I would suggest it’s a different way of doing of science. Some people call it “not science.” You’re free to do that, but I would contend that my statement remains accurate. MN governs what is allowable as an inference, and therefore, MN philosophy is setting the boundaries. Wells called that “running the show.” Philosophy is governing science.
You said that MN rules out the design hypothesis a prior. I disagree. MN can be used to detect human design, or even design by many other designers such as ants, beavers, and bees. Design and natural are not separate things. They are often one in the same.
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If I could show you an a clear factual error in Behe’s recent book. Let us say we pick one that is not even an error central to his argument. What would you do with it? What should they do with it? What if they don’t fix it?
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That’s a fair questions for another discussion thread. Is there something false you wanted to address from my response to Daniel? (This was supposed to be directed to @swamidass. Not sure if I clicked the right Reply button or not - sorry, new to this forum)
If I’m understanding you correctly, you’re saying that within MN, the design inference is allowable as long as the designer is something that can itself be explained within MN. Am I understanding you correctly?
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I would contend that it is not accurate, because the ID folks aren’t doing science. If you contend that your statement is accurate, please point me to the new information produced by any of the ID folks testing an ID hypothesis.
Writing books aimed at laypeople is not doing science. Testing straw-man evolutionary hypotheses is bad science, but it’s not ID science, which doesn’t exist.
No, there is no such governance, and merely making inferences is a tiny part of science, not all of it as you are trying to pretend. Science isn’t debate. Science is testing hypotheses. You’ve been bamboozled by people who are making excuses for not doing science.
For example, I can hypothesize that God did a lot of new designing and poofing in the Cambrian. That hypothesis makes empirical, testable predictions.
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Correct.
It all hinges on what is natural. Methodological naturalism defines natural as that which can be empirically measured and observed. MN doesn’t get into the whole philosophical argument about theology and the like. Instead, MN has a very method focused definition of what is and isn’t natural. Another way to put it is the natural is the objective reality around us. If God interacted with the universe in a way that was measurable and observable then God would be a part of nature as defined by MN, just as humans are.
We could also look at M theory as an example. M theory posits that our universe came about due to the intersection of two or more membranes. These membranes would exist outside of our universe, so in that sense they would be “supernatural”. However, scientists think they can apply MN and determine if M theory is accurate by looking at the effects those membranes may have had on the universe we see around us.
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This is how I understand it too.
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Sorry, guys, I’m having a hard time following this with thread, but I’m trying. So if I’m hitting the wrong Reply button somewhere, I beg your pardon.
At this point, some of us (@T_aquaticus, @swamidass, and me) have agreed that the following statement is accurate: Within MN, the design inference is allowable as long as the designer is something that can itself be explained within MN.
So from that common ground, I’ll bring this back to the OP and the point @dga471 drew out regarding Jonathan Wells’s statement in the referenced BioLogos article that “materialistic philosophy is running the show.” Someone may not like the way Wells stated it, but if the designer itself must be explainable within MN, how is it not accurate to say that MN is running the show?
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Yes, you can suggest that, but only because we do not have a sufficiently precise definition of science.
I’m pretty sure that almost all scientists would reject that suggestion.
Hm, it seems that we have morphed from “materialistic philosophy is running the show” to “methodological naturalism is running the show”? Those two are different claims. I would agree with the latter, but not necessarily the former.
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I don’t follow this. Jesus is said to have turned water into wine, and the difference between water and wine is quite “detectable,” but no one supposes that the power by which he did so was “part of nature”; and Moses is said to have parted the Red Sea (well, with a little divine help!), and that parting would have been quite “detectable” to a non-religious observer, but no one has suggested that God must be “part of nature” because he made the waters part.
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Terrell is a new contributor here. I think the above expression “you are trying to pretend” is unnecessarily aggressive and could suggest intellectual dishonesty on Terrell’s part. It won’t give Terrell a sense of what Peaceful Science is like at its best. I would urge people to write to newcomers with less “edge” and read their words in the most charitable way possible.
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I don’t know anything about M theory, but if I understand your account of it, and your discussion, you are saying that it is legitimate to draw inferences about a “supernatural” entity (one outside our own universe) based on the effects of that entity on our universe. And you seem to be saying that such inferences would be admissible not merely as philosophical but even as scientific inferences. Is that correct?
I think we all agree that story telling is part of human nature.
Could you include a bit of quotation in your replies? I have three replies just above here, and it’s not clear to me which of the three you are replying to.
I don’t think it’s a morph from one thing to another. I’ll remove the adjective and just leave the philosophical ‘ism’ and restate the question: If the designer itself must be explainable within naturalism, how is it not accurate to say that naturalism is running the show? By “running the show” I mean that naturalism is governing the whole process.
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I usually do. But it seemed misleading if I picked arbitrary text.
The forum software provides an arrow you can click to find what I was replying to.
In any case, I was not accusing you of telling stories. Rather, the point is that we know there are stories about changing the water to wine. We don’t know anything about the actual event, or if there was an actual event. I’m not going to apply “natural” to an event that I don’t know happened. But I can apply “natural” to the story telling about that supposed event.
Thanks for this tip. It will prove handy in the future.
Well, I wouldn’t have been able to tell that this was what you were talking about! Your remark was so laconic as to be cryptic! A tiny bit more exposition would have helped.
But now that I see what you mean, I’m not sure how it touches the point I was raising with aquaticus. I was neither insisting upon nor denying any miracle, but only raising a point of principle. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that you personally did see water turned into wine (or saw a sea parted at the command of a man – put in any miracle of your choice), and suppose further that the person who did it told you directly he was doing so by the power of God. Suppose that you believed his claim that God was behind the miracle. Would it follow that God must be part of nature? I don’t see that it would follow, but aquaticus seems to be saying that it would. I wanted to know why.
I’m not asking you to defend aquaticus’s statement – unless you want to. I’m merely indicating that your point, however valid, doesn’t answer my question to aquaticus.
No, this is just the methodological limits of how we recognize design in science. It is also recovering the theological reasons that this rule was first instituted by Christians (not atheists!), 400 years ago.
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