Naturalists and Supernaturalists

Thanks. That entire piece was helpful. People threw concordism at me for trying to actively find scientific evidence for the first few days of Genesis. When I looked up the word, it seemed like it was just a pejorative against another Christian position. :sweat_smile:

1 Like

It is a distinct intellectual position but it is pretty general one which encompasses a large class of models integrating theology and science.

This is a problem that I’ve seen myself. The problem with crying “God of the gaps” is, where does it end? At what point does an argument for God cease to be a God-of-the-gaps type argument? Do we have to find two stone tablets on Mars with the Ten Commandments inscribed on them or something? It seems to me to be the naturalist’s version of the YEC’s “were you there?” – a kind of magic shibboleth with which to dismiss anything that they can’t otherwise answer by default. Heads I win, tails you lose.

On the other hand, we do need to have some sort of limits to what we can and can’t argue in terms of supernatural intervention. You could indeed appeal to miracles to fabricate any alternative view of history that you like. That’s what the Omphalos Hypothesis (and its more sophisticated variants such as the RATE project’s accelerated nuclear decay) are all about.

Personally, I take a view of that I guess could be called “anomphalism.” It probably needs a bit of discussion to try and define it rigorously, but what it boils down to is allowing for miracles as a valid working hypothesis for as yet unexplained phenomena, but only rejecting them as a get-out clause to avoid inconvenient truths that are already explained.

3 Likes

I think God-of-the-gaps objections need to be articulated with more care in these debates, with an effort to make a distinction between scientific and metascientific questions. Of course there are some people (mostly with a science-heavy background) who think that there is no distinction between the two, but I don’t think you need to be a theist to see that as philosophically simplistic and naive.

I think the RATE project’s proposal and Omphalos hypothesis are epistemologically different. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought the people involved with RATE genuinely believed that scientific methods should in principle be able to give an approximately correct picture of the past. In principle, such a position is scientifically falsifiable, which is why they needed to postulate a specific set of hypotheses to explain their findings. The ad hoc hypotheses are ad hoc and unconvincing, of course, but they still needed them.

In contrast, someone who believes in a true Omphalos scenario is like someone who believes that the universe began last Thursday. It is not correct to say that such a position is falsified by the scientific method. A theory in physics, for example, merely provides equations governing the time evolution of a physical system given certain initial conditions. If the system’s real-world history actually started at t = 1000 instead of t = 0, that doesn’t contradict the physics, as long as appropriate initial conditions are given in both cases. Thus, Omphalism is an example of a scientifically unfalsifiable position.

4 Likes

Certainly. It’s one of many antidotes to scientism: Popper’s handy guide to what is scientific (what’s empirically falsifiable) and what isn’t is probably over-simple in itself, but very useful.

Presumably we’d need some sort of reason to believe or accept an unfalsifiable view, though. It is true that it’s impossible to falsify the notion that we were instantaneously created 5 minutes ago, but it’s also true that there’s no compelling reason at all to think we were.

18 posts were split to a new topic: Research Programs and Religion

Probably in principle, but not in practice.

In the end of the day, accelerated nuclear decay was an attempt (and a bad one at that) to work around the fact that scientific methods gave a picture of the past that they had a priori rejected.

6 Likes

I have quoted Romanes to death, so why stop now? The reason I find his work so compelling is that it was written in 1882, and his words still directly address modern discussions between naturalists and supernaturalists.

I think that nails it. Whether we are talking about evolution or gravity we are talking about immediate causes, or proximal causes as many describe them now. One can adopt both a naturalistic and supernaturalistic mindset for many processes in nature, with naturalism describing the immediate causes of the phenomena, and God being the ultimate cause.

3 Likes

I am one of these except when mainstream science or scientists insist there is no God. I agree that science must be done apart from claiming God as part of an answer, but that doesn’t mean God is absent from the natural processes. Other than that fairly common issue, science is great.

Naturalism thinks it is insulated, safe from the threat of God. But that is because it does not understand the problem that God poses. The problem is like a double-edged sword and goes something like this:

It is no harder for God to exist than not<< and >>God may be hiding

So everywhere that the naturalist looks and does not see God, is not an opportunity to boast in his godless paradigm, but rather a prediction one would naturally make about the reality of God.

Richard Dawkins completely misses this fact about God in his writings. What should alarm him the most is that he 1. Does not see God, and 2. Does not discern God in nature, and that the existence of God predicts both outcomes.

Gotta love that the God of Love is a threat…

And as I noted earlier in the thread, ‘I have not seen evidence that convinces me there is a God’ is not the same thing as ‘there is definitely no God’. And it is the former statement that most careful naturalists make…

The theology of why God might choose to hide when finding Him is a matter of life and death is a whole different issue.

1 Like

How do you think he is hiding? His presents is documented, He spent time in human form on earth and His grand design is in front of all who open their eyes to observe it.

Don’t you know the passage that says God hides himself?

The Scriptures are replete with the idea of a threatening God.

This lack of evidence is what should trouble the naturalist the most.

The Scriptures are not silent regarding the fact that God desires to be sought out.

Please read the post immediately above mine: the notion that God is hiding belongs to @r_speir, not me.

OK, I’m done: “the most convincing possible evidence that God exists is that there is no evidence that God exists”.

At that point, any further engagement is bootless.

3 Likes

All eyes are not open like ours. Dawkins is convinced he does not see God in nature. That fact should desperately trouble him.

Why should it?

You think my statement is contradictory, but that only indicates you have not confronted your problem.

Isaiah 45:15 “Truly you are a God who hides himself, O God of Israel, the Savior.”

Since God hides himself, then we should have also predicted he would create everything and hide his tracks. If you cannot discern God, his very existence predicts exactly that.

Omphalos much?