Naturalisms, Method vs Metaphysics: My answer to John Loftus

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's been a while since I spared with my old friend John "buy my book" Loftus, yet I found him on the Dangerous Idea Blog spouting stuff about methodological naturalism, so I thought it would be fun.Loftus distinguishes between Methodological naturalism and Metaphysical.

Paul de Vries described the difference between “methodological naturalism,” which is a disciplinary method that says nothing about God’s existence, from “metaphysical naturalism,” which “denies the existence of a transcendent God.” [Paul de Vries, “Naturalism in the Natural Sciences,” Christian Scholar’s Review 15(1986): 388–96]. The method of naturalism assumes that for everything we experience there is a natural explanation, whereas metaphysical naturalism is a worldview that denies the supernatural realm exists. [1]

He writes a piece intended to move the reader from commitment to one to acceptance of the of the other. There is significant commitment among theists to Methodological naturalism because that is nothing more than the approach that says only deal with natural causes in scientific statements. Then we are supposed to see the consistency of metaphysical naturalism and feel cognitive dissonance and go "O well I accept it as a method I guess I should ,make it my metaphysic's." Since it is such a transparent approach the answer should be transparent too, but we will get there in a minute.

He establishes the importance methodological naturalism (MN) in science: "Methodological naturalism is the backbone of science. We cannot have science without it. To see this, just think of the extreme position where every question is settled by saying “only God knows,” or “the Bible says it; We believe it, that settles it.” But this importance only emerges as a methodology, whi9ch assumes it's special use contextually. The context we are talking about is science. As long as we can maintain a distinction between science and metaphysics or science and the rest of reality we can maintain the distinction. That's the real problem because the ideology of atheism seeks to reduce knowledge to one thing, their spin on science.

 

Loftus says:

The question of naturalism only arises when it comes to the gaps in our knowledge. Why does it only apply to the gaps? There are many thousands of scientific experiments taking place every single day. In previous centuries those experiments would’ve been testing something on the cutting edges of the science of that day. But because the science of today is considered normal science (ala Thomas Kuhn) Christian defenders don’t raise the question of methodological naturalism about them. [2]

We don't raise it because we have settled the issue. We understand the distinction between methodology for science and metaphysical/ontological understanding and it's a problem for us. It only entails gaps where atheists fail to understand that if you allow other kinds of knowledge everything is not a struggle with scientist ideology. He's ignoring theology as always so he has no idea of reasons exists for other views. Ironic that he appeals to Kuhn because he somewhat misuses the allusion. It is not that Kun considered science in this age in particular "normal science" as in exemplary form of Science. The science in any age ,however primitive. is "normal science." For Kuhn science is a social construct and works by paradigm shifts so it's not going to supply any kind of metaphysical truth.

.....
Lofuts,,,, ,,,,,,,,,vs,,,, ,,,,,Meta
 

Loftus makes the assertion that early scientists were Christian:b "Most early scientists were Christians and they used this method in order to discover the facts about the world. Ronald L. Numbers tells us:"

"By the late Middle Ages the search for natural causes had come to typify the work of Christian natural philosophers. Although characteristically leaving the door open for the possibility of direct divine intervention, they frequently expressed contempt for soft-minded contemporaries who invoked miracles rather than searching for natural explanations. The University of Paris cleric Jean Buridan (a. 1295-ca. 1358), described as “perhaps the most brilliant arts master of the Middle Ages,” contrasted the philosopher’s search for “appropriate natural causes” with the common folk’s erroneous habit of attributing unusual astronomical phenomena to the supernatural. In the fourteenth century the natural philosopher Nicole Oresme (ca. 1320-82), who went on to become a Roman Catholic bishop, admonished that, in discussing various marvels of nature, “there is no reason to take recourse to the heavens, the last refuge of the weak, or demons, or to our glorious God as if He would produce these effects directly, more so than those effects whose causes we believe are well known to us.

Enthusiasm for the naturalistic study of nature picked up in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as more and more Christians turned their attention to discovering the so-called secondary causes that God employed in operating the world. The Italian Catholic Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), one of the foremost promoters of the new philosophy, insisted that nature “never violates the terms of the laws imposed upon her. [3].

Loftus should stop here and consider this a good reason to think that science and religion are compatible. Why should there be any further discussion? Because the ideology atheist fundamentalism can't rest until it's the only outlook in the world. Orwellian atheism must conquer all. It is this telos that drives John to ask silly questions: "Why would God create a world where scientists must adopt such a method in order for us to discover the facts of science, which would in turn eventually lead them to think the only causes that exist are natural ones, that supernatural explanations are unnecessary?" Because God never meant for science to be the only form of knowledge?" Perhaps because God is not obsessed with science. If God created us with brains to think and curiosity to spur discovery why would he then turn around and make they job too obvious? That would cheat humanity out of the experience of growth as a species. In fact the rational for my theodicy argument would also answer this question. God wants us to make a personal search for truth so we cam internalized the values of the good.[4]

At this point Loftus falls back on the notion that there is no empirical evidence (he says "objective"). "Even with methodological naturalism God could still overcome it with sufficient objective evidence. The problem is that the evidence doesn’t exist. Christian defenders refuse to admit this."[5] That's a deceptive argument. There is no direct scientific evidence that "proves" God or "disproves" God. In fact it's not clear such evidence would be possible. Any evidence that pointed to God would contradict metaphysic naturalism and thus if method supposedly leaded to meta then no such science evidence for God would ever be coherent. That is not the same as saying there is no evidence for God. There is it just requires a different paradigm. I hate to say it but my book (buy my book) offers that approach and data.[6] [7]

He tries to rub a little salt in the wounds saying "Just think of the failed repeated attempts to test prayer." I've never seen an atheist answer the empirical evidence of Lourdes. That's been reinforced over the years by new academic work.[8][9] We knew the double blind approach was wrong for the question because you can't control for outside prayer but the empirical approach has not been answered.

