no need to build any defined body of knowledge whatever you subjectively think based on logic is science. This fuzziness in definition allows the divine to be part of science but it also allows it, nay almost compels it to be defined, judged and rejected by science.
But where does this empirical “scientific” approach to religion and everything lead? Sean is absolutely logically sound in working from his premise of science to the inevitably Provine rejection of any God worth having and his own declaration;
“I, personally, would have to go with what I saw as the weight of empirical evidence. This is why if I ever honestly became convinced that the weight of empirical evidence was on the side of life existing on this planet for hundreds of millions of years, I would leave not only the SDA Church, but Christianity as well” (http://www.educatetruth.com/theological/the-credibility-of-faith/comment-page-1/#comment-18717).
Are you really happy to preach this message to your parishioners?
5] What actually happens when this empiricism is honestly applied to religion? You will know that the late 19th century saw an objective “scientific” analysis of scripture in the form of higher criticism or historical criticism. Whatever you my think of it, it has changed the way sacred texts are viewed. Christianity responded with fundamentalism which tried to stuff the genie back in the bottle by simply assuming a priori that the bible was the word of God and was inerrant in its original autograph. One alternative which I find much more compelling was the neo-orthodox tradition that admitted that historical and textual criticism were quite valid but that God had revealed Himself in the person of the incarnate Jesus who we can understand through the community of faith and the scripture the word of God delivered by human hands and revealing the prejudices and understandings of the original writers. Adventism as you know has rejected historical criticism but has not been comfortable with either fundamentalism or neo-orthodoxy. One denies reality the other is too woolly and lacking in scientific precision to clearly define truth. Adventism together with evangelicals is somewhere in the middle denying the validity of higher criticism and uncomfortably asserting a very utilitarian position that admits the scripture contains a few errors but is infallible for salvation without admitting its vulnerability to a robust scientific criticism.
6] Where does intelligent design creationism fall into this landscape. I like most scientists do not see it as having any value in contemporary science. Ignorance is an important driver to science which is quite happy to admit we do not have a scientific explanation either because there are questions that cannot be addressed by science or for which the experiments have not been done. Science says this is our method which includes methodological naturalism. It has given us the basis for all the goods we enjoy. if this method cannot be applied it is not part of science. It says we will continue to use this method to explore the vast areas of ignorance. Contrary to Sean’s assertion neither I nor science assert that it will solve everything in the future but I would certainly assert I will continue to apply this method.
ID wants to answer every question with an assertion that if we dont have natural mechanism or if we can construct based on our incomplete models and knowledge a statistical improbability then there must a designer be.
It is simply the teleological thinking of Paley and does not have any impact on the conduct of science. At worst it muddies the waters and denies the accepted basis of science which is methodical naturalism or natural law. As a religious movement it places undue scientific and logical constraints on the performance of religion. Introducing science to religion as I have said before is a bad thing.
I can do no better in defending a sensible science and religion than quoting Jonathon Sacks.
“Science fulfils three functions that I see as central to the Abrahamic faith. It diminishes human ignorance. It increases human power. And it exemplifies that we are in God’s image. God wants us to know and understand. And he want us to exercise responsible freedom. And wants us to use the intellectual gifts he gave us. These are not reasons why scientists should become religious. They are reasons why religious people should respect scientists”
“I have tried simply to show you that religious faith is not absurd, that it does not involve suspension of our critical facilities, that it does not and should not seek to inhibit the free pursuit of science, that it does not rest on contradiction and paradox, that it does not force us to accept suffering as God’s will for the world, and that it does not ask us to believe six impossible things before breakfast. It involves a mode of engagement with the world significantly different from that of science, but not incompatible with it. Least of all it does not presume to tell scientists when they are right and when they are wrong. That is a scientific enterprise to be performed by scientific methodologies.”
“I do not regard atheism as an untenable stance toward the world. I have known some of the great atheists of our time, admired them deeply and – as I hope I have shown in one or two places in this book- learned much from them, not least about religion itself. We disagreed, but I would not wish to live in a world in which people did not disagree. Disagreement is how knowledge grows. Living with disagreement is how we grow.”
The great partnership pg 292-293
We need both religion and science. As he says Science takes things apart to see how they work. Religion puts things together to see what they mean.
Thanks for responding
Grace to your
Paul
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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.
