Lewis on 'closed-system' naturalism

[Interplanner]

“Religion and Science”
C.S. Lewis (Literature, Oxford, d.1955) in GOD IN THE DOCK, #7 abridged

“Miracles,” said my friend, “Oh, come. Science has knocked the bottom out of all that. We know that Nature is governed by fixed laws.”

“But, don't you see,” said I, “that science never could show that anything [was beyond Nature]?”

“Why on earth not?”

“Because science studies Nature. And the question is whether anything besides Nature exists—anything “outside.” How could you find that out by studying simply Nature?'

“Look here,” he said “Could this 'something outside' that you talk about make two and two five?”

“Well, no,” said I.

“All right. The idea of their being altered is as absurd as the idea of altering the laws of math.”

“Half a moment. Suppose you put a nickel into a drawer today and another in the same drawer tomorrow. Do the laws of arithmetic make it certain that you'll find 15 cents there the next day?”

“Of course, provided no one one's been tampering with your drawer.”

“Ah, but that's the whole point,” I said. “The laws of arithmetic can tell you what you'll find, with absolute certainty, provided that there's no interference. If a thief has been at the drawer of course you'll get a different result. But the thief won't have broken the laws of math—only the laws of the land. Now, aren't the laws of Nature much in the same boat? Don't they all tell you what will happen provided there's no interference?...The laws will tell you how a billiard ball will travel on a smooth surface if you hit it in a particular way—but only provided no one interferes. If they do, you won't get what the scientist predicted.”

“No, of course not. He can't allow for monkey tricks like that.”

“Quite. And in the same way, if there was anything outside Nature, and if it interfered—then the events which the scientist expected wouldn't follow. That would be what we call a miracle. In one sense it wouldn't break the laws of Nature...But they can't tell you if something is going to interfere. I mean, it is not the expert at math who can tell you how likely someone is to interfere with the pennies in my drawer. A detective, or a psychologist, or a metaphysician would be better.”

 

[fzappa13]

Our ability to envision something beyond what we see is central to the Cristian faith and it is what trips up most Christians when they try and reconcile the various ideas offered in the Bible. A dichotomy for sure but I believe it is perceptual and not actual. Call it faith ...

 

[Interplanner]

Hmmm, I'm not sure this response goes with this 'conversation.' Can you say why? this is about the blindspot created by 'closed system' naturalism since T. Huxley. Miracles are villified, but only because those people chose to 'close' their universes.

 

[Jose Fly]

So if there is more to our universe than "natural" phenomena, where are the non-natural things? Everything we ever study turns out to be entirely natural. We look deep into the corners of the universe and all we ever see are natural events playing out. We look into atoms and sub-atomic particles and all we ever see are natural events playing out. Everywhere we look, all we see are natural events.

On what basis then should we go against all our observations and conclude that non-natural phenomena are a part of our universe?

 

[Stuu]

The 'fixed laws' are a bit of an illusion. Physics isn't a religion with fixed dogmas, it is exactly the reverse. Models of how the universe behaves are made (usually using maths) and those models are tested. The models that survive the testing become theories. The behaviours that appear to be unvarying become laws. The two aren't quite the same thing, and I would argue that the laws of physics aren't strictly a proper outcome of physics. Those laws could be broken, which would require a new theory that accounts for the variation in behaviour. That's exactly what has happened in physics over the past couple of centuries.

The miracles industry (and is sure is an industry, especially in the Catholic church) represents conveniently lazy thinking. Little effort is made by religions to investigate their alleged deviations in the 'laws of nature' properly because it is in their interests to preserve apparently insoluble mysteries. That's their niche business.

So whenever you see someone claiming that they know a phenomenon is 'outside nature', I recommend laughing heartily at that lazy thinker. As Jose Fly is saying above, 'nature' can be whatever we decide it is, and those who exclude their world of gods and demons from it are just indulging in special pleading.

