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From: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: A Call to Religious Unity   -   The Scientific Faith
Message-ID: <249@cybvax0.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 30-Nov-84 01:34:09 EST
Article-I.D.: cybvax0.249
Posted: Fri Nov 30 01:34:09 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 30-Nov-84 17:36:29 EST
References: <248@mhuxh.UUCP> <241@cybvax0.UUCP> <1420@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Reply-To: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Distribution: na
Organization: Cybermation, Inc., Cambridge, MA
Lines: 49
Summary: 

In article <1420@umcp-cs.UUCP> mangoe@maryland.UUCP (Charley Wingate) writes:
> Science applied as a universal system of knoledge (which it is not) has a
> bad history of prejudice against the supernatural.  When you start from the
> position that you will accept no supernatural causes, is it any wonder that
> you end up endorsing atheism or agnosticism?

(Hey, no fair!  I prefaced my comments with a "flame on"!  Well, if you want
 be rational about it, I'm game.)

All human endeavors suffer from prejudices.  But I think science has a much
better record on overcoming prejudice than religions do.  In order to know
about a supernatural cause, you must have a supernatural effect.  A great
many phenomina once considered supernatural have been scientifically
investigated and found real, from meteors to zombis.  If you show a
supernatural effect, someone will be happy to investigate it.  Prejudice
against supernatural causes is real and justified because they so frequently
are displaced by natural cause explanations.

> The claim that "we don't need God to explain the day-to-day working of the
> universe", if true, still doesn't imply "there is no God."  If God does some
> action to the universe only once ever, there is no way to determine this.
> You can always explain it away with a purely physical explanation, and
> unless you want to guarantee rejecting God, you can't simply opt for the
> purely physical.

You make a fine case for agnosticism instead of atheism here.  Which, as an
agnostic, I agree with.  I'm willing to believe in anything physical and
demonstrable.  I don't believe or disbelieve in hypothetical supernatural
beings on principle.  (However, I specifically disbelieve in a large number
of theologies, which is another story and based on different criteria.)

Another problem with the idea of the "supernatural" is that it is a
garbage-bin category.  Whatever gets rejected or yet to be categorize
by other classifications is thrown into this mish-mosh category.  Essentially,
the supernatural is the same as the "God of the cracks".  It used to be that
almost the whole world's functioning was supposedly due to god.  But then,
along came science and god's role was less than was previously thought.
Until now, when god seems to do nothing except what science hasn't yet
explained, what science has let slip through the cracks.  (You can add logic,
mathematics, philosophy, and a few other sources of natural explanations
to the term "science" in this argument.)  The same is true of the term
"supernatural".  It is a remanent of its former self.  Both god and the
supernatural are being whittled down to that which is unknowable,
unprovable, undemonstrable, without effect, and thus unimportant.
Unimportant because the questions are undecidable and there are no known
results.  Thus agnosticism.
-- 

Mike Huybensz		...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh