W. Gary Crampton is one of, one suspects, a scary number of
people with a certain view of the relationship between religion and science.
Crampton is associated with The Trinity Foundation, which also has something to
do with John Lofton but is run by one John R. Robbins (who seems to be an enormously prolific producer
of unhinged bullshit). They seem to have an annual “Christian Worldview Essay
contest”, an opportunity for kids to write blithe, sheepy-eyed praise of the
monstrously delusional Calvinist theologian Gordon Clark (famous as the main
defender of presuppositional apologetics,
who claimed single-handedly to have refuted all of philosophy and all of
science; therefore the Bible is inerrant.
In any case, this is Crampton’s background, and he seems to
be a fair representative of the tradition with his essay “The Biblical View of
Science” (discussed here).
His view of science is, fundamentally, that science “does not explain how the
laws of nature work, nor does it accurately define or describe things. Science
does not discover truth; it is a method for dominating and utilizing nature.”
Why not? Well, Crampton claims that the problem of induction shows that
scientific knowledge is impossible, and notes that since observation is
sometimes unreliable, scientific knowledge is never certain, hence science
doesn’t provide truth, hence scientific claims obtained by experiment and
observation are always false. Instead “[t]ruth is found in the Scriptures
alone; the Bible has a monopoly on truth. It is God's Word that must be
believed, not the experiments of men.” Spotting the flaws in Crampton’s
argument is left as an exercise (that he seems not to know what ‘truth’ means
is only a symptom). To end it with a flourish, Crampton quotes Robbins:
“Science is false, and must always be false. Scripture is true and must always
be true. The issue is as clear, and as simple, as that.”
Diagnosis: Apparently progress got off the rails with Plato.
Good thing Crampton and Robbins are there to tell us how to get epistemology
back on track,far from the Satanic blind alleys of careful observation,
science, induction, reason, justification, rationality, critical thinking,
knowledge, reality, confirmation, accuracy, veracity, experiments, logic, evidence,
or truth.
No comments:
Post a Comment