SCIENCE ISN'T EVERYTHING

Science gulls us into trusting it as the only explanation we need of the world because that part which it does explain, it explains brilliantly.  So brilliantly in fact that we have come to ignore the rest of the world that science cannot explain.  Or if we can't quite ignore it, we dismiss it as either nonsense that only the ill-educated or feeble-minded take seriously or a black hole of subjectivity that permits only opinion and no knowledge.

The Real Physicist, Lawrence Gage, argues in this essay for us to remove the blinkers that we have let our love affair with science blind us to the full realm of causation in the universe.  He points out how by common sense we should recognize that the ancient Aristotelian four-fold scheme of causation more completely explains our world than modern science's reduction of everything to matter and mechanics.

Gage concludes with this sound advice:

"It strikes me that today's Christians shouldn't fall into the trap of letting the secular world dictate the terms of discussion. Instead of letting God be boxed into the Enlightenment's one-dimensional notion of causation, modern Christians should reclaim their ancient patrimony in which God (through Jesus Christ) is the atemporal cause of all that is temporal, the reason by which anything is intelligible, by which everything is, and for which it exists."

Indeed.

Comments

[Franklin Mason]

Very nicely said. This sums of my view of the matter perfectly.

[Bill]

Thanks, Franklin.

I became enamored with science as a kid watching the first mooning landing nearly forty years ago, and spent the next quarter-century as a knee-jerk naturalist. (At least a methodological one, if not a dyed-in-the-wool metaphysical naturalist.)

But eventually reality intrudes and I began to understand how scientists were doing a lot of hand-waving about the mind rather than supplying solid explanations. It's been my good fortune that as I turned away from naturalism, there has been an Aristotelian (even a Thomist) renaissance dedicated to recovering a more complete understanding of our universe. There is more to the world than matter and mechanics.

If nothing else the authors of this renaissance (including bloggers like Lawrence Gage and Bill Vallicella) have provided me with a vocabulary to articulate my intuitions that this universe is a dualistic one. For that alone I owe them a great deal.

Regards, Bill

P.S. Good discussion re the E-harmony lawsuit at the "Maverick Philosopher" website.

[Franklin Mason]

I flirted with a full-blown metaphysical naturalism, but never gave myself over to it entirely. I always doubted that mind was irreducible without remainder to matter; and I never for a moment doubted the objective reality of moral obligation. Slowly - ever so slowly - this pair of commitments led me back to Christianity. I grew up in a Southern fundamentalist sect and have no desire to return. But I seem to have found a home in the Catholic Church. It satisfies both mind and heart. At present, I'm in the RCIA at a local church and have the good fortune to spend time with the theologian in residence, Tom Ryba.

I've always been a great admirer of Aristotle, and of Thomas (though I know the former much better than the latter). I should add that part of what brought me back to the Church was a great respect for the philosphical acumen of men like Thomas.

[Bill]

Good luck with RCIA, Franklin. It is fortunate that your program has a theologian. Although I was baptized Catholic, I was never confirmed. So when I returned the Church as an adult, I went through RCIA. It's a worthwhile program.

Prior to my return, I too found a great respect for the intellectual rigor behind the Church's teachings. Once I was able to break my materialist frame of mind (a pernicious habit of thought that still dogs me at times), I was astonished by the genius of men like Aquinas in grounding that part of reality we cannot know directly in that which we can.

Regards, Bill