Silk for calde blog: Wolfe thesis

Jeff Wilson · 19 Dec 2009, 19:44 · from 2009-December.txt.gz

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From: jwilson at io.com (Jeff Wilson)
Date: Sat, 19 Dec 2009 13:44:20 -0600
Subject: (urth) Silk for calde blog: Wolfe thesis
In-Reply-To: <e815e3c90912181957l103ebd5cl76b13e5548d9a5af at mail.gmail.com>
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Message-ID: <4B2D2D14.4060106 at io.com>

Matthew Weber wrote:
> 
> 
> On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 7:31 PM, Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com 
> <mailto:jwilson at io.com>> wrote:
> 
>     brunians at brunians.org <mailto:brunians at brunians.org> wrote:
> 
>         It is certainly scientific in the old sense.
> 
>         It has been gone over for a long time by some brilliant people
>         and the
>         loose ends are pretty much all tied up.
> 
> 
>     How about transubstantiation, and other unobservable unfalsifiables?
> 
> 
> Could you unpack what you mean by "transubstantiation"?  Where I come 
> from, the word is used to describe a theory of how the Real Presence in 
> the Eucharist works; a theory couched in 13th-century neo-Aristotelian 
> philosophico-scientific terms. 

It is a conjecture that in the sacrament of Holy Communion the substance 
of the bread and wine literally becomes the substance of the flesh and 
blood of Jesus Christ, while the species, the appearance available to 
the senses remains exactly as before. To be a scientific theory, this 
would have to be supported by a body of observations and experiments 
that would show a different result if the conjecture were false. Not 
only has this not been done by the Church's thinkers, people attempting 
to procure samples of the Eucharist for examination are harassed and 
charged with kidnapping and assault, and falsification has been 
discouraged historically by threat of anathema, despite the continuity 
of species making it unfalsifiable by definition.

> Look at any of the great works of systematic theology (Thomas's Summa, 
> John Damascene's Exposition, Lombard's Sentences).  There's nothing 
> wrong with the reasoning in any of these works, and they proceed in an 
> orderly, rational, and coherent fashion.  Whether you find them credible 
> will depend, of course, on whether you accept their basic assumptions.  
> Criticizing them for not following the methods of 21st century science 
> is a bit like criticizing theoretical mathematics for not having a good 
> beat.  That's not what they're /for/.

The methods of 21st century science are also those of 17th century 
Galilean science and the 11th century Book of Optics, but I agree that 
scientific rigor is not what religious texts are for. I think that their 
highest purpose is explaining that religion is useful despite being 
primarily concerned with things that are not subject to scientific inquiry.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
IEEE Student Chapter Blog at
< http://ieeetamut.org >

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