judge

Can you explain with some examples?

Do you mean which dogma should you place between your ears?

Might not be as important as you imply.

Really? Do you now speak for humankind?

Many many people find there are other ways of knowing "truth" than methodological naturalism.
I gave one earlier, from John 8:31-21

If you hold to my teaching you will know the truth and the truth will set you free

Knowing things according to MN will not help us in all areas of life. Life is far too complex and wonderful for it too.
Theological knowledge wont either. Holding to the teaching of Christ will bring knowledge of truth . It will help with practical problems of life where NM will not.
Thousands and thousands of people experience this, regardless of doctrine.

youngalexander

I do not wish to be unkind, nor to make unwarranted assumptions. However, we are responsible for our statements here. I see that Sauron has queried your mention of QM.

There is a laypersons perception that QM leads to fuzzy outcomes - or something of the sort. On the contrary, QM has led to the greatest accuracy of the finest levels of observed nature and to repeated predictions of that quality. The confusion may come from the probabilistic nature of those observations.

Fundies regard the Big Bang as some sort of 'proof' of creation. Physicist regard the BB as a singularity requiring a paradigm change.

It is extremely unwise to base theology upon cutting-edge science.

youngalexander

There is ultimately only one test - does it work.

Methodological naturalism does work.

Faith does not.

Roger Pearse

Friend,

You have to do it yourself. It's the only way, on matters of controversy. Really it is.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

judge

I have never said it does not. It works in limited areas.


Faith produces results for millions of people. Do you speak for them?

Added: I dont question the great lesson of science. that knowledge comes by hypothesis and experiment. It is just this method can be applied outside science as well!

Febble

Well, I get thrown off by the term "supernatural explanation". I don't know what it means. If it means "caused by God", that suggests that everything else isn't. And if it means "caused by God in some way that God doesn't normally use" then I see no problem in trying to investigate which method God used on this occasion.

In which case there is no reason not to use the Scientific Method, which means gathering data, creating a model that fits the data, making predictions arising from the model, and looking for new data that will confirm or infirm those predictions.

But there is no way of distinguishing a generalised "supernatural cause" from "a cause we can't identify", because "a cause we can't identify" is our null hypothesis. And equating the null hypothesis with "supernatural cause" would simply be arguing God-of-the-Gaps.

And because a God that is the Cause of Everything can't be distinguished from No God At All, there isn't ever any way we can infer an omnipotent God from data.

Febble

Well, it's not a way at all, most of the time.

youngalexander

The concluding par:

We are in a time when pseudo-scientific claims are demanding a place in the science curriculum, and biologists and zoologists cannot afford to ignore them. Similar voices wish to insert themselves into academic Bible scholarship, and serious adherents of Bibelwissenschaft should likewise offer opposition.

I buzzed off on hols on 20th Apr, just as spin initiated the thread. Thus I missed it and now thank Apikorus for drawing it to my attention. By golly, if only we had seen it during the MJ analogous to creationism? HJ to Evolution? debate, eh GDon??

Places a whole new light upon 'parallelism'.

Febble

But it's a quite different kind of truth. I agree with you that there are truths in domains other than science, but they are not objective truths. They are, by definition, subjective. None the worse for that necessarily, but a completely different kind of animal.

judge

Yes , agreed. This is a different kind. A much stronger kind. Truth one arrives at by ones own experience in life is far stronger and far more useful in real life.
Which is why it might be unrealistsic that people who have arrived at this kind of knowledge WRT to Christ should pretend they dont' know what the reality is.

Should one abandon real knowledge, of life, in order to accomodate the synthetic knowledge of biblical crticism?

Just dosn't seem to make any sense.

Oh well it's my own fault for even being here. Maybe I'll just erase my membership.