From: Keith Miller (kbmill@ksu.edu)
Date: Thu Sep 11 2003 - 23:37:43 EDT
> I'm not sure all would agree with your assessment of ID, but I think
> what we
> find in the ID situation is something of a new challenge for science.
> Standard science has not had to deal with the possibility an outside
> causal
> agency making itself felt in this reality. Also since this supposed
> causal
> agency would be intelligent and not some predictable regularity, that
> even
> compounds that problem. Science as science does not entail exclusion
> of
> such an agent but how is science to deal with it? Clearly the standard
> scientific method will not suffice. If scientists, however, take
> seriously
> not only the religious ideas of intelligent design in evolution but
> also
> those on divine agency(i.e. providence), how are scientists to
> approach this
> issue? From what I have seen recently in the ID literature, many ID
> proponents are taking seriously these challenges. Whatever emerges of
> this
> new "scientific method" it will certainly lack some of the certainty
> it now
> enjoys. However, since doing science entails some metaphysical
> presumptions
> anyway, perhaps doing science that is a little less certain with a
> little
> more faith is not that bad thing after all.
But what you describe is simply not science. I see no way that divine
action can be a part of scientific description. Divine agency is
almost by definition a black box - a divine agent can theoretically
explain everything and thus nothing. Science is a method by which we
attempt to discover processes and mechanisms at work in nature. It is
a limited endeaver. To try to make "science" into some overarching all
encompassing search for truth is to undermine the very methods by which
we evaluate the validity of scientific explanations. I have yet to see
a description of what the ID scientific method is - other than simply
to allow metaphysical speculation as part of scientific description
(which is not a methodology at all).
Keith
Keith B. Miller
Research Assistant Professor
Dept of Geology, Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS 66506-3201
785-532-2250
http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~kbmill/
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