Rejecting the supernatural a-priori. Intellectual dishonesty?

[AtheistArchon]

- This has come up a couple of times, so perhaps a new thread might be in order. Mods, feel free to relocate this topic if it's not within parameters.

- We were discussing miracles, and a few times the point has come up that skeptics have no valid justification for disregarding supernatural events a-priori in favor or a naturalistic worldview.

- Having had such a conversation in real life, I can tell you that this can get confusing... so bear with me please, and let me know if I don't make myself clear. I can be obtuse at times, unintentionally of course. :tongue:

- My own take on the supernatural is this: anything's possible. However, I am also a naturalist in that the natural world is obvious to me, and to anyone else except perhaps a solipsist. I don't rule out the possibility of supernatural events normally, but I do expect a heck of a lot of qualty empirical evidence backing up a supernatural claim. That is, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence (ECREE).

- For example, let's say I told you guys that I went on vacation to Hawaii last week. There's no good reason why I couldn't have gone... it's a popular vacation spot. Most people have no problem believing me, but even if they are skeptical, I can show them a boarding pass or a few photos, and they are easily convinced. People go to Hawaii every day. However, if I told you that I went on a vacation to Mars last week, THAT is an extraordinary claim. Who would believe me? Even if I showed you "Mars rocks" and photos of me with a "Martian", this probably wouldn't be enough.

- Now, if I took you on a ride on my spaceship... then you might be more prone to believe me. A ride on my spaceship is, however, quite extraordinary evidence.

- No, I think anyone would be justified in not believing such a claim. Why? Because right now, it just doesn't happen. Perhaps in a hundred years or so, but not right now. Likewise, claims of the laws of physics being broken are even more unlikely to be accepted without some serious evidence.

- Now, what about the alternative? Should we really believe any and all supernatural claims without investigation? I think this would be foolish. No, the burden of proof must lie with the claimant, not with the skeptic.

- Lastly, there's one area where I do simply disregard the supernatural, and that's in science. The reason is because science, as a method, does not allow supernatural explanations. Why not? Because if we allowed them, science would be useless. Any number of supernatural explanations could fit any scientific hypotheis:

1. What causes tooth decay? Mouth gremlins.

2. Why is the sky blue? Air fairies painted it that way.

3. What causes coal to burn? A fire spirit lives within coal.

- And so on. I can invent literally any number of supernatural explanations that DO answer the question. Science would grind to an immediate halt.

- By the way, I should give credit here. "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" was said by Carl Sagan.

- Comments? Questions?

[spl_cadet]

Your view is the accurate one in my opinion. The one that I've griped about is the "Oh, it has supernatual stuff in it thus it must be mythology." Allowing the possibility while requiring evidence is perfectly fine.

[Socrates]

The main comment is, once again the distinction between operations and origin science is overlooked. Biblical miracles are one-off acts in the past, where God intervened supernaturally for a good reason. But for the present, we would expect God to be in sustaining mode, which is regular and repeatable. In fact, modern science grew out of the notion that the Universe was created by a God of order, who would susain the universe in a regular way. The notion of scientific laws makes sense only in this framework, and these laws are our descriptions of God's sustenance.

I've often referred to this article: Naturalism, Origin and Operation Science (http://www.answersingenesis.org/news/lerner_resp.asp#Naturalism) www.answersingenesis.org/news/lerner_resp.asp#Naturalism

[AtheistArchon]

Your view is the accurate one in my opinion. The one that I've griped about is the "Oh, it has supernatual stuff in it thus it must be mythology." Allowing the possibility while requiring evidence is perfectly fine.


- Well, to nitpick, not all supernatural claims are "myths", no, but I do hold the belief that Christianity has all the earmarks of what we commonly call mythology today. But then, I'm an atheist.


Biblical miracles are one-off acts in the past, where God intervened supernaturally for a good reason. But for the present, we would expect God to be in sustaining mode, which is regular and repeatable.

- Why should we expect this? Are there no miracles these days at all?


In fact, modern science grew out of the notion that the Universe was created by a God of order, who would susain the universe in a regular way. The notion of scientific laws makes sense only in this framework, and these laws are our descriptions of God's sustenance.

- Mmm, no. An ordered universe is indeed a presupposition of science in the sense that we expect there to be no supernaturalism, but deities (especially those who actually interact with the universe, unlike deism) performing miracles specifically deny that presupposition. If we suppose that scientific laws or theories are the result of, or coexist with, miracles, then we've nullified the basis of science.

- I've never heard the argument that scientific laws are indicators of god before.

