I guess the next person that responds to it is doomed too, by virtue of being an accessory, unless we stopped the discussion. Having evolved from a leperchaun though, I wonder if it applies to me?
______________________________

NOTE FROM MICHAEL PATTON: Good comments, but its time to close. Thanks so much.

Oh crap….I just made post 666 and we all know what that means…

John 1453,

“And there is no sufficient reason for the theist to adopt naturalist beliefs.”

I’m not sure what you mean by this. Is there never sufficient reason? What is sufficient reason? What exactly are naturalist believes? Is the simple fact that most if not all naturalists believe something make that a naturalistic belief?

Furthermore this again gets into the relative weight of the evidence and as I stated that is something we are going to disagree on. It doesn’t address whether evolution is incompatible with Christianity on its face.

I disagree that we live our lives based on methodological naturalism. Early scientists practiced science quite fine without methodological naturalism, and we live our everyday lives without it as well. The difference between scientists who practice methodological naturalism and those who don’t is that those who don’t have a teleological view of the universe. They believe that there is an end and a purpose to things. They also posit a divine being who imposes order rather than chaos. That is why people expect water to come out the faucet and fall down into the sink when they turn the tap. Not because they are methodological materialists / naturalists, but because they observe and expect regularities in the natural world and (if they are theistic) because they expect that a rational God would have the natural world work in an ordered and consistent manner through time.

Plantinga writes, “The theist knows that God created the heavens and the earth and all that they contain; she knows, therefore, that in one way or another God has created all the vast diversity of contemporary plant and animal life. But of course she isn’t thereby committed to any particular way in which God did this. He could have done it by broadly evolutionary means; but on the other hand he could have done it in some totally different way. For example, he could have done it by directly creating certain kinds of creatures–human beings, or bacteria, or for that matter sparrows and houseflies–as many Christians over the centuries have thought. Alternatively, he could have done it the way Augustine suggests: by implanting seeds, potentialities of various kinds in the world, so that the various kinds of creatures would later arise, although not by way of genealogical interrelatedness. Both of these suggestions are incompatible with the evolutionary story.

A Christian therefore has a certain freedom denied her naturalist counterpart: she can follow the evidence where it leads. If it seems to suggest that God did something special in creating human beings (in such a way that they are not genealogically related to the rest of creation) or reptiles or whatever, then there is nothing to prevent her from believing that God did just that. Perhaps the point here can be put like this: The epistemic probability of the whole grand evolutionary story is quite different for the theist and for the naturalist.”

Thus, for the theist, the probability of the story of evolution with respect to the evidence together with the views a theist typically holds, is much lower than its probability for naturalists with respect to the evidence together with the views the naturalist typically holds. That is to say, there is no necessary straightforward incompatibilty between Christian teaching and evolution. Rather, it is more a matter of probabilities given the same evidence but different a priori beliefs. And there is no sufficient reason for the theist to adopt naturalist beliefs.

John 1453,

Aside from what philosophers are theorizing, the common use and practice of the scientific method works pretty well today. Its not perfect, nor have I ever claimed it to be, but it is sufficient, and you acknowledge that in your everyday living, as does everybody in the Western world.

Common descent is falsifiable, but that requires looking at evidence, both pro and con, and I know you don’t like to go there. Further, the thousands of anti-evolution websites believe it’s falsifiable too, or else they wouldn’t be amassing all this “proof” that its wrong. Heck, even you believed it was falsifiable in a small way when you talked about feathered dinosaurs!

Evolutionary biologists demonstrate various aspects of it as being falsifiable when they take part in the peer review process.

Of course, since the overarching theory of Common Descent is so well supported, its very unlikely that it will ever be “proven wrong”. A new theory may come by and supersede it, but it would have to explain all the evidence in a better fashion. The probability of ever reaching a point where we say that all life does NOT have a common ancestor and deferring to some special creation model is incredibly slim, if not nonexistent. Any new theory must account for whats already known.

I’m fully aware of the soil that gave rise to modern science. I gave a presentation about it in my Evolutionary Biology class a few years back. I simply don’t like the accepted scientific theories determining the conclusions of my theology, nor do I like my theology determining the conclusions of any scientific theories.

Anything else is compromise, and I know you don’t like that.

Greg,

“I’m sorry, but that’s a horrible foundation to build an “alternative theory of origins” off of.”

Sorry, I’m not trying to be combative, but simply I don’t agree with your conclusion, even if some of the rest of your arguments have merit.

True, we operate on a certain type of methodological naturalism in much of our everyday physical habits. We eat, we sleep , we procreate, we breathe, and so on, in order to physically survive. These are necessary survival tools , with which all animals are equipped, however, not just man, and are more a matter of instinct than choice.

And, yes, we can and should rely on doctors who have verifiable physical skills in performing complex procedures such as surgery. But, because I require someone to have the necessary credentials and the knowledge to successfully perform surgery that does not mean I can’t look for other types of medicine such as herbs, homeopathic, or other alternative methods. Or, if I want, I can ask for another medical opinion. Why? Because I am given an alternative choice in those matters, although granted it may not be the best one to pursue.

And, isn’t this what you just did in interacting with my points by giving an alternative view? And, why were you able to do that? Simply because this blog gives you and me and others like us the opportunity to do so, even though evolution isn’t theology either, and this is a theological blog.

