RE: [asa] Science's Blind Spot: The Unseen Religion of Scientific Naturalism

So my Web pages have been read by at least one person today. Good.

In answer to the question I would not use 'differentiation' as an apologetic argument. It may turn out to be useful eventually. I am relying on Paul Davies and Hofstadter (spelling?) in what I say. So I say:

This problem is discussed in illuminating detail by Hofstadter. Paul Davies refers to it in his `The Cosmic Blueprint '. Both acknowledge it to be a profound mystery. Hofstadter seems more optimistic than Davies that sheer mechanical complexity involving extraordinary recursive processes will provide the answer. Paul Davies wonders whether the DNA acts as a `receiver' rather than the source of the genetic information. If he is right where is this greater information? What is its source if not in the individual cell? Did a DNA strand produce Adam, or was it the other way round, or was it a bit of both?! My own hunch is that the individual life forms (such as bacteria, grasses, spiders, elephants and humans) and their respective DNAs are open structures - open to realities beyond the mere chance mutations that Dawkins sees as an essential part of all evolution. These might include environmental factors and, in the case of humans (say), the human will and its chosen behavioural patterns. These might very well influence the DNA's development from one generation to another.

God of the gaps.

It is often alleged that ID people are evoking the dreaded 'god of the gaps'. This criticism is based on the assumption that all physical effects have physical causes. Just because many physical effects have been found to have physical causes, does not mean that we can assume that all will. That is an unwarranted assumption. Further the 'god of the gaps' gets less as science advances. With the biological understanding of life, the advance of science has revealed a world of marvels unthought-of before. The 'gaps' or mysteries are getting greater.

T.F.Torrance used to say that 'chance' was the atheists' god of the gaps! I saw him yesterday by the way.

 
Good wishes from Scotland,
 
Howard Taylor
------------------------------------------------
FAITH AND THE MODERN WORLD:
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Howard Taylor,
Work:
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Tel: 0131 451 4508 Mobile: 0775 969 6811
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Blog: http://apologetics.blog.co.uk

________________________________

From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu on behalf of David Opderbeck
Sent: Wed 7/18/2007 14:15
To: Taylor, Howard G
Cc: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Re: [asa] Science's Blind Spot: The Unseen Religion of Scientific Naturalism

Howard, thanks for your comments and the links to your website. I looked at one of the articles on your site and noticed what seems to be the heart of your argument here. You dicuss the problem of differentiation, and say:

        Biologists call this the problem of `differentiation' and it is still a great enigma. it seems to me to mean that there must be another plan or control greater than the DNA that is switching on the parts of the DNA relevant to finger growth in the cells of my fingers while keeping the parts of the same DNA that have to do with the growth of other parts of my body switched off. If there is this greater plan where is it located? Please note that although the example of the human nose, fingers and toes is given here, this problem relates to all forms of life.

From that, you argue:

        Causation, then, would not just be `bottom-up' (DNA causing the individual life form to come into being), but also `top-down' (the life form, over many generations acting on the DNA). This could not make sense unless ultimately the `top-down' causation came from Mind and began, not with the individual life form, but God himself. If I am right then there is much more to life than very intricate mechanism. However we must wait for more research into the riddle of `differentiation' before being too assured in our comments. For the time being we must be content with a sense of very great mystery and awe.

This is very interesting, but it's one of those things I've grown to find frustrating about ID. Isn't this a classic examle of a God (or mind)-of-the-gaps argument? I appreciate the caveat you give about waiting for more research, but if the conclusion is that we need to wait for more research, where's the apologetic power in the argument? I notice that you mention artificial intelligence research at one point, but you don't address the key concept of "emergence" that fuels most artificial intelligence programs. If emergence proves to be a useful concept, doesn't that start to close this apparent gap?
 
