Re: [asa] Re: Coyne vs Collins

Cameron, I've got to scoot off to a meeting so I'll admit I haven't digested
your whole post below --but do have one small initial reaction to what you said
below.

Quoting Cameron Wybrow <wybrowc@sympatico.ca>:

>
> First, on methodological naturalism versus metaphysical naturalism. We know
> that Eugenie Scott and many TEs make a big deal about the distinction. But
> they do that largely to fend off attacks from both sides. Eugenie uses it to
> fend off attacks that Darwinism implies atheism. She wants to look
> professionally neutral on the subject of religion. The TEs use it to fend
> off charges that Christians can't do science because they will be using
> miracles to explain things all the time. In sum, the whole discussion is
> politically charged. Why would any philosopher or scientist, outside the
> constitutionally-charged religion-in-the-schools atmosphere of the USA, want
> to make a distinction between epistemology and ontology ("I'm
> methodologically naturalist, but not metaphysically naturalist")?

Proposal ---maybe because they believe it's the truth? or because it's accurate?

I won't dispute that our motivations for thinking so may be messy, but you can't
discount all truth just because somebody's motivations may not be pure.

If I believe 2+2=4 for the wrong reasons, does it become less true? If saying
that science is not being practiced when we attribute things to miracles, we may
have all sorts of motivations for the assertion, but one of those may be because
we are actually interested in accurate reflections of reality.

--Merv

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Received on Thu Apr 30 08:59:32 2009