Can you reconcile metaphyics and science?
At best metaphysical arguments violate Occam’s razor. They are not scientific and argue for a very different world view.
The problem is that some people want to hold up unjusitified beliefs as justified.
They do not argue for a different world view, they depend upon it. And since that world view is considered in parallel with the scientific world view, not in conflict with it, you seem to be getting very upset over something that is not harming either you or its adherents.
Didn’t you know? William of Ockham hated science! He was among the most science-hating people on earth! (Fransiscan Order.)
That world view makes a scientific claim. That the waiver actully changed into the flesh of God.
Hold up? Again, at gunpoint?
As I noted earlier, you have no idea what you are talking about.
From the (Aristotelian/Scholastic) perspective, the accidents of the host is wheat and water baked (in the West) without leavening while the contents of the cup are wine, unfortified. This exactly satisfies the requirements of science and is not contradicted by any church doctirne. There is no “scientific” claim that the host become’s God’s flesh and your repetittion of that claim in multiple threads merely demonstrates that you have failed to even make an attempt to understand the declaration of the church.
In logical circles, that is known as a strawman.
The very idea that there is a “substance” beyond the “accidents” violates Occam’s razor.
No it does not.
Happily, one needn’t make that choice, as plane-building is not in the bailiwick of metaphysics. I wouldn’t want to fly in a plane whose construction was based on the priniciples of legal philosophy, either; that doesn’t mean that legal philosophy is of no value.
Essentially what you’re doing is accusing a philosophical system which does not claim to be science of not being science. Now, I’m not a Catholic either, but surely you can see that there’s nothing terribly unusual, or peculiar to the Catholics, in holding a religious belief about matters of religion.
To be sure, there’s nothing scientific about thinking that a wafer has been converted into the body of Christ while retaining its physical properties; but, since science only deals with physical properties, which the Church agrees remain the same, there’s nothing antiscientific about this either. Science will tell you that the wafer has not changed its mass, specific gravity, temperature, etc., and the Church will agree, even as it argues that the wafer is now the body of Christ.
This is as opposed to the case where science asserts that evolution has taken place, and certain other churches assert that it has not. There, we are dealing with a statement that contradicts science.
I don’t believe that the wafer is Christ, not because I see that as being unscientific, but because I am not Catholic and do not agree with Catholic religious doctrines. Conversely, I don’t believe in ID, not because I’m not a member of a church that believes it, but because I see it as being unscientific.
(And if it did, that would do nothing to make the claim wrong. It would merely indicate that Occam’s razor is not the sole measure of all things.)
I just brushed up on my Transubstantiation theology with a quick trip over to the Wikipedia entry on the subject.
I disagree with your claim that the doctrine’s claim is a scientific claim. It claims (so says the wiki authors) that the substance of the wafer changes into the body of Christ, but that the accidents of the wafer remain unchanged.
“Substance” here is used as a term of art. The substance of an object (or person or whatever) is what that thing is in of itself, without regard to how it looks, feels, tastes, sounds, or smells like. It’s the thing’s essential nature, on a more basic level even than molecular structure.
“Accidents” is also a term of art. The accidents of an object are those properties of the object that can be determined by the senses. Things such as smell and appearance, yes, but presumably also things such as molecular structure. (I doubt molecular microscopes were in wide use when this theology was developed.)
The doctrine claims that the substance changes, but not the accidents. I fail to see how this is a scientific claim, as there’s no experiment I know of that could detect this change in substance, or predict its effects.
You can’t “violate” Occam’s razor; it’s a guideline, not an axiom.
And it isn’t even Ockham’s. No one knows who came up with it.
It makes the claim that there actually is a substance beyond the accidents.
What a petty little bitch.
…which seems to me to be an unscientific claim.
Not only un, but also anti.
By all means, I want to know how to design an experiment that would demonstrate the nature of an object beyond that which can be observed about it.
I don’t see how it’s any more antiscientific than the claim that there’s a “national frontier” fifty klicks south of here, that billions believe to exist but that cannot be detected by geologists. :dubious: