I quoted two complete sentences.
Your third sentence is irrelevant to our present discussion, FRiend.
betty boop: "But first, may I note that you are submitting "evidence by Authority."
So, who is this "authority?...
...I doubt I will accept him as a bona fide authority."
The opinions expressed there equate to those I've read in numerous other places over many years.
So they represent "conventional wisdom" on this subject.
betty boop: "I reject the idea of 'special revelation' as being the exclusive province of 'people of the Book'."
Sure, that's fine, but it's not the subject under discussion or debate.
The issue here is whether any such "special revelation" qualifies as "natural science"?
The answer is: obviously not, and that is pretty much the only major point I've been hoping to make.
betty boop: "Of course it is true that "the Trinity and the Incarnation ... may be known only through special revelation and may not otherwise be deduced."
Well, certainly they can never be "deduced."
They are articulations of the greatest story ever told that exists at the very foundation of Western culture and civilization.
[No wonder you and spirited irish have been in such a tizzy lately....]"
Whatever else the Trinity doctrine may or may not be, however much the Trinity may or may not have been revealed or "deduced" from scriptures, whatever "articulations" it expresses at the foundations of Western culture and civilization, the Trinity doctrine is still not, never was and never will be "natural science".
Also, I don't assume that spirited irish is in some kind of "tizzy" lately, or ever.
Rather, I conclude that somewhat like yourself Ms boop, Ms irish has an agenda, namely to use this "news/activism" forum as a vehicle for expressing her religious beliefs.
Those beliefs, not surprisingly, include a strong condemnation of "the world" as we know it, and a call to come home to the sanctuary of her religion.
This hypothesis explains virtually every spirited irish post, and is not contradicted by any.
betty boop: "Natural revelation does not reduce to "computability" concerns — as it would be according to the present method of science."
The "present methods of science" are the only methods of natural-science, period.
Of course, you are free & welcome to adopt whatever other methods for understanding truth you might wish, just so long as you don't call those other methods by the name, "science".
betty boop: "The upshot being: I could never doubt subsequently that the universe has a divine origin and purpose."
Nor do I, but I never call such theological and religious beliefs "scientific".
So can such simple distinctions possibly be so difficult for you to grasp?
I'm beginning to think not, and that your apparent "incomprehension" is a matter of obstinate refusal, not stoopidity.
betty boop: "You continue to claim that science is all about "natural explanations for natural processes"; indeed, is so defined.
And then make it clear that if I disagree with you about this, then there is something seriously wrong with my reading comprehension, or general level of intelligence."
Before I could ever ask you to agree, I must first see some small sign that you even comprehend & understand the basic distinction between what is science, and what is not.
So far, I've yet to see even a small acknowledgement that such distinctions can be made.
Instead, you consistently insist on using the word "science" as a proxy for "reality" or "truth", if not "Truth".
So, you are dead-set and determined, come h*ll or high water, to keep blurred the distinction between what is "natural" and what is not.
And my response to your obstinacy is: of course, you are entitled to such opinions, but they are irrelevant to the scientific mission to, find natural explanations for natural processes.
betty boop: "I think that what is most wrong about your "definition" of science is that it presupposes that the natural world is entirely material, physical, always directly observable in all its most important phenomenological aspects."
My definition of the word "science" presupposes no such thing.
It only posits that anything outside the natural world is also outside the purview of "science".
Please tell us why you so obstinately refuse to acknowledge such a simple distinction.
betty boop: "But biological systems in nature are not machines.
And given their organizational structure — which is the most fascinating thing about them, and which is, if anything, a "super-natural" property (in that it cannot be reduced to an observable, but whose absence would quickly translate a living organism into a dead one)."
Your assertion (without supporting evidence) that "biological systems are not machines", may or may-not be true, but is irrelevant to science, which can only examine biological systems as if they were "machines".
Any examinations or hypotheses of super-natural aspects of biology fall outside of science.
betty boop: "nowadays, so many popular defenders of science — e.g., Richard Lewontin, Richard Dawkins, "the usual suspects" — want all investigations of "super-nature" to be killed in the cradle...."
Like tacticalogic, I've never heard of these people outside the context of anti-evolution screeds.
I care nothing about them, and don't know why I'm invited to defend them.
But the obvious truth about them is that: when they cross the line from methodological naturalism to philosophical naturalism, they are also, in effect, crossing the line between science and their atheistic religion.
As such, however much they may wish to cloak their atheism in scientific terms, we can still understand them as expressions of religion which will be meaningless to those who don't share such beliefs.
betty boop: "You can't just segregate one unified Whole — which is the Universe of Nature itself, including human nature — into abstract categories according to personal taste — e.g., "natural vs. supernatural" — and then expect Nature to comport with your abstraction.
Indeed, this would be a fine example of A. N. Whitehead's 'Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness.' "
But of course, you can, and science does exactly that.
Beginning (so far as I know) with the, ahem, distinctions first pointed out by Aquinas, the scientific enterprise has focused its attention on: natural causes for natural processes, period, and none other.
