Dennis:

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?

I think this is fine if a Prime Cause exists. That means that, in the context of this discussion, all your work is still ahead of you. 

iwpoe wrote:

Now, to channel Kuhn's gost for a moment, what would actually happen is that the anomaly would be ignored or dismissed, but that's methodological / sociological, not metaphysical.

That's dead wrong. Scientists would be all over the anomaly. They'd want to know exactly how -- in excruciating detail -- the theories broke down and what the boundary conditions are like.

iwpoe wrote:

As far as I can tell, unless you want to strengthen it, your claim that miracles are incompatible with our best scientific theories turns out to be trivial. Since you insist you want to make no metaphysical conclusions, the whole argument is weak. It amounts to little but saying that "our best theories don't talk about God."

No. Our best theories are incompatible with the miraculous claims that are used as evidence for Christianity. I don't understand what "make metaphysical conclusions means". I'm arguing for all sorts of metaphysical conclusions -- like there is no Christian God.

iwpoe wrote:

So what if they don't? To speak in a rough historical generality, scientific methodology has specifically and very early stipulated that it won't consider such. I am in no way surprised they don't. Some scientists could start adding such clauses with little loss of practical predictive power because the matter in discussion seems to be arcane.

This is why I've pushed you on making metaphysical claims. If you don't want to outright come out and say:

'What our best theories don't provide for can't actually exist.'

or the epistemological:

'We cannot know what our best present theories don't provide for.'

or even some merely ethical demand:

'We cannot, in principle, consider admitting any possibility that our best theories don't provide for.'

I'm not arguing any of those (so you have interpreted me correctly so far)

iwpoe wrote:

or some more dignified and easier to defend derrivative idea, then all you seem to have is the merely rhetorical and philosophically rather boring:

A. Science is high prestige.
B. Religious thought speaks of something that the sciences don't provide for.
C. You want to go along with science don't you?

This is not even close to what I'm arguing. I couldn't care less about prestige and I'm not making some appeal to popularity. It's hard to imagine how you'd think I was saying that. I care about evidence. Our best scientific theories have a tremendous amount of it.

iwpoe wrote:

To which I answer, no, I'm a, as you call it, "critical thinker" about metaphysics. I don't care to go along with a consensus just because it's a consensus once I'm considering metaphysical matters. That you would like to add some din about the consensis being "well supported" is also of no beaing on the matter unless you want to make a stronger claim. It seems just to be another form of A.

I'm not making an appeal to consensus. If you don't understand the difference between consensus and evidence, then no wonder you're so confused about my position.

It all comes down to (i) certain scientific theories being well supported by evidence, (ii) testimony for ancient sources being not nearly as well supported by evidence, and (iii) these scientific theories and that ancient testimony being incompatible. So far I haven't really seen a challenge from you on any of these three points.
 

Thanks John and Daniel. Of course, that means that I have to establish a Prime Cause first, and that depends on the metaphysical investigations. 

Daniel, what I wanted to say was this; since they flow from the necessary properties of very basic particles, if these particles depend upon God for their whole being, even their identity conditions from which flow those necessary properties flow, then there doesn't seem to be anything given up here with the addition of miracles. The whole natural world is one creative act of God's concurrence where the substances and the relations we discover in the world are owed to the identity conditions of Divine Ideas. In short, for anything that is, if contigent, establishes this stuff for me.

KevinScharp wrote:

No. Our best theories are incompatible with the miraculous claims that are used as evidence for Christianity

Classical theists do not believe that metaphysical investigations alone lead to the Christian God. You need more than just natural theology, you need revealed theology.

KevinScharp wrote:

(iii) these scientific theories and that ancient testimony being incompatible

The contention here is simply that given a concurrentist ontology, there is no contradiction. I fail to see a contradiction here.

KevinScharp wrote:

For example it would make general relativity and quantum field theory no longer incompatible. So there'd way less reason to seek out a new physical theory like string theory.

When you put it that way, it seems like a theoretical plus.

KevinScharp wrote:

I don't see why you think subtraction gets you less modified theories. Can you explain that?

This is why I wrote “seems to entail”. I agree with you that people could develop relevant theories for worlds with miracles. I also think, however, that if they can develop them for Greg's miracles world, then given they can establish that we're in a concurrentist world they can develop them for our world.

KevinScharp wrote:

The world you're appealing to with subtraction is one without God but with the anomalies?

Arguendo, I'm assuming a specific, immutable God in both worlds. (I'm also assuming (1) that, omnitemporally, there aren't many miracles in our world, and (2) that good theories for worlds with less miracles are less modified than good theories for worlds with lots of miracles.)

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. Moreover, this is an area of specialization for me. That doesn't mean you should take my word as authoritative, but it does mean that you'll have to do way better than channeling The Dude. The position you describe as "how I'd like to think science functions" is the received view, and by rejecting it, you're taking on all sorts of implausible commitments that the opponent of the confidence argument would surely rather avoid.

You are aware "the received view" is, especially in philosophy, nothing but a rule of play, not an argument. What's philosophical consensus good for? 30-60 years in a single country in a signle sub-discipline? And it's amazing that in some fields it looks liberal, American, secular, and permissive when the culture is liberal, American, secular, and permissive. I'll defer to it if I'm ever trying to get tenure.

Everyone here is at least a philosophical theist with sympathies to classical metaphysics- needless to say, the recieved view is different here. An argument can be mounted generally for the competing positions, of course, but their being "recieved" will have no bearing on the matter.

That said, Greg is covering this line of argument better than I am, and I see no reason to rehash in different words his chain of argument.

However, I am a Platonist, not a Christian. I am inclined to think that either the Christian miracles didn't occur or they don't entail what Christians think they do. What I'm interested in is whether, in principle, a miracle could occur and what that would look like. I'm personally inclined to think that they either would not happen or that they would not occur in the usual 'will of god' manner, but this has absolutely nothing to do with my confidence in our best scientific theories. That is a matter on such a high level that I hardly see its bearing.