[Buddha-l] Re: Fighting Creationism

[SJZiobro at cs.com]

(In a message dated 4/3/2007 9:14:39 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
jehms at xs4all.nl writes: 
> Hi Stan,
> both the analogia and the eminentia would not pass Kant's criticism of 
> metaphysics. Both are models taken from the phenomenal world that are 
> applied to the noumenal. Maybe we can meet each other there, it's about 
> halfway. I would be the first to admit that the scientific theories are 
> models too and that the origin of the universe lies beyond the scope of 
> scientific investigation. This agrees completely with the teaching of 
> the Buddha and with the separation between samv.rti and paramaartha satya.
> The evolution of biological species however is a theory and model that 
> has been and will be tested over and over again. This is not the case 
> with creationism. OK, I admit that to say that the fittest survives 
> contains a circularity, it's like saying that the richest has most 
> money. But the principle of striving to survive and selection by 
> competition seems to be sound. Another problem is that creationism has 
> to remain rather vague, because no one can tell exactly how God did the 
> job, whereas genetic biology can tell in great detail how species 
> change. So on pure pragmatic grounds creationism doesn't stand a chance 
> and if we remember that the only reason creationism has been put forward 
> is that some people cannot accept the duplex ordo, then it appears to be 
> a matter of scientific hygiene never to accept it.
> 

Erik,

This is all very engaging, even if I have my reservations about Kant. For 
instance, he conceives of an Ich denke (cogito) as a formal (or empty) condition 
for the possibility of thinking objective contents, but merely positing a 
thinker thinking does not necessarily reduce to a concrete being intelligently 
asking and rationally answering questions. Phenomena appear, but they do not act 
or perform. Even though he posits a noumenon -- and he needs to -- it is 
conceptually useless in the knowledge of things. I'm not sure how this would 
equate, ultimately, with a coherent criticism of metaphysics since he cannot even 
acount for concrete, extramental being(s). As a critical idealist, he cannot 
really account for anything more than a picture world in which the Anschauung is 
ultimately a matter of looking at these pictures. But now I am digressing. 
With reference to your rightly pointing out that the way of the analogia entis 
and of the via eminentia being models with a basis in phenomena, I will posit 
the following. We apparently are not content to simply ask what something, 
anything in the phenomenal realm, is; and the via analogia entis does not satisfy 
our pure, unrestricted, and simple desire to know immaterial things. But 
perhaps this desire to know all reality finds an echo in the Kantian notion of the 
transcendental illusion, even as Kant denies to us any real knowledge of a 
truly transcendental Cause.

I do agree with you entirely that scientific models cannot ultimately account 
for the why of the universe. It is for this reason I consider that 
scientists, when they begin to makes claims relative to the "why" of the universe, cease 
speaking as scientists. At this point they are no longer doing science, and 
their remarks are open to the critical protocols of philosophers and 
theologians. When they are speaking properly as scientists operating within their own 
sphere of competence it is the turn of philosophers and theologians to listen 
carefully. I have a question about the Madhyamaka notion of samv.rti and 
paramaartha satya. Does it really apply without any dissonance to the subject at 
hand, namely, the seeming divide between science and philosophy (or reason and 
faith)? I guess what I'm asking is whether the notion of the two truths 
necessarily involves contradiction (with each simplex register operative in a sphere 
unbridgeable with the other), or might it involve something more coherent? Are 
both are actually complementary with the paramaartha satya "containing" the 
samv.rti such that the latter will always reduce in some manner to the former? 
Another way of putting the question is to ask whether any lower order truth can 
really, actually, radically contradict a truth of a higher order? In the 
context of this thread, does the descriptive power of genetic biology outlining a 
process of change really stand in opposition to the "why" of the process in the 
first place? 

Regards,

Stan    
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