There’s no Christian need for the BB to be a miracle.
MN is the idea that scientific research should seek only natural causes and explanations when investigating the natural world. However, Bishop addresses this in only a brief portion of one piece and the other authors do not discuss it at all; Falk and Stearley both told me of their surprise that Meyer attempted to deduce their views on MN from their contributions. For the record, BioLogos as an organization affirms the methods of science but does not have a position on the use of the term MN in discussing intelligent design and divine action. As our faith statement says, we affirm special divine action in the natural world (answers to prayer, miracles, the Incarnation, the Resurrection) and we affirm natural processes as divinely governed. Beyond this, members of the BioLogos community nuance the complex issue of MN in various ways. Series author Robert Bishop argues elsewhere that MN is a theologically well-motivated approach for understanding the workings of God’s creation. Program Director Kathryn Applegate writes of methodological naturalism as a useful distinction from metaphysical naturalism, i.e. that the search for natural causes and explanations in science is distinct from the belief that these explanations are the only source of truth and knowledge. Board chair Jeff Hardin approaches the topic with lay audiences as a way to disentangle metaphysical claims from scientific method. Grantee Loren Haarsma and Board member Ard Louis argue that it is not essential to demarcate science as a naturalistic methodology. Fellow Ted Davis discusses the history of the idea as “a difference of opinion about the nature of science itself.” Senior Scholar Jeff Schloss shows the difficulty of demarcating the natural from the supernatural. I and other evolutionary creationists prefer to see the practice of science as a completely Christian activity rather than an activity that adopts the methods of naturalism. The views of BioLogos on MN cannot be easily generalized…
https://biologos.org/articles/reviewing-darwins-doubt-conclusion
Noted. And agreed that ancient Hebrews certainly saw God on those terms. There’s a whole lot of other stuff all over the Bible too, including hints of it in some of the very passages you quoted “… intended it for good…” or the fact that somebody could be “handed over” implying that the ‘wicked hands’ themselves are not identical with God’s hands, even if they still do only operate within and underneath God’s allowance. But I won’t dispute over much here on this disagreement.
My understanding is that it’s not a “should” it’s a “can.” I don’t believe the tools of science are adequate for seeking anything other than natural causes. I guess that is a main point of contention with ID.
I’m not an ID proponent. I think ID generally has bad science and philosophy.
Why should we interpret the Cambrian period as the result of divine intervention? It’s just a God of the gaps argument. God of the gaps isn’t good science or philosophy.
In another thread T_aquaticus made these his primary points against ID
Notice that none of them require Methodological Naturalism.
You could also say there is no Christian need for Jesus to have been born God…
except that this is how Christians define themselves.
I think it depends on the questions you are trying to ask. MN is not that great for figuring out morality or why a sunset looks beautiful. However, MN is very useful for other questions, such as why life falls into a nested hierarchy or why exons are more strongly conserved across species than introns. MN is a tool, so it is important to use it for what it was meant to do, which is explain how the empirical world of nature operates. Scientists have these big data sets, and they want to figure out how all of it fits together. MN is how they do it.
1 Like
I don’t think you have to explicitly commit to MN in order to do it. What you can do is see you don’t need theistic components in order to understand something this is different than saying what MN seems to say “I refuse to see theistic components.”
My idea is based more on pragmatic considerations and the idea of parsimony.
It is easy to win arguments when you get to define all the terms. But when people like me or @shekar question the validity or usefulness of methodological naturalism, this kind of response isn’t terribly convincing.
Especially when my plea is simply that science - the pursuit of truth - is better served by a philosophical approach that says, “follow the evidence wherever it leads” rather than “rule out certain conclusions before you start your investigation.”
How do you determine if something is not a theistic component? If someone believes that nature is a manifestation of God’s will then what science observes is theistic. I would agree that parsimony plays a role here, but it is more of a theological point than a scientific one. A bit of a detour . . .
Phillip Gosse wrote a book in the mid 1800’s that tried to reconcile geology with young Earth creationism by having God create a universe with the appearance of age. Reverend Charles Kingsley read the book and wrote back to Gosse. This is what he had to say:
The same argument could be applied to the topic of biology. If life was created by the immediate actions of a deity then you would have to conclude that this deity tried very hard to make it look like life evolved. Why would the deity do that? It really is no different than creating the universe with the appearance of age.
I agree 100%. In case you missed it I’m not an ID proponent.
Notice your argument isn’t MN is true therefore life evolved. Rather it’s in the face of the evidence we have, biological evolution is more parsimonious, has more explanatory power, etc. You don’t need MN to make this case.
