| Subject: Re: Naturalistic presupposition is the only possible presupposition for science |
Author:
Bystander
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Date Posted: 09:38:29 05/11/04 Tue
In reply to:
Liberal
's message, "Naturalistic presupposition is the only possible presupposition for science" on 11:09:37 05/10/04 Mon
>frankly speaking, your classical apologetic position
>is too familiar to me
Not sure what this supposed to mean. Let's stick with rational arguments, shall we?
>naturalistic presupposition is the fundamental
>presupposition of science and modern historical
>research. without it, we cannot assume the stability
>of natural laws and no scientific or modern historical
>research (including all crime investigations: e.g.,
>how can you be sure this steel knife was hard enough
>to kill people yesterday, was not soft like a sponge
>yesterday?) can take place
I agree that modern science (and many other aspects of life) depends on the stability of the natural order. But one doesn't need to hold onto naturalism in order to accept this assumption; one can believe in the supernatural and still assumes the stability of the natural order. In fact, without such assumption, the concept of "miracle" becomes meaningless, for there is no reference of stability to contrast against. Also, the term natural "law" may be a misnomer, for it is a description, not a prescription, of what we observe in the natural order. Therefore there is a possibility that an external "force" may enter into the natural realm and temporarily "tip the balance" so to speak.
>jesus seminar intends to searh for the historical
>jesus, which is a piece of historical research work
The problem is that when doing historical Jesus research, one is dealing with records saying that an exceptional thing (or things) occurred -- in particular, the resurrection of Jesus. Now if one uses the concept of "natural law" (a descriptive term) to exclude any possibility of miracle, one makes the descriptive into presriptive, which is not warranted.
What I am saying is that one needs not, methodologically speaking, rule out from the outset that miracles must not have happened when doing historical research. Naturalistic assumption does exactly that.
>that said, be reassured that i won't adopt a
>naturalistic presuppostion while i'm searching for
>spirituality
Good to hear that. :)
For myself, I don't need to change my presupposition from church to the academia. This gives me the satisfaction of feeling "whole" and integrated (just a personal feeling).
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