{"id":14163,"date":"2012-02-24T18:58:00","date_gmt":"2012-02-25T00:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.catholiconnection.com\/2012\/02\/if-you-learn-anything-new-all-week-learn-this-faith-in-science-part-iii.html"},"modified":"2012-02-24T18:58:00","modified_gmt":"2012-02-25T00:58:00","slug":"if-you-learn-anything-new-all-week-learn-this-faith-in-science-part-iii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jonhaines.com\/philosophy\/if-you-learn-anything-new-all-week-learn-this-faith-in-science-part-iii\/","title":{"rendered":"If you learn anything new all week&#8230;learn this. Faith in Science (Part III)"},"content":{"rendered":"<div dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align: left\"><span style=\"background-color: white\"><br \/><\/span><\/p>\n<table style=\"color: #222222;line-height: 18px\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"font-family: arial, sans-serif;line-height: 1.4em;margin-bottom: 0px;margin-left: 0px;margin-right: 0px;margin-top: 0px\">\n<div style=\"font-family: Georgia, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;margin-bottom: 0px;margin-left: 0px;margin-right: 0px;margin-top: 0px\">\n<div dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align: left\">\n<div style=\"clear: both;text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-IyDg0urkGkI\/T0PWRMy150I\/AAAAAAACBlo\/BjtR2mBfso0\/s1600\/images+(3).jpg\" style=\"clear: right;color: #1155cc;float: right;margin-bottom: 1em;margin-left: 1em\" target=\"_blank\"><span><img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-IyDg0urkGkI\/T0PWRMy150I\/AAAAAAACBlo\/BjtR2mBfso0\/s1600\/images+(3).jpg\"><\/span><\/a><br \/><span style=\"background-color: white\"><\/span><\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"background-color: white\"><\/span><\/div>\n<p><span><span class=\"il\">Learn<\/span>&nbsp;these three words:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"margin-left: 15px\"><span>Occasionalism&nbsp;<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-left: 15px\"><span>Conservationism &nbsp;<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-left: 15px\"><span>Concurrentism&nbsp;<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span>These three words summarize the three main worldviews with regard to the relationship between God and the world&#8230;that is every perspective generally fits into one of the three.<\/p>\n<p>As a preface, ever since Aristotle was rejected in the &#8220;Enlightenment&#8221;, forms of the first and second views have become ever more&nbsp;popular in the western world. This change essentially manifests the polarization of faith and reason, which The First Vatican Council, Leo XIII, Pius IX and Pius X all tried to prevent and John Paul II had to deal with after the Second Vatican Council, now not only outside the Church but from within. Cardinal Avery Dulles S.J. wrote in his essay &#8220;Faith and Reason: From Vatican I to John Paul II:<\/span><\/p>\n<div style=\"color: #23262a;text-align: justify\"><span style=\"background-color: white\"><span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<blockquote><p><span>&#8220;Also in the footsteps of Vatican I, John Paul II &nbsp;opposes both a rationalism that dismisses the input of faith and a fideism that distrusts the&nbsp;guidance of &nbsp;reason ($552, 53). He repeats the teaching of &nbsp;Vatican I&nbsp;that faith and reason &#8220;mutually support each other&#8221; ($100)&#8230;.&nbsp;In line with Vatican &nbsp;I, the pope&nbsp;teaches that the Magisterium has the right and duty to condemn philosophical tenets that are opposed to truths of faith (955, fn. 72), and&nbsp;that there can be no conflict between faith and-reason, since both are&nbsp;gifts of the same God, who could&nbsp;never&nbsp;contradict himself (998,53)&#8221;&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.shu.edu\/catholic-mission\/upload\/Faith-and-Reason.pdf\" style=\"color: #1155cc\" target=\"_blank\">Full Text here<\/a><\/span><br \/><span style=\"background-color: white\"><\/span><\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"background-color: white\"><\/span><span>.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span>&nbsp;Here are the three:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"margin-left: 15px\"><span><b>Occasionalism<\/b>-(wrong) -The view that every occasion of change in the world is a direct result of God causing it to happen. When one billiard ball hits the second billiard ball, then occasion of the second ball moving was a direct result of God caused it to happen.&nbsp;<\/span><\/li>\n<ul><span style=\"background-color: white\"><\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<li style=\"margin-left: 15px\"><span>My physics professor in college, Dr. Sich, once told me a story of being in the desert in Saudi Arabia. The bus had broken down and everyone was off of the bus. In order to see&nbsp;<span class=\"il\">if<\/span>&nbsp;the tank had any gas left in it, the driver lit a match. When Dr. Sich objected to him doing this (quite forcefully), the man calmly responded, &#8220;Allah protects us, things only happen&nbsp;<span class=\"il\">if<\/span>&nbsp;he wills.