 

Then he tries to turn the alleged problem into an overall paradigm indictment of faith:

This point is extremely important for to see. Just think if there existed sufficient objective evidence to overcome the method of naturalism and it's clear this is what they are doing. Their problem is that this kind of evidence does not exist, and it should. So in order to maintain their faith, Christian defenders have to complain about it even though scientists have amassed a massive amount of knowledge from using it, knowledge that changed our world. [10]

To overcome the method of naturalism. "The Method" like there's only one. See the bait and switch? He starts out talking about two methods and now it's one. Somewhere along the way you are supposed to  do this black is white slide where Methodology becomes metaphysics. But he has not justified collapsing method into metaphysics for the reasons ai spelled out above. In a metaphysical frame work that is not limited to the ideology of science as the only knowledge there other reasons to believe in God and reasons to understand the major questions about God, reality existence, and knowledge as transcending. This is why it is a true black is white slide because Method and Meta have one thing in common ( both about science) but they are really opposite ends of a spectrum.

 

The view from within the ideology looks very different, as Loftus says:

It's knowledge gained about things that were once on the cutting edges of science, about things that, if Christians defenders were alive in a previous era, they would've complained how methodological naturalism doesn't leave room for faith, in those very areas where science rolled over faith-based thinking.[11]

Obviously not true since it did. Methodological naturalism left room for faith in Newton's day and Newton's life. He never made such a complaint. The difference is in John's world there is just one form of knowledge, science viewed through atheist lens. In my world there is a large framework that allows for many forms of knowledge and science is in come compartment and in that compartment Methodological naturalism works fine. But it's limited to that compartment. In that sense it helps provide some evidence that ,while it doesn't  "prove God," does offer rational warrant for belief.

 there were comments on DC I will answer a couple in the comments here.

 

Can Science really prove the basis of modern Physics?

Realms Beyond

I've demonstrated in other posts,  that transcendent realms were not the origination comcept of suernatural. That is, however, the modern Western concept. Thus, we might as well ask, are there realms beyond our knowing, is this possible? If so, is there any possibility of our investigating them? Scientists have usually tended to assume that metaphysical assumptions about realms beyond are just out of the domain of science and can’t be investigated so they don’t bother to comment. Victor Stenger, however, wants to be able to assert that he’s disproved them so he argues that the magisteria do overlap. “There exists a widespread notion, promulgated at the higher levels of the scientific community itself, that science has nothing to say about God or the supernatural…”^[1]

He sights the national academy of sciences and their position that these are non overlapping magisteria, “science is a way of knowing about the natural world. It is limited to explaining the natural world. Science can say nothing about the supernatural. Weather God exists or not is a question about which science is neutral.”² Stenger disagrees. He argues that they can study the effects of prayer so that means they can eliminate the supernatural.

Two things are wrong with Stenger’s approach. First, he doesn’t use Lourdes or any other empirical record of miracles. He’s going entirely by double blind studies which can’t control for prayer from outside the control group; that makes such studies virtually worthless. So in effect Stenger is taking the work of people who try to empirically measure what is beyond the empirical, then when it doesn’t work he says “see, there’s nothing beyond the empirical.” That proves nothing more than the fact that we can’t measure that which is beyond measuring. Secondly, he doesn’t deal with the real religious experience studies or the M scale. That means he’s not really dealing with the empirical effects of supernature. I’ve just demonstrated good reason to think that supernature Is working in nature. It’s not an alien realm outside the natural, it’s not a miracle it’s not something that sets its self apart form the daily regular workings of the world. Supernature is of God but nature is of God. God made nature and he works in nature. We can tell the two apart by the results. Now I am going to deal with the other two issues, are there realms beyond the natural? Are there evidences of a form of supernatural in the world that stand apart from the natural such that we can call them “miracles?”

Are there realms beyond the natural? Of course there can be no direct evidence, even a direct look at them would stand apart from our received version of reality and thus be suspect. The plaintive cry of the materialists that “there is no evidence for the supernatural” is fallacious to the core. How can there be evidence when any evidence that might be would automatically be suspect? Moreover, science itself gives us reason to think there might be. Quantum physics is about unseen realms, but they are the world of the extremely tiny. This is the fundamental basis of reality, what’s beneath or behind everything. They talk about “particles” but in reality they are not particles. They are not bits of stuff. They are not solid matter.³ Treating particles as points is also problematic. This is where string theory comes in.

This is where string theory comes in. In string theory fundamental particles aren't treated as zero-dimensional points. Instead they are one-dimensional vibrating strings or loops. The maths is hair-raising, and the direct evidence non-existent, but it does provide a way out of the current theoretical cul-de-sac. It even provides a route to unifying gravity with the other three fundamental forces - a problem which has baffled the best brains for decades. The problem is, you need to invoke extra dimensions to make the equations work in string-theory and its variants: 10 spacetime dimensions to be precise. Or 11 (M-theory). Or maybe 26. In any case, loads more dimensions than 4.

