Aug 18, 2005

de dominium tilde

[Cross-posted over at the evangelical outpost]

I'm reminded of a silly, sarcastic post over at IDtheFuture where Paul Nelson tried to ironically show that simply negating a statement shouldn't change its epistemological status. I always had a nagging suspicion he was wrong, and now I see why.

Contrast these statements:

(1) A designer intentionally designed creatures. (Scientific, according to Nelson, Dembski, Behe, et. al.)

~ (1), or, It is not the case that a designer intentionally designed creatures.
(Outside the bounds of science, according to Plantinga)

Hey, presto! Magic is indeed possible, thanks to the tilde.

1 comment:

Andrew M. Bailey said...

In all fairness, I don't think Al would say (1) is scientific either. The tension here seems to be between Plantinga and the ID folk, not any internal inconsistency in either of their respective positions.