Ah, I finally see some philosophical ground Walter and I can occupy
together....but
Science is not inherently
>naturalistic. Instead, it is inherently empirical and observational. As I
>keep pointing out, science ALEADY accepts intelligent designers (for
>example, in the Piltdown explanation, or the SETI research), so
>evolutionists cannot arbitrarily keep out other intelligent designers.
...we soon encounter shifting ground.
Naturalism and intelligent design are not necessarily exclusive, so I don't
think the examples of piltdown and SETI are very relevant to the naturalism
vs supernaturalism dichotomy. As you said in point three above, science
must be testable. For the most part, we haven't figured out a way to test
or falsify supernatural phenomena, so science is being true to itself by not
including these. This point is relevant to an earlier post of mine in which
I pointed out that the falsifiability criterion for science may simply
reflect technical deficiencies (e.g., an inability to test the issue at
hand). Thus, what is "not science" today may become science tomorrow.
Cheers,
Steve
__________________________________________________________________________
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 Ctr
University of Wisconsin
Madison, WI 53792
"What, then is time? I know well enough what it is, provided that nobody
asks me" Augustine'Confessions'
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