Stuart

 

[Interplanner]

OK, so let's go to the first miracle of Jesus. He first claims to forgive some paralysed person's sins. Any miracle "industrialist" could do that, right? His opposition took offense at the claim because of what it means in Judaism: that he was assuming the role of God. I mention this in case you think the account is a fabrication; the opposition is real; the follower of orthodox Judaism at that time and place in the 1st century was taught to ostracize such a person, perhaps to stone them. Death was preferred to ostracization, because you had to leave the area and completely start over your life including where you bought bread.

So what follows? He asks his opposition: 'which is easier: to say (that) to the paralytic or to say 'get up, roll up your mat, and walk?' Then he advances the encounter by saying that in order for his opponents to know (epistemology) he is God forgiving sins, he will heal and raise the paralytic at will.

Several hundred saw this happen, but that does not matter as much as two other things: that the opponents saw this and had their belief system shattered and 2, that the rest of the story falls apart at that point if it is not true on both its unseen and seen sides. It has been called the miniature of Christ's ministry for that reason. There is no gospel account if this event is fabrication. That's true whether you are looking at his at-will miracles or at his claims and most important: as to the opposition and their acts. You've probably heard: they killed him.

So I guess you don't accept a 'closed system' after all. Because what you wrote wriggles out of it.

Dr. S. Austin, geologist, UW, was told in 1968 not to pursue his interests in catastrophism because there would be no jobs for him. Today, almost all scientific colleagues he knows are catastrophists.

Gen 1's day 3 and the 6's flood are "catastrophist" in the sense that they are "interference" (--Lewis) with clear intentions. The mountains are pushed around, the plates are folded, slid, moved. The magma chambers are burst. The ground water is steamed providing all the moisture that the flood account is referring to, whether from Adam to Noah or during the deluge described by Noah. Up to 600 ancient tribes have independent accounts (I don't know that all of them refer to events outside their perimeters) of such major, catastrophic flooding. We have piles of dinosaurs smashed, bent, folded, crushed in slurry from these times. We have 150 miles of 2 meters deep of nautiloids in slurry from Arizona to Nevada ending up in totally random orientation (they normally end up flat, horizontal on a calm ocean floor) and from all age groups of them (not the feeblest). The Colorado plateau was ocean floor pushed up over a mile, and the Grand Canyon could form in months as did the "Little Grand Canyon" did at Mt St Helens in 1980.

So I'm a little confused at your theoretics about theory. It would really help me to know you had your nose in actual data. You never mention exact times, places, instances. You just have one doctrinaire denominator: that there can't be a person Creator who can communicate propositionally, and whose acts into a history are there to reinforce things said about it by Him. And yet you belong to a "science" where the rules change all the time, and where physics is not guided by...well...physics.

If it looks like a worldwide deluge, acts like it, evidences like it...

 

[Danoh]

OK, so let's go to the first miracle of Jesus. He first claims to forgive some paralysed person's sins. Any miracle "industrialist" could do that, right? His opposition took offense at the claim because of what it means in Judaism: that he was assuming the role of God. I mention this in case you think the account is a fabrication; the opposition is real; the follower of orthodox Judaism at that time and place in the 1st century was taught to ostracize such a person, perhaps to stone them. Death was preferred to ostracization, because you had to leave the area and completely start over your life including where you bought bread.

So what follows? He asks his opposition: 'which is easier: to say (that) to the paralytic or to say 'get up, roll up your mat, and walk?' Then he advances the encounter by saying that in order for his opponents to know (epistemology) he is God forgiving sins, he will heal and raise the paralytic at will.

Several hundred saw this happen, but that does not matter as much as two other things: that the opponents saw this and had their belief system shattered and 2, that the rest of the story falls apart at that point if it is not true on both its unseen and seen sides. It has been called the miniature of Christ's ministry for that reason. There is no gospel account if this event is fabrication. That's true whether you are looking at his at-will miracles or at his claims and most important: as to the opposition and their acts. You've probably heard: they killed him.

So I guess you don't accept a 'closed system' after all. Because what you wrote wriggles out of it...

