Religion and Science (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Second, on that point is the thought that prophesy creation is item . According to theism, galore(postnominal) of divinitys propertieshis omni skill and omnipotence, his goodness and loveare necessity to him: he has them in all(prenominal)(prenominal) accomplishable world in which he exists. (And since, agree to nigh theist thought, he is a undeniable being, unrivaled that exists in every possible world, he has those properties in every possible world.) non so, however, with his property of creating. He isnt induce, by his genius or some(prenominal)thing else, to draw the world; it is or else a loose execute on his part. Furthermore, given that he does create, he isnt obliged to do so in every particular way, or to create any particular kinds of things; that he has created the kinds of things we actually pick up is again contingent, a empty action on his part. It is this article of faith of the adventure of reverent creation that underwrites the observation al character of red-brick Western science (Ratzsch, 2009). For the earth of the necessary is (for the most part) the country of a priori knowledge; here we work mathematics and system of logic and much philosophy. What is contingent, on the other hand, is the nation or realm of a posteriori knowledge, the choose of knowledge produced by perception, memory, and the empirical methods of science. This family relationship between the contingency of creation and the immenseness of the empirical was recognize very early. accordingly Roger Cotes, from the preface he wrote to Newtons Principia Mathematica: Without all discredit this world, so alter with that variety of forms and motions we see to it in it, could draw near from nothing nevertheless the perfect free will of God directing and presiding over it. From this fountain it is that those laws, which we peal the laws of Nature, have flowed, in which there bulge out many traces of the most wise contrivance, solely n ot the to the lowest degree shadow of necessity. These therefore we must not seek from doubtful conjectures, but chance on them from observations and experiments.