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.
Maybe it would help[quote=“Christy, post:40, topic:43156”]
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.
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Appreciated. Maybe it would help, then, if you could point me to exactly where “it is written” (So to speak) that science requires methodological naturalism.
as you said above, someone can’t talk about theology without talking about God because the very term means “study of God.” So far, so good.
But where in the definition of “science” does it specify that only certain conclusions are allowed?
I know we’ve discussed this before, so before getting too far in the weeds, to clarify terms, I grant absolutely and of course that science, being the study of “nature” cannot speak to the “supernatural.” Scientific tools don’t and can’t study the supernatural. Again, so far, so good.
But in a universe where we as Christians acknowledge there are both natural and supernatural causes for some things, it should be a legitimate conclusion, and even a legitimate hypothesis, that certain phenomena cannot be explained by natural causes, and that, unless we gains further data, the idea that the cause was outside of nature can and ought to be allowed as a legitimate working hypothesis. All while refraining from giving any specific or explicit claim about the cause, or doing anything that would cross over into theology or the study of the supernatural.
To compare… a committed atheist, studying the resurrection, will never entertain a supernatural hypothesis. He has excluded that conclusion, and even any such hypothesis, a priori by his philosophical commitments. And, if he reaches a conclusion, he will reach a natural conclusion. His philosophical commitment has all but guaranteed that he will arrive at an erroneous conclusion.
Now, I don’t object to someone refraining from making a conclusion, saying, “scientifically, we simply can’t say anything about this… there is no science that can explain this, and while we might acknowledge the hypothesis or possibility of the miraculous, science, as science, simply cannot speak to that? Perhaps this is where God directly intervened… but if so, science can tell us nothing about that.” That, if it helps clarify, I find entirely legitimate. And, unless I’m mistaken, this is the position Francis Collins has articulated regarding origin of life… and people aren’t accusing him of violating MN.
My problem is when someone follows methodological naturalism, and then concludes “this has to have been the result of such and such natural phenomenon… because I am required to arrive at a natural conclusion because I considered every natural alternative, and this was the most likely of them.” This, as should be obvious, is fallacious logic, and would certainly lead to erroneous conclusions about Jesus miracles, the resurrection, etc.
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MN is being spoken above as if it were some added ingredient (which many of us are wanting to inject into our arguments or science, ostensibly to make sure it’s bonafide).
But there is no “added MN”. There is already a presumption of it that we have now labeled as such - that we look back and see has been in operation for successful science of the last several centuries (long before anybody thought to reflect on such methodology or give is such a label.) It hasn’t now become some formal prescription necessary to make science bonafide. It’s a description of the way successful science has been operating.
Actually, in a way you kind of do. Even though MN may not be explicitly mentioned as such, if you didn’t have it, then all observations could be concluded with “Well, God just makes it happen that way. End of story.” But those sorts of observations don’t lead to productive science. Those who still want to delve deeper, thereby setting the God question aside for their specific quest, - they are using MN effectively for their specific pursuits. And that seems to be descriptive of every successful scientific pursuit we know about.
ID skeptics aren’t saying: “your science has no MN, therefore we won’t accept it.” Rather, they are asking, “…so where are your scientific results? your research programs?” And if those appear to still be lacking after all these years, we are left to speculate on what might be the difference between productive and prolific science, and nonproductive science. It’s a matter of some fascination that we see MN to be a pretty standard (to the point of being un-named, un-acknowledged) ingredient in the former, and a matter of dispute in the latter. And we can draw our own conclusions.
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Hi Merv,
I don’t see why that has to be the case. Because that argument wouldn’t work in theology or philosophy either as far as I can see. It is epistemically irresponsible to just say “Well, God just makes it happen that way. End of story.” simpliciter in any situation. Its not something special to MN.
So as @Christy suggests we may be thinking of MN differently.
I don’t know. I am operating under the assumption, that for something to be considered a scientific conclusion, it has to result from the scientific method. The scientific method requires hypotheses that can be falsified based on empirical evidence, which is observations of the natural world. Conclusions are based on inferences about what empirical evidence means. My presupposition is that hypotheses that involve divine or supernatural elements are not falsifiable using the tools of science (testing hypotheses by collecting empirical evidence and inferring logical conclusions). So, a conclusion about such a hypothesis would not be scientific. I don’t understand methodological naturalism to mean assuming God doesn’t exist or isn’t operating. I understand it to mean assuming you can’t test or discover that activity using the tools of science.