You know, just the other day I saw a wonderful bumper-sticker which said:
So I ask again, why do you so obstinately refuse to grasp such a simple idea?
bro: So they represent “conventional wisdom” on this subject.
Spirited: They represent ‘conventional wisdom” only so far as they speak to what sophistical naturalists— rebels against our Lord—want to believe and require others to believe as well.
Though BroJoeK has been doing his best to disguise his real stance behind a mask, rather than opaque his mask is both transparent and porous, meaning that telling statements keep slipping through:
“The issue here is whether any such “special revelation” qualifies as “natural science”?
No, the real issue, the truth of the matter implied by BroJoeK’s clumsy sophistry is that, like a long line of evolutionary materialists (naturalists)before him, he is in rebellion against the God of Revelation.
As one who prefers the word of fallen man over the Revelation of God, BroJoeK is the intellectual heir of a way of thinking that from the beginning,
“... has been characterized by a desire to be free from the burden of Christianity...As a rebellion against Christianity, its negative goal defined its positive form: the desire to remove the church and replace it with the state gave liberalism its structure, beliefs, and goals.” (Worshipping the State: How Liberalism became Our State Worship, Benjamin Wiker)
Wiker writes that as far back as the Renaissance the strong impulse to throw off the restraints of the personal God and Christianity was already at work in certain Churchmen and intellectuals, hence their eventual embrace of materialism
(naturalism, Darwinism, empiricism, methodological naturalism, reductionism):
“The desire to be liberated from the constraints of Christianity was the original reason for modern liberalism’s embrace of a world defined entirely by materialism—the view that there are no immaterial entities like God of the soul, but only physical entities. This embrace of materialism began as far back as the Renaissance. And the same impulse was behind the nineteenth-century enthusiasm for scientific materialism, and it remains a staple of liberalism today.” (ibid, Benjamin Wiker)
Rebels against the personal God are in league with antitheists such as Karl Marx, who though not the devil, did his work for him.
Our war is against God and the world created by Him,
declared Karl Marx, father of the Communist Manifesto. In his poem, “The Pale Maiden” he admits that he has willfully opted for Hell:
“Thus heaven I’ve forfeited; I know it full well; My soul, once true to God; Is chosen for hell.” (Marx & Satan, Richard Wurmbrand, p. 22)
“The Evil One is the satanic revolt against divine authority....Socialists recognize each other by the words, “In the name of the one to whom a great wrong has been done....Satan (is) the eternal rebel, the first freethinker and the emancipator of worlds.” (Mikhail Bakunin, comrade of Marx, ibid, p. 27)
“We do not fight against believers (or) even clergymen....We fight against God to snatch believers from Him.” (Vetchernaia Moskva, a Communist newspaper, ibid, p.77)
The Satanic revolt, like supernatural Christian faith is a movement of spirit having its taproot and energy in Satan, the father of naturalism, heresy, lies, sophistry and envy, the author of rebellion, and the revelator of secrets contrived to damn unto hell.
Satanic revolt is war against the supernatural Trinity...the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which in Bakunin’s words are the “cursed and fatal principle of authority.”
Thus it proclaims the reign of negation (of God’s Revelation, His Truth, His Moral Law, soul/spirit, Heaven, and hell), though a negation nevertheless pregnant with the expectation of fulfillment in the revelation, and finally the actual presence, of evil personified....the dark Lord of this world.
The sentiment of the revolt is Satanic pride:
” which spurns subjection to any master whatever, whether of divine or human origin.” (Bakunin, Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age, Fr. Seraphim Rose, p. 63)
The nature of the Satanic revolt is the antithesis of the supernatural Christian faith. Whereas Christian faith is joy, patience, love, truth, humbleness, perseverance, submission in all things to the Will of God, and blessed eternal life, the Satanic counterfeit is negation, skepticism, lies, sophistry, revulsion, burning envy, impatience, seething hatred, jealousy, rebelliousness, blasphemy, and eternal life in Hell.
BroJoeK: I conclude that somewhat like yourself Ms boop, Ms irish has an agenda, namely to use this “news/activism” forum as a vehicle for expressing her religious beliefs.
Spirited: An “agenda?” Yes. My “agenda” consists in opposing lies and sophistry, be it clumsy or otherwise, with truth to the best of my ability in the hope that readers of this thread will not be led astray by sophistical liberal naturalists in their unholy quest “to snatch believers from Him.” (Vetchernaia Moskva, a Communist newspaper, ibid, p.77)
By your own admission BroJoeK, you prefer the damning errors and sophistry of naturalism to the Revelation of God. This is why you insist on God’s “so-called” Revelation being subordinate to natural science:
“(does) ‘special revelation” (qualify) as “natural science”?
The answer is: obviously not, and that is pretty much the only major point I’ve been hoping to make.”
Beware your choice, your abuse of free will, ‘FRiend,’ for at some unknown, unperceived moment it will become eternal. Heaven is real. So is hell.
I never claimed it was.
Would you answer a simple, straightforward question, dear BroJoeK: What relation, if any, does "natural science" have to Truth?