And your thinking is way too loose and light, almost without any weight at all.
Yes, but of course, T. That’s obviously THE only SINGLE definition in the WORLD - at Wikipedia! 
And it’s “correct” too. 
Your saying so absolutely does not make it so.
Mostly what rhymes with light here is tight, as in you are incredibly uptight about a nonissue.
I’m dim but dogged Gregory. And I’m still a creationist of course. One who has stared in to the near Nietzschean pit of the factiest fact of them all: eternity. Nobody here can go there. And there it is. God always has been the ground, the hypostasis of being, the instantiator of the prevenient laws of physics in all the infinite autonomous universes which He has sustained from eternity. He’s that big and that clever. Anything less is Heath Robinson / Rube Goldberg.
So what is the other way to do science? Why don’t you actually tell us. Show us how it works.
I think De Vries would agree with me that science, which is done from a methodological naturalism framework, is different from metaphysical naturalism.
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I reject that the suffix -ism automatically denotes an “ideology.”
Oxford English Dictionary says it can denote “philosophies, theories, religions, social movements, artistic movements, and behaviors.”
Evolutionary creationism is a theory (in the sense of a model) for approaching the Bible and interpreting Christian doctrine in light of the facts of mainstream science. It’s not an ideology. It’s not a “system of ideas that aspires to explain the world and change it.” Neither is the scientific method whether you call it methodological naturalism or something else.
Your tendency to impose rules on the use of words that have nothing to do with what other people mean when they use the words.
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I have a master’s degree in applied linguistics that was about half sociolinguistics and cultural anthropology coursework. So, I actually do have some training. I’m sure not nearly enough to equip me to understand the high-level philosophical discourse on discussion forums, but luckily I’m a lifelong learner. I’ve also noticed that not everyone who claims to be an expert, is necessarily one.
The problem is the things you try to do to English, though. And we all speak English here.
No I didn’t. I reject your assumption that something that ends in -ism is automatically an ideology. That’s a ridiculous assertion, if that is what you expect us to accept.
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Some of us even have degrees in the subject.
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Thanks for that, Christy - and for shedding light in a conversation where others have instead given more heat. I retract my earlier conjectures that there must inevitably be ideologies lurking around every corner, now that I’ve been shown a more accurate definition for how that word is typically used. I’ll work on being more careful about how I use it.
Pedagogical score for Christy: 1; for Gregory … well … see how that works, Gregory?
Sorry, Matthew, a simple undergraduate course in philosophy of science could help you. Do you actually think social scientists are required to be NATURALISTS?!
de Vries’ title shows the error in your “I think de Vries would agree with me” view already. No, he doesn’t agree with you, Matthew! Please, be more careful and try to understand why not.
Notice the “IN NATURAL SCIENCES”? He was writing about naturalism IN NATURAL SCIENCES, NOT OUTSIDE OF THEM. Thus, we can faithfully and confidently REJECT naturalism OUTSIDE of natural sciences, unless we define “science = all fields are naturalistic” to begin with.
It would usually be atheists advocating MNism, but here it’s confused evangelical Protestants who don’t realise the poison they’re welcoming in the well. Indeed, all of the BioLogos moderators appear to hold the same “philosophy of science” as T_quaticus, who is an atheist. Notice, it’s not that they share “scientific knowledge” in this case, but rather the same reductionistic philosophy, that would gut social sciences and humanities of meaning.
Are there any OTHER ‘sciences’ than “natural sciences”, Matthew? Any? Please answer first, then I’ll answer your de Vries-style silliness with his own words again.
Btw, again to ask: have you actually read “Methodological Naturalism in the Natural Sciences: A Christian Perspective” or are you again talking about something you simply have very little awareness and apparently almost no discernment about, like with ERS and Wilson’s “new social Darwinism”?
I know when you submit an article to a journal you better not be invoking God in your explanation of societal trends.
Hmm, it’s almost as if worldview is irrelevant to the way one uses the scientific method. I feel like I’ve said that before.
You really have no clue how it works, do you Christy? If not, please stop posing as if you know, as humility would require.
