The parts are Maya 
- Maya? How does your solipsist move from place to place?
- There’s that word “magic” again. Yuk!
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Striking though, how much it’s like what was promised in the garden: “You will be like God determining not only good and evil, but even reality itself.”
Not sure who would really choose that if they knew they would be alone.
Which is why they say we all are capable of it. Even the serpent used the plural pronoun to better mislead the woman.
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Found this interesting from Plantinga’s Methodological Naturalism?:
“What the Christian community really needs is a science that takes into account what we know as Christians. Indeed, this seems the rational thing in any event; surely the rational thing is to use all that you know in trying to understand a given phenomenon.”
“I say this is the natural thing to think; oddly enough, however, the denial of this claim is widely taken for granted. As a matter of fact, it has achieved the status of philosophical orthodoxy.”
Or after looking at statements from several prominent writers in the scientific community claiming that humans have not been designed by God, Plantinga writes:
“we might say that strictly speaking, when these people make such declarations, they are neither speaking as scientists nor doing science. They are instead commenting on science, drawing conclusions from scientific results–conclusions that don’t follow from the scientific results themselves, requiring extra and extra-scientific (perhaps philosophical) premises. Perhaps this is true, although it has become increasingly difficult to draw a sharp line between science and such other activities as philosophical reflection on science.”
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Human empathy, emotions, needs, and wants are all part of reality. Those are the justification for a subjective morality.
The rationalization is the Golden Rule. If you don’t want to be a slave then you shouldn’t enslave others. If you don’t want your stuff stolen, then you shouldn’t steal other peoples’ stuff.
The justification is human wants and needs.
Sure they do. They pick the moral system that they like best, the culture and society they want to live in. If people don’t like the way their society is run, then they revolt and establish a new government.
If you wouldn’t want to be a slave, then owning slaves is wrong. It’s not a difficult concept to understand.
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Wao!! This is a good one from Plantinga:
“But even if it were true by definition that a scientific hypothesis could involve no reference to God, nothing of much interest would follow. The Augustines and Kuypers of this world would then be obliged to concede that they had made a mistake: but the mistake would be no more than a verbal mistake. They would have to concede that they can’t properly use the term ‘science’ in stating their view or asking their question; they would have to use some other term, such as ‘sience’ (pronounced like ‘science’); the definition of ‘sience’ results from that of ‘science’ by deleting from the latter the clause proscribing hypotheses that include reference to God (i.e., by removing from the definition of ‘science’ Ruse seems to be endorsing, the clause according to which science deals only with what is natural). Their mistake would not be in what they proposed to say, but rather in how they proposed to say it.”
And this is simply magnificent:
“We can therefore say a good bit by way of description of this human activity; and it is an activity of impressive worth and value. It is of enormous practical worth, resulting in lengthened life spans, relief from illness, increased comfort, and a better quality of life for many. (It has also given us the means to destroy ourselves and our environment.) But its benefits are by no means merely practical; modern science has also enabled us to learn much about ourselves and the world which God has created; it is hard even to conceive what intellectual life was like prior to the rise of science. In addition, parts of science – theoretical physics, for example – have an austerely splendid intrinsic beauty and power; they represent magnificently impressive intellectual accomplishment; they resemble great poetry and great music; perhaps the most impressive intellectual accomplishment of humankind is, say, theoretical physics from Newton to the present. And now the question is this. Should Christians carry on this enterprise from a Christian perspective? Is this enterprise such that religious or theological perspective is relevant to it? We won’t get an answer to this question from a mere definition of the word ‘science’; an answer will require familiarity with the activity, and the discernment necessary to seeing what is characteristic of it. So an answer will involve substantive questions about the nature of science, our own nature, and the nature of the world in which we live.”
This is also outstanding:
“God-of-the-gaps theology is worlds apart from serious Christian theism… God-of-the-gaps theology, therefore, is every bit as bad as McMullin, Van Till, Stek and Allen think. (Indeed, it may be worse than Van Till and Stek think, since some of the things they think – in particular their ban on God’s acting directly in nature – seem to me to display a decided list in the direction of such theology.) Serious Christians should indeed resolutely reject this way of thinking. The Christian community knows that God is constantly active in his creation, that natural laws, if there are any, are not independent of God, and that the existence of God is certainly not a hypothesis designed to explain what science can’t. Furthermore, the Christian community begins the scientific enterprise already believing in God; it doesn’t (or at any rate needn’t) engage in it for apologetic reasons, either with respect to itself or with respect to non-Christians. But of course from these things it doesn’t follow for an instant that the Christian scientific community should endorse methodological naturalism.”
