I don’t agree with that. You would do the OOL research out of curiosity. And you might find a possible answer. But you also might find that it is far more difficult or unlikely than you had thought, and maybe there isn’t any natural explanation.
I don’t agree with that, either. The “yet” might be a reflection of whom you are talking to, rather than a reflection of your own beliefs.
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Yes, that’s definitely one way to do it.
Though the conviction that there is a natural answer and it is probably in such and such way has been regularly expressed by scientists in their communication with the general public right from the time of Urey Miller.
No qualifiers such as… “Perhaps there is no natural explanation”.
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I probably wouldn’t say that. But I often say “perhaps we will never explain it” (or something similar).
Again, it depends on who I am talking to. If I am talking to a theist, I’ll openly admit that I cannot rule out divine intervention. If I’m talking to a non-religious person I won’t bring that up, but I’ll admit that we might never have a satisfactory answer.
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You’re not alone. 
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I would like to return to some discussion about God’s providence, because I think it is relevant here.
Picking up on both @terrellclemmons’ comment,
And @swamidass’,
Cannot Christians – faithful philosophical naturalists need not apply 
, cannot Christians talk about meaningful events and sets of events as objective demonstrations of God’s interventions?
A father gives an unexpected gift to his child. The outside observer who did not have a loving father and is therefore always suspicious of motives and infers duplicity, equivocation and hypocrisy will not accept the gift as objective evidence of the father’s ‘loving intervention’. The child, however, absolutely will.
I expect that you see where I’m going with this… The Christian will correctly infer, adequately enough for forensic testimony, that meaningful improbable events and sets of improbable events are evidence of God’s interventionist activities and a frequent and predictable M.O., by his design.
Since similar – yes, I’m going to use that word – ‘hypernatural’ events have been recorded – events where no natural laws have been broken – in both Testaments of scripture and in the lives of multiple scores of Christians over the centuries, and hopefully in our own as well, we have basis.
The philosophical naturalist will say that evolution couldn’t happen the same way twice. The Christian who understands God’s sovereignty will say that there are no accidents and can correctly infer design and expect to see it. Prove it scientifically? No, but still know it is true.
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And speaking of meaningful improbable events and multiple sets of meaningful improbable events, Hugh Ross and many others have written much about all the events and parameters that make our planet unique, and more keep being discovered.
And a favorite,
Yes, this is standard ID rhetoric. It also appears to be driven by an agenda, and a departure from the doctrine of providence. I, for one, am not comfortable with the theological innovation here.
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I am not that well read that I can affirm it is ‘standard ID rhetoric’. If it is, so be it. I am well lived enough, however, to have much documented ‘empirical evidence’ of Father’s M.O. to see the correlation.
You would… but a lot of people don’t.
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What agenda, what departure, and what innovation?
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(You may not have noticed, but that last paragraph allows for evolution: Welcome to Terrell Clemmons: Questions on Methodological Naturalism)
Possibly so, in personal or intimate small-group conversation, where the speaker might be adjusting his expression in the light of what he knows about the listener(s), but if the statement is made in a textbook or some other means of mass communication, where it is going out to an audience whose composition is unknown to the author, the author could not make any such personal concessions, and it would read, to an audience with no personal relationship with the author, as a statement of a supposedly detached truth. In such a writer/reader environment, the most natural reading of the statement would be that the author is convinced that science will eventually one day discover how life originated. And if science discovers that, then it won’t be a supernatural cause that is discovered.
I’m not suggesting that such an author would be pushing PN in a heavy-handed way. Indeed, he might not even be conscious of the implication. But the use of language often reveals our unconscious, tacit commitments.
The force implicit in the “yet” can be seen easily if one compares the sentence with and without it:
Version 1. Science has not discovered how life began.
Version 2. Science has not yet discovered how life began.
Version 1 leaves open the possibility that science may never discover how life began, and that leaves open the possibility that life began supernaturally.
Version 2, when contrasted with Version 1, leaves the strong impression that science will some day discover how life began, and what follows from that has already been explained above.
If the writer of Version 2 is a very precise writer, very self-conscious about his choice of words, then the strong impression created by the “yet” will be intended. If the writer tends to be sloppier about meaning and choice of words, the impression may not be consciously intended, but it’s still very possible that the thought is lurking inchoately in the back of the writer’s mind.
In the case of a biology textbook written by a strongly pro-evolutionary champion like, say, Ken Miller, someone very alert to the nuances of terms in creation/evolution debates, it’s extremely likely that in such a sentence the “yet” would be chosen advisedly.