When sociologists who are themselves religious believers (unlike those at the Evolution Institute) publish about religion, faith, spirituality, God, we don’t do so naturalistically. Are you seriously crazy or just insulting the beliefs of social scientists who are believers?!
Your “anti-supernaturalism” is noted. But that differs from MNism. Would it help if you talked with someone about this, instead of continuing to get it wrong? MNism differs from anti-supernatualism. The problem is that people like Christy fail to give positive content to “naturalism”, as they misdefine the term, just like de Vries did. It’s a well-established Wheaton-inspired pattern already.
“Hmm, it’s almost as if worldview is irrelevant to the way one uses the scientific method. I feel like I’ve said that before.”
Since I wrote “philosophy of science”, not “just science”, the topic is obviously not science itself. It sounds like you misread again.
Yes, you’ve repeated a lot of things, some of them errors. Like that you STILL think there’s only ONE method used across the wide range of sciences. No progress yet, Christy? Such a view isn’t even wrong, so there’s no need to respond to it.
A person who treats ideology (creationism) as if it should be compared with science (evolutionary biology) is quite obviously confused, no matter how much they protest otherwise. I simply don’t think people should accept such views, and everyone I’ve met who’s slowed down, been careful, and thought closely about it, doesn’t confuse ideology with science by comparing “evolution” with “creationism”.
Indeed, Christy seems to wish to borrow from atheist Eugenie Scott for that particular miscomparison, according to Scott’s 2004 book of that title “Evolution vs. Creationism”. Christy seems to get a lot of her philosophy from atheists and agnostics, e.g. evolutionism and MNism (de Vries made a gift for atheists with MNism). Instead, I would recommend good “spiritual” philosophers, who won’t accept the MNism that Christy keeps hammering on based on de Vries’ shameful article.
Thankfully, James has shown it’s possible to stop using MNism. I agree with James and with non-ideologues in the conversation.
Curiously enough, Christy and Joshua Swamidass hold the same view; they both embrace the ideology of MNism, they both aggressively and loudly deny it’s an ideology, and they both use it as a weapon against people who believe that “science” does not need to ideologically “naturalistic”. They also both have no training in philosophy. Swamidass was even spelling it “idealogy” for a couple of months, showing he REALLY didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. But he pushes the same ideology forward as people here at BioLogos are doing now with MNism again.
@cewoldt and @DavidS were both correct to caution here against Christians embracing such poisonous, anti-religious ideology. BioLogos doesn’t seem to have the necessary philosophical training or awareness to take any of our comments seriously. Tough love from them!
There is a simple assumption held by not a few evangelicals who’ve swallowed de Vries’ poisionous philosophistry that MNism is necessary to use against creationism (this seems to be the BioLogos standard position). Yet, it’s actually not needed. It’s their choice to use it as an ideological weapon in the conversation; this is what de Vries unleashed.
Instead, creationists HATE being told that creationism is an ideology. They want “creationism” to just mean “the best and only proper view of Scripture.” Similarly, “evolutionary creationists” likewise really don’t like being told that evolutionary creationism is an ideology. They really want “evolutionary creationism” to just mean “the best and only proper view of Scripture.” Unfortunately for them, most people don’t take “evolutionary creationism” seriously, except for evangelical Protestants (like Lamoureux) and people like BioLogos, because we see it as “yet another type of creationism”, and we reject ideological creationism.
Evolutionism = ideology that BioLogos is against
Creationism = ideology that BioLogos is against
Evolutionary creation = attempt at science, philosophy, theology collaboration, not “just science”
Theistic evolution = attempt at science, philosophy, theology collaboration, not “just science”
Theistic Evolutionism = ??
Evolutionary creationism = ??
Google is our friend. Words ending in -ism that are not philosophies, more than a few:
I don’t know Dale. I’m partial to the ideology of prism.
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Yes, people can have internal biases that influence their perspectives… But when someone writes an academic paper on some social effect… They don’t include God in their explanation. For example, my wife doing an MS in a social science, was looking at mobility and segregation. She is a Christian, but yet did her analysis from a methodological naturalism perspective. It is similar for my friend, an academic historian, where he does research from a methodological naturalism framework.
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