Actually, this person obviously does accept "a closed system;" just a different one, as was the case in your above example.

As with that closed system that reviled the blind man whom Jesus healed, when he was questioned by the Scribes and the Pharisees, in their unbelief - John 9:

28. Then they reviled him, and said, Thou art his disciple; but we are Moses' disciples.
29. We know that God spake unto Moses: as for this fellow, we know not from whence he is.

Fact of the matter, per the narrative, in light of Isaiah 8:20?

Luke 4:

16. And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read.
17. And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written,
18. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,
19. To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.
20. And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him.
21. And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.
22. And all bare him witness, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth. And they said, Is not this Joseph's son?
23. And he said unto them, Ye will surely say unto me this proverb, Physician, heal thyself: whatsoever we have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in thy country.
24. And he said, Verily I say unto you, No prophet is accepted in his own country.

Luke 7:

19. And John calling unto him two of his disciples sent them to Jesus, saying, Art thou he that should come? or look we for another?
20. When the men were come unto him, they said, John Baptist hath sent us unto thee, saying, Art thou he that should come? or look we for another?
21. And in that same hour he cured many of their infirmities and plagues, and of evil spirits; and unto many that were blind he gave sight.
22. Then Jesus answering said unto them, Go your way, and tell John what things ye have seen and heard; how that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor the gospel is preached.

Romans 1:

20. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
21. Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.

Its just a repeat of more of the same "closed system" against the above other, itself a necessarily "closed system," given the unbelief of men.

 

[Interplanner]

He was trying to un-close it by saying that the laws of physics are not really laws in the modern view.

 

[Danoh]

He was trying to un-close it by saying that the laws of physics are not really laws in the modern view.

From within their own closed system - that is ever the case within such instances - lol, never mind, Inter.

 

[Stuu]

OK, so let's go to the first miracle of Jesus. He first claims to forgive some paralysed person's sins. Any miracle "industrialist" could do that, right? His opposition took offense at the claim because of what it means in Judaism: that he was assuming the role of God. I mention this in case you think the account is a fabrication; the opposition is real; the follower of orthodox Judaism at that time and place in the 1st century was taught to ostracize such a person, perhaps to stone them. Death was preferred to ostracization, because you had to leave the area and completely start over your life including where you bought bread.

So what follows? He asks his opposition: 'which is easier: to say (that) to the paralytic or to say 'get up, roll up your mat, and walk?' Then he advances the encounter by saying that in order for his opponents to know (epistemology) he is God forgiving sins, he will heal and raise the paralytic at will.

Several hundred saw this happen, but that does not matter as much as two other things: that the opponents saw this and had their belief system shattered and 2, that the rest of the story falls apart at that point if it is not true on both its unseen and seen sides. It has been called the miniature of Christ's ministry for that reason. There is no gospel account [because] this event is fabrication. That's true whether you are looking at his at-will miracles or at his claims and most important: as to the opposition and their acts. You've probably heard: they killed him.

I've bolded the part that I think must be the conclusion of a proper historian. Jesus probably existed, because of all the fabricating of history the gospel writers had to do to make him fit prophecies in the Jewish bible. It is reasonable to say he was executed by the Romans. Nothing else has any credibility. It is not reasonable to say you can know anything Jesus said or did during his life. Saul of Tarsus doesn't mention any miracles of Jesus, and he was the only clearly identifiable christian writer linking the time of the apparent execution of Jesus with the apparent time of the writing of the synoptic gospel accounts.

So I guess you don't accept a 'closed system' after all. Because what you wrote wriggles out of it.

It's not clear whether you are addressing that to me. In case you are, I have not the faintest clue what you mean by a 'closed system'. I know what that means in the context of thermodynamics, but I suspect you don't.

Dr. S. Austin, geologist, UW, was told in 1968 not to pursue his interests in catastrophism because there would be no jobs for him. Today, almost all scientific colleagues he knows are catastrophists.

Or it could be because he is a history-denier.

Stuart