Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site umcp-cs.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!godot!harvard!seismo!umcp-cs!mangoe From: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate) Newsgroups: net.religion Subject: Re: A Call to Religious Unity - The Scientific Faith Message-ID: <1510@umcp-cs.UUCP> Date: Fri, 30-Nov-84 19:48:14 EST Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.1510 Posted: Fri Nov 30 19:48:14 1984 Date-Received: Sun, 2-Dec-84 05:38:04 EST References: <1420@umcp-cs.UUCP> <249@cybvax0.UUCP> Reply-To: mangoe@maryland.UUCP (Charley Wingate) Distribution: na Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD Lines: 66 In article <249@cybvax0.UUCP> mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) writes: [In reply to me] >(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. Maybe I'm exceptionally dense, but I don't understand how you counter a prejudice with another prejudice. Unless, of course, you want to claim that science is the True prejudice, as Rich does. Then you have science, the True Faith. > 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. Why do I have to keep exlaining the difference between the ressurection and things like meteors????????? [Enter patient mode] Meteors, zombies, spontaneous generation, et al., are phenomena which repeat themselves and are readily amenable to scientific observation. Supernatural explanations of these are malformed natural law, not claims of miracles. The ressurection is (supposedly) not to be repeated, not available for observation. [Enter exasperated mode] There's no way in heaven or hell that I am going to accept an analogy between meteors and the Resurrection. >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. Well, we all know that Christians generally accept that the source of the regular behavior of the universe is God. We derive this from our knowledge of God, not vice versa. I don't see anything wrong with the "God of the Cracks", because it's quite obviously an illusion. A God would HAVE to appear this way, proportional to how often he tore away natural law to reveal himself. Natural law, even if it is provided by God, must serve to conceal Him. It is as if God has erected a wall, on which he has painted the universe, and what we see of him is thus where he has left cracks. [Attention heresy hounds: I realize this sounds very Buddhist, but I don't want to take time here to recast this in Christian terms.] The truth in "God of the Cracks" is the cracks; there is no reason to expect glimpses of God to look like natural law. Charley Wingate umcp-cs!mangoe