the assertion that since nature is ordered then apparently the supernatural must be disordered.
That is not quite my assertion.
It is not "nature is ordered, therefore the supernatural must be disordered". The premiss is different in two ways.
To correct the first difference I would change the premiss as you have it from "[what is] nature is ordered" to "what is ordered is nature". More formally, it would be a change from "all that is nature is ordered" to "all that is ordered is nature". It is reversed.
But, I am not trying to say that the supernatural is disordered. The thread title, after all, is "How to recognize God". I am trying to say something about human capability, not something about what God must be. So the second change to the premiss would be to change "all that is ordered is nature" to "all that appears to be ordered is nature".
As a formal syllogism, it would go.
1. All that appears to be ordered is natural.
2. The supernatural is not natural.
3. Therefore, the supernatural cannot appear to be ordered.
Now it is about what we can recognize. It is about human beings, not God.
My sloppiness of expression is the cause of the confusion.
I am not asserting that where we see disorder we see the supernatural nature of God. I am saying, "could be".
Ok, so you're not saying it is God of the Gaps, just that it could be God of the Gaps?
I am also saying that the supernatural nature of God could not be seen except as disorder, because where there is no disorder, there is a rule.
God does not follow rules.
God acts in accordance with his own nature, and does not act contrary to his nature. These are the 'rules' which he follows.
Originally Posted by Tom Cohoe
1. All that appears to be ordered is natural.
2. The supernatural is not natural.
3. Therefore, the supernatural cannot appear to be ordered.
You premise is that only the natural is ordered. This has not been shown so 3 does not follow.
__________________
Give me Scotland or I die - John Knox
A mathematician confided
That a Möbius band is one-sided,
And you'll get quite a laugh,
If you cut one in half,
For it stays in one piece when divided!
which is not equivalent your putative restatement of my premiss:
Only the natural is ordered.
because my premiss leaves open the possibility that the supernatural is ordered but appears [to us] to be disordered.
Uh ok, so only the natural appears [to us] ordered. The supernatural would not appear ordered to us [apparently]
No
So omphalos instead of god of the gaps?
__________________
Give me Scotland or I die - John Knox
A mathematician confided
That a Möbius band is one-sided,
And you'll get quite a laugh,
If you cut one in half,
For it stays in one piece when divided!
Uh ok, so only the natural appears [to us] ordered. The supernatural would not appear ordered to us [apparently]
Functionally, we have always called supernatural that which we couldn't understand. When, through science, we understood it, i.e., when we found the order that was there to be found, we said that it was just a natural phenomenon after all. E.G., St. Elmo's fire became electrical discharge. The supernatural retreated.
So yes, basically, you've got it.
Originally Posted by theFijian
So omphalos instead of god of the gaps?
These are just dismissive labels.
Fijian, have you thought about the implications of quantum mechanics?
Functionally, we have always called supernatural that which we couldn't understand. When, through science, we understood it, i.e., when we found the order that was there to be found, we said that it was just a natural phenomenon after all. E.G., St. Elmo's fire became electrical discharge. The supernatural retreated.
So yes, basically, you've got it.
Indeed, classic God of the Gaps.
These are just dismissive labels.
That was a dismissive statement.
Fijian, have you thought about the implications of quantum mechanics?
Go on, you're dying to tell me!
__________________
Give me Scotland or I die - John Knox
A mathematician confided
That a Möbius band is one-sided,
And you'll get quite a laugh,
If you cut one in half,
For it stays in one piece when divided!
Last edited by theFijian; 22nd October 2009 at 05:21 AM.
Whatever determines the choices made from the quantum mechanical probability distribution underlies everything that we observe. Every single thing that happens that we can know about is (as the Copenhagen interpretation calls it) the collapse of a wave function.
Everything.
That's no 'gap', for starters, my good buddy Fiji. It was what the evangelist Henry Drummond appealed for when he coined the sneer, "God of the gaps".
So what is making these choices that underlie everything that happens, then? Maxwell's demon? A pseudorandom number generator, the big computer in the sky?
Did you ever wonder why physicists are more likely than biologists to be theists? Why, for example, did John Polkinghorne, professor of physics at Cambridge University, one of the most prestigious physics universities in the world (home to Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell, Ernest Rutherford, and Steven Hawking, among many other illustrious physicists) go on to become an ordained priest in the Anglican Church?
I am not asserting that where we see disorder we see the supernatural nature of God. I am saying, "could be".
Why "could be"?
Because, how, living in shadowland, could I know?
But then, what's the point of all these words?
The point is to have an answer for a sceptic who says, of God, "I have no need of that hypothesis. I'm rational (a favorite label of the sceptics for themselves)".
To this sceptic, we can say, "This isn't the nineteenth century. Science has found its limits. All is not explained. That hypothesis works. No scientific hypothesis does. I thought you said you were rational? It seems you have an irrational faith that God does not exist. Well there's evidence. You can make your choice, but it's faith either way. You can choose nihilism and an unexplained fundamental nature of the world, or you can choose life, love, meaning, and have an explanation."
But it has to be, "could be". Augustine advised as much almost two millenia ago. Who knows, a scientific revolution could occur and we could end up with a deterministic model for the universe again. Then TheFijian would be right to call me a gappy guy. Oh, except I said "could be", so I'd escape narrowly.
No. What arrogance to say that God must influence the world by what I've outlined above. It's just something to challenge the sceptics, who call themselves rational. And it's a heck of a lot smarter than looking for scientific proof that God plays a role in this world. We have been offered a way back from our fallen state. It is faith. Not scientific proof. What kind of idea of God do they have who think he's not smart enough to hide the fact of his existence from our eyes so we can prove scientifically he exists rather than depend upon faith? Science makes bad faith and faith makes bad science. Irreducible complexity is as dumb as using a literal reading of Genesis to drive away the theory of evolution.
Last edited by Tom Cohoe; 25th October 2009 at 12:04 PM.
Reason: changed "to answer" to "to have an answer for" and correct spelling
The point is to have an answer for a sceptic who says, of God, "I have no need of that hypothesis. I'm rational (a favorite label of the sceptics for themselves)".
To this sceptic, we can say, "This isn't the nineteenth century. Science has found its limits. All is not explained. That hypothesis works. No scientific hypothesis does. I thought you said you were rational? It seems you have an irrational faith that God does not exist. Well there's evidence. You can make your choice, but it's faith either way. You can choose nihilism and an unexplained fundamental nature of the world, or you can choose life, love, meaning, and have an explanation."
What arrogance to say that God must influence the world by what I've outlined above. It's just something to challenge the sceptics, who call themselves rational. And it's a heck of a lot smarter than looking for scientific proof that God plays a role in this world. We have been offered a way back from our fallen state. It is faith. Not scientific proof. What kind of idea of God do they have who think he's not smart enough to hide the fact of his existence from our eyes so we can prove scientifically he exists rather than depend upon faith? Science makes bad faith and faith makes bad science. Irreducible complexity is as dumb as using a literal reading of Genesis to drive away the theory of evolution.
What interests me even more than the reaction of skeptics to this sort of argument is the reaction of IDists. It seems that "faith" has become a pejorative word in their vocabulary. And Christians who appeal to faith have fallen into a cesspool called "fideism".
__________________ The high, the low, all of creation God gives to humankind to use. If this privilege is misused, God's Justice permits creation to punish humanity~~ Hildegard of Bingen cited in, Earth Prayers from around the World
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