Given the lack of data, an infinite number of hypotheses could fit. What facts are there for a hypothesis to fit, after all? Still, one would have to posit, for the third hypothesis, a being who was not only deceptive but senseless. What would be the point in faking something you could as easily do? The God of hypothesis 3 has to be attached to a number of bizarre characteristics.
Well, as I see it, thatâs just the point. Methodological naturalism proceeds from the premise that everything in existence is subject to universal, inviolable natural laws. One consequence of this is that we can make an accurate assessment of the likelihood of any possible event or observation based on observations that have already been made. By this method, the probability of some events can be determined to be so low that they area considered impossible.
The believer in the resurrection will often argue that methodological naturalism is just an assumption that does not apply when assessing purported, one-off âmiracles.â But if we discard methodological naturalism, then our previous knowledge and observations no longer apply. This is not the case solely for an actual resurrection caused by the Christian god. All of the other possible explanations for the belief in the resurrection are, equally, of indeterminate probability. .
(This is quite apart from the fact that the explanation I favour, that a bunch of people who belonged to a cult came to believe weird things about its founder, is not really all that improbable. It is almost commonplace.)
I think thatâs a naive view of science. The term âmethodological empiricismâ has already been introduced. At the deepest level of physics, you may have some point, but in other sciences, all sorts of things change over time and with place or conditions, so that the present may be only a rough key to the past. The problem I see is that the God hypothesis as usually presented is too vague to have any clear consequences and thus implies almost nothing in particular. Add to this the lack of data. Is there even anything to be explained?
I disagree. Before being a method, science is a human enterprise, a quest so to speak, aimed at approaching as far as possible the truth about the natural world. The scientific method is only a tool devised for achieving this task. And whenever a tool is inappropriate to a task, it should be put aside. 6
From the 16th to the 19th century, a series of scientific discoveries seemed to give increasing credence to materialist theories. But over the last century and a half, a series of other scientific discoveries have undermined the materialist edifice and given new vigour to the thesis of a Creator God. All this is well explained by Stephen Meyer in his book « The Return of the God Hypothesis »
A post was split to a new topic: SC: The proper distinction between science and theology
I disagree too. You can have hypotheses about the supernatural but these always require material evidence to be testable. We havenât found material evidence of the supernatural yet.
I agree science is not appropriate for all tasks. Likewise, theology is not appropriate for all tasks. Hello Demarcation problem. 
Which materialist edifices are undermined? While they may not be fundamental, QM, GR, and the standard model seem to have held up.
And what Creator thesis? The fine tuning of the Big Bang, the one championed by Ken Ham, or the amorphous Rorschach inkblot that is ID?
2 Likes
Have they? What were these âseries of other scientific discoveriesâ? Who were the scientists who discovered them? Were they indeed scientific discoveries or just philosophical arguments (as seems to be the main ID stock in trade)?
Big bang, fine tuning and information storage and processing systems within cells are 3 major discoveries that has provided wind in the sails of theism. Dawkins famously said that âDarwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.â Well, it can now be said that the progress of science since the last 150 years makes it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled theist.
Or the Hindu one?
This is implicitly an argument from ignorance. The textbook God-of-the-gaps.
2 Likes
Could you explain how these three things provide wind? (I think you may be contributing the wind yourself.) And how the second is even true? And in fact whatever is it youâre talking about with the third?
2 Likes
Of those, only the Big Bang is a âscientific discoveryâ. I would however say that it is a mischaracterisation to claim that it, in and of itself, âundermined the materialist edifice and given new vigour to the thesis of a Creator Godâ â it is merely used as a piece in a number of uncompelling apologetic arguments.
Fine tuning is merely a âcharacterizationâ, and thus a claim about the constants of nature. At best, within science, it is a mere âhypothesisâ. It is also a philosophical argument: âA modern variation of the teleological argumentâ.
âInformation storage and processing systems within cellsâ, would appear to be simply Meyerâs own inexpert and pseudoscientific claims, based in part of Dembskiâs pseudomathematics.
A more accurate characterisation would be that you are lauding the âprogress in Christian Apologeticsâ. Your second and third âdiscoveriesâ arenât scientific, and your first only provides any aid to an âintellectually fulfilled theistâ with a heavy overlay of apologetics.
1 Like
All teleological arguments are, at their core, claims that P(Life|God) >> P(Life|~God), or at least that P([some feature of the universe]|God) >> P([some feature of the universe]|~God). But the fact is we donât know nearly enough about either nature or God to be able to reliably calculate P(X|God) or P(X|~God). For this reason, I donât think any teleological arguments support the existence of God. Even if it could be shown that evolution is utterly false, it wouldnât help support the hypothesis of creation (though I donât believe evolution and creation are contradictory anyway).
3 Likes
I am not saying that, according to methodological naturalism, nothing changes. However, it does entail that there are natural laws that do not change. Thatâs how we are able to extrapolate from our current observations to conclude that the Big Bang happened 14 bya. But, really, the principle that past and future events can be best understood by using the observations we make in the present is one that probably extends beyond MN. It is what the proponents of the resurrection rely on when they say âPeople donât have mass hallucinations of the same thingâ or âPeople donât willingly die for something they know to be a lie.â I donât see how the argument âBut they could, if there was an omnipotent god who wanted them to,â is any less sound in those instances than in the instance of the claimed resurrection of Jesus.
2 posts were split to a new topic: Bayesian inference and the teleological argument
I read that book Liked it!
This topic was automatically closed 7 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.