[net.religion] Science & Religion: sleight of hand

dubois@uwmacc.UUCP (Paul DuBois) (11/20/84)

> > Science and religion are NOT in any way opposed to each other!  The
> > scientific method can and should be applied to all religious activities,
> 
> That would abuse the scientific method.  The scientific method applies
> only to _repeatable_ phenomena, not to things like your birth, life, and
> death.  Most unmechanized cultures have _no_ use for the scientific
> method of experimentation and analysis, because in unmechanized cultures
> virtually nothing is precisely repeatable.
> -- 
> Col. G. L. Sicherman

There is a subtle shift here.  The scientific method may not apply
to *your* birth.  Does it follow that we know nothing about birth?
No:  while your birth may not be repeatable, birth certainly is.
Ditto life.  Ditto death.
-- 
Paul DuBois		{allegra,ihnp4,seismo}!uwvax!uwmacc!dubois

pmd@cbscc.UUCP (Paul Dubuc) (12/06/84)

I think generalizations are good in science, but they can be carried
too far.  When this happens there it a tendancy to fit the facts to
our accepted generalization.  When this gets done over and over, especially
with regard to non-repeatable supernatural events, we end up making
"coincidence" the catch-all for things that don't fit our generalizations.

John W. Montgomery discusses this in his essay "Science, Theology, and
the Miraculous":

	... But which facts will our evidence be tested against--the
	immediate facts to be interpreted, or the entire, general
	range of human experience?  Where particular experience and
	general experience are in accord, there is no problem; but
	where they conflict, the particular must be chosen over the
	general, for otherwise our "investigations" of historical
	particulars will be investigations in name only since the
	results will always reflect already accepted general experience.

	... the moment the general runs into tension with the particular,
	the general must yeild, since 
	(1) the historian's knowledge of the general is never complete
	so he can never be sure he ought to rule out an event or an 
	interpretation simply because it is new to him, and
	(2) he must always guard against obliterating the uniqueness
	of individual historical events by forcing them into a 
	Procrustean bed of regular, general patterns.
	Only the primary-source evidence can determine whether an
	event occurred or not, and only that same evidence will
	establish the proper interptetation of the event.


-- 

Paul Dubuc	cbscc!pmd