 

On 7/18/07, Taylor, Howard G <H.G.Taylor@hw.ac.uk> wrote:
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> If a definition of science is that it always looks for physical causes for physical affects then one can understand that no Mind would be allowed. But in shutting our Mind (without reason) one is ruling out, a priori, a factor which may be relevant. In the history of science methodological naturalism is a new belief based on nothing but an arbitrary and recent definition of what science is.
>
> Howard Taylor
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------
> FAITH AND THE MODERN WORLD:
> www.howardtaylor.net
> Howard Taylor,
> Work:
> Chaplain, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, EH14 4AS
> Tel: 0131 451 4508 Mobile: 0775 969 6811
> E-mail: H.G.Taylor@hw.ac.uk
>
> Home:
> 51 The Murrays, Edinburgh, EH17 8UD
> Tel: 0131 664 0751
> E-mail: HowardTaylor1944@yahoo.co.uk
>
> Skype: Howard1944
>
> Blog: http://apologetics.blog.co.uk
>
> ________________________________
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu on behalf of George Murphy
> Sent: Wed 7/18/2007 12:56
> To: Peter Loose; asa@calvin.edu
>
> Subject: Re: [asa] Science's Blind Spot: The Unseen Religion of Scientific Naturalism
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> 1) MN is not "based around" the assumptions of matter & energy. It's a prescription that science should not appeal to God as an explanation. The introduction of intelligence or mind as explanatory elements would not violate MN in this sense - as long as those are not simply aliases for God (which they are for ID). Of course whether or not such a procedure is fruitful is another matter.
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> 2) Matter & energy, as concepts in physics, are not at the most basic level "two" entities but one - that's the significance of E = mc^2.
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> 3) The claim that Ontological Naturalism is the "logical precursor" to Methodological Naturalism is false.
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> 4) I was neither "setting aside" the Resurrection nor saying that it is the only phenomenon (Note my plural - "unique historical events like the resurrection") with which science cannot deal. I was recognizing precisely the possibility of events, commonly referred to as miracles, which cannot be explained adequately without reference to God. OTOH Scripture gives us no reason to think that the origin of life is in that category.
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> 5) In the vast majority of cases God sustains - & acts - by his powerful Word in cooperation with creatures. That is why science constrained by MN works - the point of my original post.
>
> Shalom
> George
> http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Peter Loose
> To: asa@calvin.edu
> Sent: Wednesday, July 18, 2007 5:12 AM
> Subject: [asa] Science's Blind Spot: The Unseen Religion of Scientific Naturalism
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> Wow George - I am amazed! May I as a Brit make a comment?
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> What is MN? It's a set of assumptions based around two poles - Matter and Energy. Any outcome must be bounded by those assumptions. Now suppose those assumptions are wrong in any absolute sense? Will that ever be discovered?
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> Probably not - because MN is almost universally now come to be the only 'correct' way of doing science. And when MN fails, as it has manifestly, in any question about the origin of a single self-replicating cell or indeed on the increasingly vast matters shown up by the Encode project, those who operate by a commitment to MN fall back on another set of commitments. It's deep in the world-view of arguably virtually all scientists. That assumption is that MN is linked, to its logical precursor, Ontological Naturalism. So, if the answer to for example "the origin of life question" is elusive (it is?) then ON informs our Scientism and, by faith, we understand that the worlds were framed by MN. So we wait in faith, committed to MN, for the answer to the question of the origin of the single living cell.
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> Now a third pole of science ought to embrace something akin to Intelligence or Mind. We know that Information is at the heart of life. No computer engineer can look at DNA without recognising that the cell is programmed for life.
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> I've spent my life applying computers to Industrial Process Control problems. I've lived with the challenges of designing rugged software that doesn't fall over and cause, in my case, Steel Mills to crash. What I know is how difficult that challenge is. I know that it costs incalculable hours to develop software that runs reliably. I know that any 'glitches' or 'bugs' in the software didn't get better overnight. No, we pored over the code to work out, intelligently, what was going wrong and how to put it right.
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> Everything we know about Information tells us that it only arises from pre-existing Intelligence. It is neither matter nor energy. Those who hold to MN might as well postulate that Windows XP (or any other 'language' ) could arise simply by squirting a long string of 'white noise' into a bi-level device ( e.g. - a Schmidt trigger) and expecting as output a string of code that when married with an X86 Instruction set would suddenly become Windows XP or any other Operating System. The real world simply isn't like that. There seems to be a complete absence of empirical evidence to say that the biological world is any different. But because we've assumed MN we have formed an attachment to it that is so inseparably linked to science, that anyone who argues science can be done with an additional pole, such as Information, or Mind, then that person is ostracised - "he's not doing science".
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> I am amazed too that one can set aside the enormous ramifications of 'The Resurrection' in a single sweep of the hand "But - bracketing off for a moment claims for unique historical events like the resurrection - we don't have any reason to believe that there are any such phenomena." What do you mean by your phrase "Any reason"? Most of the New Testament challenges that statement. While the Resurrection is clearly absolutely huge, it is by no means the only 'Singularity' in either the NT or the OT.
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> Then we come to such themes as spelled out in Hebrews 1:3 (NIV) The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.
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> I am engineer, not a scientist or a philosopher - but I am old now and I've heard enough and seen enough to know than MN is a limit on science and is the territory of the a priori commitment to Naturalism. What's the difference between Naturalism and Atheism?
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> Peter Loose
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> Chelmsford
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> UK
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> ________________________________