So where are they then? One idea is that they are right under our noses, but compacted to the quantum scale so that they are imperceptible. "Hang on a minute", you might think,"How can you ever prove the existence of something that, by definition, is impossible to perceive?" It's a fair point, and there are scientists who criticize string theory for its weak predictive power and testability. Leaving that to one side, how can you conceptualize extra dimensions?⁴

There is no direct evidence of these unseen realms and they may be unprovable. Why are they assumed with such confidence and yet reductionsts make the opposite assumption about spiritual realms? It’s not because the quantum universe realms are tangible or solid or material they are not. Scientists can’t really describe what they are, except that they are mathematical. In fact why can’t they be the same realms?

Then there’s the concept of the multiverse. This is not subatomic in size but beyond our space/time continuum. These would be other universes perhaps like our own, certainly the size of our own, but beyond our realm of space/time. Some scientists accept the idea that the same rules would apply in all of these universes, but some don’t.

Beyond it [our cosmic visual horizon—42 billion light years] could be many—even infinitely many—domains much like the one we see. Each has a different initial distribution of matter, but the same laws of physics operate in all. Nearly all cosmologists today (including me) accept this type of multiverse, which Max Tegmark calls “level 1.” Yet some go further. They suggest completely different kinds of universes, with different physics, different histories, maybe different numbers of spatial dimensions. Most will be sterile, although some will be teeming with life. A chief proponent of this “level 2” multiverse is Alexander Vilenkin, who paints a dramatic picture of an infinite set of universes with an infinite number of galaxies, an infinite number of planets and an infinite number of people with your name who are reading this article.⁵

Well there are two important things to note here. First, that neither string theory nor multiverse may ever be proved empirically. There’s a professor at Columbia named Peter Woit who writes the blog “Not Even Wrong” dedicated to showing that string theory can’t be proved.⁶ There is no proof for it or against it. It can’t be disproved so it can’t be proved either.⁷ That means the idea will be around for a long time because without disproving it they can’t get rid of it. Yet without any means of disproving it, it can’t be deemed a scientific fact. Remember it’s not about proving things it’s about disproving them. Yet science is willing to consider their possibility and takes them quite seriously. There is no empirical evidence of these things. They posit the dimensions purely as a mathematical solution so the equations work not because they have any real evidence.⁸

We could make the argument that we have several possibilities for other worlds and those possibilities suggest more: we have the idea of being “outside time.” There’s no proof that this is place one can actually go to, but the idea of it suggests the possibility, there’s the world of anti-matter, there are worlds in string membranes, and there are other dimensions tucked away and folded into our own. In terms of the multiverse scientists might argue that they conceive of these as “naturalistic.” They would be like our world with physical laws and hard material substances and physical things. As we have seen there are those who go further and postulate the “rules change” idea. We probably should assume the rules work the same way because its all we know. We do assume this in making God arguments such as the cosmological argument. Yet the possibility exists that there could be other realms that are not physical and not “natural” as we know that concept. The probability of that increases when we realize that these realms are beyond our space/time thus they are beyond the domain of our cause and effect, and we know as “natural.” It really all goes back to the philosophical and ideological assumption about rules. There is no way to prove it either way. Ruling out the possibility of a spiritual realm based upon the fact that we don’t live in it would be stupid. The idea that “we never see any proof of it” is basically the same thing as saying “we don’t live it so it must not exist.” Of course this field is going to be suspect, and who can blame the critics? Anyone with a penchant for the unknown can set up shop and speculate about what might be “out there.” Yet science itself offers the possibility in the form of modern physics, the only rationale for closing that off is the distaste for religion.

All that is solid melts into air

This line by Marx deals with society, social and political institutions, but in thinking about the topic of SN it suggests a very different issue. The reductionst/materialists and phsyicalists assume and often argue that there is no proof of anything not material and not ‘physical” (energy is a form of matter).  The hard tangible nature of the physical is taken as the standard for reality while the notion of something beyond our ability to dietetic is seen in a skeptical way, even though the major developments in physics are based upon it. Is the physical world as tangible and solid as we think? Science talks about “particles” and constructs models of atoms made of wooden tubes and little balls this gives us the psychological impression that the world of the very tiny is based upon little solid balls. In reality subatomic particles are not made out of little balls, nor are these ‘particles” tangible or solid. In fact we could make a strong argument that no one even knows what they are made of.

We keep talking about "particles", but this word doesn't adequately sum up the type of matter that particle physicists deal with. In physics, particles aren't usually tiny bits of stuff. When you start talking about fundamental particles like quarks that have a volume of zero, or virtual particles that have no volume and pop in and out of existence just like that, it is stretching the everyday meaning of the word "particle" a bit far. Thinking about particles as points sooner or later leads the equations up a blind alley. Understanding what is happening at the smallest scale of matter needs a new vocabulary, new maths, and very possibly new dimensions.

This is where string theory comes in. In string theory fundamental particles aren't treated as zero-dimensional points. Instead they are one-dimensional vibrating strings or loops. The maths is hair-raising, and the direct evidence non-existent, but it does provide a way out of the current theoretical cul-de-sac. It even provides a route to unifying gravity with the other three fundamental forces - a problem which has baffled the best brains for decades. The problem is, you need to invoke extra dimensions to make the equations work in string-theory and its variants: 10 spacetime dimensions to be precise. Or 11 (M-theory). Or maybe 26. In any case, loads more dimensions than 4.⁹

Particles are not solid; they are not very tiny chunks of solid stuff. They have no volume nor do they have the kind of stable existence we do. They “pop” in and out of existence! This is not proof for the supernatural. It might imply that the seeming solidity of “reality” is illusory. There are two kinds of subatomic particles, elementary and composite. Composite are made are made out of smaller particles. Now we hear it said that elementary particles are not made out of other particles. It’s substructure is unknown. They may or may not be made of smaller particles. That means we really don’t know what subatomic particles are made of. That means scientists are willing to believe in things they don’t understand.¹⁰ While it is not definite enough to prove anything except that we don’t know the basis of reality, it does prove that and also the possibilities for the ultimate truth of this are still wide open. To rule out “the supernatural” (by the wrong concept) on the assumption that we have no scientific proof of it is utterly arrogance and bombast. For all we know what we take to be solid unshakable reality might be nothing more than God’s day dream. Granted, there is end to the spinning of moon beams and we can talk all day about what ‘might be,’ so we need evidence and arguments to warrant the placing of confidence in propositions. We have confidence placing evidence; it doesn’t have to be scientific although some of it is. That will come in the next chapter. The point here is that there is no basis for the snide dismissal of concepts such as supernatural and supernature.