If interesting, I have discussed the topic of methodological naturalism at length elsewhere. I have noticed that there are two slightly different aspects that need to be careful he clarified to make sure that people are not talking past each other. Otherwise, there seems to be some unintentional equivocation that happens in the discussions.
Specifically, the term “natural” can mean to somewhat different things in these discussions… it can mean:
A. “Natural” as opposed to “supernatural”
-or-
B. “Natural”, as opposed to “fabricated”, I.e., as opposed to having been constructed by intelligent purpose.
So, Consider your cell phone: do we call that a “natural phenomenon”? In sense “A” yes, of course, absolutely. There is nothing supernatural about it. It is made of atoms and molecules, and is as much a part of this natural order of things as a tree or an asteroid.
But in sense “B”, no, a cell phone is not a “naturally” occurring object. Apples occur naturally, fish, rain, solar radiation, very small rocks, these are all “natural” objects. A cell phone, by contrast, is an artificial, or designed, or “man-made” object. In that sense, it is not part of “nature”
What happens in these discussions, someone says that science, following methodological naturalism, says “science must only study what is part of nature.” And if we mean nature in sense “A”, i entirely agree. We can’t see angels in telescopes, we can’t examine miraculous forces in a Particle accelerator, etc. and thus science has no business, in itself, in saying “God did this.”
But the determination that something is or isn’t “natural” in sense “B” is very much part of science. As I’ve written in these pages before, archaeology, forensics, computer science, cryptology, and SETI are all predicated on the fact that science, as science, can and should in fact distinguish between “naturally occurring” phenomena and that which has occurred by design. So long as the scientist makes no theological determinations in his paper, and in his scientific paper he limits himself to saying no further than “X is naturally occurring” or “X does not occur naturally, but it exhibits the hallmarks of design,” then this absolutely is within the realm of science.
If interesting, I discussed at length (and even added pictures!) here…
And thus far we would agree. Thus you should have no problem with an agnostic or atheist scientist who examines a biological phenomenon and determines it to be too complex to have occurred naturally, and thus suggests it was intelligently designed… so long as he hypothesizes that the designer was an extraterrestrial intelligent alien?
Would this violate “methodological naturalism” as you understand it?
That’s where people have repeatedly disagreed with you.
We’ve been through this before. I believe the only way we can make determinations about what could not have occurred naturally (in your sense) is by having experience with the Designer and the kind of products said Designer designs and by making assessments based on comparisons with what is already known. I do not accept that “design” or “intelligence” can be divorced from the entity that embodies it and studied or logically deduced in some abstract sense as it’s own entity that can be discovered apart from personal revelation and knowledge of the Designer. I don’t believe you can reasonably theorize that aliens produced something unless you have experience with those aliens and the kinds of things those aliens produce. I don’t believe you can reasonably theorize that God’s intelligence is behind something unless you have experience with God and the kinds of things that display his intelligent design. I’m not saying that you can’t get that experience, just that you can’t get it with scientific tools. You have to start with knowledge of God and reason your way to what God produces. You can’t start with knowledge of what God produces and reason your way to an otherwise unknown God. That doesn’t make sense to me.
So To clarify, you would say that SETI is not a legitimate scientific pursuit, since they are trying to find evidence of extraterrestrial life before knowing anything about said intelligence?
Or that Francis Crick’s directed panspermia hypothesis was also not legitimate science, since he knew nothing of the aliens he hypothesized might have been behind the design of life on earth?
That brings up the question of whether you can have scientific inquiry into things that you can’t draw scientific conclusions about. @mitchellmckain told me you can.
I would be inclined to say it’s not scientific, no. But I acknowledge that there are realms of theoretical scientific inquiry that do not involve empirically testable hypotheses and essentially can’t draw scientific conclusions. I definitely do not believe that you can draw scientific conclusions that evidence of extraterrestrial communication is indeed extraterrestrial communication without experience with the extra-terrestrials who produced it. If said extra-terrestrials are not part of the natural (definition A) world, then you can’t study their existence using the tools of science. If they are, then you can’t study their intelligence or communication apart from studying them. I don’t think “intelligence” can be disembodied. God’s intelligence is embodied by God. Alien intelligence if it exists, is embodied by specific aliens.
