Re: DH Idiocy 1


"Steve Goldfarb" <slg@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:e69lei$e1a$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In <1149785356.998789.80730@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> "Lisa"
<lisa@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:


We all agree there was not a single human author. What are you talking
about?

Gosh, that's adorable, Joel. Maybe you and Steve ought to be battling
this one out. The Flood story, to use one example, appears on the face
of it to look like two stories clumsily combined into one. At least
thus spake Herman. But the only way to judge such a thing is relative
to writings styles of human beings. To suppose that God would
necessarily write the way the average human writer would... well, you
can assume that, but it lacks any basis.

What on earth are you saying? I'm trying to get clarity but to no avail.

Obviously you believe that the Torah is a divine artifact. We get it. Also
obviously, other people do not believe is a divine artifact. You seem to
be trying to make some sort of conclusion at this level - that anyone who
doesn't accept that the Torah is a divine artifact is... something. Or, to
say it another way, I interpret something you wrote earlier as meaning,
roughly, that any theory that begins with the premise that the Torah is
anything but a divine artifact is inherently circular in nature.

If I understand Lisa's arguments correctly, then there are certain
parallels between the arguments that she puts forth in defense of
the thesis that the Torah is a divine artifact that the arguments
that advocates of ID (intelligent design) put forth in defense of
their position. Advocates of ID like William Dembske, Michael
Behe, Phil Johnson etc. complain that usually presented
presumes naturalism as a philosophical starting point,
therby ruling out intelligent design (ID) on grounds
that ID is supernatural. That sounds to me much
like the complaint that Lisa has against the advocates
of the Documentary Hypothesis.

But is that a fair complaint? I would submit that
such is not the case. Just as science as it is actually
practiced does not invoke metaphysical assumptions
about causes having to be strictly natural in order
to conduct its inquiry, neither, it seems to me, do the
advocates of the Documentary Hypothesis. As I
understand it, science operates without a priori
ontological commitments as to what sorts of entities
might exist. It need not make such claims in advance,
and indeed to make them might very well bias inquiry.
Science is, and should be, open to the existence of any
entity which gains sufficient empirical, theoretical
support in the course of scientific investigation and explanation.

Nevertheless, while science does not presume naturalism
as such, scientific inquiry does tend by its very nature to
unify our understanding of the world, and such unity is indeed
supportive of naturalism. The basic characteristics of scientific
explanation
are such that phenomena will be connected within theories across
different levels (from molecules to galaxies) and types (from neurons
to consciousness to culture). The success of science lies exactly in
demonstrating that empirically grounded fundamental laws,
constants, and particles (whether conceived as matter or energy) are
the universal building blocks from which all other phenomena in
its purview are constructed. The world described by science is of a
piece, and necessarily so, since scientific explanations are just those
which show how phenomenon X arises as a function of phenomena
Y and Z. Whatever becomes the object of scientific investigation will,
if the investigation is successful, be incorporated within the single,
unified understanding that is the goal of science. Therefore, while
scientific theories have and will continue to change in response
to new objects of inquiry, the goal of science does not change.

It seems to me that likewise the advocates of DH are committed to
developing a scientific analysis of how the Torah was written.
If the supporters of DH (who otherwise might be quite religious)
do not invoke God in their explanations as to how the Torah
or other texts have come to be written, it is because they find
that such supernaturalist explanations make poor scientific
hypotheses. Now a friend of mine has elaborated on-line
what he sees as some of the characteristics of good scientific
explanations (See http://www.naturalism.org/science.htm#explanation).
He emphasizes that good scientific explanations science seek to
provide "the simplest and most parsimonious peer-reviewed
explanations, based on empirical, intersubjective evidence."
That, science "seeks testable, verifiable, and transparently
mechanistic or specifiable explanations for phenomena -
no mysterious or unspecifiable processes play a more than a
passing role in scientific accounts."

Now if we were to make a comparative assessment of
the Documentary Hypothesis versus the thesis that
the Torah was divinely authored, in terms of their
being competiting scientific explanations, then it
seems to me that the DH wins hands down in satisfying
more of these requirements than the supernaturalist alternative
hypothesis. That does
not mean that it necessarily true, but simply that it
possesses more of the characteristics of a good scientific
explanation than the supernaturalist alternative that
is being championed her by Lisa.



Are you in fact saying that? Or something akin to that?

--s
--



.

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