(January 12, 2010 at 9:17 am)rjh4 Wrote: If you assume materialism for science and then admit that the origin of the universe could have happened in other than a materialistic way, how can you rationally say that origins is a scientific question, i.e., one that can be answered using materialistic assumptions? If you only uses materialistic assumptions for science and you treat origins as a scientific question and the universe came to be in other than a materialistic manner, then it seems that science would never be able to discover that manner because it would automatically be rejected for its lack of adherence to materialism.Origins is related to nature, the natural material world. That is why it is a scientific question. It is directly related to natural laws. Questions about these laws (such as how they came into being) are more philosophical questions, since science cannot answer these, given that science relies on the laws themselves. If your question was "how did the universe begin?" or "when did the universe begin?", the questions are scientific in nature (since they involve measurable and obtainable results). If your questions were "what caused the universe to begin?", or "what is beauty?", the questions are more philosophical in nature, and not covered by science. NB: Note the question about beauty is not related to how we interpret beauty, or why we see beauty, but what beauty actually is. The former two examples are scientific in nature (since they are about us, our brains, how we interpret things, etc).
Never did I say, however, that science returns the ultimate absolute answer to questions involving origins. As I noted before, you could reasonably argue that the universe started last Thursday (or two milliseconds ago if you like) and remain un-refuted by philosophy. So, we could simply take guesses at what the causes of certain things are, or make them up and assume they are correct, but such thinking doesn't get you anywhere. Science is an extension of this thinking, except for ideas that are thought up, rigorous testing occurs, re-evaluating the idea against the evidence that is obtained.
What science does is evaluate evidence against ideas, and form a probability on what has happened. This is perhaps the only difference between science and other forms of thinking, but it is an important one. We could go on and on saying "yes, but something supernatural *could* have happened", but if we make this assumption without good reason, we do not get any advances (since the supernatural has no known methods associated with it to learn how to utilise it). I'm sure you'll agree, it is far better to assume materialism and get results which can be used to further advance technology, than to not assume anything and spend your time questioning whether the colour change in the test tube was the result of a chemical reaction or the interference of a supernatural entity.
Quote:Consequently, I think you are kidding yourself that science (scientists in general) would follow any evidence that is not materialistic, no matter how good it was. (Note, from my point of view one does not need to assume materialism to carry out science. One can legitimately carry out science using assumptions of "uniformity of nature", i.e. that nature generally behaves in a law like fashion. That is quite different from materialism overall but for operational science it would seem to produce identical results.)I think you are forgetting the number of scientists who believe in Gods, or who are Christians and believe Jesus was the result of an immaculate conception. At some point, with most religions, miracles occur that violate the laws of nature. Violations of laws of nature don't all tend to chaos per say. The switch of an unfertilised egg with a fertilised one does not have any repercussions down the line, assuming the supernatural world exists.
For another example, imagine a totally flat 2D world. The natural laws of this world describe that there isn't any "up", that only 2 dimensions exist. Thus, things can only enter and leave a certain area in this world by moving either forwards or sideways. However, if a supernatural being from the 3rd dimensional realm were above the flatland, it could easily violate this law and place a flat square directly into this area.
Quote:So from your point of view what would constitute a good reason to believe something other than material happened?A violation of a law of nature, such that the violation could be easily demonstrated, and such that another law could not be interjected in order to explain the occurrence, or the current law changed to account for the violation.
Quote:Wouldn't a mere logical argument for the existence of God then make God contingent on the logic? In other words it seems that if logic is the ultimate presupposition in your world view and it can be used to prove God, then logic is then superior to God and His authority. (From my world view, God is the creator of the universe and everything therein and is the ultimate authority. Nothing can be more authoritative and trustworthy for us than God and His Word. The only way we can really know about God is if He revealed Himself to us. Of course, I think He did that throughout history and that this was recorded as His Word, the Bible.Words in a book can be used to prove the existence of an author, though this does not make the words greater than the author. If God does exist, it stands to reason that he/she/it created the laws of logic for a purpose, and if the laws can formulate an argument for the existence of God, that purpose seems obvious: to demonstrate God's existence. Think of it as God leaving clues in the form of our reasoning.
I'd also point out that without the logic we have, the words and things "revealed" to us would make no sense; and neither would your argument that the only way we can really know about God is if he revealed himself to us. Hence your argument that revelation is the only way of knowing God is itself a violation of this revelation. You first need logic in order to understand anything to do with words or language. Thus if your God created everything, it created logic, and our use of logic is relied upon to understand revelation. Would you agree with this?
Quote:I know you are at least somewhat familiar with TAG as I have seen you mention it to Fr0d0. Could you explain why you think that it either relies on "presuppositions that cannot be verified themselves, or faulty logic and fallacies"?There are many problems with TAG, as listed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcenden...of_the_TAG
The main ones which I argue are that it does not constitute an argument of proof since it relies on unproven premises (assumptions) which by definition could be wrong, that it is circular by assuming the validity of Christian theism in order to prove the Christian God exists (the Christian God existing being a part of Christian theism), and that ultimately, it sets out to prove the existence of a specific God and utterly fails to do so (at best, it can only attempt a proof of the existence of *some* God).