1 Victor Stenger, God and The Folly of Faith: The Incompatibility of Science and Religion. Amherst: New

York: Prometheus Books, 2012. 225.

2 Stenger, ibid, quoting National Academy of Sciences, Teaching about Evolution and the Nature of Science. Washington DC: National Academies Press, 1998, 58.

3STFC “are there other dimensions,” Large Hadron Collider. Website. Science and Facilities Council, 2012 URL: http://www.lhc.ac.uk/The%20Particle%20Detectives/Take%205/13686.aspx

4 ibid

5 George F.R. Ellis. “Does the Miltiverse Really Exist [preview]” Scientific American (July 19, 2011) On line version URL: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=does-the-multiverse-really-exist

George F.R. Ellis is Professor Emeritus in Mathematics at University of Cape Town. He’s been professor of Cosmic Physics at SISSA (Trieste)

6 Peter Woit, Not Even Wrong, Posted on September 18, 2012 by woi blog, URL: http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/

7 ibid, “Welcome to the Multiverse,” Posted on May 21, 2012 by woit

URL: http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=4715

8 Mohsen Kermanshahi. Universal Theory. “String Theory.” Website URL: http://www.universaltheory.org/html/others/stringtheory5.htm

9 STFC ibid, op cit.

10  Giorgio Giacomelli; Maurizio Spurio Particles and Fundamental Interactions: An Introduction to Particle Physics (2nd ed.). Italy: Springer-Verlag, science and Business media, 2009, pp. 1–3.

Science and Supernatural:Atheist Misconception about Sciene and Fortress of facts

 


 The whole point of this essay is to illustrate the point that religious thinking is not stuck in the ancient world. Modern religious people can and do think scientifically and modern atheist don't always understand what scientific thinking is about. The atheist straw man understanding of faith chalks belief up to stupidity and calls it "faith" while assuming that scinece is an ultimate form of proof that can't e questioned. All of these assumptions are wrong headed.

CARM discussion: a thread by "The Tide" called "The absurdity of Christianity."
 Argument about the origin of the universe.  The atheist has made the claim that there is no empirical evidence for God. I have said no empirical evidence for multivariate and string theory and things atheists re willing to base their views upon. Mathematical models are no better my God arguments i say. MarkUK says:

Originally Posted by MarkUK

 Mathematical models are supplemented by empirical evidence; they aren't Genesis.

Originally Posted by Metacrock

they are not! there is no such evidence. we have no empirical evidence of a multivariate and probably never will. I wonder do you understand what mulitiverse is?we have no empirical evidence that proves the origin of the universe. when scientist assert that we will find it someday and it wont be about God they are expressing faith. just because they are priesthood of knowledge doesn't mean they know everything or that they don't use faith.you might as well open your eyes and learn, scinece is a human thing ti's done by humans and humans make mistakes. Science is not god its not even the only form of knowledge.

 Originally Posted by Whatshisface

So, you have faith the origin of the universe is God's doing, scientists, according to you, have faith it will be a natural explanation. As stated by you both positions are contradictory, so faith seems a poor way to get at the truth. The thing is, science gets round this by having a system to weed out faith, prejudice, mistakes etc. It may not be perfect, but for finding things out its the best thing wev'e got. If you disagree, please point to anything else that has science's track record.

Meta

 Now probably by "faith" he means the  atheist straw man of faith which is "believing things for no reason."That will become apparent when he seems to contrast this "faith" with the reasons he thinks he has in science. the truth is reason means placing confidence in a hypothesis even though it may be particularly proved. It does not mean believing things without evidence. Faith is a complex concept that can be summed or understood easily. In this context it deals with belief, and there is no reason to dismiss it as something stupid like "believing things for no reason" or "without evidence." Because I make a rhetorical rejoinder to his pejorative about faith he thinks that means there's a contradiction and it proves faith is bad. No, the contradiction is in his view becuase he has faith that means he must think at some point faith is good. It just depends upon what one has faith in. The atheists clearly expressing faith in science when they assume that the models are backed by empirical proof even though there is no such empirical proof for multiverse.

His assertion that scinece weeds out faith and mistakes shows not  only that it's the straw man version of faith he's going by but also the total misconception about the nature of science. That assumes that scinece is proof, becuase if it's not resting on faith at some point then it must provide absolute proof. Science is not about proof. I've already discussed, the views of Philosopher of science Karl Popper. Popper is highly respected among scientists. If we assume that faith is not being stuipd, it is not accepting things for no reason or not ditching critical faculties, then there's no reason to think science has anything over faith. Both are apt for their given tasks. They don't do the same things, there's no reason we can't use them both. This is one of the most fallacious assumptions atheist make is the idea that religion is stuck back in the ancinet word and it can never evolve with that times.