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> From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On Behalf Of George Murphy
> Sent: Tuesday, July 17, 2007 2:18 AM
> To: George Murphy; David Opderbeck; Ted Davis
> Cc: PvM; Gregory Arago; asa@calvin.edu; (Matthew) Yew Hock Tan
> Subject: Re: [asa] Science's Blind Spot: The Unseen Religion of Scientific Naturalism
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> After a long lapse, another of the typos you all know & love. Below read "Of course that doesn't mean that what it's able to study exhausts all reality, or that we may NOT encounter observable phenomena that such science can't finally explain."
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> Shalom
> George
> http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
>
>
> From: George Murphy
>
>
> To: David Opderbeck ; Ted Davis
>
>
> Cc: PvM ; Gregory Arago ; asa@calvin.edu ; (Matthew) Yew Hock Tan
>
>
> Sent: Monday, July 16, 2007 1:16 PM
>
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> Subject: Re: [asa] Science's Blind Spot: The Unseen Religion of Scientific Naturalism
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> 2 comments -
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> 1) Those who've been on the list for awhile may remember that Hunter was on it a couple of years ago & that some of us debated these issues then.
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> 2) All the history, philosophy & theology involved in this discussion is interesting, but we shouldn't lose track of one crude empirical fact: Science operating within the constraints of MN works - it has been working for ~400 years & continues to work very well in explaining known phenomena & predicting new ones. Of course that doesn't mean that what it's able to study exhausts all reality, or that we may encounter observable phenomena that such science can't finally explain. But - bracketting off for a moment claims for unique historical events like the resurrection - we don't have any reason to believe that there are any such phenomena. Of course that's where ID raises it's distinctive objection, but the best it's done so far is to point to some phenomena that haven't yet been explained fully. There is simply no good reason for scientists, whatever their religious beliefs, to abandon MN as a presupposition for doing science: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
>
>
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>
>
> Shalom
> George
> http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
>
>
> From: David Opderbeck
>
>
> To: Ted Davis
>
>
> Cc: PvM ; Gregory Arago ; asa@calvin.edu ; (Matthew) Yew Hock Tan
>
>
> Sent: Monday, July 16, 2007 11:51 AM
>
>
> Subject: Re: [asa] Science's Blind Spot: The Unseen Religion of Scientific Naturalism
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> Ted said: I also believe it is much more accurate; the term MN itself
> probably arose with Christian philosophical reflection on the limits of
> science and the reality of a "supernatural" God, and our definition reflects
> this.
>
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> But what Hunter seems to be saying is that what we now call MN is rooted in the epistemology and method of Bacon and Locke. For the Enlightenment empiricists, empirical study of the world is an effort to obtain unified knowledge about reality-as-it-is. If reality-as-it-is includes the empirically observable hand-of-God, then that observation properly falls under the umbrella of "science," or, to use an eighteenth century term, "natural philosophy." The gist of Hunter's argument -- at least what the book review seems to reflect -- is that "science" should return to this broader notion of "natural philosophy." The current restrictions of MN would reflect an improper, a priori skeptical elision of God from nature, as well as an improper turn away from "empirical," observational, inductive Baconian science towards more speculative deductive methods ala Popper.
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> But my first question about this is how to return to Bacon and Locke after Darwin, Einstein, and Heisenberg -- in other words, do Bacon and Locke work after Newton's mechanism has been dethroned? And my second question is how to return to Bacon and Locke after the collapse -- or at least undermining -- of foundationalist empistemology's naive view of culture, history and language.
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> On 7/16/07, Ted Davis <TDavis@messiah.edu> wrote:
>
> >>> PvM <pvm.pandas@gmail.com > 7/15/2007 5:01 PM >>>quotes Wikipedia on
> Methodological naturalism, as follows:
>
> <quote>Naturalism does not necessarily claim that phenomena or
> hypotheses commonly labeled as supernatural do not exist or are wrong,
> but insists that all phenomena and hypotheses can be studied by the