&#8221; This is occasionalism in action and also fideism (faith alone apart from reason\/<i>scientia<\/i>) This is of course a very dangerous an incorrect view incompatible with the Catholic understanding of the world.&nbsp;<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-left: 15px\"><span>This is also what many fundamentalist Christians fall into when they refuse to recognize the findings of archeology that there is a good chance evolution is true.&nbsp;<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<li style=\"margin-left: 15px\"><span><b>Consequentialism<\/b>-(wrong)-As quoted from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: &#8220;It holds that God may have created the world in the beginning, but that since that moment and with the exception of miracles, the world runs causally of its own accord and on the basis of its own powers and principles, without the need for God (<span class=\"il\">if<\/span>&nbsp;he exists) to be continually and perpetually involved.&#8221; This is the view that was taken in the enlightenment and the view that the Popes condemned because it leads to atheism&#8230;<\/span><\/li>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"margin-left: 15px\"><span>in this view, God is the first mechanical\/efficient cause, not the first final cause. The universe is dependent on him in the way that a son is dependent on his father for his existence&#8211;(<span class=\"il\">if<\/span>&nbsp;the first hadn&#8217;t existed then the second couldn&#8217;t have existed. However, God essentially isn&#8217;t involved&#8230;once the&nbsp;universe&nbsp;exists, in the same way someone winds up a clock and lets it run&#8211;Deism.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-left: 15px\"><span>So&#8230;God becomes unnecessary.&nbsp;<span class=\"il\">If<\/span>&nbsp;the world runs on its own, why even propose the idea that God&nbsp;preceded&nbsp;it? The world could have always existed on its own and reasonable person recognizes that God is a superfluous concept and we thereby become atheist, agnostic, or&nbsp;<span class=\"il\">if<\/span>&nbsp;<span class=\"il\">you<\/span>&nbsp;are feeling spiritual&#8211;pantheist. And yes, this is exactly what progressively&nbsp;happened. This is why everyone is so confused when they say science disproves God&#8211;because now we can find the merely mechanical explanation for everything and this is sufficient because this is the only type of causation that exists&#8230;the mechanical. How was the world created? Now it is sufficient to say the mechanism of evolution evolution&#8230; This is different from the classic view that actually makes sense where God is the first final cause (many claim this view was destroyed in Kant&#8217;s Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics but I&#8217;m sure that&#8217;s worth another post), tied in with the world at every moment,&nbsp;<i>allowing<\/i>&nbsp;everything to happen.&nbsp;<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<li style=\"margin-left: 15px\"><span><b>Concurrentism<\/b>-The view (and the right view) says that nothing happens without the &#8220;permission&#8221; or allowance of God because everything that exists, exists because God holds it in being at every moment. He is the thing towards which all things are oriented. However, any change in the world, (unless it is a&nbsp;miracle by direct intervention)&nbsp;happens, in a less removed sense, because of the parts in the world that are involved-they are following their natures.&nbsp;<span class=\"il\">If<\/span>&nbsp;objects did not have natures we would not be able to depend on them acting in consistent and predictable ways, which would not only destroy modern empirical science, but science in general since this is the basis of all knowledge.&nbsp;<\/span><\/li>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"margin-left: 15px\"><span>I distinguished between&nbsp;<i>modern empirical science (MES)<\/i>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<i>science in general<\/i>&nbsp;because after the enlightenment, many started to believe that the only form of knowledge\/science is the subcategory we mean when we refer to science today (modern empirical science, which asserts that all science (knowledge) can only come from observation and experimentation.&nbsp;<span class=\"il\">If<\/span>&nbsp;it can&#8217;t be demonstrated it can&#8217;t be believe. Unfortunately that claim doesn&#8217;t hold up because that very same claim can&#8217;t be demonstrated&#8211;this is why philosophy remains the more fundamental branch of science, despite what anyone might say.