That’s my point.

John 1453,
Re: Your objections

1. it incorrectly empties Romans 1:20 of a great deal of meaning;

I honestly don’t see how evolution robs this verse of it’s meaning. As has been said before (at least by me) evolution in my mind clearly points to a God because a process such as this wouldn’t happen without someone or something designing it.

2. it unecessarily buys into philosophical or methodical naturalism or both;

This statement if true wouldn’t make evolution false or inherently wrongheaded since the physical evidence would still remain. It must make us skeptical, but it doesn’t necessitate rejection.

3. it leaves God as merely a ghost in a machine;

Ultimately any discovery of natural laws that explain the universe leaves God as the ghost in the machine. Gravity removed the idea that God personally held the stars in planets in the sky.

4. it divorces faith from science;

I’m not sure there is a viable alternative to this divorce. Science seeks to understand the world around us by explaining it with processes and mathematics. Now again this limits science a people should be aware of these limits (there’s a reason we have philosophy of science courses). However, no creationist has yet to put up a viable theory for the evidence short of saying God made it that way. Now I’ve heard you say that you don’t think that you have to put up an alternative theory. This is true philosophically, but not practically. Philosophically all you have to do is prove your opponent false (which I would say you haven’t done yet for evolution). However, practically we have all this physical evidence which is currently understood in an evolutionary framework. If you don’t offer a viable alternate explanation people just aren’t going to go along with you.

5. it accepts an atheist alternative explanation for the origins and development of the biological world; and

It is only an alternative explanation if it is false which is something that hasn’t been shown. Furthermore, I would disagree that it is a necessarily atheistic alternative explanation. Ultimately it is agnostic and doesn’t care whether there’s a god or not. Science is just interpreting the physical evidence and postulating laws and processes that could allow for that evidence to be formed.

6. it is a primary faith commitment to something that is non-falsifiable and which was explicitly developed on materialist principles in order to exclude God and special creation.

I’m not sure how it is non-falsifiable. If you could elaborate on this a bit cause the predicative power of evolution seems to be to be insanely strong.

Re 658. Sorry, my skin thinned there for a moment. Musta been the hand cream I used this morning. I’ve washed my hands and am back to my normal rhino hide.

John,
First off you read a post that was a reply to you when you replied to the “in your mind you can’t separate evolution from naturalism” thing.

Second off you again are so prejudiced that you are seeing what you want to see in the statements of others. As John 1453 pointed out no one said what you are accusing them of saying with the meaning you are accusing them of conveying. And even if someone did IT WOULDN’T MATTER. If I went and asked 100 Evangelicals about Calvinism I would probably get 1/3 that say “evil”, 1/3 that say “Truth”, and another 1/3 who don’t know what I am talking about (I’m completely making this up as an example btw). Now despite the fact that 33 people said Calvinism was evil would it be proper to conclude ALL or even MOST Evangelicals think Calvinism is evil??? No, that would be a logical fallacy.

I’m still interested in hearing your thoughts on CMP’s article.

re post 657 and the definition of science

The Theory of Common Descent (TCD) does not, in fact meet all the requirements of a definition of science. It is not emprically verifiable, nor is it falsifiable. Moreover, Greg does not acknowledge that there is no universally accepted definition of “science”. He also does not acknowledge the significant critiques that have been made of the definition he apparently uses. Though I have read various critiques, here’s a quick quote from wikipaedia that reflects what I have read in other places:

“Philosopher of science Paul K Feyerabend advanced the idea of epistemological anarchism, which holds that there are no useful and exception-free methodological rules governing the progress of science or the growth of knowledge, and that the idea that science can or should operate according to universal and fixed rules is unrealistic, pernicious and detrimental to science itself. Feyerabend advocates treating science as an ideology alongside others . . . He also contended (along with Imre Lakatos) that the demarcation problem of distinguishing science from pseudoscience on objective grounds is not possible and thus fatal to the notion of science running according to fixed, universal rules.

“Professor Stanley Aronowitz scrutinizes science for operating with the presumption that the only acceptable criticisms of science are those conducted within the methodological framework that science has set up for itself. . . . Aronowitz also alleges that while scientists consider it absurd that Fundamentalist Christianity uses biblical references to bolster their claim that the bible is true, scientists pull the same tactic by using the tools of science to settle disputes concerning its own validity.”

Greg, using his definition, would have to concede that science is not the search for truth. If Science is restricted to methodological naturalism then a more accurate definition would be: Science is the search for exclusively materialistic theories of the world. That is a much narrower and more agenda driven than simply “the search for truth.”

Western science arose in a theistic environment, and its early practitioners were almost all Christian. They saw the universe as a rational place that could be investigated because God himself was rational. Current science is living off the interest accumulated from that early investment, and operates on basic assumptions about the world that are theistic (so yes, there is a Christian theory of gravity; it’s the one we are currently using). If there is no God, we have no reason to expect the universe to operate rationally and regularly or to be understandable by us. In fact, given the random nature of evolution, it’s far more likely that humans should have developed without the capacity to understand the universe. Or we should not reject the possibility of cows popping out of nowhere and appearing in our living rooms.