[Socrates]

Socrates:

Biblical miracles are one-off acts in the past, where God intervened supernaturally for a good reason. But for the present, we would expect God to be in sustaining mode, which is regular and repeatable.

Why should we expect this? Are there no miracles these days at all?See the debate on Cessationism. But neither side would agree that miracles are commonplace, otherwise they would not be miracles! And they would agree that they are not capricious.

Note that miracles are rare in the Bible too, mainly concentrated at specific points in time, e.g. Creation, the Fall, the Flood, Babel, the Exodus (the founding of the nation of Israel), Elijah and Elisha (founding of the ministry of the Prophets) and the New Testament (authenticating Christ and His Apostles).


In fact, modern science grew out of the notion that the Universe was created by a God of order, who would susain the universe in a regular way. The notion of scientific laws makes sense only in this framework, and these laws are our descriptions of God's sustenance.

Mmm, no. An ordered universe is indeed a presupposition of science in the sense that we expect there to be no supernaturalism, but deities (especially those who actually interact with the universe, unlike deism) performing miracles specifically deny that presupposition.Once more, they do no such thing under a BIBLICAL framework of a God of order. I do provide hyperlinks for a reason, and mine covers a lot of your objections. If we suppose that scientific laws or theories are the result of, or coexist with, miracles, then we've nullified the basis of science.Then you'd need to inform Kepler, Newton, Faraday, Pasteur, Kelvin and many other founders of important branches of modern science.

I've never heard the argument that scientific laws are indicators of god before.What I said is well documented in Stanley Jaki, Science and Creation, Scottish Academic Press, Edinburgh and London, 1974.

[Vorkosigan]

Then you'd need to inform Kepler, Newton, Faraday, Pasteur, Kelvin and many other founders of important branches of modern science.

No, the early scientists struggled with this issue. Kepler's specific goal, for example, was to develop a universe that run like a clock. As he put it in Mysterium Cosmographium of 1596:

I am much engaged in investigating physical causes. My goal is to show that the celestial machine is not the likeness of a divine being, but is the likeness of [a] clock.(emphasis in original)

The early scientists were all theists, and kicked out gods and miracles precisely because they failed to produce useful results. Methodological naturalism was developed by theists, in other words, as a result of the failure of the previous 1500 years of theism to provide useful and reliable explanations of reality. They began turning to new ideas and technologies -- the influx of scientific ideas from the Arab and Chinese worlds (Copernicus had an Arab treatise on heliocentric systems on his shelf, Dante based The Inferno on earlier Arab works, Harvey got circulation of the blood from the Arabs, who got it from the Chinese) and on new technologies such as the cannon and the clock, paper, the compass, and getting inspiration from Europe's rising capitalism that demanded accurate and useful information and technology, Europe's relative poverty and backwardness compared to elsewhere, and European expansionism that brought it into contact with more advanced and previously unknown areas of the world.

What I said is well documented in Stanley Jaki, Science and Creation, Scottish Academic Press, Edinburgh and London, 1974.

Since Jaki is a priest, it is highly unlikely that he would come to any other conclusion. The position that scientific laws indicate god is not one taken seriously by any major thinker in the philosophy of science, except for those with religious concepts that run to personal gods. Scientific laws do not indicate anything supernatural is going on with the universe.

Vorkosigan

[Vorkosigan]

In fact, modern science grew out of the notion that the Universe was created by a God of order, who would susain the universe in a regular way.

In fact, this view of "order" did not grow out of Christianity, but out of the experience of westerners with machines beginning in the 15th century, and out of attempts to use math to model the behavior of machines, and then transferring that insight to the behavior of nature, the so call-ed mechanistic philosophy that became the rage in the 17th century. Christian scientists may have thought that the universe was orderly, but they were updating their religion to match their ideas about the universe, a common practice among religious thinkers.

[Socrates]

Vork doesn't address Jaki's tight arguments, but merely dismisses him because he is a priest. He also pointed out that science was STILLBORN in the cultures Vork cited, precisey because they had no framework for an orderly universe. The evolutionist Loren Eiseley also stated:


The philosophy of experimental science ... began its discoveries and made use of its methods in the faith, not the knowledge, that it was dealing with a rational universe controlled by a creator who did not act upon whim nor interfere with the forces He had set in operation... It is surely one of the curious paradoxes of history that science, which professionally has little to do with faith, owes its origins to an act of faith that the universe can be rationally interpreted, and that science today is sustained by that assumption.

