Dear Fr. Ivo, As usual, you make many categorical assertions without providing any reasons for making them. In fact, you are repeating some of the same statements you have made several times before. All of these statements have been refuted or questioned by me or someone else. So I will only make brief comments in responses to your assertions, and provide links to my past refutations of your unsubstantiated claims.
--- "Fr. Ivo Da C. Souza" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >Your basic error is not to admit the limits of >empirical Science, which you are absolutizing. > Not true at all. I am the quintessential agnostic from all points of view. I do not claim to know if there are any limits to science or not. Neither science nor I claim to know the absolute truth. Science does not know how to recognize absolute truth even if it stumbled upon it. How do you know there are limits to science? Do you know the absolute truth? I have stated these views of mine several times in this forum in many different ways. Here is a link to one such post sent in response to Fr. Ivo making a similar charge against me: http://www.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet/2004-January/009417.html > >1.Mathematical-scientific methods are limited, >particularly in respect of the ever-greater reality. > How do you know this to be true? What is the ever-greater reality? > >2.Scientific theories are models that can be revised >from time to time. > Yes. That is the greatness of science. With each revision we achieve a better understanding, and a better technology and genuine advancement is possible. Some revisions have led to insights with a very high degree of accuracy and certainty, such as the fact that the earth revolves round the sun. > >3. God cannot be empirically verified and analyzed >like other objects. > Science does not want to verify or analyze god at all. God is not a scientific hypothesis. It is an unnecessary and unsupported abstract construct from the scientific standpoint. Science has no use for it. > > 4.Bible does not contradict Science. > I have thoroughly refuted this statement before. Here are the link for these refutations: http://www.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet/2004-January/009063.html http://www.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet/2004-January/009140.html http://www.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet/2004-January/009154.html http://www.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet/2004-January/009404.html Other Goanetters have questioned you about it in utter disbelief before. > >5.You need not try to substitute belief in Science >for belief in God. > A strange remark and utterly false! Why would I even want to do that? > >6. The God of the Bible is not identical with the God >of the ancient world picture, with that of Hindu >faith, or with the God of the Greek philosophy... > Everybody knows that. The real question for believers is which God is the true God and why? For science it is a non-issue. > >7. I am for critical rationality, but against an >ideological rationalism, or absolutization of the >rational factor. > Science is not an ideology. It is a method to objectively validate observations and evaluate natural explanations for them. > >Even Religion can degenerate into an ideology, to >which we are opposed... > Religion is an ideology. All religious beliefs are dogmatic views and ideas that do not require objective evidence to support them, and are often held in spite of evidence to the contrary. > >8.Both scientists and theologians must constantly >seek the truth afresh, each according to their own >different methods. > I am surprised by this assertion. For scientists this is old hat. But do theologians seek truth afresh? Can you tell me which core religious beliefs have been revised by theological "reflection" and "discernment" lately, and why? > >9.Modern empirical Science employs its methods, such >as quantifying, formalizing, mathematicizing. But they >are not adequate for the understanding of the world of >the qualitative and of such specifically human >phenomena as smiling, humour, music, art, suffering, >love, faith, in all their dimensions. > Not true at all. Today's science addresses all these issues, and has already made substantial progress in understanding them. Here is a link to my earlier refutation of an assertion such as the above: http://www.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet/2004-January/008900.html http://www.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet/2004-January/008940.html http://www.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet/2004-January/009008.html > >Questions of the human psyche and society,.... > These are also being addressed by science today. I myself am involved in understanding the human psyche. See my earlier links. > >10. You should not overlook the hypothetical >character of the theories and laws of the natural >sciences, and regard their conclusions as absolute. > I have already addressed this non-issue above. Cheers, Santosh