" For, be it observed, the exception in limine to the evidence which we are about to consider, does not question that natural selection may not be able to do all that Mr. Darwin ascribes to it: it merely objects to his interpretation of the facts, because it maintains that these facts might equally well be ascribed to intelligent design. And so undoubtedly they might, if we were all childish enough to rush into a supernatural explanation whenever a natural explanation is found sufficient to account for the facts. Once admit the glaringly illogical principle that we may assume the operation of higher causes where the operation of lower ones is sufficient to explain the observed phenomena, and all our science and all our philosophy are scattered to the winds. For the law of logic which Sir William Hamilton called the law of parsimony—or the law which forbids us to assume the operation of higher causes when lower ones are found sufficient to explain the observed effects—this law constitutes the only logical barrier between science and superstition. For it is manifest that it is always possible to give a hypothetical explanation of any phenomenon whatever, by referring it immediately to the intelligence of some supernatural agent; so that the only difference between the logic of science and the logic of superstition consists in science recognising a validity in the law of parsimony which superstition disregards."
And . . .
" Now, since the days of Linnæus this principle has been carefully followed, and it is by its aid that the tree-like system of classification has been established. No one, even long before Darwin’s days, ever dreamed of doubting that this system is in reality, what it always has been in name, a natural system. What, then, is the inference we are to draw from it? An evolutionist answers, that it is just such a system as his theory of descent would lead him to expect as a natural system. For this tree-like system is as clear an expression as anything could be of the fact that all species are bound together by the ties of genetic relationship. If all species were separately created, it is almost incredible that we should everywhere observe this progressive shading off of characters common to larger groups, into more and more specialized characters distinctive only of smaller and smaller groups. At any rate, to say the least, the law of parsimony forbids us to ascribe such effects to a supernatural cause, acting in so whimsical a manner, when the effects are precisely what we should expect to follow from the action of a highly probable natural cause."
–George Romanes, “Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution”, 1882
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“So return to our central question: should the Christian scientific community observe the constraints of methodological naturalism? So far as this argument is concerned, the answer seems to be: yes, of course, in those areas where Duhemian science is possible and valuable. But nothing here suggests that the Christian scientific community should not also engage in non-Duhemian Augustinian science where that is relevant. There is nothing here to suggest that if it ain’t Duhemian, it ain’t science.”
Plantinga Methodological Naturalism?
Perhaps someone could show us how including God in the scientific method would work. Show us the background research, falsifiable hypothesis, experiment, results, and conclusion.
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- What threw me off was your term “solipsist”, until I realized it could be a very small element in a set which is itself conscious and has free will, and that such a set could actually be a subset of a much larger subset, e.g. a Divine Council.
- Here endeth my public thoughts in this thread.
But human nature=morality doesn’t work that way. It works by an irregular verb. For all of us.
Consider when an advantageous trade relationship exists due to the economic underdevelopment of a neighbor state. This
is surely not theft. Does it become theft when the inequality is intentionally perpetuated through any number of possible means?
Or rather they will form a sector within the existing society that better secures their advantage. And it’s a race to the bottom amid our limited resources. A film The Platform comes to mind.
Still surprised Plantinga’s argument aligned so neatly with my intuition. Something felt off with the premise of metaphysical naturalism, and now doubly off that someone who effectively represents Biologos would try to put me in my place:
This is a major epistemological issue. Plantinga is a reigning authority. This essay is 35 years old. You mean to tell me no one has touched his position in this organization… I find that hard to believe and/or accept.
Did it though? Seems to me that Plantinga was talking about philosophy and saying that Christians have a right to be believing scientists. Also pointing out that philosophical naturalism gets inappropriately imported into “science” by scientists who approach all of life from a naturalistic perspective. Also there is nothing wrong with Christians “carrying on the scientific enterprise” from their Christian perspective and moral convictions, but the definition of science isn’t going to speak to that issue.
Plantinga:
The topic under discussion is rarely “non-Duhemian Augustinian science.” Plantinga is arguing for practicing “theistic science.” On the one hand, I doubt many Christians will disagree that they have a right to and should approach their work with their full Christian selves, informed by all the knowledge that they have. Plenty of peole have criticized some kind of strict enforcement of the non-overlapping magisterium idea where scicence and religion can never be in dialogue about anything. Science and philosophy are entertwined when it comes to saying many things about the world. On the other hand, I don’t he is in anyway proposing some new theisitc scientific method that investigates God.
Indeed it is, and much discussion on methodological naturalism and criticism of the whole Intelligent Design endeavor has happened in the meantime. If you think a couple Plantinga quotes from ages ago are going to make everyone on this thread realize they don’t know what they are talking about when they insist that the scientific method can’t investigate supernatural activity, you’re mistaken.
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Here is a peer-reviewed published essay by former BioLogos program director Kathryn Applegate defending methdological naturalism. She interacts with the Plantinga book you cited.
Thanks for the article. I’m looking forward to reading it.
That’s a subtle turn of phrase. What is under discussion is the definition of science, not the scientific method. There are not that many people in this thread. If you were aware of Plantinga’s argument, it would have been a fruitful admission on your part.