> same methods and therefore anything considered supernatural is either
> nonexistent, unknowable, or not inherently different from natural
> phenomena or hypotheses.</quote>
>
> Then, Pim adds the following comment:
>
> If all Hunter is interested in is pointing out that there may have
> been some who had religious motivations to restrict science, such
> should again not be confused with a methodological approach. Science
> neither approves nor disapproves of the supernatural, which for all
> practical purposes is the logical complement of natural.
>
> Here are my comments:
> First, this is not an adequate definition of MN, IMO. In fact, ironically,
> it lends support to the incorrect argument from ID advocates, that MN simply
> collapses into metaphysical or ontological naturalism. Thus, I'm surprised
> that Pim quoted it. Note the language: " all phenomena and hypotheses can
> be studied by the
> same methods and therefore anything considered supernatural is either
> nonexistent, unknowable, or not inherently different from natural phenomena
> or hypotheses." Here is my paraphrase, aimed at making my point: If
> scientific methods (ie, naturalism) can't detect it, it ain't real, it's
> only a figment of one's imagination. Am I missing something here? If so,
> please be explicit about what I'm missing. I do think this is the tone and
> intent of this very poor definition.
>
> Second, Pim, the definition you cite from wiki contradicts your own
> comment, when you wrote: "Science
> neither approves nor disapproves of the supernatural, which for all
> practical purposes is the logical complement of natural." If the
> supernatural is "nonexistent" or "unknowable," (see wiki), then the latter
> part of Pim's sentences is entirely emptied of content. If the
> "supernatural ... is not inherently different from natural phenomena or
> hypotheses," then it collapses into the natural, and I fail to see how it
> becomes "the logical complement of natural." Please have another look at
> that wiki definition, Pim, and clarify your own view in light of it.
>
> Third, I offer a much better (IMO) definition, taken from the entry on
> "Scientific naturalism" that I wrote with philosopher Robin Collins for the
> Garland encyclopedia of science & religion
> ( http://www.amazon.com/History-Science-Religion-Western-Tradition/dp/0815316569),
> a shorter version of which (essays unabridged, however) from JHU press
> ( http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title_pages/2308.html). Here is our
> definition of MN: "the belief that science should explain phenomena only in
> terms of entities and properties that fall within the category of the
> natural, such as by natural laws acting either through known causes or by
> chance (methodological naturalism)."
>
> Why do I believe this definition is much superior? First, it spells out
> that MN is a belief; one might even call it a belief about beliefs, in terms
> of its implications. Our definition leaves ample ground (as it should) for
> one to make reality claims about a God who really is bigger than "nature,"
> and who actually interacts with "nature," which is better called "the
> creation." It simply affirms, properly, that inferences about God go beyond
> what science itself can claim. It in no way rules out the legitimacy of
> such inferences. Second, when read in context (our definition of part of a
> much longer definition of four types of naturalism), it is clear to people
> that MN does not equate to or collapse into overreaching forms of
> naturalism. Thus, e.g., we define "scientific naturalism" (our term for the
> most wide reaching kind of naturalism) as follows: "the claim that nature is
> all that there is and hence that there is no supernatural order above
> nature, along with the claim that all objects, processes, truths, and facts
> about nature fall within the scope of the scientific method." Our
> definition of MN is designed, properly, to leave this type of speculation
> aside entirely. Whereas the wiki definition, IMO, strongly suggests or
> implies precisely that nature is all there is--at least, all that is
> genuinely meaningful to discuss, which is the spirit of the logical
> positivism that still underlies efforts to ridicule belief in God and keep
> it out of the academy.
>
> The definition Robin and I give, in what is frankly a far more reliable and
> academically serious publication that wikipedia, is (I believe and I hope
> others agree) a definition that is much more appropriate to consider on the
> ASA list. I also believe it is much more accurate; the term MN itself
> probably arose with Christian philosophical reflection on the limits of
> science and the reality of a "supernatural" God, and our definition reflects
> this.
>
> Ted (ASA member, and glad of it)
>
>
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Received on Wed, 18 Jul 2007 17:14:16 +0100