Whatshisface goes on:

Every time we find out about something that we once thought had a supernatural explanation we find a natural explanation, its never the other way round which is why a natural explanation of the universe is a reasonable expectation, not faith. The only way you can redress the balance is to point to examples where the supernatural explanation has turned out to be true, to the same confirmed, evidential standard that natural explanations have. Can you do this? I don't think so.

 That's using the atheist straw man concept of supernatural. As I've discussed before supernatural is empirical. It's something we know for a fact exists, it's mystical experience,that was the original concept (see my essay). The enlightenment philosophies changed the idea to unseen realms and magic powers and so forth in order to ridicule the notion. He argues that the only way to reinstate the balance. This talk of a balance comes from the assumption that there's some kind of competition and scinece is winning. There can only be competition if these concepts do the same things. They don't do the same things, they dont' cover the same aspects of reality, there can't be a completion. There's way to say that striking a blow for the truth of one counts on the same scale as the blows of truth for the other. So being to prove 47 different kinds of arthropods might not be anywhere near as important as one concept of spiritual reality. Of course he's assuming the straw man concept. In terms of the true concept, where supernatural is mystical experience then that is proved to be real and well documented with a huge body of scientific work of over 200 empirical studies from academic journals. The scientific studies document the transforming effects of these experiences. I do not have a complete bibliography of the 200 studies as yet reading on the net. I have them assembled but not on the net. There's an excellent article that sums up many of the studies and provides an excellent bibliography, although it's only partial. Krishna Mohan's article on spirituality and well being. See also my article on doxa.

 As Abrham Maslow said in his book on Peak Experience:

Now that may be taken as a frank admission of a naturalistic psychological origin, except that it invovles a universal symbology which is not explicable through merely naturalistic means. How is it that all humans come to hold these same archetypical symbols? (For more on archetypes see Jesus Chrsit and Mythology page II) The "prematives" viewed and understood a sense of transformation which gave them an integration into the universe. This is crucial for human development. They sensed a power in the numenous, that is the origin of religion."

"In Appendix I and elsewhere in this essay, I have spoken of unitive perception, i.e., fusion of the B-realm with the D-realm, fusion of the eternal with the temporal, the sacred with the profane, etc. Someone has called this "the measureless gap between the poetic perception of reality and prosaic, unreal commonsense." Anyone who cannot perceive the sacred, the eternal, the symbolic, is simply blind to an aspect of reality, as I think I have amply demonstrated elsewhere (54), and in Appendix I, fromPeak Experience (online copy of the book)

 Whatshisface

BTW, the past is littered with statements that say, we will never find that out, that's impossible, etc, that have been proven wrong. I am slightly taken aback by your dim view of science. Remember, all science is is a disciplined way of finding out about things. You can't brush it under the carpet as if it doesn't count. And re the origin of the universe, science is the only way we will find out about it.

 That's charming but irrelevant becasue nowhere have I said that. The idea that religion says this in general just by the nature of what it is is part of the ideological propaganda and the myth of the enlightenment. There's no actual reason why religious people have to think this way. This is assuming a God of the gaps mentality. Atheist assume that becuase they think everything is about scientific explanations. They can't understand the concept  of having other kinds of explanations that matter more. "Science is a disciplined way of finding out about things" but what he says after that shows what he really means to say is "scinece is the only way to find out about things. It's not. It's not a way to find about ultimate reality or God. The only way to do that is to experience God.

 Originally Posted by MarkUK

Never, in the history of humanity, has a scientific explanation been supplanted by a non-scientific one; there is an embarrassment of riches of it going the other way.

Science sticks around, or is turned over by more science.

That assumes that religion is about ancinet world thinking and it can't ever update. If you try to update atheists will say "that's not Christianity." Christianity to them is thinking stupidly and in a very old fashioned unscientific way. The modern scientific study of religious experience confirms the turth of religoius belief. Atheists known nothing about social sciences as a general rule an the shameful and silly way they have tried to find all manner of means of destroying confidence in the studies, everything but read them, proves this. They are not scientific thinkers. They are totally and totally opposed to scientific thinking when it doesn't back their ideology of anti-God propaganda. We can see modern scientific thinking in process theology which has been the major trend in theology throughout the twentieth century. We can see it in the acceptance of evolution as a fact of scinece, and we can see it in the understanding of science and relative value expressed in so many major theologians in the last century such as Pannenberg and Molatmann.

The Empirical Supernatural

 

Rabbi Tzvi Freeman writes about the dichotomy between natural and supernatural and how unnecessary it is. He quotes a question ask him form the general public, a question that shows the extent to which supernature has been discredited and slandered:

The supernatural seems irrational, superstitious, archaic and primitive. So far, the natural world has provided explanations for the previously mysterious unknown: social psychology, psychiatry, chemistry, mathematics, biology, medicine, physics, astronomy, geology and history have aided humanity and preserved our mental and physical health and extended our lives.

So why do we refer to G-d to as a supernatural being? Where is the evidence that the supernatural exists, or has any bearing on our lives? Does the word "supernatural" even mean anything, other than "I don't understand this (yet)"?[1]

Here we see several of these misconceptions about the supernatural, not only because it’s linked to superstition, which it clearly has nothing to do with, but also the idea that God is “a supernatural being” (whatever that is) and that there’s no evidence for it, when in reality the evidence everywhere, in the previous article Dawkins gives us a bunch of it, even though he thinks it’s disproving supernatrue. The questioner puts this dichotomy in terms of the known (nature) and the unknown (supernature). The Rabbi’s answer takes off along these very lines; known and unknown. “Superntural” he deduces is based upon whatever doesn’t’ fit the categories of knowledge listed; all of course are scientific categories. That’s the only form of knowledge that atheists will think about or accept. Everything must be scientific or it doesn’t exist. Dawkins concept of a rational form of religion is a scientific (“Einstein”) religion.