&nbsp;<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-left: 15px\"><span>The biggest difference between the old view and the new view is that along with believing that the only type of knowledge is the type that comes from the MES, any knowledge beyond the mere mechanism of a thing is no longer knowledge. This means that&nbsp;<span class=\"il\">if<\/span>&nbsp;<span class=\"il\">you<\/span>&nbsp;believe the purpose of a plant is actually to produce another plant or&nbsp;<span class=\"il\">if<\/span>&nbsp;the purpose of sex is to produce the next generation&#8230;that not actually part of the object\/action it is only in our minds.&nbsp;<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-left: 15px\"><span>Though books can be written on the topic, purpose and form are not merely in our minds for the following reasons:<\/span><\/li>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"margin-left: 15px\"><span>Read&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.battleforthecoreoftheworld.com\/2012\/02\/reflection-on-randomness-literally.html\" style=\"color: #1155cc\" target=\"_blank\">my post on Randomness<\/a>\n<div><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-left: 15px\"><span>The Modern Empirical Sciences are based on the same principles&#8230;<span class=\"il\">if<\/span>&nbsp;purpose and form in objects go, so does all forms of science because there is no reason to try to predict what is purely random and not directed towards an end.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-left: 15px\"><span>The idea of &#8220;merely in our minds&#8221; itself is meaningless because&nbsp;<span class=\"il\">if<\/span>&nbsp;it is true then we admit our minds have purpose&#8230;which would be to deceive us. The idea is there are few reasons in favor of the idea, so why even advocate it when everything points the opposite direction? Well, that is another topic&#8230;but the bottom line&#8230;is that it certainly it is useful to study the mere mechanism of nature. Behold the glory:<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span><br \/><\/span><\/p>\n<div style=\"clear: both;text-align: center\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"clear: both;text-align: center\"><span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.catholiconnection.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/blogger\/-oldIfxL26u0\/T0Pzyrbs8DI\/AAAAAAACBmc\/HPED1Yg4ZI0\/s1600\/images%2B%2810%29.jpg\" style=\"background-color: white;color: #1155cc;margin-left: 1em;margin-right: 1em\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/www.catholiconnection.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/blogger\/-oldIfxL26u0\/T0Pzyrbs8DI\/AAAAAAACBmc\/HPED1Yg4ZI0\/s1600\/images%2B%2810%29.jpg\"><\/a><\/span><br \/><span style=\"background-color: white\"><\/span><\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"background-color: white\"><\/span><span><\/span><\/div>\n<div style=\"clear: both;text-align: center\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"clear: both;text-align: center\"><span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.catholiconnection.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/blogger\/-5gtlUgk5saQ\/T0P0C8dFIpI\/AAAAAAACBmk\/ejnm0h2loUk\/s1600\/images%2B%2811%29.jpg\" style=\"background-color: white;color: #1155cc;margin-left: 1em;margin-right: 1em\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/www.catholiconnection.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/blogger\/-5gtlUgk5saQ\/T0P0C8dFIpI\/AAAAAAACBmk\/ejnm0h2loUk\/s1600\/images%2B%2811%29.jpg\"><\/a><\/span><br \/><span style=\"background-color: white\"><\/span><\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"background-color: white\"><\/span><span><\/span><\/div>\n<div style=\"clear: both;text-align: center\"><span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.catholiconnection.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/blogger\/-fSHI5wh5n2Y\/T0PyViWE0JI\/AAAAAAACBmM\/MhHGaNW_RzY\/s1600\/images%2B%288%29.jpg\" style=\"background-color: white;color: #1155cc;margin-left: 1em;margin-right: 1em\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/www.catholiconnection.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/blogger\/-fSHI5wh5n2Y\/T0PyViWE0JI\/AAAAAAACBmM\/MhHGaNW_RzY\/s1600\/images%2B%288%29.jpg\"><\/a><\/span><br \/><span style=\"background-color: white\"><\/span><\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"background-color: white\"><\/span><span><\/span><\/div>\n<div style=\"clear: both;text-align: center\"><span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.catholiconnection.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/blogger\/-5VhkgJXi1kU\/T0PyZYgUXHI\/AAAAAAACBmU\/F8DBkH-s9P8\/s1600\/images%2B2.jpg\" style=\"background-color: white;color: #1155cc;margin-left: 1em;margin-right: 1em\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/www.catholiconnection.