Re: The Terms of Debate in Kansas

On Mon, 16 May 2005 21:46:32 -0500 Keith Miller <kbmill@ksu.edu> writes:
>
> My use of the term "methodological naturalism" is simply as a
> description of what science does. It is descriptive not
> prescriptive.
> It is another way of describing what we mean by the empirical
> character
> of scientific investigation. Science research seeks to discover the
>
> natural cause-and-effect processes that underlie the structure and
> history of the physical universe. Appeals to supernatural action
> simply are not informative in understanding how the universe works.
>
> Supernatural agents are effectively black boxes since they are
> unconstrained, and appeals to such agents are equivalent to appeals
> to
> ignorance.
>
> Keith
>

Keith,
I have to object to your last sentence. I don't see how any person can be
a black box. As I understand the label, a black box gives a consistent
output for a specific input. But I cannot expect so direct a response
from a person, although there are some social constraints. Even lesser
creatures are not altogether predictable. I recall running across the
Harvard Law of Animal Behavior, something like: If a laboratory animal is
placed in a defined experimental situation and a measured stimulus is
applied, the animal will respond exactly as it pleases. An entity with an
infinite number of degrees of freedom is hardly a black box.

You are right that an appeal to the creator, or to an intelligent agent,
marks the current level of ignorance. This is disgusting theology, a
deity measured by current limitations and subject to reduction by
increased information.
Dave
Received on Tue May 17 00:56:40 2005