The Original Concept of Supernature

            All of these objections assume a certain version of the supernatural. The supernatural has become a catch-all for anything non materialistic or naturalistic that scientistic types want to snub without really having to disprove it. Supernatural today means anything from ghosts, Bigfoot, UFO to psychic powers, and angels and demons and God in heaven. Not so with the original concept. In the early centuries of Christian philosophy the original Greek fathers thought of God as transcendent but they did not necessarily conceive of that as “supernatural.” The Supernatural was something very different then than it is now. This is important because that original meaning, which Christian spiritually was predicated upon, is empirically probable and completely naturalistic and can be shown to be real by simple scientific means. We have to understand the original concept, there are two thinkers who tried to restore the concept to it’s original form and we need to listen to what they tried to say. The first one was Matthias Joseph Scheeben (born, 1 March, 1835; died at Cologne, 21 July, 1888.) His major work was Nature and Grace.[2] Scheeben was a mystic who contemplated and studied divine grace and hypostatic union. He was also of greatly accomplished academically and was a fine scholarly of scholastic theology. He studied at the Gregorian University at Rome and taught dogmatic theology at the Episcopal seminary

at Cologne. Scheeben was the chief defender of the faith against rationalism in the nineteenth century.

In the summer of 1888, Scheeben died in Cologne, having spent most of his fifty-three years teaching dogmatics and moral theology in the archdiocesan seminary there. He was Germany's most persuasive defender of Vatican Fs decision on papal infallibility and an impassioned advocate of religious freedom in the Kulturkampf, Bismarck's determined but finally unsuccessful effort to subject the Catholic Church to the control of his new German state. He was also the author of three major dogmatic works: Nature and Grace (1861), The Mysteries of Christianity (1865), and the massive Handbook of Catholic Dogmatics, left unfinished at his death.

The generations that followed Scheeben regarded him as one of the greatest minds of modern Catholic theology. His books were repeatedly republished in Germany up into the 1960s and translated into other European languages, including English (the Dogmatics, alas, only in highly truncated form). Since the Second Vatican Council, though, he has mostly been neglected by theological teachers and students who have wrongly imagined the nineteenth-century Catholic tradition to be a period of antimodern darkness.

The Catholic world of a hundred or more years ago was quite right, I think, to see the Cologne seminary professor as perhaps the finest modern Catholic dogmatic theologian. His writings not only yield rare insight into the mysteries of Christian faith, they draw the attentive reader ever more deeply into the mysteries themselves. Scheeben is more important now than he has ever been. He can teach a theological generation that has sold its inestimable birthright how to restore and renew dogmatic theology.[3]

            The other thinker is Eugene R. Fairweather (2 November 1920-) was Anglican scholar and translator of Church fathers from Ottowa. MA in Philosophy form University of Toronto (1943) Ordained priest in 1944 and became tutor at Trinity college Toronto same year. He studied theology at Union theological seminary and earned his Th.D. in 1949. He had an honorary doctorate from McGill University. At the time he wrote his article “Christianity and the Supernatural” he was editor of the Canadian Journal of Theology and professor of dogmatic theology and ethics at Trinity College, Toronto.[4] Fairweather quotes Scheeben and bases part of his view upon Scheeben’s.

           Fairweather’s view of the supernatural is contrary to the notion of two opossing realms, or a dualism. He uses the phrase “two-sidedness,” there is a “two-sidedness” about reality but it’s not a real dualism. The Supernatural is that which is above the natural in a certain sense but it is also working in the natural. There are supernatural effects which in the natural realm and make up part of human life. Essentially we can that “the supernatural” (supernature) is an ontology. Fiarweather doesn’t use that term but that’s essentially what he’s describing. Ontology is a philological description of reality. Supernature describes reality in that it is the ground and end of the natural. What that means is unpacked by Fairweather to mean that it is an ordered relation of means to immediate ends with respect to their final ends. “The Essential structure of the Christian faith has a real two-sidedness about it, which may at first lead the unwary into a dualism and then encourage the attempt to resolve the dualism by an exclusive emphasis upon one or the other [side] of the severed element of completely Christianity.”[5] He explains the ordered relation several times through paring off opposites or supposed opposites: human/divine; immanent/transcendent; realm of Grace/realm of nature. All of these he refers to as “ordered relations.”[6] If this was Derrida we would call them binary oppositions. In calling them “ordered” he is surely saying one is ‘above’ the other in some sense. They are not necessary oppositions because that’s his whole point, not a true dualism.

            Supernature is working in nature. It’s not breaking in unwelcome but is drawing the workings of nature to a higher level. Fairweather describes it as the “ground and end of nature.” In other words is the basis upon which nature comes to be and the goal toward which nature moves. Now it’s true that science removes the teleological from nature it doesn’t see it as moving toward a goal but that’s because it can’t consider anything beyond its own domain. Science is supposed to be empirical consideration of the natural realm and is supposed to keep its nose out of the business of commentary on metaphysics. Of course modern science does the opposite it become a form of metaphysics by infusing itself with philosophical assumptions and then declaring there is nothing beyond the natural/material realm. That is to say, when it is dominated by secularist concerns that are the direction science is put in by ideological interests. Be that as it may, theological we can take a broader view and we see a goal oriented aspect to the natural. Supernatural effects draw the natural toward supernature. That is to say human nature responds to the calling of God in elevating humans to a higher level of consciousness. Another example of the ground and end of nature that Fairweather doesn’t give, but I like to use, is Martin Luther King’s statement about the arch of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice. Nothing in nature bends toward justice, if by “nature” we mean rocks and trees but there more to the natural realm than just those aspects that science studies. Humans are part of the realm of the natural and it’s part of our social world that we understand concepts of justice. Due to our own purposive nature we bend the arch of the moral universe toward justice.

