Is nature all there is? John F. Haught

I have read John F. Haught's Is nature all there is? (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. See here for previous post on the book.)

I have read quite a few books on the philosophy of science, that is, on such topics as what the underpinnings of the scientific enterprise are, the history of the scientific way of finding things out, and what are the limitations, if any, of the scientific enterprise. I don't recall a better such book than the book referred to above. It is short -- 215 pages plus an index. It is well written, and readily understandable by a reasonably intelligent non-scientist.

After a most unfortunate beginning (Haught misquotes the late Carl Sagan, who said that "The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be" -- Haught substitutes "universe" for "cosmos," and lengthens the quote by a few words.) the book is great.

For anyone who does not know, "naturalist" has at least two meanings. Some naturalists spend lots of time studying nature, generally trying to disturb the natural world as little as possible in the process. Haught uses the word to refer to someone who believes that there is a natural explanation for everything, as opposed to a supernaturalist, who believes that there is at least one something outside the universe, often a god or gods. Haught is a supernaturalist. So am I.

Haught argues that supernaturalism is more able to explain phenomena on the earth than naturalism, and does quite a good job of it.

In this post, I will restrict myself to two issues. One of these is the explanation of critical intelligence, the ability to analyze things critically. Naturalists, and others, depend on critical intelligence, and, in fact generally appeal to it as having bolstered their cases. Haught says this:
How then can we justify the spontaneous trust we all place in our critical intelligence and the imperatives of our minds? You will note that in asking this question I too am expressing confidence in my own mind, assuming that by obeying the imperatives to be open, intelligent and critical I may come closer to the truth, to what is. If I lacked this spontaneous trust I would not be asking the question that begins this paragraph. And if any naturalists are reading this book, they will notice once again that their own sincere questioning of what I am writing here is possible only because they too have already made an act of faith in the imperatives of their own minds to lead them to truth. (91) and this:

Therefore it is out of a sense of fidelity to my desire to know that I must now press on to find a more adaptive context for my critical intelligence than the one offered by scientific naturalism. I cannot find such an environment short of a worldview that looks upon nature as completely intelligible. And in the end, I believe, such a worldview must be a theological one, where the anticipated fullness of being, meaning and truth is ultimately nothing less than the eternal reality invoked by religions. Such a worldview is a much more encouraging setting for endless, ongoing scientific inquiry than is the naturalist belief that the universe "just is" and therefore is ultimately unintelligible. (96)

He also deals with purpose, and makes these telling statements:
For if nature is all there is, there could be no overall purpose to the universe. That is, there could be no goal beyond nature toward which the long cosmic journey would be winding its way. But if the logic here is correct, then the detection of an overarching purpose in nature would imply that nature is not all there is. In the broadest sense purpose means "directed toward a goal or telos." The question before us, then, is whether the cosmos as a whole is teleological, that is, goal-directed. (98)

Thanks for reading.

"Thinking Critically and Christianly About Technology" by Ken Funk

In the September issue of Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, there is an interesting article entitled "Thinking Critically and Christianly About Technology," by Ken Funk. (Volume 59, pp. 201-211. The September issue should appear on-line in a few months.)

Funk presents three principles to guide us in our use (or not) of particular technologies. These are as follows:
Principle 1: Technology ought to facilitate and not hinder our communion with God and the fulfillment of our moral obligations to him. . . . Principle 2: Technology ought to facilitate and not hinder the preservation of human life and improvement of human welfare . . . and the fulfillment of our moral obligations to people. Principle 3: Technology ought to facilitate and not hinder the preservation of the natural world and its order and integrity and the fulfillment of our moral obligations to God's lesser creatures. (p. 203)

He goes on to say that establishing principles isn't enough, and suggests that there are some subtle dangers in the use of technology. (204-6) Some of these are:
Technology's ambivalence. The use of technology to accomplish some good almost always also brings about evil.
Concentrating on secondary things, such as increasing the speed of transportation, or Internet access, rather than on the good we originally sought to accomplish. Perfecting the technology becomes an end in itself.
"The Illusion of Human Sovereignty." (p. 205) Technology gives us a lot of power that we didn't used to have. We think of ourselves as being in charge of our own destiny, which is a serious mistake.

I think Funk has said some important things.

I previously posted on "Technology: Some biblical basics."

Thanks for reading.

