Doug Hayworth wrote:
> At 06:18 AM 7/5/00 -0400, you wrote:
>
> >In a message dated 7/4/2000, Bryan Cross wrote:
> >
> ><< I believe the solution is to approach every problem with a genuine search
> >for natural explanations, but with the willingness to acknowledge the
> >possibility of (direct) divine action. That avoids the error of occasionalism
> >(which you describe as
> >'God-of-the-Gaps theology eating everything up) on the one hand, and the
> >error of
> >methodological naturalism on the other hand. >>
> >
> >It seems to me that this statement sums up the arguments on the thread of
> >"Johnson and intelligent design." Is this not a statement on which we can
> >all agree?
> >
> >Bob
>
> If only it was that simple! Methodological naturalism has been (and will
> continue to be) so powerful in learning about the properties of the natural
> order exactly because it does not give up whenever things aren't
> immediately explained. Evolutionary biology (and all natural sciences)
> have been so fruitful in generating understanding of nature because they
> have always kept looking with the assumption that every phenomenon can be
> explained. From what Bob has been arguing, we would give up on the
> Trilobite eyes as having been formed by natural evolutionary processes; yet
> if we do, scientific inquiry on the matter grinds to a halt. Until we meet
> God in eternity and we know fully, as God has known us, NATURAL science
> should proceed methodologically with naturalism.
>
> What we can agree on, I hope, is that God in Christ upholds it all, whether
> in its natural or supernatural order, by his powerful Word and according to
> his purposes.
>
> Doug
Yes we can agree on that! (Perhaps it is good to remind ourselves often about that
which we hold mutually.)
[I think Howard has a good point about the way the terminology 'ID vs. natural
causes' implicitly implies the rejection of providence. So I am going to refer to
intelligent design by direct action (IDDA) as opposed to intelligent design by
natural causes (IDNC).]
I did not say or advocate that "we give up whenever things aren't immediately
explained". I never mentioned time at all. But let me build on my previous
statement, and see if we can reach further agreement. If we hold our scientific
conclusions fallibly, we can continue to search for natural causes for X even
after we have reached a tentative conclusion that the best explanation for X is
IDDA. This will result in some false positives, but no irremediable false
positives. The alternative methodology entails the programmed incapacity to avoid
and overcome false negatives. From what others on this list have been writing
about methodological naturalism (MthN), it is only to be employed within the
domain of natural science, and the reason it need not be a 'universal acid' is
that one places limits on what science can explain, thereby allowing other
disciplines/sources to tell us that which science cannot. First, how does one
stipulate limitations upon what can be explained by natural causes without either
begging the question or drawing boundaries arbitrarily? If, as Doug claims, ID
proponents are guilty of abandoning natural explanations too soon, how much sooner
can one get than a priori? Second, and this is related to the first question, it
seems that according to this method, there will in principle be cases in which the
disciplines perpetually disagree. For example, if we take Doug's answer about the
trilobite eye, and apply it to the fine-tuning of the universe, science should
forever go on looking for an explanation by IDNC. But if there is no explanation
by IDNC, science will be perpetually in conflict with whichever disciplines are
not governed by MthN and which provide a non-IDNC explanation for fine-tuning.
Likewise, if life on Earth was IDDA-designed by ETs, MthN would be stuck on a
blind alley, perpetually looking for IDNC. In order to avoid this problem, one
must either (1) assume that there are no cases of IDDA [How is such an assumption
possibly justified without begging the question?] or (2) one must know where all
the cases of IDDA are in advance and then stipulate the boundaries of natural
science so as not to include them. But how does one know where all the cases of
IDDA are in advance without presumption? It would seem like sheer arrogance to
presume to have an exhaustive list. Therefore, MthN is stuck with the problem of
having the intrinsic capacity to produce *irremediable* false negatives with
respect to IDDA. A method which has a built in false-negative producer, is a
flawed method, even if it is fabulously successful, even if it is *accidentally*
100% successful. [I hope we are agreed that what we are searching for is
truth-as-correspondence to reality, not
truth-as-what-just-happens-to-have-worked-real-well-up-till-now.] Therefore it
seems to me that MthN, even when limited to the domain of natural science, is a
flawed methodology.
- Bryan
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