            The term Supernatural (SN) comes to us from Aquinas.[7] He gets it from John Scotus Erigena and Burgundio of Pisa, who in turn take it from Pseudo-Dionysius and John of Damascus.[8] The latter used the adverbial form Supernaturaliter. This is coming from the Greek hyperphuos.[9] “From an early period the concept of ‘that which is above nature’ had been seized upon by Christian Theologians as an appropriate means of stating the core of the gospel, so far example, Origen tells how God raises man above human nature…and makes him change into a better and divine nature.”[10] John Chrysostom speaks of speaks of humans having received grace “health beauty honor and dignities far exceeding our nature.”[11] “In the West the most concise expression of the idea is to be found in the Leonine prayer ‘grant us to be partakers of his divinity who deigned to become  partakers of our humanity.’”[12] “In these and a multitude of patristic texts the essential point is just this, that God, who is essentially superntrual perfects with a perfection beyond creaturely comprehension. Nevertheless elevates human creatures to a true participation in divine life an indwelling of God in man and man in God.”[13] The important point here is that human nature is being raised to the higher level of divine. We can see this manifests itself through the experience commonly known as “mystical.” That I will take up shortly, First, let’s turn to Scheeben to document further that is the nature of the supernatural. Supernatural is the power of God to raise us to this higher level.

            Scheeben deals with the distinction between natural and supernatural faith. Throughout his writings we see this typified in terms of the tendency of the power of God to elevate humanity to a higher spiritual level. This means consciousness as well as habit. He speaks of “supernatural effects,” the effect that the pull of the supernatural has upon the natural. This is why it’s valid to think of the supernatural as an ontology, it’s a description of reality, or what is. Empirically that description tends toward the realization of human consciousness reaching to a higher level as a result of certain kinds of experiences. Scheeben expresses this in terms of “higher nature.” Super nature is the higher nature to which human nature is being elevated.

If the lower nature is raised in all of these respects to the level of a higher nature, and especially if this nature modifies the lower nature so deeply and affects it so powerfully that the limits of possibility are reached; if God, purest light and mightiest fire, wishes through to permeate his creature with his energy, to flood it with brightness and warmth to transform it into his own splendor, to make the creature like the father of spirits and impart to it the fullness of his own divine life, if I say, the entire being of the soul is altered in the deepest recesses and in all its ramifications to the very last, not by annihilation, but by exaltation and transfiguration. Then we can affirm that a new higher nature has come to the lower nature, because it has been granted a participation in the essence of him to whom the higher nature properly belongs.[14]

He seeks in one point of his work to resolve a fine point of difficulty between the Thomist-Molinist dicthotomy. Scheeben didn’t like dichotomies and thus seeks a third way. His solution is to see the natural as a mirror of the divine. The dichotomy deals with predestination, grace and free will. That’s not the issue I don’t want to get off into that. For Scheeben the authority of God is the sole formal object of faith. Thus faith is divine both in its source and object.[15] According to this position faith is neither the result of rational self interest nor a consequence of the human spirit. We must not mistake the manifestation in experience for the motive of faith. Faith is the result of obedience to the drawing power and call of God.[16] Nature (Greek Physis, Latin natura) is the realm of life from life, according to Scheeben. Super nature is the overarching principle toward which nature strives

The whole point is that the life of the children of God is directed to such specific objects and ends as cannot be striven for or attained, at least in a way that corresponds to their loftiness, except by acts of a supernatural perfection, that is, of a perfection unattainable by nature, —in other words, by acts which are kindred and similar to the proper life of God in its loftiness.[17]

We can see in his answers to the Thoamsit/Molinist issue the basis of the claim that Super nature is the power of God to rise us to a higher level. This is how Schebeen construed it. In summarizing Murry speaks of  “power which flow from the new nature,”

that is his starting point(16). One conclusion follows immediately: the new powers which flow from the new nature must themselves be “an image of the divine vital powers”(17), i.e. the specific perfection of the divine vital powers must reflect itself in their working. That is Scheeben’s “Grundanschauung”, on which rests all his theorizing about supernatural acts. In a word, to the divinization of man’s nature corresponds a divinization of his activity(18). And Scheeben is occupied wholly in drawing out the nature of this divinization and its consequences. The immediate consequence, in which I am here interested, is that man’s divinized activity must be directed to objects of the specifically divine order. The essence of Scheeben’s thought is revealed in this sufficiently characteristic passage:[18]

The passage in Scheeben to which he refers:

If we have truly become partakers in the divine nature, and by this supernature have become most intimately akin to the divine nature.... then we are taken up into the sphere of its life; then the Godhead itself in its immediacy and in its own proper essence as it is in itself becomes the object of our activity. Then we shall know God Himself, illuminated by His light, without the mirror of creatures; then we shall love God immediately in Himself, no longer as the Creator of our nature, but as One Who communicates His own nature to us, —penetrated as we are by His fire, and made akin to Him in His divine eminence . . . In a word, if we become partakers of the divine nature, our life and our activity must be specifically similar to the divine. To this end it must’ have the same specific, formal, characteristic object as the divine activity has.[19]