I imagine this is where many would vehemently disagree with you. The idea that SETI is an “unscientific” process because one needs some kind of discreet knowledge about the intelligence in question before making any hypotheses about a phenomenon seems absurd to me in the extreme.
If SETI ever did pick up a clearly non-naturally occurring pattern… say some radio signals that carried a series of 500 prime numbers, or the entire multiplication table up tom20x20… the folks at SETI would proudly announce they had discovered what by all accounts seem to be signs of intelligent life. And it would be carried by every scientific journal and magazine as the Cover story.
And I can imagine no credible or noteworthy scientist criticizing their hypothesis as being “unscientific” on the basis they hadn’t directly studied the hypothesized extraterrestrial intelligence in question.
The beliefs of the scientist are irrelevant and the conclusions of science are not about such subjective judgement calls. Show me a written procedure which shows this conclusion no matter who performs the procedure and only then can this constitute a scientific conclusion.
It depends how the pursuit is conducted. After all, you would not say that searching for a black hole in a certain section of sky is not a scientific pursuit just because a black hole might not be there. It is the whole point of the honesty of testing an hypothesis that you can get a negative answer and find there is no support in the evidence for your hypothesis. But trying to prove your hypothesis rather than testing it, never accepting a negative conclusion, is not scientific.
The problem with God is that this is also too much of a moving goal post. It is not a falsifiable hypothesis because an all powerful being side steps any observational results.
No, I did not. I explained the objection made by scientists to the criterion of falsifiablity in order to defend the legitimacy of this criterion. I explained that no scientist wants to be lost in pure speculation but that the inquiry into string theory is somewhat grounded by the mathematics, since the mathematical results can prove useful even if string theory doesn’t pan out.
SETI has to accept more limited objectives. You cannot falsify the existence aliens in the universe but you can falsify the presence of identifiable signals from a certain direction during a certain period of time. Biology OFTEN has to accept limited hypotheses of this nature all the time. Is the existence of an intermediary link in an evolutionary sequence falsifiable?
I think so.
Imagine if we have a fossil that appears to be intermediate between two existing populations. And then we discover that the fossil doesn’t come from an EXTINCT population at all. Going to a highly isolated part of Earth we discover that the fossil comes from a still EXISTING population, and genetically, it can be proven that it has no connection with the two existing populations we thought were being linked by the fossil.
All that proves is that this fossil is not the intermediate link we are looking for. It does not prove that the intermediate link did not exist.
First of all, the whole process of using intermediate fossils is to be educational… to indicate the possibilities. The classic clade analysis is based purely on phenotype of the fossil… and some of these fossil sequences are KNOWN to belong to unrelated branches.
So, secondly, after learning this fact, I explained to @marty that I don’t even like working with these intermediate fossil demonstrations. They are not what I thought they were.
However, lastly, if you are suggesting a case where we THOUGHT an intermediate fossil WAS a genetic common ancestor, and we discovered a living representative of the species represented by that fossil - - and the genetic connection didn’t exist, that would FALSIFY the original premise.
But I’m going to re-state one last time: intermediate fossils do not, as a rule, prove relatedness. That’s not the purpose of the clade analysis. And so there is generally nothing to disprove.
Seems to me this thread has moved over to talking about the boundaries of how we define “science.” At the first level the scientific method has the ability to support or disprove a hypothesis about how the natural world behaves, what natural laws are in operation. But the next step after that is (obviously, to me) to ask if there are implications for humans. Research is great partly because it helps us understand, and partly because it leads us to new technologies.
Some here apparently argue to have implications excluded. But if we go by the general scientific population, speculations around the science are rampant. So in the practice of science the implications seem to be part of science.
Now, this is a very human tendency, but I find that the attempt to exclude implications is applied selectively. If the discussion leads to conclusions you agree with or don’t care about, then it’s OK. But if you disagree with the conclusions then “it’s not science.”
So for example, Sean Carroll evangelizes his “many worlds” opinion about how to interpret Quantum Mechanics and most people hardly bat an eyelash (although some may roll their eyes). But if …
then they are equally as irrelevant for Dawkins and Carroll as for Behe and Meyer. In contrast, on these forums I don’t typically see this applied equally. It is only applied to ID proponents. (Granted that there is more pseudo-science in some corners of ID, but that is a different discussion.)
I’m just saying, I don’t understand why we should shut out ID arguments but tolerate tens of thousands of other scientists speculating away.