Tuesday, March 30, 2004

Be careful what you read...

C. S. Lewis said,
A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere - "Bibles laid open, millions of surpises," as Herbert says, "fine nets and stratagems." God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous.
So you might think I'm now going to link you to another Evangelical blog? Think again. Ed from Dispatches has contributed to the formation of The Panda's Thumb, a blog that is "dedicated to explaining the theory of evolution, critiquing the claims of the anti-evolution movement, and defending the integrity of science and science education in America and around the world." It's certainly easy to be content with reading critiques of evolutionary thought, but to truly understand the worldview with which a naturalist operates you must access their material directly. This site seems to be a good aggregate of the type of thinking that goes on in the minds of those that adhere to the evolutionary paradigm. Consider this intro to, We don't need no steenking Philosophical Naturalism,
Oh dear, it's happening again. We scientists are usually rather mellow, undemanding folk. Give us a cyclotron or an electron microscope and we will happily stay out of peoples way (pausing only to invent Plasma TV screens, or some such frippery). But what really gets our goat is when people decide to tell us what science is. It's bad enough when philosophers or sociologists do it, but now lawyers want to get in on the act. Yes, lawyers (see Is Beckwith Right? Does MN entail PN?) have decided that since science uses Methodological Naturalism, it automatically means we are all dedicated to Philosophical Naturalism. Well, that gets an entire heard of caprine organisms! Well, we scientists have bad news for you lawyer buckos, we don't do isms. We test things. And sometimes we test things that everyone widely accepts as "supernatural" that our lawyer friends would have us believe that dread Methodological/Philosophical whatever-it-is-ism will not allow us to test.
Wasn't it C. S. Lewis who said that everyone holds to a philosophy of how the world works (i.e., a worldview), it's just that some people hold to bad philosophies. Maybe it was Peter Kreeft who said it? Anyway, whether one claims to not do an ism is entirely distinct from whether one is consistent with the implications of the assumptions behind his methodology. Consider my earlier post on Methodological Naturalism. Keep an eye on the Panda's Thumb for the latest musings from evolutionists. It's well documented, up to date and, like it's namesake, well designed.

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