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/blogger\/-5VhkgJXi1kU\/T0PyZYgUXHI\/AAAAAAACBmU\/F8DBkH-s9P8\/s1600\/images%2B2.jpg\"><\/a><\/span><br \/><span style=\"background-color: white\"><\/span><\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"background-color: white\"><\/span><span><\/span><\/div>\n<p><span><br \/><\/span><\/p>\n<div style=\"clear: both;text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-Y9EF71bq3lY\/T0QFugdo3NI\/AAAAAAACBnQ\/nrOdvX4y4U8\/s1600\/4causes.jpg\" style=\"clear: right;color: #1155cc;float: right;margin-bottom: 1em;margin-left: 1em\" target=\"_blank\"><span><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" height=\"320\" src=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-Y9EF71bq3lY\/T0QFugdo3NI\/AAAAAAACBnQ\/nrOdvX4y4U8\/s320\/4causes.jpg\" width=\"251\"><\/span><\/a><br \/><span style=\"background-color: white\"><\/span><\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"background-color: white\"><\/span><\/div>\n<p><span>However, illogically, the result focusing on the mere mechanical has for many people acted as a retroactive justification for the incorrect&nbsp;<i>metaphysical<\/i>&nbsp;position that coincided with it.&nbsp;<span class=\"il\">If<\/span>&nbsp;the demonstration of mechanism is all&nbsp;<span class=\"il\">you<\/span>&nbsp;are looking for, it&#8217;s not&nbsp;surprising&nbsp;that is all&nbsp;<span class=\"il\">you<\/span>&nbsp;will find. We are smarter than that. No one can become completely ignorant of the appearance of orientation\/<i>telos<\/i>&nbsp;of the mechanism because we live and breath in it everyday. God&#8217;s existence is necessary because his role is existence itself&#8230;he is that towards which all things are oriented towards for their perfect as Aquinas argues in his five proofs.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #23262a;line-height: 21px;text-align: justify\">Here are some related posts:&nbsp;<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"margin-left: 15px\"><span><span style=\"background-color: white;line-height: 21px\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.battleforthecoreoftheworld.com\/2012\/01\/in-depth-edward-feser-on-biological.html\" style=\"color: #1155cc\" target=\"_blank\">Biological Reductionism<\/a>\n<div><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-left: 15px\"><span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.battleforthecoreoftheworld.com\/2012\/01\/england-metaphysics-banned-from-schools.html\" style=\"color: #1155cc\" target=\"_blank\">England chooses science over the science before science<\/a>\n<div><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-left: 15px\"><span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.battleforthecoreoftheworld.com\/2012\/01\/faith-in-science-part-ii.html\" style=\"color: #1155cc\" target=\"_blank\">Faith in Science Part II<\/a>\n<div><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-left: 15px\"><span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.battleforthecoreoftheworld.com\/2012\/01\/are-we-positive-comte-part-i.html\" style=\"color: #1155cc\" target=\"_blank\">Faith in Science Part I<\/a>\n<div><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Learn&nbsp;these three words: Occasionalism&nbsp; Conservationism &nbsp; Concurrentism&nbsp; These three words summarize the three main worldviews with regard to the relationship between God and the world&#8230;that is every perspective generally fits into one of the three. As a preface, ever since Aristotle was rejected in the &#8220;Enlightenment&#8221;, forms of the first and second views have become [&#8230;]\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15010,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[49,26,55,92,136,67,25,10,137,138,139,7],"class_list":["post-14163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-philosophy","tag-atheism","tag-catholicism","tag-empiricism","tag-faith","tag-mes","tag-metaphysics","tag-modern-philosophy","tag-philosophy","tag-random","tag-saudi-arabia","tag-second-vatican-council","tag-thomas-aquinas"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonhaines.com\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonhaines.com\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonhaines.com\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonhaines.com\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonhaines.com\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jonhaines.com\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonhaines.com\/philosophy\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonhaines.com\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonhaines.com\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonhaines.com\/philosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}