Religious Views vs. Secular Views

[Scarberry, Mark]

With reference to raft trips through the Grand Canyon (and begging the
moderator's indulgence for one off-topic response):

The fact that two groups of persons interpret evidence differently and reach
different conclusions does not show that there are two truths. At least one
of the groups is in error. The notion that there are two levels of truth --
a religious level and a secular level -- is, I think, a notion that many
Christian philosophers (and others) have opposed over the centuries and up
to the present. If I'm not mistaken, such a notion was brought forward in
Europe in the High Renaissance to explain how the church's teachings could
be reconciled with Aristotle. Aquinas rejected the notion and instead
incorporated Aristotle's insights into Christian thinking as part of one
truth. I think John Paul II, not a philosophic slouch, agreed with Aquinas.
On the contemporary Protestant side, I think Alvin Plantinga also would
agree that there is only one truth. (Though I don't remember him making that
specific point, I think it is implicit in his 3 volume set on epistemology.)
 
Scientific truth and religious truth are not hermetically sealed (not even,
for Johnny Carson fans, in a mayonnaise jar on Funk & Wagnall's porch).
Scientific evidence suggests very strongly (to say the least) that the Earth
is much more than 10,000 years old; that may influence a Christian's or
Jew's interpretation of the first few chapters of Genesis, making a
nonliteral interpretation seem more reasonable than it otherwise would seem.
I cannot believe, as a matter of supposed religious truth, that the Earth is
10,000 or so years old, and also believe, as a matter of scientific truth,
that the Earth is several billion years old. There is one truth as to the
age of the Earth.

Mark S. Scarberry
Pepperdine University School of Law
 

-----Original Message-----
From: dr dow - univ. [mailto:ddow at uh.edu] 
Sent: Thursday, October 06, 2005 11:52 AM
To: CONLAWPROF at lists.ucla.edu
Subject: Re: Religious Views vs. Secular Views

not only is mcconnell wrong,  as larry says, what he says is ganz 
false.  anyone who thinks that "truth is truth," that there are not 
religious truths and secular truths but only Truth itself, has missed at 
least a century's worth of intellectual history, and probably closer to 
three centuries' worth.  you can get a cliffs notes version of how wrong he 
is by reading today's nytimes story on the two groups of grand canyon 
rafters.  the story can be found at the following link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/06/science/sciencespecial2/06canyon.html?hp&e
x=1128657600&en=8fc8f41ec2ec6c4e&ei=5094&partner=homepage

i think it is obvious that if, instead of two groups of rafters, we had two 
groups of judges, there would be little doubt that they would decide many 
cases differently based precisely on their differing conceptions of truth.