Murray summarizes again:

This one passage, out of many(20), is sufficient to show how the theory of the supernatural object enters into Scheeben’s system, namely as a consequence of (or if you wish, as a postulate for the completion of) his favorite parallelism between the divine life of God Himself and the life of grace in His creature(21). That parallelism suggests the formula that man’s supernatural activity is “an image of the divine activity”, and this formula in turn commands on the one hand the introduction of a supernatural object (i.e. “God as He is in Himself”), and on the other hand dictates the consistent use of the term “immediate” to characterize the nature of the union with God that is effected by supernatural knowledge and love(22). In this last detail, — that supernatural activity unites the soul immediately to God, — Scheeben’s theory culminates. The idea appealed immensely to him, though practically speaking it merely means that “God as He is in Himself” is the immediate object of supernatural activity. Its contrary is that natural activity effects no immediate union with God, since it reaches God only through the medium of creatures, and not “as He is in Himself”[20]

            In all of these descriptions we see one standard concept: that supernature is a life, an experience, an inner relation between the divine and human nature. He says supernture is that which we partake of divine life. Human nature is elevated to the higher level by super nature and this primarily the way Scheeben speaks of supernature. This is what super nature is, the power of God to elevate to a higher level. There is an indication form what is said that “the supernatural” is a level of being above he realm of the natural. That must be the case because the power of God to elevate would surely be centered upon a higher level than then natural. That doesn’t mean that we are free to associate the supernatural with psychic powers and ghosts and unexplained phenomena and anything “x-files” like. The sense that the supernatural is above the nature is an implication of the ontology; the ground and end of the natural would sure be on some higher level in a sense. The more important aspect that all of these writers speak of is “participation” in divine life. Shceeben speaks directly of super nature just that, the divine life in which we are elevated to participate in.

            The important aspect of all of this in relation to science is that super nature is not some juxtaposed belief in the unseen that has no analogy in the empirical. The experience of being raised to a higher level through contact with the divine life is clearly empirical. It may be a matter of interpretation as to the cause of the effects, but the effects of what is called “religious experience” are certainly empirical. It’s not hard to link those experiences with the divine; the content of them is that of God and the divine relation to the world. This is what most of those who experiences these things think they experienced.

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[1] a reader writing to Rabbi Tzvi Freeman, “What is the Supernatural?” Chabad.org Essentials. Blog URL: http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/356494/jewish/What-Is-the-Supernatural.htm  visited 1/23/2012

[2] Matthias Joseph Scheeben, Nature and Grace, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2009 (paperback) originally unpublished  1856.

[3] Bruce D. Marshall. “Renewing Dogmatic theology.” News Edge. Blog URL: http://dialog.newsedge.com/portal.asp?site=2007100814443105593225&searchfolderid=pg2007100814522209759333&block=default&portlet=ep&nzesm=on&display=Religious+Cults&action=sitetopics&mode=realtime&nzenb=left&criteria=[topic%3Dcults]&searchID=730376&datetime=[t-minus%3D7]&hdlaction=story&storyid=[storyid=zFhV9A4ingKfyJKkM7SYF60h7bzyuSst6cpLFPeF_KF10rs2TkU8gQnIhJL0BsKdSpTF6QIOR0rsVM2GIwVDyw**]&rtcrdata=on&epname=EFORE&

Visitied August 14, 2012. Bruce D. Marshall is professor of Christian doctrine at Perkins School of Theology.(c) 2012 Institute of Religion and Public Life

[4] Editor’s introduction to Eugene R. Fairweather, “Christianity and the Supernatural,” in New Theology no.1.  New York: Macmillian, Martin E. Marty and Dean G. Peerman ed. 1964. 235-256.

[5] Ibid. 237

[6] ibid

[7] Fairweather,ibid, 239

[8] ibid

[9] ibid

Pseudo-Dionysius Ep 4, ad Caium (PG 3:1072)

[10] Fairweather, ibid (239).

[11] ibid

[12] Fairweather quoting Leonine prayer, ibid.

[13] ibid

[14] Maithias Jospeh Scheeben quoted in Fairweather (239-240). Fairwether fn Scheeben the version he uses. M.J. Scheeben, Nature and Grace, St. Lewis: Herder, 1954, 30.

[15] Avery Dulles, S.J. An Assurance of Things Hoped for: A Theology of Christian Faith. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1994, 90.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Scheeben, quoted in Works by John Courtney Murray Chapter II “Natural and supernatural Faith.” Website, Woodstock Theological Center Library. P100 URL: http://woodstock.georgetown.edu/library/murray/1937-2.htm  visited August 14, 2012

Mathias Joseph Scheeben on faith, Doctoral Dissertation of John Courtney Murry

Woodstock Theological Center Library.

This volume in the Toronto Studies in Theology reproduces the doctoral dissertation John Courtney Murray, S.J. (1904-1967) completed in the spring of 1937 at the Gregorian University in Rome. From then until now, the Gregorian University archives contained the original typescript of “Matthias Joseph Scheeben’s Doctrine on Supernatural, Divine Faith: A Critical Exposition”. A carbon-copy was incorporated into the Murray Archives housed by the Woodstock Theological Library in the Special Collections Room of the Joseph Mark Lauinger Library at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. John Courtney Murray eventually published the third chapter, modified and disengaged from its original context (1). The complete, original text is published here for the first time.

URL: http://woodstock.georgetown.edu/library/Murray/1937.htm

[18] John Courtney Murray summarizing Scheeben, ibid.

[19] Scheeben quoted in Muarry, ibdid, p101

[20] Murray, ibid.