Nelson: Parabolas and Methodological Naturalism (Again)

How long have we known each other – six years? Can’t remember exactly, my bad. But in that entire interval, I have never seen the faintest glimmer that you would ever infer design for any biological event or pattern. You keep an open checkbook for undirected physical process and write out generous advance payments to it, if an ID hypothesis ever comes knocking. I’ll have more to say about this in the ENV series (not naming you personally, of course). Yes, you think I’m obsessed with MN, but I see MN in action in your scientific reasoning, and if I ask myself, why do my smartest ID colleagues, who are every bit as bright as Josh, infer design (say, for the origin of first life)? The difference is MN in practice. My ID colleagues stand outside the naturalistic parabola, and have stopped obeying it.

Our common ground is not scientific or philosophical. It’s theological. Obviously that matters to me, and to you, but for the atheists who come here? They are indifferent at best.

So I focus on where you and I disagree, because that’s where these issues are properly joined.