From: Brian Harper (harper.10@osu.edu)
Date: Wed Aug 27 2003 - 15:43:07 EDT
At 12:35 PM 8/27/2003 -0600, Terry M. Gray wrote:
>Brian Harper wrote:
>
>>
>>This issue does seem to be problematic. Is methodological naturalism
>>really the way of doing science or is it just a way to circumvent ID?
>>If it is (and I agree that it is), then why is it one sided? Why doesn't
>>MN also constrain the atheist scientist?
>>
>>This lack of symmetry will continue to provide fuel to the
>>flames of rhetoric until its corrected.
>
>I'm having some difficulty in this thread understanding why we don't think
>that Dawkins violates MN. (I'm going to leave Gould out--I'm somewhat
>surprised at how hard we're coming down on him--he's a totally different
>beast than Dawkins in my opinion.) When Dawkins promotes atheism (or
>anti-theism) in the name of science, he is NOT doing MN. He's not
>constrained by it because he's not just about promoting a science agenda,
>but also a religio-philosophical agenda. (There's this "life is religion"
>part of me that says that he is being more honest and wholistically human
>about his religious view than we Christians and others who encourage the
>elimination of religion-talk from our science-talk.)
Yes, I agree he isn't doing MN. My question about symmetry
is why he would not be similarly constrained as a theist.
For example, I believe he should be treated by the scientific
community with the same disdain shown towards ID.
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