I’ll intervene on this conversation started by S. Joshua Swamidass as my guess is he’s going to mangle terms & then claim mastery over them, as he has done in the past on the topic of ‘methodological naturalism’ (MN). Paul Nelson (of micro-/macro- distinction) has posted here in the past & has done a fine job of staying more neutral, scholarly and welcoming to discussion than most IDists at the DI. It would be welcome for Nelson to clarify, re-iterate or to add any points here that Swamidass might not wish to address at PS, or in case the naive scientism cum MN lobby grows too loud there.
This is one of those topics where in my view Swamidass scores quite low in credibility and coherency (much like I score in biology! = P). This makes sense because he has little training and doesn’t seem to have done much personal reading in philosophy, social sciences or humanities. Paul Nelson, on the other hand, did a PhD in the philosophy of biology. So if Swamidass starts to try to out-philosophize Nelson, things could get hilarious quickly, as they have in the past, e.g. with Jonathan Burke, who discovered predecessors to GA -> GAE that Swamidass missed & had to add at the last minute.
Let’s see if Swamidass is ready to learn if the term ‘methodological naturalism’ is really a sword he wants to fall on or not. So far, it has been. Nelson, as do I, rejects MNism, & not just as a misnomer.
In the highlighted thread, we see Swamidass ask Nelson for clarification on a topic that Swamidass has obviously done a little bit of armchair talk with buddies about, but hasn’t actually got into the main course yet. Swamidass insists, “For the record, I think MN is legitimate, but that debate is a separate issue.”
Swamidass keeps repeating the same clumsy and imprecise language, then insisting there is nothing to debate about it. He continues to use a word duo (M+N) that he says he thinks is ‘wrong,’ yet without making any attempt to get beyond it. Why not? If he has to hear it 20 times before he understands it, then despite his proficiency in biology & computation, that might be what he needs in order to learn in other fields, such as philosophy. MN is not simply ‘legitimate’ or ‘illegitimate;’ it is rather an expression of ideology about the way (natural) science is done, i.e. its methods. That Swamidass doesn’t realise the inherent bias in the way he is framing the conversation explains much about why people communicating about ‘origins’ topics don’t understand each other.
The reasons Swamidass won’t debate are because, 1. He doesn’t have an original place to stand that was not already taken first by others who likely know the field better than he does, 2. Debate for Swamidass seems always to quickly turn into a kind of non-mainline Christian evangelical apologetics, similar to the BioLogos model, at least how he frames his ‘Empty Chair Confessional’ scenario, as if he were the Science Pope. And when you can’t evangelize evangelcalism to your opponent, or claim A&E as your own in front of them, then the game is up, and, 3. He’s trying to promote peace when there is no peace, using inciting arguments (re: MN) & doing so while flying the confessional banner of the very community that has been among the most protesting & agitating & stubborn & backward (consistent biblical literalistic bigotry & anti-science misunderstanding) in the conversation. And yet he hasn’t yet issued a word of apology for even the METHOD he is using, which comes right out of the same fundamentalist-creationist playbook that caused the problems in the first place and which in his own way, he exacerbates even while ‘scientifically’ preaching peace.
Mature catholic and orthodox Abrahamic monotheists have no need for the highly ideological, scientistic ‘peace’ that Swamidass would sell them on the way down the road to further separation of theology/worldview & human life.
“1. Using God as an explanation is disallowed by MN in scientific work.”
Technically speaking, that comes closer to ‘methodological anti-supernaturalism’ (ASN) than to promoting a naturalism-only approach to methods used in natural sciences. The latter would require a positive signification that Joshue doesn’t adequately provide, which is why the DI produces books like “The Nature of Nature.” It is difficult to figure why Joshua doesn’t understand that MASN does not = MN. Yet he keeps repeating it. One could write it down to a kind of narrow thinking required to ‘do biology’ that may make it difficult to explore other fields of thought respectfully and on their own terms, & thus to try to better understand than just dictating standard-fare (most often, but not always, atheism-driven) MN to philosophers.
Anti-supernaturalism is a different position from pro-naturalism. Methodological naturalism is still a type of naturalism. Swamidass can’t seem to come to grips with or allow his own English language to reflect this in his thoughts. So instead he might pause to ask why philosophers, not to mention social scientists and humanities scholars rather widely, reject the ideology that Swamidass thinks he is defending by simply calling it ‘good science’. We don’t want Swamidass’ naturalistic ideology hidden behind the term ‘methodological,’ yet Swamidass insists we must accept it or be negatively counted.
Sorry Swamidass, ideology is not just automatically ‘good science’ because a PhD in biological computation with a medical degree says it is & encourages others on a soapbox to echo him.