St. Augustine, Exegesis, and Origins

The June, 2005 issue of Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith is now available freely on the Internet. I found one of the articles to be of especial interest. (You may have different interests -- look at the Table of Contents) That was "The Relevance of Augustine's View of Creation Re-evaluated," by Andrew J. Brown. Although the article is indicated as being for students and scientists in the early part of their careers, it is not an instant read, because it is 12 .PDF pages long, and because the issues are complex. Brown writes well, and understands the relevant literature. Any intelligent person who reads English, and has some idea of what "exegesis" means, should be able to comprehend what Brown has to say.

As Brown says, "Augustine is perhaps the most important thinker amongst church fathers on creation in Genesis." (p. 135) (See here for Wikipedia article on St. Augustine.)

One reason Brown has written this article is that Augustine gets misquoted, or quoted out of context. Another reason is that the very important issue of when the earth, and its inhabitants, were created, remains just that, an important issue.

It is not possible to summarize all that Brown says about Augustine in the space usually allotted to a blog post, and without plagiarizing Brown. Let me put it this way -- Augustine does not fall readily into any of the categories of beliefs on origins that come readily to mind in the present day (such as young-earth creationism, day-age belief, and the like) and he believed that Genesis 1 could be interpreted in more than one way.

People concerned about exegesis, about Augustine, and about origins owe it to themselves to read Brown's article.

Thanks for reading this post.

Dialog on Science-Religion issues

My title does not mean to imply that science and Christianity are opposed. I don't believe that they should be. God is the author of truth, whether perceived through experiment, in the Bible, or as revealed to individuals by the Holy Spirit. Unfortunately, we are fallen, and don't always perceive such truth as God meant it, through whatever means we are looking for it.

The American Scientific Affiliation is an organization of Christian, most of whom are also scientists. Some of them are quite prominent, like Francis Collins, head of the human genome project. Most aren't. The organization publishes a quarterly journal, Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith. Articles are released to the Internet roughly two years after original publication. The Affiliation takes no position on issues of origins, other than that there is a God who is creator. Perspectives deals with other matters, such as stewardship of nature and medical ethics, as well as issues related to origins.

I recently received the March, 2007, issue of Perspectives. I found it excellent, mostly because of two dialogues. In both cases, the editor had persuaded authors with differing views to react to each other.

One such dialog concerned Intelligent Design (ID). Loren Haarsma ("Is Intelligent Design 'Scientific'?" Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 59:55-62, March 2007) pointed out, I believe correctly, that ID is partly scientific, partly philosophical, and partly theological, and that it is easy to concentrate on only one of these aspects, missing the others. (Unfortunately, in some court cases about teaching science in the public schools, ID advocates have seemed to claim that ID is only scientific.) Haarsma considers all three aspects in some detail, challenging ID to be good science, good philosophy, and good theology. He also says that ID's claims about origins should be restrained to something like "I believe that current knowledge does not fully explain how certain biological phenomena arose, and doubt if there will ever be a naturalistic explanation" rather than claiming that science has ruled out a naturalistic origin for them. On the other hand, he also says that anti-creation advocates should show similar restraint, as the evidence for anything else is scant, or non-existent, and should say something like "I believe that the evidence points to an evolutionary origin of certain biological phenomena, and that eventually, it will be possible to explain its origin naturalistically."

Michael J. Behe, perhaps the most important ID scientist (author of Darwin's Black Box) responded. He agreed with much of what Haarsma wrote. Here is a quote from Behe:
. . . the message "evolution or design, one or the other," is a flawed choice. To the extent that the public has gotten than impression, it is regrettable. There is nothing in the idea of intelligent design that precludes the design being unfolded over time, and I myself judge that scenario to be the most consistent with all of the data we currently have. What's more, I am mostly happy with [Haarsma's] statement, "suppose the laws of nature are fine-tuned not one for the self-assembly of molecules and stars and planets, but also for the self-assembly of biological life and biological complexity." Michael J. Behe, "The Positive Side of Intelligent Design: A Response to Loren Haarsma," Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 59:63, March 2007.

I deeply appreciate the thought of both Haarsma and Behe, and Perspectives for publishing both together.

Another dialog was between Hugh Ross, who is, in this dialog, anyway, labeled a Concordist, that is, one who believes that scientific findings, properly understood, should not contradict scripture, properly understood, and a critic, Paul Seely. Seely was quite critical of Ross, but Ross defended his views rather thoroughly. I don't claim enough expertise to judge between them. The issues are clearly spelled out in this dialog. See the Reasons to Believe website for more about Ross's beliefs. See here and here for some available publications, in previous issues of Perspectives, by Seely on these topics.

Thanks for reading.