I wrote:
>In my opinion, as long as Christians invoke something that
>can be interpreted to be God, they will be banned from the
>field of play. This is because the game that is played on
>that field entails such a rule of censorship. The game of
>science is to explain the world without reference to God.
Glenn replies:
>Here I disagree. The game of science is to explain the world--with or
>without God. Obviously, in science, if we use God to solve all our problems
>or explain everything we don't understand, then we are doing bad. Science
>does not ipso facto rule out a God from the universe.
We do indeed disagree, but I think we need to distinguish between
idealized notions of how things ought to be and real-world notions
of how things are. In an ideal world, there would be no bias in the
newspapers, courts would rule solely on the basis of truth, hospitals
would care only about healing, universities would care only about
education, and science would be open to God-explanations if there
was evidence.
But in the real world, science simply rules out anything that looks
like teleology or theology. Consider a couple of citations from
working scientists:
"Science, fundamentally is a game. It is a game with one overriding and
defining rule: Rule No. 1: Let us see how far and to what extent we can
explain the behavior of the physical and material universe in terms of
purely physical and material causes, without invoking the supernatural."
- Richard Dickerson, JME 34:277.
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such an hypothesis
is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic."
- Scott C. Todd, Nature 401:423.
One can always argue about whether this should indeed be the case,
but the simple truth is this is how the game *is* played. Try bringing
up a explanation with theological or teleological overtones in a scientific
meeting and watch how quickly scientists will tune you out. If you
make your case carefully and attempt to support it with data, you
will succeed only in causing them to wonder how such a seemingly
bright mind came to be distracted by such ridiculous considerations.
If science was truly open to explanations that invoked God, we would
be able to find some articles published where these cases were being
made and debated in the scientific literature. For example, intelligent
design is excluded from science not because it has discredited the notion;
the question is simply ignored and in the rare cases where it may be
raised, it is usually pompously and flippantly dismissed.
Remember, science is simply what scientists do. And scientists do
what Dickerson and Todd do.
Mike