2. Wrong based on answer to 1.
“3. The idea was to discuss an intelligent designer rather than God, design rather than creation, and remove references to Scripture. In fact this was all an attempt to abide by MN.” – Swamidass
How can Swamidass get this so wrong? Is it because he is fixated on MN as a personal ideology he holds as a natural scientist? I have asked Joshua in the past to clearly articulate what a non-naturalist natural scientist looks like & he has avoided answering as if a plague were chasing him. In other words, in his ideological incoherence, he claims both to reject naturalism & accept naturalism at the same time. And now having been caught doing this, doesn’t wish for it to be pointed out. It would be better if Swamidass could learn his error openly & move forward with a clearer message. I believe Paul Nelson could help him do this.
First, it’s an Intelligent Designer, capitalized, if one has a proper sense of Divine Names. C’mon, Paul, don’t just peter out on this – take it head-on! Yes, the DI won’t talk about the Intelligent Designer as part of the ‘theory,’ which is rather minimalist in the end anyway, definitely not a ‘design revolution’. IDism in short: information, therefore mind & therefore a better chance of divine Creation than according to an atheist worldview. Apologetics. Yet Swamidass doesn’t seem to realize how using & promoting the ideology of MN, actually furthers the atheism he somewhat vaguely claims he is against. And the problem is that he can’t just up his science-talk in giving an answer to this because it is not a ‘strictly scientific’ observation or problem he is facing. Pushing harder the wrong way isn’t a good choice. So, when Swamidass gets off his high Science horse, we may actually be able to have a better conversation that takes the ideology of MN more seriously than Swamidass currently does, perhaps just because he can’t see the other side.
4. Facepalm.
“5. Consequently there has been a shift in ID. Rather than work within MN, more and more ID proponents want to get rid of MN in questions of origins.”
No, IDists have been consistently anti-MN since the beginning of the Movement. I’ve been following it since @2002. “In questions of origins,” one of the problems is the scientistic attitude Swamidass brings to the table in contrast with Nelson. Then Swamidass has the gall to ask: “How would you rewrite your narrative in a way that could be common to us?”
I realise the guy deserves some slack, but how about Swamidass making an attempt to rewrite his non-mainline ‘narrative’ in a way that doesn’t particularly privilege the ideology that he holds in the conversation? It would be more productive to instead open up the conversation even to people who patiently, consistently & faithfully reject the scientistic ideology of MN. If Swamidass is unwilling to even consider that it is he who might be misperceiving things, perhaps due to his philosophical immaturity & loose use of concepts & terms, progress with Nelson might indeed take place, which could be good for the future of ‘the conversation.’
One of Nelson’s flaws, of course, is his trust in the work of Stephen C. Meyer, whose definition of ‘history’ leaves more than a lot to be desired. I was quite surprised at what I discovered at Cambridge where Meyer wrote his dissertation & don’t think they appreciate being linked as Meyer & the DI likes to advertise. Let’s leave Meyer out of this & listen to what Nelson has to say.
I’d pick Nelson over Swamidass when it comes to MN. And of course Steve Fuller has gone perhaps even further than Steve Dilley, who Nelson recommended to Swamidass, in exposing MN. Whether or not Nelson can finally get through to Joshua on this topic is another issue. Sometimes more attempts is all it takes.
Nelson wrote that: “MN is the current dividing line because the ID community is united by the bare proposition that “intelligent design is empirically detectable in nature.” In order for design to be detectable, of course, it must have some observational or empirical content which does not reduce ultimately to physics. That’s intelligence as a distinct cause, issuing in distinct effects. MN forbids appeals to intelligence (i.e., as a basic or fundamental constituent of reality). There’s the conflict.”
Here’s where Nelson starts to go off the rails. 1) It’s Intelligent Design, not intelligent design’. The detectability of divine Intelligence, as Phillip Johnson & Charles Thaxton, along with Olsen & Bradley believed & believe. 2) Design is already ‘detectable’, but it is not the end goal simply to ‘detect’ some kind of thing (ontology). Rather, IDism is about implications, the implication of a Mind beyond matter. Good natural science and social science can & do already “appeal to intelligence”. I was speaking with a design theorist & reading a design thinking paper recently. But that’s not ‘Intelligent Design Theory’ and never will be. 3) Science is not a ‘forbidding’ field or discipline. Nelson himself couldn’t see a coherent, clear, valuable ‘Intelligent Design Theory’ even recently, in his own words. The IDists simply have provided no strictly scientific evidence of the instantiation of what they call ‘Intelligent Design’ and instead depend on probabilism & sciency apologetics, the latter much like the earlier ‘creationist’ movements.
