Greg wrote:

The point of my argument is to draw out how accommodating miracles to one's scientific theory has much more to do with what one understands the point of a scientific theory to be rather than what one understands the content of a particular theory to be. Someone who thinks miracles occur can keep his theories--and continue to suppose that they accurately represent or approximate natural laws and the world's causal structure--if he changes his position about the point of a scientific theory.

Right, I get it. I don't think you've demonstrated anything like this. Even your example has the scientists adopting new theories.
 

Greg wrote:

KevinScharp wrote:

Greg wrote:

I don't see that that is required. One could imagine that they would not explicitly append a ceretis paribus clause to each law in their textbooks. All that is required, perhaps, is that they alter their metaphysics and philosophy of science, changing their interpretation of their scientific theories; they leave the theory unaltered, having decided that it is worth having a theory that models the causal structure of the natural realm even if the natural realm is not all there is.

I don't think that what you are suggesting is coherent at all. Give me an example of how the same theory would be reinterpreted to accommodate the miracles.
 

I'm just suggesting that they understand the scope of physics as being limited, where they don't rewrite the equations because there is no need--they regard them as adequate as far as modeling the causal structure of the universe goes.

In any case, if at this point you and I are just going to assert our thoughts about how plausible my example is, I am happy to let the argument stand, unless you have something to add.

Nope, that's fine. You've done a good job of pursuing this line. I think it's clear that pushing this issue further will get into how to individuate scientific theories and the whole role of modeling and auxiliary hypotheses. Seems like we could spend time on topics of more central interest.
 

iwpoe wrote:

So, now, back to Christ: it would be perfectly understandable to say that Jesus' resurrection is incompatible with what we understand about biology and etc if we were to concede that he was a mere human being. Indeed, I think even Christians would be willing to concede that if Jesus was a mere human being then it is unlikely that he was able to raise himself from the dead. But if Christ is God incarnate as Christianity holds him to be, it's not only not incompatible with science that he have wondrous powers, but not surprising either. Not only is there no being fundamentally like God in the universe which is covered by scientific explanation, but God isn't even a thing in the universe, so he couldn't even in principle be covered by any kind of Natural Science.

You have to presuppose some additional metaphysics about science, which are not necessary at all for science to be explanatory, to go ahead and assert that somehow God incarnate would be unable to have wondrous powers because of biology or some such. This is why Craig and others are willing to constantly accuse you and others of reductionism and naive physicalism, because that's where these arguments always drive to- a direction that would only be supported by some extreme metaphysical assumptions. That you can be faithful to science without evoking such metaphysics does not mean that your position is coherent without them.

I agree with you 100% that scientific theories DO NOT entail that there is no God. I know this is a popular argument from atheists, but I think it's crap for exactly the reasons you give.

I agree that, normally, atheists argue that God or miracles are incompatible with science by appealing to naturalism. And I'm not doing that because I hate naturalism and wouldn't be caught dead endorsing it. Instead, I have a different argument -- the familiar miracles used to argue for Christianity and other religions are incompatible with our best scientific theories. Testimony from the ancient sources gives us some reason to believe that those miracles happened (as much as other ancient texts like the Illiad). But the evidence for our best scientific theories gives us overwhelming reason to believe that those miracles did not happen. Could I imagine a putative miracle that would have so much evidence for it that it would overwhelm the evidence for our best scientific theories? Yes! Absolutely. Moreover, I do not think that our best scientific theories entail that no god created the universe. So I differ substantially from the normal atheist arguments in this area. I'm explicitly NOT invoking metaphysics -- I've found a way to do it without the usual metaphysical assumptions (like naturalism).

iwpoe wrote:

But in any case classically the argument was never between:

1. Some mere human being, Jesus, despite all biological constraints on a person, died and contrary to everything we understand about how biology works, used his own natural body to return from the dead.

or

2. Human bodies cannot of their own power return to life, so Jesus the man didn't come back to life.

It is instead between:

A. God on earth, Jesus Christ, used his divine power to both die and return from the dead.

or 

B. There is no reason to believe the testimony about that event/good reason to disbelieve it.

Okay, good, this is a nice contrast. I do take 2 over 1. That's correct. But I don't accept the contrast between A and B. That is, I think each of them is false. We do have some reason to believe the testimony, but that is overridden by our reason to believe our best scientific theories. Maybe that's what you meant by the second clause in B.


 

KevinScharp wrote:

This has been tremendously helpful. When I was doing all the research to get into Craig's overall system, it took a while and several rounds before I felt like I understood it well enough to find its weak points. It's an impressive edifice. Anyway, his position on miracles (which I think is fairly representative) jumped out, and I realized I could turn that weak spot into a central argument for my own position -- what I called the confidence argument. I knew this was sort of novel and I gamed out lots of objections and my replies, but nothing -- NOTHING -- can match genuine feedback. So, thank you. And the level of discussion in here is really high. It's obvious that many of you know your way around this material well.

Out of curiosity, have you interacted at all with classical theism? (Most classical theists reject most of Craig's views.)

KevinScharp wrote:

I'm not sure how to respond to this. It sounds like "well, that's just like your opinion, man." If you're willing to reject our best scientific theories on the basis of some ancient texts, then it's hard to see any reasonable continuation

Dr. Scharp, why do you think this? This puzzles me. You've carefully avoided the following issues, which I will say are essential to constituting any form of knowledge. You've not spoken of knowledge, but merely confidence as such.  I would even go on to say that 

We need to find out what it means by 'natural,' as opposed to 'supernatural.' - This is a metaphysical enterprise.

We need to find out the ontological nature of substances, and its interactions. - This is a metaphysical enterprise that blooms in natural philosophy.

We need to find out what it would mean to be a miracle. - This is a metaphysical enterprise.

In our investigations, it might turn out to be the case that the whole natural world is supernaturally supported (indeed, this just is the classical theist's position). The only difficulty would be an epistemic one, where we perhaps have a harder time to determine natural events (events or relations owed to what essentially belongs to the nature of the things themselves) from supernatural ones, and this in-turn would make our scientific theories suffer. But there is nothing here to give. Before we can even argue for those things, we simply have to demonstrate its possibility. Whether they happened or not might pose some problem or the other, but that'd be irrelevant to establishing its possibility. What those possibilities would in-turn be like for us once actualized is altogether a different affair.

John, are things like conservation of energy necessary truths? Say that this wasn't a necessary a truth, if then it isn't, there's nothing violated. The conservation of energy is contingent upon the the Prime Cause. It is only there, insofar as there is something which causes it to be. Would I be wrong to say this?