That just isn’t the case. Wise has already admitted that even if all of the evidence pointed away from YEC he would still conclude YEC. That’s not science.
YEC is a dogma, and that is why it is incompatible with science. There is no evidence that could potentially falsify YEC because YEC was never a product of the evidence in the first place. A little thought experiment might help here. Imagine if all of our recorded information and all of our memories were just erased. We had to start from nothing. What evidence would people follow to arrive at the conclusion that the Earth is only a few thousands of years old? There is none. However, they could rediscover all of the evidence that we have now which points to the Earth being 4.5 billion years old.
If you claim you are doing science then the epistemology is already agreed upon. That epistemology is methodological naturalism. This means your hypothesis is falsifiable and your evidence is empirical.
Religious beliefs are as irrelevant in science as they are in baseball. In baseball, you agree to the rules. Your religious beliefs don’t change the rules of baseball. The religious beliefs of the umpire don’t matter. It is the same for the rules of science.
Methodological naturalism doesn’t rule anything out. It only defines what is and isn’t scientific. As an analogy, the rules of baseball don’t rule out the existence of hockey.
An epistemology is a set of concepts and rules that define knowledge within that rule set. You can choose to use the scientific method, or choose not to. It’s up to you. All that is asked is if you are making a scientific claim that you use the scientific method which is methodological naturalism.
What I have found over the years is that many people conflate scientific with true. They are not necessarily the same thing. Something can be true, but not be scientific. Science is just a method. If someone is trying to make deeper philosophical claims about nature, then they may be applying ontological naturalism which is different from methodological naturalism.
Lots of good points. The only thing I’d say here is that I think most Christian scientists would probably say these understandings are compatible and even in harmony. The example Lennox gives (which I’ve always been a fan of):
Question: Why is the water boiling?
Process Answer: Heat is transferred from the stove to the pot, causing rapid vaporization
Story Answer: I wanted a pot of tea
Productivity is an interesting metric, and I think much of our fascination with science has to do with its applicability and how productive naturalistic explanations have been at allowing us to build and do stuff (it’s a pragmatic argument). Still, naturalistic explanations run the risk of undermining the truth of our moral beliefs if accepted. Whether accepting a naturalistic explanation for morality is a “productive” thing is a harder question.
Yeah I agree. Still I think this cuts both ways. What if all the evidence pointed away from (metaphysical) naturalism or naturalistic explanations? Then by the same logic naturalism would be dogma. Anthony Flew re-evaluated his positions for the same reason.
I don’t know if I agree with all of Flew’s conclusions. Still, I found his desire to “follow the evidence wherever it leads” to be refreshing. Thomas Nagel (an atheist) came to a somewhat similar conclusion about reductive physicalism in his 2012 book “Mind and Cosmos,” which I have yet to read to be honest.
I say all this as a Christian and someone who strongly favors natural explanations. I wonder if I’ve been too hasty to prefer naturalistic explanations for pragmatic instead of epistemic reasons. As a graduate student I’m constantly surrounded by people who only offer natural explanations. What evidence would it take for me to think a naturalistic explanation was insufficient or inferior to some other type of explanation? Can I even define a “naturalistic” explanation?
I guess I don’t understand how that would work. Scientific explanations are descriptive, not prescriptive. An Is does not become an Ought.
Then no one would use the scientific method because it wouldn’t work.
I think it is very healthy to step back and put things in perspective. Scientific and True can be two different things. One of the biggest reasons that we do use scientific method is that it is very pragmatic. The scientific method has had a lot of success. But it is just a tool.
The tough part is finding a method for detecting the supernatural/divine/spiritual. Or do we even need those labels? If there were a deity interacting with nature, would that just fall under the banner of natural? What humans do is considered natural and a part of nature. The other difficulty is that supernatural explanations usually lack a LOT of detail. At what point does a vague explanation stop being an explanation at all? Is there a difference between a belief and an explanation?
Michael Polanyi didn’t agree with the epistemology
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
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All things are in process.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
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Aye, if a deity were doing that, they would always have done so the same way even if they were as deranged as the Mother of The Null. That would be part of nature. But it isn’t.
A scientific theory is defined by methodological naturalism.
It doesn’t. Methodological naturalism has requirements from what can be counted as valid data and valid hypotheses within the method, but it doesn’t rule out anything. It’s more of a filter. Think of it as the “you have to be this tall to go on the ride” sign at the amusement park. It’s not saying that short kids don’t exist, only that they can’t go on the ride.
Then one has to wonder what role does naturalism play in the terms if it doesn’t exclude supernaturalism. Wouldn’t methodological objectivism be a better use of words?
Some contemporary metaethicists use Darwinian evolution from EDAs (evolutionary debunking arguments) for moral beliefs. These are people like Richard Joyce, who wrote “The Myth of Morality” and “The Evolution of Morality.” They explain our belief in the existence of moral “truths” as a byproduct of natural selection which are thus illusory. The idea is we formed moral beliefs for the purpose of the propagation of the species and our moral faculties are hopelessly flawed. Joyce and I are both fans of Mackie’s “argument from queerness” which illustrates the difficulty of justifying the existence of any moral values.
Scientific explanations can only serve to debunk our moral views because the existence of any objective, mind-independent moral obligations and duties would have to be supernatural. Science obviously has no way of discovering these principles (or these moral “oughts” if they do exist). It can, however, give a naturalistic explanation of why who these could have evolved moral intuitions even if all of them are either false or non-propositional.
I don’t know of any evolutionary psychologists publishing work in the field who think they can justify the existence of objective moral duties and values under the naturalistic methodology they use to offer their explanations. Many advocate for amorality or a complete changing of moral discourse to reflect their belief that moral duties fictions and not mind-independent.
If, as I contend, the “spiritual” is “physical” and the “physical” is “natural”, why wouldn’t the “spiritual” be “natural” too? The question, IMO, would be: “What is ‘supernatural’?”
Quite possible… and my confusion may even contribute to being a little oversensitive myself.
I certainly believe it to be false. But that doesn’t change the necessity of methodological naturalism in science.
It produces the only explanations which are meaningful and useful to scientific inquiry.
Reality is too complicated to speak of “true explanations” as if explanations are in absolute categories of true and false. If someone asks, “why does this ice cube exist?” I can reply by talking about the physics of this change of state from liquid water to ice. Or… I can talk about the person who filled the ice tray. Or… I can talk about how refrigeration works. Or… I can talk about the economics of the production of refrigerators. Or… I can talk about… the origin of earth and the universe, or about God. Many explanations and all of them true, even if they are not the explanations you are looking for.
What evidence would falsify your belief that hitting the ball is the best thing to do when you are up at bat in baseball.
The answer can be “no evidence” when it is contrary to the rules of the game.
In any case, I have no such belief. There is only the fact that naturalistic explanations are the only ones which are of any meaning and use to science. In general people look for very different things in explanations – and quite naturally scientific explanation don’t satisfy many people about many things.
The rules of how science works are not predictions. Science does not and cannot be expected to hold itself up by its own bootstraps.
Are you confusing string theory with quantum physics?
It has been demonstrated in quantum physics that some events have no cause determining that outcome within the accepted scientific worldview. It does indeed mean that science cannot provide an explanation for why those events rather than some other alternatives.
Like I have said elsewhere this is a gap to which the “god of the gaps” criticism does not apply. And others are indeed free come up with explanations outside of science without being in conflict with science.
