In a message dated Tue, 1 May 2001 2:03:42 PM Eastern Daylight Time, "Lawrence Johnston" <johnston@uidaho.edu> writes:
<<
Phil's complaint is that sometimes when discussing biology with Christian
Biologists at Christian Universities, they say they are Methodological
Naturalists. But then they insist on limiting the Bio-discussion to natural
causes, ie. Natural selection. In that case I think they are clearly behaving
as Philosophical Naturalists, and should be willing to recognize this.
So maybe Phil should choose a new name for such scientists , rather than saying
that the two terms mean the same thing. Maybe Crypto-Philosophical
Naturalists?
>>
So what if Phil as a lawyer is discussing a legal case solely in terms of natural explanations (as opposed to bringing in explanations like "a demon put the victim's wallet in my pocket")? Does that make him effectively a Philosophical Naturalist? Or what if a physicist discusses star formation in terms of the natural processes of gravity and nuclear physics? Is that physicist a crypto-Philosophical Naturalist? If not, please explain what is fundamentally different about biology that makes you (and Phil) apply a different standard to biologists than to other disciplines.
Allan Harvey, steamdoc@aol.com
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