[Phys-L] Re: Another attack on Evolution

[Hugh Haskell <hhaskell@MINDSPRING.COM>]

At 08:08  -0600 1/20/06, James E Mackey wrote:
> I believe there is more controversy about the conclusions of
> philosophical evolution, i..e. man is nothing but an animal and
> everything originated from inanimate atoms, than that statement allows,
> unless we chose to define a requirement to be a scientist that he/she
> must accept evolution.  Is this what you mean?

I think it is safe to define a scientist as one who uses the
generally accepted processes called "science" to seek out
naturalistic explanations for natural phenomena. To settle for
answers outside the naturalistic paradigm is an intellectual
dead-end. It leads one to stop looking once one gets to a point where
no obvious answer comes to mind--"I don't understand how lightning
works, therefore it must be a special province of God's, and I need
look no further for an explanation." It doesn't mean that one must
"accept" evolution to be a scientist, but one must continue to seek
the explanations for what we observe in nature within the context of
nature. One needn't believe that evolution as we understand it today
is the final answer to how we got to where we are, but to insist that
it must only be "God's work," is to end the investigation before it
even starts--hardly a prescription for the enhancement of knowledge.

One of the problems of this approach is that, as science advances,
and more and more phenomena are brought under the umbrella of
naturalistic explanations, there is less and less left for God to be
responsible for--we have the case of the "god of the gaps." It seems
to me that this is a pretty thin reed to rest one's theology on.

Hugh
--

Hugh Haskell
<mailto:haskell@ncssm.edu>
<mailto:hhaskell@mindspring.com>

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