Re: The Terms of Debate in Kansas

Randy asked about the following definition of MN:

> Methodological Naturalism
>
> The philosophy of mainstream science that nature has its own method,
> without the possibility of supernatural influence on, say, how DNA is
> sequenced. William S. Harris, a chemist who helped write Kansas'
> alternative science standards questioning evolution, said that
> methodological naturalism puts blinders on the search for truth.

This is decidedly not the description of the scientific method as used
in the Kansas standards (the standards do not use the term
methodological naturalism). In the standards, science is described as
the "human activity of of seeking natural explanations for what we
observe in the world around us." This is not a bad concise
description. It in no way denies the existence of spiritual reality,
or the action of God in sustaining, or guiding, natural processes.

The ID supported Minority Report consistently and falsely describes the
scientific enterprise as rejecting the supernatural and as implicitly
supporting atheism and materialism.

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/
Received on Sun May 15 23:35:50 2005