It’s religion itself. Bizarre, arbitrary, irrational, anti-social, tyrannizing, oppressive, damnationist, nationalist (in the Orwellian sense) tenets. And some very nice people. Scientists are as human as anyone, as corrupted by power as anyone, but the tenets of science and its pursuit at MIT, Cambridge, Stanford, Oxford, Harvard, Caltech, Imperial, UCL, Welcome transcend that humanity.
That’s my experience as well. I tend to be more skeptical of results that support my hypothesis than evidence which contradicts it.
I define natural by that which can be or can potentially be empirically measured and tested for. This would involve some sort of repeatability and independent verification. In other words, if God or spirits interacted with nature in a detectable manner then this would make them part of nature for the purposes of methodological naturalism. This is where we see several branches of theology kick in. On some branches, the actions of God are undetectable and thus can not be included in methodological naturalism. On other branches, it is claimed that God’s actions are detectable, but I have yet to see compelling evidence from proponents of these types of theologies. Either way, it isn’t methodological naturalism that necessarily excludes God from science. Rather, it is how God is defined or believed to act that excludes God from scientific examination.
As to math and quantum mechanics, math gives us the models that we test. We run experiments and see if the results match the mathematical model. This includes quantum mechanics. While we may not be able to observe a particle in superposition, we can certainly measure the results after the wavefunction has collapsed and see if those observations match the predictions made by the model.
We are also talking about methodological naturalism (MN), not philosophical naturalism. MN makes no truth claims about the existence of God, spirits, or the supernatural. All MN says is that you need certain requirements before the method can be applied.
As to ethics and morality, it is a fact that morals exist. I lean towards the school of subjective morality, so I don’t think there are moral facts. However, we do live in human society where ethics is important. With science being a human endeavor it makes sense to do science in a way that is ethical. Worth noting is that institutional review boards are required to have non-scientists who also review research proposals for safety and ethics. Our local IRB often has a local pastor, and from what I have learned from interacting with them they really enjoy the opportunity. As humans we have an obligation to act morally and ethically, and this is especially true when we are funded by public tax dollars.
What you are seeking is a testable model that can be supported by empirical measurements. You don’t even need to bring the word “natural” into it. If the predictions flow logically from the premises, and the predictions are testable, then you may have a scientific model.
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and that is exactly my point…you have highlighted where your investigation begins. It does not begin with science, it begins with the question that needs answering.
So here are some of the first few questions we must answer:
- where did the energy and matter come from that started the big bang
- who started the big bang
- why is it that all code (such as computer) in our reality always come down to an intelligent designer? We can never throw the 1’s and 0’ that form computer code up into the air, and when they land, they form something intelligent that performs a useful task…why is that? In light of the computer code problem, how can one explain the existence of code in DNA from the perspective of "throwing it up into the air and it landing to form something intelligent and capable of performing a useful task?
- How is it that in the theory of evolution, we cannot seem to find any cross species breeding? Surely if we evolved in said manner there should be examples of this even in the fossil record? Also, any changes that are attributable to evolution are usually degenerative…why is that?
My answer to the above questions is easy and its supported by a book clearly proven to be unchanged in over 2000 years (so it hasn’t been corrupted since the earliest written references we have). I can base my understanding of my observations on a consistency with the writings of that book. Evolutionists cannot do this, so they must deny that book. And this is where the claim, there is no room for God in Science comes from…humanism denying God and searching for an alternative. They construct theory after theory after theory only inclusive of those ones that deny God. Any that support God are immediately thrown out.
The problem is that you start with the answers before you even begin to look at the evidence.
We MUST answer??? Or are they questions that people are researching?
Why would it be a who?
You are assuming the answer. You are assuming codes have to come from an intelligent designer.
No one is explaining DNA as the result of “throwing it up in the air”.
We see interbreeding between species right now, in the modern age.
You are assuming that changes are usually degenerative. Why don’t you question that?
Writing stuff in a book isn’t scientific evidence. Science works from empirical observations.
You reject any evidence that contradicts your interpretation of scripture.
Rejecting your claims about what God has done is not rejection of God, just your claims about God.
