I was reading an article that was posted on Slashdot.org yesterday. The article stated that scientists have discovered the mechanisms by which a honey bee flies. No big deal, you say. Well, probably not, but the article pointed out that one argument used by proponents of intelligent design is "Science can't be that good, it can't even explain how bees fly."
I really don't like this type of reasoning. This is called God of the Gaps...or something like that. That is, God's will/plan/presence can be seen in the unexplained phenomenon we encounter. Before we had a theory of gravitational attraction, people may have believed "this ball falls toward to the earth, because God wills it." Or "birds fly because god wills it." Now we have complex theories of gravitation and fluid dynamics that rely on natural law to explain these phenomena. Does that mean God somehow shrunk after the discovery of these laws/theories?
One of the first days of my intro psychology class at st. olaf I asked Dr. Huff, "Does a complete understanding of the functions of the brain preclude the existence of a soul." He had an articulate response that I don't remember verbatim, but he talked about God in the gaps and how it is folly to force God into those crevacies.
Doesn't faith exist without validation and vindication? Isn't part of the definition of faith a strong belief that needs not be supported with rational or tangible evidence?
Help me out here.
3 comments:
I'm not sure if I believe that the ID group uses logic like "science can't be that great b/c it can't explain such and such." After all, ID is billed as science also. If they were to use such an argument, it would completely undermine their position as a science.
As for faith... you're right that the word presupposes that one doesn't have tangible evidence for a belief. However, we use the word, perhaps incorrectly, to say things like "I have faith that the sun will come up tomorrow," which is entirely based on evidence. M-W tells me that faith is a conviction without evidence, whereas belief is a conviction with evidence.
Just another example of the bastardization of English resulting in mass confusion. Damn people using words wrong. ...don't look at me; I wouldn't do such a thing!
Just for the record, there is no proof that world wasn't created by a divine being about 12 minutes ago. If anyone believe they have evidence I would love to hear it. That being said... if it was created more than 12 minutes ago... it has developed through evolution... and you have to believe me... cause I'm a scientist.
Alex
Sorry. Coming to this a little late...no one may ever even find it!
Oh well.
I agree that faith (and here I speak not generically but of what I would refer to as my religious faith) necessarily involves irrationality and intangibility, but my experience of it is not as a state of persistent or willful ignorance, of grasping on to a set of tenets in the face of all logic to the contrary. (Though I do not deny that it is this way for many)
Instead, I find faith a far more complex mixture of the rational and the irrational, of the tangible and the intangible. It is a means of making sense of the world that tries to feel beyond what it is we see, hear, taste, touch and smell but a means that should NEVER ignore what we sense.
For me, faith is s tension between feeling and being felt, grasping and being grasped, holding and being held. Never is it merely a willed act--something one undertakes as a personal project. As in "I will have faith!" It is undertaken in community, as people (not person). And because its matrix is the relationships between people, it does not fall victim to 'god-of-the-gaps' reduction, because the capacity for human interrelationship within and between communities (given our extraordinary individual uniqueness) seems quite endless.
Unless of course we all came into existence a few minutes ago--or that we are all merely figments of pete's imagination...
Post a Comment