‘Supernatural creation stories may, in fact, be true’
There are a lot of interesting comments on Other ways of evaluating truth claims; be sure to check them out. Josh Rosenau replied a couple of times, and many interesting things came up. In particular, Richard Wein gave us a passage from a statement by the University of New Mexico history department published at the NCSE site:
Science is one way of knowing the world ; it is not the only way of knowing, and it is certainly not the only way of knowing everything. Indeed, in the grand scheme of human thought and action, the domain of science is modest — the realm of natural phenomena. Science, as it has developed historically, will not and can never tell us anything about the nature of beauty, or the attributes of justice, or the qualities of goodness. There are many ideas and many truths (like the belief that all people are created equal, or that they have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) upon which science must remain mute. Supernatural creation stories may, in fact, be true; but science, as only one way of knowing, will never tell us this. Science is simply not equipped to speak on supernatural issues, and it would be a mistake to try to force it to do so.
That’s from a section with a lot of statements, so the NCSE may not endorse every word of every statement…But then as an organization for the promotion of science education maybe it really shouldn’t publish hooey like that at all? Maybe it really shouldn’t publish statements by academics that say ‘Supernatural creation stories may, in fact, be true; but science, as only one way of knowing, will never tell us this’? Because that is ridiculous?
No, supernatural creation stories may not in fact be true. You might as well say that it may be true that I was born of the mating between an alligator and a mushroom four thousand years ago. That may not be true! And science, ‘only one way of knowing’ or not, will indeed tell us this. There are factual claims that can be falsified by science, and supernatural creation stories are that kind of factual claim. All the more so if they are breezily put in the plural! ‘Supernatural creation stories may, in fact, be true’; what, all of them? So the world may have been created by Raven, and also may have been created by JHWH? Sure, sure, everybody’s welcome, all shall have prizes; all the stories are (maybe) true, no stories shall be left out; if they contradict each other they contradict each other; yee-ha. Such is life in the U of New Mexico history department, apparently. But what is that kind of gibberish doing at the NCSE?
What? The alligator’s been lying? And here she was in the bar last night, going on about how proud of you she is. That was after the third drink, though…
And don’t listen to a word the mushroom says, either!
I suspect that the whole conversation about “other ways of knowing” has, at its core, a fuzzy meaning of truth. A creation story can provide a lot of insight into how the people of a particular culture understand themselves; in that sense, it’s more of a truth vector than a real truth. If you allow for truth vectors, i.e. pointers to something truthful, then the “other ways of knowing” bit makes a little more sense.
Alas, in the real world just like in writing software, it’s easy to get the true entities and their pointers mixed up.
At least you’re not a crockoduck!
Or a mushrator!
The statement contradicts itself. If supernatural creation stories may be true, then they can possibly be falsified: that is, they make claims that science can investigate.
Now, if I, with zero scientific education, can see that after dinner and a few glasses of wine, they must be drinking something stronger than wine. Maybe mushrooms. New Mexico is a great place for hallucinatory mushroom and cacti. Far out.
I think science is very clear that no humans are created equal – genetic and environmental variation insure that is true.
Here’s the concluding paragraph of one of my essays, titled ““Keeping an Open Mind Is a Virtue, but not so Open that Your Brains Fall Out.”
“I’m often told that science strips away comforting illusions or the mysteries that add beauty and meaning to life. Yet which is a more potent (let alone true) image – stars as glittering nails inolympics crystal domes, or as incandescent engines that create life? Science needs no pious platitudes or sloppy metaphors. Science doesn’t strip away the grandeur of the universe; the intricate patterns only become lovelier as more keep appearing and coming into focus. Science leads to connections across scales, from universes to quarks. And we, with our ardent desire and ability to know ever more, are lucky enough to be at the nexus of all this richness.”
You can read the rest of it here:
The silly thing about this whole debate is that respectable people think they are being clever and somehow not falling for yet another garden variety hypostatized abstraction, carrying with them the exact problems that doomed souls, cartesian “minds,” and all the rest.
The door on this whole line of thought can be slammed instantly. Yes or no: is the contemplation of beauty something that is possible in a mind? Yes or no: is a mind anything but that which arises from the brain? Yes or no: is a brain a physical thing?
Once that much is conceded, nothing is left except a gesture toward the presumed difficulty of transforming a question into a tangible scientific achievement. And for some reason or another this mutates into the definitive conclusion that problems not yet solved can not be solved.
