Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site cbscc.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!cbsck!cbscc!pmd From: pmd@cbscc.UUCP (Paul Dubuc) Newsgroups: net.religion Subject: Re: Science & Religion: sleight of hand Message-ID: <4263@cbscc.UUCP> Date: Wed, 5-Dec-84 22:32:40 EST Article-I.D.: cbscc.4263 Posted: Wed Dec 5 22:32:40 1984 Date-Received: Thu, 6-Dec-84 06:44:46 EST References: <468@uwmacc.UUCP> <1261@umcp-cs.UUCP>, <525@uwmacc.UUCP> Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Columbus Lines: 35 I think generalizations are good in science, but they can be carried too far. When this happens there it a tendancy to fit the facts to our accepted generalization. When this gets done over and over, especially with regard to non-repeatable supernatural events, we end up making "coincidence" the catch-all for things that don't fit our generalizations. John W. Montgomery discusses this in his essay "Science, Theology, and the Miraculous": ... But which facts will our evidence be tested against--the immediate facts to be interpreted, or the entire, general range of human experience? Where particular experience and general experience are in accord, there is no problem; but where they conflict, the particular must be chosen over the general, for otherwise our "investigations" of historical particulars will be investigations in name only since the results will always reflect already accepted general experience. ... the moment the general runs into tension with the particular, the general must yeild, since (1) the historian's knowledge of the general is never complete so he can never be sure he ought to rule out an event or an interpretation simply because it is new to him, and (2) he must always guard against obliterating the uniqueness of individual historical events by forcing them into a Procrustean bed of regular, general patterns. Only the primary-source evidence can determine whether an event occurred or not, and only that same evidence will establish the proper interptetation of the event. -- Paul Dubuc cbscc!pmd