Other writers, who are not even all Christians, agreed, e.g. Alfred North Whitehead, Melvin Calvin, Carl von Wiesäcker.

[Vorkosigan]

Socrates:

Vork doesn't address Jaki's tight arguments, but merely dismisses him because he is a priest. He also pointed out that science was STILLBORN in the cultures Vork cited, precisey because they had no framework for an orderly universe.

Why the Arabs and the Chinese did not develop western-style science is hotly debated, and certainly cannot be dealt with in sound bites like this (the idea of lawfulness being only one among many issues). I didn't "dismiss" Jaki's arguments; I simply pointed out that in the Philosophy of Science, outside of a few theists, nobody believes that scientific laws point to a designed universe. Jaki can argue all he wants, but nobody wastes time on the topic except believers.

Other writers, who are not even all Christians, agreed, e.g. Alfred North Whitehead, Melvin Calvin, Carl von Wiesäcker.

You don't have to be a Christian to accept that God created the world. Whitehead had his own view of God. Calvin (I assume you mean the 1961 Nobel winner) was a working scientist and not a philosopher of science who once complained he couldn't understand Polanyi because his work was all economics and philosophy. To which quote of Calvin's do you refer? Weisacker is a believer. Whatever the believers may say, natural law does not point to any particular entity as the creator of the universe.

Vorkosigan

[AtheistArchon]

See the debate on Cessationism. But neither side would agree that miracles are commonplace, otherwise they would not be miracles! And they would agree that they are not capricious.


- Well perhaps we need to define the word "miracle" then. Need a miracle be rare? I don't see why. A miracle is simply something, anything, that god does. Yes?


Note that miracles are rare in the Bible too

- You're kidding, right?


(Me)Mmm, no. An ordered universe is indeed a presupposition of science in the sense that we expect there to be no supernaturalism, but deities (especially those who actually interact with the universe, unlike deism) performing miracles specifically deny that presupposition.

Once more, they do no such thing under a BIBLICAL framework of a God of order. I do provide hyperlinks for a reason, and mine covers a lot of your objections.

- They absolutely do under a biblical framework, or any framework in which deities are said to interact with the universe. The bible is not a science book, nor is it a book of universal laws which science must adhere to.

- Let me rephrase it so it's easier to understand: a deity that interacts with the universe (does miracles) specifically denies the scientific method; it cannot ever be shown via science. Miracles, by their definition, deny one of the prime presuppositions of science, which is that we can relate to the universe in a meaningful way. The universe is constant, or put another way, we are not being decieved. Or, put still another way, we are not experiencing "miracles" which cannot be measured or explained, but are merely god-magic.


What I said is well documented in Stanley Jaki, Science and Creation, Scottish Academic Press, Edinburgh and London, 1974.

- It may be documented thusly... but I've still never heard of science being an indicator of god when science specifically denies the possibility of supernatural explanations. It's kind of contradictory, I think. After all, science doesn't seem to be evidence of any other supernatural entities.

[Joseph Alward]

JOE ALWARD
I think you explained the need for extraordinary evidence very well, Atheist Archon. Such evidence seems to be lacking in the claims by the biblical literalist that, for example, woman was made from the rib of man (Genesis 2:22), sticks turned into snakes (Exodus 7:11), and the donkey talked to its master (Numbers 22:28-30). What evidence can the literalist provide in support of these miracles that is lacking in the miracle stories of other religions?

Take the rib story: Who believes this is true, and why?

[Jaltus]

sticks turned into snakes To be honest, that one is really easy.

Certain snakes, when grabbed right behind the head, go rigor mortis. While not necessarily a natural reaction, they can be trained to do so, much like frogs having their stomaches rubbed.

[TenDimensions]

Yesterday @ 11:56 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=44324#post44324)
AtheistArchon:
- I've never heard the argument that scientific laws are indicators of god before.

Perhaps you might be interested in this thread (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=145)

I'm currently anxiously waiting a reply from Five Solas.

[AtheistArchon]

To be honest, that one is really easy.

Certain snakes, when grabbed right behind the head, go rigor mortis. While not necessarily a natural reaction, they can be trained to do so, much like frogs having their stomaches rubbed.

- Then they weren't really sticks then, were they? :teeth:

- Sorry, I couldn't resist. :wink: Perhaps there are other "natural" explanations for some other miracles as well?


Perhaps you might be interested in this thread

I'm currently anxiously waiting a reply from Five Solas.


- Thanks TD, let me check it out.

[Jaltus]

AA,

You might want to read Exodus 4:1-8:18.

The magicians could only duplicate so much.