At 11:49 PM 5/2/00 +0100, Richard wrote:
>From: Susan Brassfield <Susan-Brassfield@ou.edu>
>
> >you are assuming that evolution has something to do with religion. It
> >doesn't. "Materialistic-naturalism" is required for science. There's no way
> >to conduct science without that assumption. Or, at least, neither you nor
> >Johnson has come up with any viable suggestions as to how one would go
> >about conducting science without that assumption.
>
>The words "materialism" and "naturalism" come up frequently in these
>discussions, but I still haven't seen a precise definition of what they
>mean. Do they just mean the assumption that the phenomena in question are
>explicable? If so, then they *are* required by science, which is all about
>finding explanations.
This is a good question. There are many forms of both Naturalism and
Materialism.
Some are very mild forms such as you write above, others are very narrow. For
example, the Mechanistic Materialist would assert that the Universe consists of
nothing but particles in motion. One sometimes observes creationists attempting
to fuse Naturalism and Materialism into a single view which is equated with
narrowest possible form of materialism. Since creationists are continually
complaining
about all forms of creationism being lumped together and labeled YEC, I
think it
would be a good idea if they also started distinguishing the different
varieties of
Naturalism and Materialism.
>On the other hand, I don't agree that science must reject ideas like demonic
>spirits and omnipotent creators out of hand. It should reject them because
>they are poor explanations (they explain very little), and science is about
>find the best (most explanatory) explanations which are consistent with the
>facts.
I disagree here. It is not that science rejects these ideas, science simply
cannot address them at all. It is impossible to evaluate them as good or
poor. If one were to adopt explanations which are consistent with all the
facts, then Last Thursdayism (God created the world last Thursday)
would have to be a serious contender.
Brian Harper
Associate Professor
Mechanical Engineering
The Ohio State University
"One never knows, do one?"
-- Fats Waller
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 04 2000 - 17:51:43 EDT