On Wed, 17 Apr 1996 19:23:13 -0500 you wrote:
CW>As a layman, I simply cannot understand the debate over whether a
>commitment to methodological naturalism is/is not a prerequisite for doing
>science. Is it overly simplistic to define science as "the study of
>phenomena and their causes?" If so, it would seem that science should
>search for truth, and should go wherever the search leads. Particularly as
>regards the design/descent argument, isn't the pertinent question, "what
>happened?" rather than "what is the proper methodology?"
You will no doubt be told that the true scientific question is "what
happened" *naturalistically*. That is because science (as it has been
defined by naturalists) is concerned only with *natural* causes. So
supernatural creation has been excluded from science *by definition*.
Johnson says it amusingly well on one of his tapes:
"Now I'm going to go back to that word `science' again and tell you
something more about what that word `science' means. You've already
seen that `science' means the study of what is material and natural.
And that with science defined that way, the only way in which science
can explain why you and I are here or why there are flowers and trees,
is as the result of purposeless natural processes. I'm sure that
that's clear by now.
So science assumes that some such process did all the creating and it
has this theory, the Darwinian theory, which satisfies a lot of people
in the scientific world. Now suppose you say, `well I don't believe
that theory is true. I don't believe those, well, forces of mutation
and selection could do all that creating.' Do you know what you will
be answered with? `What is your alternative?'... Now at this point
you can only make one of two moves and both of them are wrong! You
could say, `Well, my alternative is - God created.' You see why
that's wrong? That's outside of science. That's not science. We put
that aside in our very definition of science. You're not only talking
about science - you're talking about religion. You go over there to
the Church... and don't bother the serious people who are trying to
find out how things really happened, because that's for science. And
you have made a suggestion that's outside of science. So that's a
foul ball - strike one!
Now you say, `well all right,' let's forget about God. We won't talk
about God. I'll obey the rules. How about, `We don't know'? Strike
two! Because that's every bit as much against the rules as `God did
it'. The reason is that science is defined, you will be told (I've
been told on countless occasions), as a process that continually
progresses from relatively inferior explanations of things to
relatively superior explanations. And you see, to simply say the
theory that you've got, it has certain flaws, all right every theory
doesn't explain quite everything, some details need to be filled in,
and so on. But we've got this theory and if you say you want
scientists to throw out that theory, to say that it is not true, and
to substitute nothing but `we don't know' - that's outside the rules
of science every bit as much as God is.
What you must do is you must propose a better alternative and the
alternative must satisfy the philosophical ground rules, that is it
must
involve nothing but material processes that are purposeless and
naturalistic. So the question then becomes not what is there, but
what is the best naturalistic and materialistic speculation anybody's
produced about how we could have gotten here, assuming there is no
God. And if that's the question - Darwinism is the correct answer.
You can't improve on that (or nobody's been able to improve on it) in
the confines of materialistic and naturalistic philosophy.
(Johnson P.E., "Darwin On Trial" , 2 tape set, First Evangelical Free
Church, Fullerton, CA, Oct 1992)
CW>If the true answer is, "God did it, all at once," do we not want
>to know it? IMO, the debate over whether to include/exclude God from
>science turns on whether we truly want to deal with the answer. The
>response, "well, God *may* have done it, but that's not for science
>to decide," is question-begging at its worst.
Agreed. But believe it or not, there are some *Christians* who are so
committed to the definition of science proposed by "the natural man"
(1Cor 2:14), that they will actually defend the exclusion of God from
science, even in the area of *origins*.
God bless.
Steve
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