The same argument that proves science will never describe beauty once proved that we would never map the human genome or make machines that could fly.
Huh?
So God may in fact have created Adam and Eve out of his rib and blah blah blah and getting kicked out of the garden?
Really?
Really?
Do they really want to stand by this?
That creepy “ways of knowing” terminology has to be eliminated immediately. It leads to oatmeal mush brain.
Still, I guess this means that the big deep hole in my back yard doesn’t, after all, lead down to the inframundo where the magic twins live. Darn. I wanted to open a roadside attraction.
So where is the technology based on these other ways of knowing? What are the triumphs of theological or postmodernist engineering? Forms of wonder and worship have hardly changed for thousands of years, but the applications spawned by science have changed the face of the planet in a few hundred years, not always to the better.
There is, after all, a practical difference between different ways of knowing. Some are reliable and useful. Others may be fun, even inspiring, but if your plumbing springs a leak are you going to reach for a wrench or a hymnal?
Once you allow supernatural explanations, nothing is certain anymore. Then the world might have been created last Thursday, but will be destroyed in a week as it turned out to be bad idea, or OB might indeed have more interesting parents than have been known so far. Allowing supernatural explanations makes everything exceedingly uncertain as we cannot know whether anything is as it appears to be. The evidence will be irrelevant as there might be a supernatural explanation for why things are not what they seem to be. If people are willing to allow supernatural explanations for big events, then small supernatural events should be even more acceptable, but who would accept the explanation that one’s bank account is regrettably now empty due to some unfortunate supernatural events for which the bank can obviously not accept liability.
I quite like the way Josef summarized the problem in the third paragraph. I might object to the use of the word “presumed”, though. The history of scientific revolutions tells us that the honeymoon period between the discovery of some candidate theory and the vindication of it is often epic.
…is often epic…but not always…so perhaps that justifies ‘presumed’ – if we take it as referring to the presumed invariable difficulty.
Fair compromise?
Damn – I think I accidentally deleted a comment – while cleaning up spam. Sorry if so.
At first I would want to say that if it weren’t epic, there’d be no revolution. When I think of the revolutions in chemistry, QM, evolutionary biology, astronomy, relativistic physics, linguistics, and the rest, the first thing that comes to mind are frowns and angry people and that sort of thing.
But of course that can’t be right. “Revolution” can be defined in a million different ways — I’m regularly told by the people living inside my tv that there is revolutionary technology behind skin care products. More seriously, Godel originally planned to map out his proof in two essays, but succeeded so well in convincing his colleagues with the first go-around that he didn’t bother writing the second one. And of course he revolutionized the crap out of the philosophy of mathematics.
And anyway the revolutions thing doesn’t generalize since normal science can be a much more straightforward and usually less tragic affair, at least when we assume that the dramatis personae (usually just scientists) have professional integrity and a body of shared beliefs.
My point is that we can’t presume one way or another — we don’t need to presume invariance. We can conclude that you can come to sound (but limited) conclusions in either direction, since as you aptly put it, there’s no invariance in the way these things pan out.
The only difference, if it is a difference, is that I think that the presumption of invariance is a nonstarter. After all, since our subject matter is the link between discovery and vindication, we’re dealing with things that are inherently surprising. There’s no sense in making these kinds of presumptions when we’re studying surprises. (Unless we are setting ourselves up for easy surprise, of course.)
So I don’t just agree, I super-duper-agree. Yes.
PF: Another important aspect of supernatural explanations is that they contain the basis for the rise of a priesthood: shamans who are able to persuade others that they are possessed of abilities to divine the supernatural phenomena behind the natural, commune with gods and spirits, etc.
This elevates their social status at the same time, so their arts, lore and techniques are commonly held closely guarded and secret.
Unfortunately, there is not here and in this respect a discenible boundary between religion and science, because some scientific practitioners are not immune from the temptation to graft the same approach onto their rationally based disciplines.
In disciplines where the basic ideas are relatively simple, such as the social sciences, they can be made less accessible to the ‘lay’ person by being decked out in dense jargon. This of course, is one of the self-perpetuating strengths of Postmodernism.
who would accept the explanation that one’s bank account is regrettably now empty due to some unfortunate supernatural events for which the bank can obviously not accept liability
I will, and gladly! Thanks, pf, I feel much better about that bottom line on my latest bank statement now…