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No more than you are. The conclusion that the earth is old was reached primarily by Christians. The claim that Genesis 1 must be written as a scientific-historic account if it is authoritative reflects “Enlightenment” and modernistic elevation of “science”, not a biblical valuing of theological revelation.
“Methodological naturalism” is a lousy name; if one accepts the biblical premise that God is in control of everything, one expects things to behave in regular ways. “Methodological naturalism” in no way implies atheism. Each Sunday morning, I get in my van and drive to church. Suppose someone says “I am more spiritual than you. Instead of relying on such natural methods as the mechanics of a car, I stay in bed and expect God to miraculously transport me to church if He wants me there.” In reality, I am being a better Christian for making use of “natural” means to do what God calls me to do than the self-declared spiritual person. Both historical accounts, including the Bible, and everyday experience show that “whatever happened here, it probably happened by natural laws” is a pretty good first guess. Although miracles do happen, it’s a pretty good first guess that some guy on TV claiming to heal people if they send him enough money is a fraud.
Science has no room for God only in the sense that my closet has no room for study of atmospheric dynamics. Methodological naturalism is a limit of science’s capacities. To claim that it implies atheism is to make the error of assuming that everything ought to be possible to analyze scientifically. The mistake is captured by an old Journal of Irreproducible Results article which purported to be testing whether angels (obtained from Carolina Theological Supply) could substitute for lab rats. The angels went through the walls of the maze and weren’t interested in chow. Obviously silly, but you can’t take an angel into lab and see what happens. It is possible to scientifically investigate the claim that a regular physical effect results from a supernatural cause. You can get a bunch of people, check their birthdays, and see if the horoscope is any more appropriate for those born at one time than at another. Likewise, young-earth claims that God did something in the course of creation may be testable by looking for effects that ought to result from the action.
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Adam, if you are going to attempt to challenge a scientific theory, you must first make sure that you are challenging what the theory says in reality and not an incorrect cartoon caricature of it.
The theory of evolution does not claim that DNA is formed by throwing anything up into the air and landing to form something intelligent.
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The claim i made that Darwinain humanists deny God in Science are not my words…so I’m not sure how you can make that statement. One such proponent of that statement and belief i guess one could say was Stephen Hawking!
@paleomalacologist David Campbell
You stated that you feel that Methodical Naturalism in now way implies atheism. I don’t agree…
[
Naturalism - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
https://plato.stanford.edu › entries › naturalism
](Naturalism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy))
by D Papineau · 2007 · Cited by 659 — In this sense, “ methodological naturalism ” is the view that religious commitments have no relevance within science
YEC Scientists might have issue with the above because the ones i have listened too (Kurt Wise, Stephen Myer etc) seem to preach that Science and God are in harmony with each other and that we can use Science to preach a personal Creator God who created this earth literally in 7 days and during that time, bent down close and breathed the breath of life directly in Adam’s Nostrils, thus he became a living man.
I think one reason why we can use Science in the way is because people are very soon going to ask, how do you know this? The questions of Epistomology all have relevance here, not just the first one!
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Given that we know that probability cites 0 as being impossible and 1 as being 100% likely, and what falls between the two is an illustration of the likelihood of success or failure, might you explain how the theory of probability works if different to exactly that…I’m keen to hear you redefine it. Because when i look at the zeros and ones in a computer program and relate that to the evolutionary model being applied to DNA, given that DNA is code, who designed the code if not an intelligent being? If there is no designer, do you honestly believe that if one were to throw zeros and ones into a digital vacuum over millions of years, eventually one would see a Microsoft operating system pop out?
BTW, to add to the difficulty of the above dilemma, who throws the zeros and ones into the digital vacume? As i stated earlier…who started the big bang and where did the energy and matter come from that started it?(I want this question directly answered…the rest without answer to this fundamental question is simply hot air)
Few here would disagree with that.
What do you imagine those to be?
