Let's suppose that God did act in some special miraculous way at some
juncture in history. Suppose he created, using "non-natural" means, life.
Or suppose that he created, using "non-natural" means, human consciousness.
A methodological naturalist would not be able to recognize such an activity
of God as part of his or her scientific theory. At most they would be to
say that life suddenly appeared or that human consciousness suddenly
appeared. I think that design folks want to be able to say that just as we
can detect artifacts in paleoanthropology as being due to the presence of
intelligent agents who organized some object in some "unnatural" way, so we
could *in principle* say that life or human consciousness could be due to
the presence of an intelligent agent that acted in some "unnatural" way.
If God can act in such a way and perhaps has acted in such a way, then, if
we are methodological naturalists, we are saying that we can make no
scientific claims about any such actions, even though they might have
detectable consequences in nature.
In general I think that it is unproductive to debate this matter by
defining science in such a way as to define the opponents out of the
picture. I'm very happy with Phil Johnson's, Mike Behe's, Del Ratzsch's,
and Steve Meyer's critique of the "demarcationist" argument. I agree that
it's truth that we're after--not just some story that follows some set of
"rules of science". Perhaps if God is involved in some extraordinary way,
we shouldn't call it science--but I'm not so sure--and besides, that's just
semantics. In the end, if we define science in such a way, we just play
into the hands of critics like Johnson and Behe who claim that it is our
method that blinds us to the obvious rather than any empirical content. I
for one don't need to give them that argument.
At the same time, I don't believe that methodological naturalism is such a
bad thing. I have some sympathy with Murphy and Van Till here. The nature
of God's interaction with his creation may be such that he always does
things in the ordinary way. But I don't want to bind God (as if I could)
and I'm content to do the empirical work. The way to disprove the
intelligent design argument is to come up with an account that eliminates
the need for appeal to some supernatural intervention (and of course that
doesn't mean eliminates the need for God!).
As for me, I'm more than happy to call on God's special miraculous activity
when it comes to the origin of the human soul and human consciousness. But
I do that based on scripture and I see no alternative to understanding the
scripture along those lines. However, I don't see any reason to call on
God's special miraculous activity when it comes to the origin of life,
based on scripture. And for now, I'm unwilling to say that the origin of
life and the origin of complexity is an unsolvable problem (although I
readily admit that it is an unsolved problem).
TG
>At 10:13 PM 12/14/96 -0500, Brian wrote:
>
>>I continue to be confused in the way that several use the term
>>methodological naturalism. Can anyone point to some references
>>wherein this term is defined? My understanding is that methodological
>>naturalism does not require the scientist to assume that nature
>>is all there is when doing science. Rather, it is a recognition that
>>the methods of science are limitted. Further, these limitations are
>>inherent, not arbitrarily specified. Methodological naturalism in
>>my view is the recognition that science is limitted. I promote it
>>because it is very useful for weeding out metaphysical naturalism
>>from science. Another error is to say that if the methods of science
>>cannot detect something then that something is not real, or to
>>say that if something is real then it can be detected by the methods
>>of science. This I would call scientism.
>
>I too have problems with the term, "methodological naturalism." It seems to
>me that the term literally defines science. The realm of science knowldege
>is naturalism, and a distinguishing feature of scientific knowledge is that
>it is tested by empirical methods.
>
>In order to more precisely describe "scientism," I suggest that we use the
>term "metaphysical naturalism.."
>
>Comments?
>____________________________________________________________
>Steven S. Clark, Ph.D . Phone: 608/263-9137
>Associate Professor FAX: 608/263-4226
>Dept. of Human Oncology and Email:
>ssclark@facstaff.wisc.edu
>UW Comprehensive Cancer Center
>CSC K4-432
>600 Highland Ave.
>Madison, WI 53792
>____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
Terry M. Gray, Ph.D. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Calvin College 3201 Burton SE Grand Rapids, MI 40546
Office: (616) 957-7187 FAX: (616) 957-6501
Email: grayt@calvin.edu http://www.calvin.edu/~grayt
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