In my perhaps naive point of view, the point of a miracle is that it CAN'T happen, but DOES. The word has been somewhat secularised - a single mother in need of expensive, life-saving surgery for her six kids wins lotto and we call it a miracle. But it isn't. Why? Because a woman in that situation CAN win lotto. If, however, her six kids died and then woke up three days later, wandered around and then said 'cheerio' and went to heaven, THAT would be a miracle. As has already been pointed out, science has shown that it is impossible for people to rise from the dead.

Now, many miracles have large numbers of witnesses. To disprove the supernatural nature of these events, it is pointless for scientists to tell those people that the event can't happen - they already know that, and that is why they are so stunned when it does. They need to prove that the event didn't happen. The Virgin Mary didn't talk to a few little kids at Fatima. Christ died and stayed dead. Proving that something can't happen without proving that it didn't just reasserts the traditional religious point of view that miracles exist and are outside the boundaries of scientific understanding.

Mick,
as I said, I am not a biologist and so cannot pass judgement on the QUALITY of those specialists who do not accept any version of the theory of evolution. I can only observe the QUANTITY: the number of those who accept the theory vastly exceeds the number of those who do not. I think you are not a lesser Christian when you accept that some people’s faith can be inspired by an interpretation of evolution theory, or Einstein’s relativity, or quantum mechanics, since there is nothing in the Bible that goes explicitly against these twentieth century theories; theories that our ancestors could never have understood.

waterboy,
I liked your wordplay literary vs literal, and at second thought also your example of Macbeth, which - in distinction to some pure fiction, like Harry Potter or Star Trek - is anchored in historical facts, and thus a good approximation (though not equivalent to) the Bible story.

As to the term consciousness I meant simply that quality which makes humans different from other oraginic units (or inorganic ones: computers). Sometimes the terms self-awareness, intelligence, sentience etc. are used and consciousness is preserved for a lower “self-awareness”. The entry in Wikipedia agrees with my use: “Consciousness is a characteristic of the mind generally regarded to comprise qualities such as subjectivity, self-awareness, sentience, sapience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and one's environment.” In spite of these big words, scientists still do not know how to handle that “emergent” property (in distinction to another one, life, which they are further in understanding of how it arises).

I agree that in the everyday use of the word, also a dog is conscious (one says he is unconscious, the same as a human, when anaesthetised).

waterboy, Mick,
your controversies illustrate, I suspect, the need for some arbiter to carve a balance between the extremes of a literal exegesis and an exegesis that is determined only by what science and history (or just personal preferences) can confirm/accept. This arbiter might or might not be the “teaching authority” (Magisterium?) of this or that Church.

George, I appreciate your attempts to explain some of the concepts that you have offered in more detail, but I regret that they haven't helped a great deal.

The core problem I have with this batch of posts is your use of the term "uninterpreted", in relation to both religion and science.

>>Everybody more or less agrees on what (natural) science means<<

Well, yes, as far as it goes. But are you saying that "natural" science is the same as "uninterpreted" science. Surely, if no-one is observing it, science - in the sense that natural phenomena explained by science, as opposed to a belief system, can be assumed to go on without any interference from ourselves. Unless of course you happen to be an existentialist, in which case we instantly move into "science interpreted" territory.

You go on to assert that:

>>“Uninterpreted” science... is simply what all scientists (with comparable qualifications) agree upon, irrespective of their world views, irrespective of whether they believe in a God or not<<

But... but... surely, if there is even a need for them to agree on something, there must be a step in between where they have laid down definitions, established groundrules etc. - all in an attempt to interpret the natural phenomenon they are observing?

I also have grave difficulty with the concept of "uninterpreted" religion. Clifford Geertz’s anthropological definition is clear enough - again, as far as it goes. But it fails to tell us anything about religion in its raw state - in other words, the definition only holds value when it is qualified by the presence of a defined religion e.g. Christianity.

There would seem to be little point, therefore in the concept of either uninterpreted religion, or uninterpreted science. Both require interpretation before they can be of any use to anyone.

Am I missing something important here?

Mick

A few things we learn from I Corinthians and chapters 13 and 15 in particular:

1. From the earliest days of the Church there has been vigorous debate over the interpretation of the resurrection story.