The problem with what you are imagining is the VAST detailed record found in our very genetics. Things Darwin claimed HAVE been falsified in this way. For example… Darwin thought the great varieties found in dogs were a result of many different canines contributing to their gene pool. It has been shown that he was wrong. All dogs have been shown to be descended from a single species of wolf. Thus claims can not only be falsified by the finding of fossils (rather rare), but can (and have) also be falsified by examining the genetics of living organisms and the even the genetics of more recent fossils.
When I see popular religious educators and spokesmen using the name of God and religion to promote intolerance, racism, misogyny, destruction of the earth, and not only to condemn scientists but do so in a belittling and contemptuous way, I am not surprised when atheists see this as a reason to condemn religion as an evil force in the world.
The scientists are no more trustworthy than any other human being. We don’t need scientists to be replacements in a new authoritarian truth. Instead we need to denounce this authoritarian way of thinking altogether.
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YES! And not only that but science is making progress EVEN when the test of hypotheses return negative results!
There seems to be a widespread confusion about this. I have been hearing complaints using “string theory” as a excuse for saying science has left the ideal of testing hypotheses according to the scientific method.
But especially as science gets more difficult. Science requires the freedom to explore possibilities in order to come up with new hypotheses to test. The failure of string theory so far probably does indeed mean we should turn to other avenues of inquiry for the time being. But if we later find that string theory really can work in a way not previously considered, it would not be the first time that such a thing has happened.
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The main ones I see are abiogenesis, evolutioanry explanations of religion, evolutionary accounts for the development of mind and evolutionary accounts for our moral beliefs.
My issue is the double standard applied to ID explanations and naturalistic explanations. I don’t really subscribe much to ID myself; this is a purely epistemic argument. Still, the fact is many have reasonable doubt that purely naturalistic processes could develop consciousness or the complexity needed to create a self-replicating cell. I’m would not be surprised if there were naturalistic causes for initial life or these things. Still, to overstate our confidence in these explanations, or favor these as historical explanations simply because they mirror the methodology used in laboratory studies, is misleading.
Of course, naturalistic accounts of abiogenesis are falsifiable (for moral development and hominization, it is more speculation). But if we accept these types of speculative accounts as scientific, I think we must include ID accounts as well. If an OOL researcher like Lee Cronin was able to make a protocell with the capacity for self-replication in a lab that mimicked early earth conditions (without any intervention), I think this would deal a serious blow to the ID movement. The falsifiable prediction that ID makes is simply how difficult this process would be under naturalism.
If the statement “all moral beliefs arose as a product of unguided natural selection” is somehow scientific and falsifiable, then “some moral beliefs cannot have developed without supernatural intervention” would be as well, as the simple negation of the previous claim. Otherwise the first statement wouldn’t be falsifiable.
I do agree, and am more heated about other Christians misrepresenting Christianity than naturalists misrepresenting philosophy. With that being said, atheists who claim to be the voice of “reason” and “philosophy” while making incorrect and grandiose claims about the historic ills of religion are going to get (deserved) criticism for their arguments.
Abiogenesis is not a claim of Darwin. He said nothing about the origin of life in “Origin of the Species”. And nobody is suggesting that his every idea should be taken as ultimate truth. It is an active area of scientific research which has made considerable progress recently. Are you attempting a “god of the gaps” argument trying to stuff God into the things we don’t yet understand about the origin of life? Why???
Nor did Darwin give evolutionary explanations of particular religions. And the evolution of human traits involved in man’s capacity for religion is hardly a non-falsifiable matter. He did say that religion and moral characteristics of man were an important evolved human social characteristics which is nothing like an evolutionary explanation of religion – and a strange thing to complain about. As social characteristics this is not even biology.
As for the human mind… Darwin only spoke about the human brain. Do you think the mind and the brain are the same thing? I do not. No, I am not a dualist but a physicalist, and I still don’t think they are the same thing. Nor is the evolution of the human brain a non-falsifiable matter.
And Darwin did not speak about our moral belief either. This is not the same thing as the evolution of rudiments of our moral capabilities, which I don’t think is non-falsifiable, but is a legitimate subject for scientific investigation.
I think you are being excessively defensive on these matters, without enough attention to the details. BUT if you think that RELIGION has exclusive rights to explanations for the human mind and/or morality, then I think you are walking on sand.
