While it’s a difficult subject, God does miraculously heal people. I was a participant once, and Keener has done an excellent job of documenting this. So yes, I can see it rubs you the wrong way, but I believe in a both-and approach. Practical medicine and the gift of faith healing. Both can also be found typified in the Bible.
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Why can’t you wrap your brain around the idea that people can acknowledge God healed someone AND acknowledge that science can’t investigate or explain God’s healing, and that’s fine. A lack of a scientific explanation doesn’t mean something didn’t happen. A lack of desire to investigate scientifically something that can’t be investigated scientifically is not denying God, it’s just understanding the limits of science. Why do you feel the need to label to stick the label “scientific” on your beliefs? Do you think that makes you a more rational or serious person? Do you think truth arrived at scientifically is better?
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Please excuse my reaction, but I find it misleading to say someone is objectively investigating an occurrence in the world, and yet they can be labeled pseudo-scientific. Pseudo-naturalistic or some other term would help to clear up any confusion.
I think what I’d like to see is a term for when something is accurate in a way that science cannot be. Bad science or pseudo-scientific are too closely related… I don’t know, I’m drawing a blank on how best to call a evidentiary investigation that is not scientific.
I had a friend who often stated “If you can’t put a number on it, it is just an opinion.” I sympathize with that view quite a bit, though opinions can be either well founded or not.
That happens quite frequently in judicial proceedings where testimony is used, without hard evidence, and ultimately it becomes a matter of the whether the evidence becomes overwhelming to the point of it being statistically likely a position is true. Sort of like in science where the P value is less than 0.05 being the equivalent of “beyond a reasonable doubt.” So, it gets back to the science of statistics, even if it is not formally called that.
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And almost like a running joke in philosophy, you can’t put a number on that opinion either.
And by formally calling it that, and formally excluding something which happens… it feels more like a sport than a real investigation of the world.
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Objective is not synonymous with scientific. You can strive for objective journalism or objective history telling and not be doing anything “scientifically.” Something is pseudo-scientific when it claims to be science but isn’t following the consensus methodologies. See this article for example:
But history or court testimony or journalism isn’t pseudoscience, it’s just not science. You can try to objectively investigate claims of miracles if you want to. You would be investigating testimony and history though using methodologies associated with journalism and history to evaluate credibility and authenticity, you wouldn’t be conducting a scientific investigation.
Why does it have to be exclusive like that. The term you are looking for is generally “true” or “reliable.” Science can yield true and reliable knowledge. So can other epistemic tools. Science cannot reveal true and reliable knowledge about the supernatual. It is limited. On the other hand, the Bible cannot reveal true or reliable knowledge about the dates of rocks. You are better off measuring isotopes and relying on science for that.
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And sometimes worse, like when reason says: “It must be the case that …” and neither measurement nor statistics support a conclusion, such as the conclusion that the smallest parts of the *Concrete Inanimate" cosmos are points of mass that all move at the same speed in Absolute Space over Absolute Time.
Now, I may be the one who is confused, as I thought I was describing a both-and approach where the supernatural is not exuded apriori.
And again, something seems off about calling it a non-scientific evidentiary investigation.
What criminal investigator or archaeologist would accept that?
To what degree? Because it has been formally excluded apriori? Or because it’s impossible to confirm if an event was caused by nothing?
Criminal investigators and archaeologists use certain scientific conclusions or evidence derived from scientific processes to support arguments that are not claimed to be scientific conclusions in and of themselves. “Joe killed his wife” is not a scientific conclusion. Neither is the assertion “This region was most likely inhabited circa 2000 BCE.”
Yes, because you can’t come to conclusions about something you know “a priori” that your tools can’t investigate. Duh.
It is impossible in general to “prove” any negative, so what is your point?
The law of non-contradiction would be an exception. “You” form a conclusion and your tools can’t investigate it.
And yet science is used to form that conclusion. You couldn’t get there without science, and yet it’s an unscientific decision. It feels like a misnomer when you can have two unscientific judgements where one is based on bad science and the other on good science.
In general? That’s an interesting admission.
Does logically proving the nonexistence of nothing count?
I think you are misunderstanding what is actually put forward as scientific conclusions. There is no scientific conclusion in existence that says “Life began from non-life” or “There was no divine first cause in the creation of the universe.” Science only makes conclusions about what it has investigated.
No one has ever argued that scientific facts can not be brought into metaphysical, philosophical, historical, or judicial discussions or that conclusions that rely primarily on other epistemologies cannot incorporate scientific knowledge as givens.
I don’t know what you are talking about.
It’s not an admission, it’s just what is generally accepted when it comes to reasoning. I’m not really interested in getting into a semantic debate about it.
If “you can’t prove a negative” means you can’t prove beyond reasonable doubt that certain things don’t exist, then the claim is just false. We prove the nonexistence of things on a regular basis. If, on the other hand, “you can’t prove a negative” means you cannot prove beyond all possible doubt that something does not exist, well, that may, arguably, be true. But so what? That point is irrelevant so far as defending beliefs in supernatural entities against the charge that science and/or reason have established beyond reasonable doubt that they don’t exist.
It simply follows from how the term is being narrowly defined.
Out of everything I just wrote, I figured this was the easiest to understand.
Evaluating conclusions for whether or not they are “good or bad” is an entirely different subject.
I think the crux of the problem as I see it is that some Christians want to marshall science in service of their apologetic arguments for God’s existence or action in the world and don’t like being told they can’t because science isn’t the right tool for that. They resent it because they feel like scientific knowledge is somehow more privileged and unassailable than other kinds of knowledge. That maybe true at a societal level, but even if one could somehow make science prove things about God (you can’t), it wouldn’t result in faith. People come to saving faith based on experiential and relational knowledge of God who loves us as his own children, they don’t come to saving faith because they were argued into certain rational positions using logic and scientific proofs. Knowing truth about God isn’t trusting God or pledging allegiance to Christ and his kingdom. Knowing truth isn’t faith.
There is no law against bringing scientific facts into theological discussions. But you just can’t get to a place where science proves or disproves anything about God. Why is this so bad or hard?
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- So if, on the basis of brute facts, I conclude that the Colonel committed the murder in the Library with a Candlestick, and there are no witnesses, no videotape, and no fingerprints, are you saying that my conclusion is an unscientific decision or an ambiguous, undecidable decision, or a good decision?
This feels like a different discussion… From the beginning I’ve taken issue with a method of science/knowledge that excludes the supernatural as a conclusion/possibility… a lot has been said… and I’m pretty sure you’ve got a misnomer when unscientific judgements can be based on good and bad science.
Or something else I been wondering is when did science stop meaning “a department of systematized knowledge as an object of study.”
I certainly believe that. But I also don’t think there is any objective proof for that whatsoever.
- IMO, a “supernatural event” is an indisputable difference between “what was” and “what is” which may or may not be measurable and which may or may not be explicable, and which is commonly disputed.
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The immediate effect of an uncaused cause may or may not be a supernatural event depending on how you define the term.
Which term? “uncaused”, “cause”, or “supernatural”?