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In Reply to: RE: Faith has much to do with it... posted by RGA on July 18, 2012 at 20:13:09:
"D'Souza's example is not what science is - therefore it is knocked down as a strawman argument. Observation is a PART of science - but it is not science itself. D'Souza clearly doesn't get the difference."
D’Souza is laying out the skeptical case here not because he wants to endorse without reservations Hume’s (or Popper’s) philosophy. Rather, his goal is to overthrow Hume’s argument against miracles using Hume’s own empirical and skeptical philosophy.
D’Souza makes the case that miracles are possible by obliterating the strongest argument against them. (In doing so it should be pointed out that D’Souza is not defending the veracity of a particular miracle.) Rather, he’s simply stating that miracles should not be dismissed in advance as unscientific or incredible. Like all Christians he concede that miracles are improbable -- that's why we use the term *miracle* -- but improbable events can and do happen, and the same is true of miracles.
The strongest argument against miracles was advanced by Hume in his book "Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding." Hume’s argument is widely cited by atheists; Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens both invoke it to justify their wholesale rejection of miracles. Hume argued that:
1. A miracle is a violation of the known laws of nature.
2. We know these laws through repeated and constant experience.
3. The testimony of those who report miracles contradicts the operation of known scientific laws.
4. Consequently, no one can rationally believe in miracles.
Hume’s case against miracles has been enormously influential, but it can be effectively answered. To answer it, we must turn to the work of Hume himself. Ironically, his writings show why human knowledge is so limited and unreliable that we can never completely dismiss the possibility of miracles. In formulating his objection to miracles, poor Hume seems to have forgotten to read his own book. D’Souza’s refutation demonstrates that:
1. A miracle is a violation of the known laws of nature.
2. Scientific laws are on Hume’s own account empirically unverifiable.
3. Thus, violations of the known laws of nature are quite possible.
4. Therefore, miracles are possible.
To see Hume’s influence, we must turn to his modern-day followers, who typically call themselves logical positivists. Atheists and "brights" don't use this term, but if you examine their presuppositions you will see that they are based on logical positivism. A logical positivist thinks that science operates in the verifiable domain of laws and facts, while morality operates in the subjective and unverifiable domain of choices and values. The logical positivist is confident that scientific knowledge is the best kind of knowledge, and whatever contradicts the claims of science must be rejected as irrational. These people are all around us today. Many of them are extremely well educated and speak with an air of certitude, so even people who do not agree with what they say have a hard time answering them.
For the logical positivist, there are two kinds of statements: analytic statements and synthetic statements. An analytic statement is one whose truth or falsity can be established by examining the statement itself. If I say, "My neighbor is a bachelor with a beautiful young wife"; you know right away that I am not telling the truth. For Hume, mathematics provides a classic example of analytic truths. Mathematical axioms are true by definition; they are, one may say, inherently true.
A synthetic statement can be verified only by checking the facts. If I say, "My neighbor weighs three hundred pounds and enjoys reading books by Richard Dawkins," you cannot tell from the statement itself whether it is true. You have to visit my neighbor’s house and ask him.
Hume argued that analytic statements are true a priori, i.e., by definition. Synthetic statements, on the other hand, are true a posteriori, i.e., by considering the evidence. For Hume, the physical sciences provide the standard model of synthetic truths. Through the scientific method-hypothesis, experimentation, verification, and criticism we can discover synthetic truths about the world.
On this basis Hume delivered his famous dismissal of metaphysics, which he did not consider any kind of truth at all. Consider the central religious claims that "there is life after death" or "God made the universe.” Hume’s point is that these statements are neither true by definition, nor can they be verified by checking the facts. Consequently, he argued, these statements are not even untrue--they are meaningless. Hume wrote, "If we take in our hand any volume-of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance-let us ask, does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quality or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matters of fact or experience? No. Commit it then to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion."
This is sometimes known as Hume’s principle of empirical verifiability. It allows only two kinds of truths: those that are true by definition and those that are true by empirical confirmation. Right away, however, we see a problem. Let us apply Hume’s criteria to Hume’s own doctrine: Is the principle of verifiability true by definition? No. Well, is there a way to confirm it empirically? Again, no. Consequently, taking Hume’s advice, we should commit his principle to the flames because it is not merely false, it is also incoherent.
There is another problem with Hume’s reasoning, less obvious but equally serious. It took the genius of Immanuel Kant to point out an error that had completely escaped Hume’s attention. Contrary to Hume's assertions, mathematical truths are not analytic. Consider the mathematical proposition in Euclidean geometry that "the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.”This seems self-evidently true, and yet it cannot be confirmed simply by examining the sentence. There is nothing in the definition of the terms that makes it true, So how do we know it is true? We have to check. It is only when we make two points on a piece of paper and then draw a line through them that we can observe that the shortest distance between them is a straight line. Kant demonstrated that many other mathematical propositions are of this sort.
