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From: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Scientism, religion, and evidence
Message-ID: <1360@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 25-Nov-84 23:42:26 EST
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.1360
Posted: Sun Nov 25 23:42:26 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 27-Nov-84 04:00:22 EST
References: <499@wucs.UUCP>
Reply-To: mangoe@maryland.UUCP (Charley Wingate)
Distribution: net
Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD
Lines: 88

In article <499@wucs.UUCP> esk@wucs.UUCP (Paul V. Torek) writes:
>> Well, why not start with the gospel accounts, ...
>
>I am afraid I understated my own case.  I think that as long as the 
>definitions are specific enough, it will be clear what would count as 
>evidence for or against!  I don't want to stick my neck out too far, so
>I won't attempt to evaluate the evidence for or against the resurrection.
>As to what evidence would be needed, and some general guidelines I think
>should be used in evaluation, see below.
>
>>Yes, but in this case, there is no experiment in the first place.  All we
>>have is eyewitness testimony, and we have no real way to evaluate its
>>reliability.
>
>I think it is possible to evaluate its reliability.  We need to ask how 
>truthful were the people of that time, how reliable their conditions of 
>observation were, how reliable their memories, how reliable the translation 
>and transcription processes were.  These can be estimated by comparing with
>situations that we know something about.  For example, we know that there
>are many conditions of observation which are unreliable (look at some of
>the "paranormal" research critiqued in Martin Gardner's book *Science:
>Good, Bad and Bogus*; or some of the tests by psychologists of people's
>accuracy in witnessing ordinary events -- not very encouraging).

I will be the first one to agree that eyewitness testimony is unreliable.
The problem I see with trying to extrapolate from current experience is
that we have an explanation which says "This event represents interference
with natural law, AND all other reports of such events are false", and thus
by it we would EXPECT current experience to indicate that such events are
not happening now.  It is fundamental to the essence of the resurrection
that it claims that there was something unique about the situation in which
the ressurection took place, and that it is therefore not valid to
extrapolate backwards from our present experience.  I won't deny that this
is a very tough claim to swallow.  I will deny that you can decide this
claim scientifically; to accept the ability of science to decide this is
to claim that we can extrapolate backwards, and therefore the question has
already been decided without the use of science.

I am unconvinced by the failure of parapsychological research.
Parapsychology insists upon the scientific observability the supernatural,
and thus claims that the rules for scientific evidence do apply.  I am
claiming that the supernatural is NOT scientifically observable.

>> Unfortunately, this common sense has to dictate that nature is uniform in
>> order to be able to allow us to apply our past observations to present and
>> future behavior.  WIth this assumption, you cannot objectively evaluate
>> a claim that the natural order of the universe has been temporarily 
>> violated.  The problem remains the same.
>
>Now wait a second.  What's the difference between saying "the natural order
>has been temporarily violated" and ascribing an unusual event to a new
>force or particle?  Anyway, the latter hypothesis should be tested, if
>possible, by checking other implications of the hypothesis (if any).  We
>must weigh the losses of each alternative explanation.  The temptation to 
>proliferation of hypotheses of new forces should be resisted precisely to 
>the extent that it would cripple our ability to understand the world.  If
>we say "it didn't happen" in the face of a lot of evidence, we may be raising
>our standards of evidence too high, which would also cripple our ability to
>understand the world.

I don't agree.  What do scientists do now when faced with a datum which
cannot be reproduced?  They do not bring up a new theory (unless the 
evidence is really tremendously strong); they throw out the datum as
representative of some undetermined experimental error. I think we can all
agree that the evidence for the resurrection is less than resounding.  The
only evidence we have which is available for general examination is
somewhat contradictory reports of reports of eyewitness testimony.  Obviously
one can take the position that they are sufficiently convinced of the 
uniformity of the behavior of nature and easily poke enough holes in the
reports to discount them.  There are those of us who feel that there is
sufficient reason to suspect that there are interruptions in nature's
conformity to some undetermined natural law.  How then does one decide
between the two?

Anyone can see that it is impossible to demonstrate the second point through
scientific observation.  To do so would require that the interruptions did
themselves have a pattern, and thus would evidence not for interrruptions,
but for a higher order law of nature.  In the same way, it is impossible
to prove the first point to be false.  To prove the first point to be true
through the use of science, we must assume that there are no interruptions--
and thus we assume what we want to show.  In the same way, we cannot
demonstrate that the second point is false without first assuming that it
is false.  It is clear (to me at least) that when we decide between these
questions, we are using something that is not science. [This by the way is
the only point I have been trying to make, and I apologize if I have not
clearly stated this.]

Charley Wingate   umcp-cs!mangoe