2. Paul was quite prepared to adapt what he was saying to suit his audience. In these passages he draws heavily on the language of Platonic philosophy to engage the Hellenistic Corinthians in the debate over the nature of the resurrection.

While Paul rejects a heavily Platonic interpretation, it is evident that Christianity as a whole, from its inception, was much influenced by Platonic philosophy and other ideas current within the milieu of those times. We do not all believe in the same way. Diversity has always been present within the Church.

The point is that the resurrection needs to be understood for what it is, theological reflection on the significance of Jesus' life, teaching, death and His relationship to God. Death, physical death, does not render life meaningless. Even in physical death Jesus rose up to regenerate His disciple's faith, restore hope and remain present to His followers as they formed themselves into the early Church.

Accepting the resurrection uncritically as biographical fact is not necessary for faith. Perhaps it is necessary for acceptance into some Churches but that is not the same thing as faith. Just as courage is not about the absence of fear, so faith is not about absence of doubt. Faith is not particularly about what you 'believe', rather it is what you do today and tomorrow to follow Jesus in spite of your doubts.

Pericles,
let me start with the term science (the adjective ‘natural’ in English is implicit, and used explicitly only to distinguish it from ‘social science’). It studies phenomena that do not involve humans directly, (though psychology seems to be an exception). Within natural science it is not much of a restriction to view the subject (the researcher) as being placed outside the object of research. [This, of course, is not the case where religion is involved.]

Another presupposition of science is the (belief in the) existence of a (material) world independent of the observer (it is the solipsist not existentialist, who denies this). A third presupposition of science is its ability to know the truth about this world, a knowledge that is essentially independent of the researcher and his/her environment. Here “knowledge” means a PROCESS, rather than something arrived at, now or in the future, and fixed for ever. Of course, these three do not constitute the complete list of presuppositions (beliefs) every scientists tacitly assumes even before embarking on his/her research. [There are post-modernists who deny the ability of science to know, or rather pursue, the truth independent of the scientist and his/her beliefs; they believe natural science is socially constructed.]

This brings me to “uninterpreted” science, which I put in quotation marks exactly because I was aware of its fuzziness. The term “interpretation” means many things for philosophers and human or social scientists. I use the simplest definition, interpretation=explanation of what is not immediately plain or explicit, where by “immediately plain” I mean from within science when speaking about science (or religion, when speaking about religion). Something like if you are a pure mathematician you can understand many things from within mathematics, without knowing what is their use, their application in science. So you are right, that I could have dropped the adjective “uninterpreted”, meaning simply science, including observations, definitions and theories based upon them, plus any conclusions that can be drawn/explained from within science without bringing a disputed world view into play. The latter condition I summarized in “on what all scientists agree upon”. (ctd)

(ctd) An interpretation of science in this context would mean taking into account some wider world-view that includes an attitude, positive or negative, to religion, acceptance of these or those presuppositions that include, but go beyond, those shared by all scientists. Such interpretation is, of course, personal and/or culture-bound. There are many “non-sequiturs” (when viewed from within science) in e.g. Dawkins’ books on Darwinism and genetics, and I have recently read a popular book on physics, written by a Christian physicist, that contained similar scientific “non-sequiturs” explainable only from within the Christian faith.

In case of religion things are more complicated. First of all, I agree with your remark about Geertz’s definition: In English there is a difference between religion as such, studied by anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, and a particular religion, e.g. Christianity. Something like language as defined by linguists, and e.g. the English language. There is nothing similar in the case of science, because there is only one science but many religions; even of the “higher” ones there are about half-a-dozen. So I should have spoken of “uninterpreted Christianity” to keep to what I think I understand best. Again, I could have dropped the adjective. This describes everything my religion means for me, which has not only rational, but also emotional and ethical components (the emotional and ethical components in science are either negligible or depend on world-view interpretation) while “bracketing” what I know from science and philosophy thereof.

For some people “bracketing” means ignoring (e.g. the extreme literalists), for others it is a permanent state of mind (they are “Christians on Sunday and scientists on weekdays”), and for others, including myself, bracketing means just an intermediary state: I know what I know from science (or rather maths where I am more at home), I live a Christian life as best as I can, and spend my time in retirement thinking about the relation between these two approaches to truth (reflected also in the proliferation of literature on the topic in the last two decades), sometimes trying to resolve various "cognitive dissonancies".