I think you’re misunderstanding what I’m saying.
I am not talking about God or religion or these things explaining anything. I’m simply talking about metaphysical naturalism and the limits of science.
Obviously a naturalistic or Darwinian explanation will have the benefit of explanatory power. But these accounts, while they may have explanatory power, may not be true if metaphysical naturalism is false.
If science can only produce naturalistic explanations, it cannot claim to produces true explanations unless its naturalistic premises are justified. I’d argue they are in many and most cases. Still, naturalism isn’t a scientific stance, it’s a metaphysical and philosophical one. Consider the following question:
“What evidence would falsify your belief that a naturalistic explanation is the “best” explanation for your observations?”
If the answer is “no evidence,” then it is clear that even methodological naturalism is not justified by science if science requires falsifiable predictions. If one answers with a specific falsifiability criterion, does this mean supernatural explanations could be admitted as scientific? Or could the “best” explanation not necessarily be the scientific one because it falls outside of the methodology of science?
They are obviously true even if metaphysical naturalism is false, i.e. being is grounded, has to be grounded, intentionally. Not that there is any natural requirement for it to be. Nature is fully autonomous at least above grounding.
Correct me if I am wrong, as I’ve heard string theory used as an explanation for how things happen without cause. But if some things or events just happen with no cause, there can be no explanation.
But what about metaphysical naturalism is false? I’d say it is only the habit of understanding what it is that science studies as things rather than processes that makes it false. That assumption also underlies our sense of what it is to think objecticely, ie, to seek to understand nature as the actions undertaken by things/objects upon other things. But if the true nature of of what we’re calling nature is really processes in which it is possible to single out portions at times to focus on as things, then we’re not really being ‘objective’ in the sense of being reasonable so much as we are being needlessly rigid in our thinking.
The real dilemma is not whether to think of things as being either naturally or supernaturally determined - but rather whether it is more productive to go on trying to understand the world as a story about things or one about processes.
My words to Ruse in 2005 were something like what you said here.
It’s a bit ironic, that here we are considering the beginning of life and the natural universe, awe inspiring as it is in what we can observe and know about these things, and yet the words get stuck in our mouth and cause dispute if we should say a person can act without being acted upon.
What possible difference could it make that you took the words from somewhere else? Surely you didn’t pick the source at random but for a purpose of yours and to convey a meaning you endorse. For someone who is quick to stereotype all ‘Darwinian humanists’ you seem not to want to be sorted so crudely yourself, not even as someone who means the words he borrows. How dare we rush to judgement where you are concerned? I forget now, what is it exactly that befits you for better treatment than you accord humanists?
And he seemed to nod in sincere agreement
Certainly humanists deny God in science. But you keep making the incorrect claim that accepting an old earth or evolution constitutes being humanist, along with the incorrect claim that therefore old earth or evolutionary arguments can be dismissed.
You then cite a humanist’s definition as “proof” that methodological naturalism supports excluding God from science. You’re accepting their god of the gaps error rather than assessing the claim from a biblical perspective. Papineau, like many other atheists, ID advocates, and YEC fail to distinguish between method and philosophy. The fact that you think that, if you were to throw a bunch of 1’s and 0’s into the air, they would fall down under the influence of gravity does not show that you don’t believe in God. You recognize that God’s normal way of running the physical universe follows regular patterns, and know that it is reasonable to expect them to happen as a first guess, without ruling out the possibilities that either we don’t entirely understand the regular patterns or that God intervened in an unexpected way. It is true that someone who assumes that God does not exist will assume that “natural” patterns will always hold, but that does not justify ignoring the fact that a significant range of theistic views also predict that “natural” patterns will generally hold.
Stephen Meyer doesn’t preach YEC, though his ID (and his climate change denial) claims are unreliable. He claims that the Cambrian radiation taking only about 10-20 million years is a problem for evolution. Creation science claims that science points to a young earth, but that is untrue. Not one of the arguments that you have posted, nor any other argument that I have encountered, actually provides good scientific evidence against an old earth. A credible biblical literalism needs to take “You shall not bear false witness” more literally than that.
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