Re: Plantinga: Whether ID [Intelligent Design]

On 3/18/06, Terry M. Gray <grayt@lamar.colostate.edu> wrote:

> Pim,
>
> So let me be the "devil's" advocate for a minute. Just suppose for the
> sake of argument that God did something like the IDer's claim--say, directly
> cause a flagellum to form in such a way that it is unexplainable using
> normal scientific explanations. Call it a miracle or whatever you like. But
> now it's part of our normal world and is propagated in normal ways, but came
> into being via some extraordinary divine act.
>
>
> Again, for the sake of argument, let's not simply dismiss it by saying
> that God doesn't work this way.
>
>
> What would or could we say about this scientifically?
>

At least three different questions are being confused in the ID-related
efforts to redefine science. First, there is the semantic question: what is
meant when I use the term "science"? Defining science as purely empirical
or not in this sense is irrelevant to the question of ID; it merely
determines what word one uses for it. The error of scientism has led people
to think that scientific evidence is better than other evidence and so it is
desirable to call what you are doing science, whether or not it really is.
This can be seen in the social sciences, which sometimes do and sometimes do
not use scientific methods, as well as in many cases relating to creation
science, intelligent design, legal issues, or other areas where claiming
scientific evidence has been seen as more valuable than honesty.
Conversely, attempts to denigrate the status of certain areas of science (
e.g., young earth slander of historical science) also reflect the assumption
that science is a superior source of evidence. It's rather annoying when
such examples of scientism are conjoined with accusations of scientism.

The issue is confused by ID advocates who claim that antireligious bias has
historically prompted a redefinition of science from its past usage to
include any pursuit of truth to a current definition related to empirical
study of the natural world. I can't evaluate the factors prompting the
change in definition of science over the past few centuries, but ID
advocates largely accept the change in definition, because they want science
to refer to empirical investigations of the natural world; the difference is
that they wish to derive non-empirical conclusions from this. When science
was used to refer to any pusuit of truth (e.g., KJV "science falsely so
called"), theology was called the queen of the sciences. However, ID
advocates do not accept overt theology as a scientific argument.

Personally, I would tend to define science as empirical investigation of the
physical world and would say that Terry's hypothetical example could lead to
a conclusion of ID because science failed to explain it, rather than ID
being a scientific conclusion. This is merely my definition of my terms and
in no way invalidates the conclusion.

The second question is what methods are appropriate and effective for
carrying out scientific investigation. Methodological naturalism works very
well in a wide variety of contexts and therefore is a useful method and a
reasonable first choice of approach, regardless of one's philosophical
views.

The third issue is the philosophical assumptions underlying one's approach
to science.

> --
> Dr. David Campbell
> 425 Scientific Collections
> University of Alabama
> "I think of my happy condition, surrounded by acres of clams"
>
Received on Mon Mar 20 13:50:59 2006