Yes, I agree with the you, to equate a ‘rational explanation’ with a ‘natural explanation’ is at best an indicator of a strong prejudice, at worst a category mistake.
No-one can avoid having his or her own philosophical commitments. You may have a naturalistic one, I may have a theistic one. These commitments won’t figure very largely, if at all, when we are studying/explaining how things work, but they play a much more dominant role when we are studying/explaining how things came to exist in the first place, or when we are studying things that bear on our understanding of ourselves as human beings.
I was reading this kind of thing in a John Lennox book on the tube yesterday.
Another related thing he was saying is that Christian theism has more than one source of knowledge or information, science and revelation from God. Whereas scientism would say that only science can lead to truth i.e. real knowledge or information.
The main point he was trying to make is that in cases where science is not our source of information, we cannot automatically assume that reason has ceased to function and evidence has ceased to be relevant.
No-one can avoid having his or her own philosophical commitments. You may have a naturalistic one, I may have a theistic one. These commitments won’t figure very largely, if at all, when we are studying/explaining how things work, but they play a much more dominant role when we are studying/explaining how things came to exist in the first place, or when we are studying things that bear on our understanding of ourselves as human beings.
I was reading this kind of thing in a John Lennox book on the tube yesterday.
Another related thing he was saying is that Christian theism has more than one source of knowledge or information, science and revelation from God. Whereas scientism would say that only science can lead to truth i.e. real knowledge or information.
The main point he was trying to make is that in cases where science is not our source of information, we cannot automatically assume that reason has ceased to function and evidence has ceased to be relevant.