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Eddie, do you think this attitude should be applied to all remaining scientific questions? For example, we don’t know how the matter/antimatter asymmetry we find in the universe comes from. Do you treat this as any different from the question of how life began?
Is it irrational for people to have any degree of “faith” (or optimism, if you would) that science will progress and solve some of these problems in the future?
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It’s an interesting question… one counter question would be-
Is it irrational to suppose that there are problems which Science cannot solve?
There is a difference between optimism and certainty.
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I’m not sure what you mean by “problems.” There are certainly problems which science will never solve by itself, simply because they are not scientific questions, such as issues of ethics and metaphysics. However, judging by the success of science in the last few centuries, assuming one believes in inductive reasoning, there seems to be a strong case that science will continue to advance and solve many problems we can’t even imagine are solvable. Possibly, the scientific questions that turn out to be unsolvable are ones that we can’t even imagine right now.
Was using the same word you sued with the same meaning.
I find this a strange take…
Just because Science was successful in solving some problems in the past, does it mean that it will continue to do so for all problems that it can define today?
I don’t see this conclusion as necessary or even logically following from the first statement.
The underlying assumption to your claim is that all the problems being addressed by Science currently (Such as the origins of Life, Consciousness, Existence of multiverses etc) have natural explanations.
I dont see how someone can make such a claim without adhering to some kind of Philosophical naturalism (atleast in a limited sense)
It would be helpful if you can clarify what you mean by -
a) The Doctrine of Providence.
b) Why the ID position “Departs” from said doctrine.
c) What is the innovation you are objecting to.
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There’s nothing wrong with any scientist proceeding on a hunch that a natural explanation of something can be found, and trying to find it.
My remarks were not meant to discourage any investigation of any kind, not even investigations into origins.
I was merely pointing out how certain verbal formulations can (perhaps unintentionally) slide from merely “methodological” naturalism to metaphysical naturalism.
Would it help if instead of an example regarding origins, I used an example from the Gospels?
Suppose someone wrote:
“Science does not yet know how Jesus rose from the dead.”
or
“Science cannot yet explain how Jesus walked on the water.”
The implicit assumption in the “yet” is that science will one day be able to give a natural-cause explanation for these things. But what if they did not have a natural cause? In that case, science wouldn’t have any hope of explaining them. So how can we justify adding the word “yet”?
If the “yet” is given its full force, the person making such statements is implying that these events had fully natural causes, i.e., did not involve any breaking of natural laws or supernatural disruption of the normal causal nexus.
This, to me, would go beyond mere methodological naturalism, into philosophical naturalism. It would be implying that all events, including those traditionally believed to have supernatural causes, have natural explanations; it would be implying that the universe is a causally closed natural system.
(Of course, if you want to say that the writer in the above examples is just being a bit sloppy or careless, and doesn’t mean “yet” with such strictness, then the conclusion can be avoided, but I don’t think it’s always the case that people are being sloppy.)
In any case, even if you don’t think that examples involving “yet” are good ones, I assume you would grant that some people who write about these issues do tend to slide from MN to PN.
I’m sure you’ve heard statements from time to time such as “Science has proved there are no miracles” – which could only be true if the methods of science could reveal all possible knowledge of the world, which itself could only be true if the natural realm covered all of reality without exception. That would be philosophical naturalism. (On the other hand, “I suspect that the action of the magnet is not a divine miracle, but follows regular laws, and I am going to try to find out those laws” would not commit one to philosophical naturalism.)
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Well, these are a bit different, though, for the reason that these are explicitly claimed as extraordinary miracles in the NT which deviate from the natural order. To deny that they are not deviations from the natural order would be tantamount to using science to deny a central claim of Scripture. But I’m not sure you can argue the same for the origin of life. How about the following statements:
Particle physicists do not yet know how the matter-antimatter asymmetry came about.
Condensed matter physicists are not yet able to mass produce a high-temperature superconductor.
Would you object to any of the above statements?
There’s also a second caveat, in that some Christians don’t necessarily believe that a scientific explanation of certain miracles invalidates that 1) they actually, objectively, happened, and 2) they were still miracles. (And this is different from the common liberal or skeptical attitude that miracles never actually happened at all, or were merely magic tricks perpetuated by a conman.) For example, @DaleCutler has argued that miracles are “hypernatural” - the timing is the most salient point, even if say, Moses parting the Red Sea could be explained in terms of tidal forces or winds. (Please correct me if I’m wrong.) Similarly, I think @PdotdQ suggested the possibility of explaining Jesus’ resurrection in terms of quantum mechanics or general relativity or something similar. In fact, he once suggested (though not fully endorsed) the theory that anything that interacts with our senses is “natural”.
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