D’Souza draws Kant’s correction of Hume to our attention not to suggest that these mathematical axioms are wrong, but merely to show that their veracity can be established only *synthetically.* We can proceed only by looking at the data. So mathematical laws are, in general, like scientific laws. We can verify them only by examining the world around us. When we observe the world around us, however, we make a disconcerting discovery first noted by Hume himself.
Scientific laws are *not* verifiable. They cannot be empirically validated. Science is based on the law of cause and effect and that law cannot be validated in experience either. D’Souza notes that Hume’s argument was a bombshell. So far-reaching were its implications that very few people grasped them, and to this day Hume’s ghost continues to haunt the corridors of modern science. D’Souza says it is quite amusing to see “brights” and other highly educated types continue to make claims about science that were exploded two centuries ago by Hume.
So, why are scientific laws unverifiable? Again, Hume’s answer was that no finite number of observations, no matter how large, can be used to derive an unrestricted general conclusion that is logically defensible. {Swan example and bouncing balls}
We give a theory the benefit of the doubt until we find out otherwise. There is nothing wrong in all of this as long as we remember that scientific laws are not “laws of nature.”They are *human* laws and they represent a form of best-guessing about our world. What we call laws are nothing more than perceived patterns and sequences. We assume the world works this way until future experiments put the lie to our assumptions.
(Again, D’Souza is laying out the skeptical case here not because he wants to endorse without reservations Hume’s (or Popper’s) philosophy. Rather, his goal is to overthrow Hume’s argument against miracles using Hume’s own empirical and skeptical philosophy.)
Hume insists that miracles violate the known laws of nature, but Hume’s own skeptical philosophy has shown that there are no known laws of nature. Miracles can be dismissed only if scientific laws are *necessarily* true--if they admit of no exceptions. But Hume has demonstrated that for no empirical proposition whatsoever do we know this to be the case. Miracles can be deemed unscientific only if our knowledge of causation is so extensive that we can confidently dismiss divine causation, and therefore we cannot dismiss the possibility of divine causation in exceptional cases.
When we speak of miracles we could mean either an extremely rare event that is nevertheless scientifically possible, or we could mean an event that contravenes the established laws of nature. Consider the question of whether the dead can come back to life. We may consider this unlikely in the extreme because no one we know has seen it happen. All medical attempts to revive the dead (D’Souza is referring to someone who has been dead for quite some time) have failed so far. But it does not follow that for a dead person to return to life is a violation of the laws of nature. Can anyone say with certainty that in the future medical advances will not reach a point at which clinically dead people can be restored to life? Of course not. So the scientific proposition that dead people cannot come back to life is a *practical* truth -- useful for everyday purposes -- but it is not a *necessary* truth.
But if we might see dead people return to life in the future, then it is possible that dead people have, on one or more occasions, been restored to life in the past. D’Souza is not making the claim that this has happened. He is merely suggesting that if it might happen one day, then it could have happened before. (Logical possibility cannot be confined to future events.) If it happened in the past, it would be a miracle. If it happens in the future, we’ll call it scientific progress. Either way, it’s possible, not because nature’s laws are necessarily overthrown, but because we have no *complete* knowledge of what those laws are.
Miracles can also be viewed as actual suspensions of the laws of nature, and here too there is nothing in science or logic that says that these things cannot happen. Who says that these laws are immutable? Where is the *evidence* for such a sweeping conclusion? Obviously, if God exists, miracles are possible. For God there are clearly no constraints outside the natural realm. Even modern physics concedes that beyond the natural world the laws of nature do not apply. There is nothing “miraculous” about heaven or hell for the simple reason that there are no laws of nature that operate outside our universe.
But even within nature, God cannot be restricted. Like the author of a novel, God is in complete control of the plot. How can He be bound by rules and storylines that He devised? If God abruptly interrupts the “logic” of events there will most assuredly be much disruption and confusion. So what? Isn’t that the point of miracles, to disrupt the normal chain of events by drawing our attention to something outside the narrative? If God made the universe He also made the laws of nature and He can alter them, on occasion, if He chooses.
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Follow Ups
- RE: Faith has much to do with it... - regmac 08:13:56 07/19/12 (2)
- RE: Faith has much to do with it... - RGA 13:08:25 07/19/12 (1)
- RE: Faith has much to do with it... - Tony Lauck 17:24:46 07/21/12 (0)
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