Correct. I do tend to adhere to skepticism, and MN is a specific example of applied skepticism. However, I freely admit that my chosen philosophical outlook could be completely wrong.
ID proponents try to claim that ID is scientific in order to give their ideas more relevance. It is the ID community that has chosen MN as the arbiter of what is true. If the ID community changes their tune and states that ID is a theological or philosophical system that isn’t scientific, then I think they could make some headway. For all intents and purposes, EC could be considered a type of intelligent design.
2 Likes
Well said… and for what it is worth, this ID sympathizer remains very open to hearing arguments and discussion from people genuinely open to following the evidence wherever it leads. This is genuinely interesting to me.
But once people have embraced Methodological naturalism, and then they tell me their examination of the evidence has led them to a naturalistic/Darwinistic conclusion, this is supremely uninteresting to me. What other conclusion could they have arrived at? They had already ruled out any other possible conclusions a priori. It is no longer a search for what is true, but has become a search for an acceptable conclusion, based on unnecessary restraints.
And as I’ve noted before, if God did ever intervene in some manner that nature unaided could not do, methodological naturalism will all but guarantee that one will arrive at the wrong conclusion. This is hardly a beneficial method.
To borrow (as I do all too often) Lewis’s words and paraphrase…
It is no use going to the [evidence] until we have some idea about the possibility or probability of [direct divine intervention]. Those who assume that [such intervention did not] happen are merely wasting their time by looking into the [evidence]: we know in advance what results they will find for they have begun by begging the question.
1 Like
Maybe. I’m not trying to win an argument though, I’m trying to understand a discussion. That is hampered when people use terms differently, as we are obviously doing here.
Yes this is probably the case. Note that the sentence you selected out of my quote in the above post was from Deborah Haarsma.
Perhaps it is time for some definitions.
Science is defined by a methodology. This methodology is not procedural in itself but derives from two ideals which govern procedure. One is an ideal of honest inquiry which seeks to test ones ideas (hypotheses) rather than trying to prove them. The second is an ideal of objectivity which bases its conclusions on written procedures giving the same result no matter what one may want or believe.
Naturalism is a way of thinking that looks for laws of nature as the cause of things. This can be a full blown metaphysical worldview where one insists that reality only consists of things governed by these laws of nature.
Methodological naturalism means that one looks for the causes for things in some kind of natural law whether or not one believes this is the limit of what is real.
Observations…
Science does not really concern itself with metaphysical questions of what is real. It tends to methodological naturalism because that is what lends itself to the testing of hypotheses and getting results in terms of written procedures which give the same results regardless of want or belief. Therefore Christy is effectively correct because we don’t know how to follow the defining ideals of science without methodological naturalism. God is not knowable or observable according to the kind of precision that science requires.
Now I am a scientist first before I was ever Christian, so while I have adopted the Christian methodology of investing authority in the Bible, I have strong tendency to fall back on a methodological naturalism of some kind when the Bible doesn’t resolve things which is obviously rather frequent as testified by the vast diversity of opinion on so many theological issues in Christianity. So even when it comes to the spiritual I tend to look for natural laws governing this also and I have found the substance monist approach of science to be helpful also. I will grant you that this will never amount to a scientific methodology since there is nothing testable, but I still find it useful for finding explanations which make sense.
Incorrect. It is great for such things (try googling why a sunset looks beautiful), it just isn’t sufficient. But tools are never sufficient for a task. A hammer by itself will not hit a single nail.
Yeah and I am on board with fairies, unicorns, and genies granting wishes. But all such things are useful for is books and films for entertainment. But science is a great deal more than a prop for telling entertaining stories so unless you can show HOW one is to carry out an honest objective inquiry without methodological naturalism then it doesn’t make any more sense than an idea of using fairies, unicorns and genies for doing science.
It’s not hard. Just note that all the evidence for biological evolution doesn’t require MN to work. Instead its based on epistemic principles that don’t need MN. MN is a redherring.
That doesn’t make any sense. Evolution is an application of MN. Variation and natural selection are the laws of nature being employed in this case. Saying it doesn’t require MN to work is like saying that water doesn’t require hydrogen or oxygen to be water, or like saying that the Bible doesn’t require words or language. It is absurd… unless the point is simply that we don’t have to understand a thing for it to be. Evolution worked long before science ever existed, just as there was water long before we knew what hydrogen and oxygen is.
Now I think I will step out since your responses are too fast for me.
How we think about MN seems to be different.