So, in the end Swamidass is right about at least this: “The issue is divine intelligence, and the attempt to recognize design without considering the designer (neither approach works in science).” Biology differs considerably from theology & theological biology isn’t welcome; it’s intentionally schismatic. Yet Swamidass is otherwise wrong to suggest that ‘science’ is & only ever can be ‘naturalistic,’ so it’s a rather small & narrow view he is espousing, in the name of Science.
At least S. Joshua Swamidass might learn the difference between philosophy and ideology from Nelson in this conversation. He may then come to realize he’s been foisting a figment of his own imagination that needn’t have been constructed. Then again, he may just shrink back into typical disciplinary language that wreaks of natural scientism, ideological naturalism, biologism & reductionism again. Whatever he does, because I’m calling him out on it here and he doesn’t like being called out away from PS, Joshua will likely deny it all or just ignore it in public because he can’t seem to figure any other way out of the philosophical corner he’s pained himself into than to blame the messenger. Sad to see such an ethically-challenged scientist.
Properly understood, ‘methodological naturalism’ denotes ideology, not ‘good science.’ If Nelson would go further than he has in the past and acknowledge this, a different, likely better conversation would open up. The problem is that Swamidass hasn’t yet shown he’s ready to travel that road. Maybe Nelson will help him get there towards meeting next year with his former ‘hero’ (as Swamidass once briefly called) Behe.
keiths:
newton:
It’s explicitly about the YEC God, which is a supernatural being. That makes it a supernatural hypothesis.
Flint,
How does that reduce it to a “borderline” supernatural claim? It’s still about a omniGod — just one operating under a self-imposed constraint. An omniGod is the epitome of a supernatural being.
We’ve falsified this hypothesis:
That claim is about a supernatural being, and it’s been falsified by the fact that the earth is far older than 10,000 years.
petrushka,
Not sure what point you’re trying to make. Of course there are people who believe that science is wrong and that the earth is young. They’re known as YECs!
I guess the problem I’m having is that your hypothesis makes TWO claims – that the YEC god is non-deceptive, and that this god created the earth less than 10,000 years ago. My understanding is that a hypothesis should make only a single claim. Otherwise, when you produce the falsification you can’t specify which of the two claims has been falsified. You are treating this as an atomic claim, and it doesn’t look like one to me.
I think what we have established is that IF there is a YEC god at all, THEN that god is deceptive. But another viable possibility is that all those genealogies in the bible are being misinterpreted by the literalists. So perhaps we’ve determined instead that IF there is such a god, that god has deceived the YECs but not the OECs. Scripture is nothing if not ambiguous.
Remember “spontaneous generation” back before Pasteur? There were those who claimed that the spontaneity was a supernatural phenomenon. I suppose you could say that for those people, this was a supernatural hypothesis. For those who blamed contamination, it wasn’t supernatural. So was “spontaneous generation” REALLY a supernatural claim, or does it depend on who you’re talking about?
Flint,
Those are really stipulations, not claims. That is, the YEC God is being defined as one who is non-deceptive and who created the earth less than 10,000 years ago.
Those stipulations can easily be separated from the claim, as I did earlier in the thread:
The claim here is simply that the YEC God exists, and it is falsified by science.
Flint,
Agreed.
I’m not sure why it matters. The question at hand is simply whether testable supernatural claims are possible. As explained above, I think they are, and for that reason I think that methodological naturalism is a mistake. Science should not be locked out of areas in which it is perfectly competent to operate.
I do understand what you are saying. The issue is the very concept of “supernatural”. To me, a testable claim is ipso facto not a supernatural claim. If it can be tested or falsified or verified, it ain’t supernatural at all in any way. To me, “supernatural” MEANS not testable. Otherwise, we fall into the error of the god of the gaps, attributing to the supernatural things that are simply not understood but in essence understandable in scientific terms.
Now, you surely disagree with my definition, which illustrates that “supernatural” is not operationally defined to everyone’s satisfaction. The claim that earth is 6000 years old is a scientific claim; it can be falsified. The claim god poofed reality into existence last Tuesday IS a supernatural claim. Supernatural claims cannot be wrong, and therefore (to me at least) cannot be relevant.
Technology that is sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from miracles.
That we admit there is no theory of evolution.
petrushka,
And?
Flint,
So is the claim that the YEC God created earth less than 10,000 years ago.
Both claims involve a supernatural agent doing something supernatural at some particular time. They’re therefore supernatural claims.
Both claims can be wrong, but it’s impossible to falsify the first. The second has been falsified.
Sigh. If claiming “goddidit” MAKES a claim supernatural, you are entirely correct. If the claim cannot be tested in principle, it’s not science. To me, “supernatural” MEANS cannot be tested in principle. We simply disagree here.
The first claim (of last Tuesday) cannot be wrong OR right, because no possible evidence can be established for or against it. The second claim, being scientific, CAN be and has been falsified.
There is always a theory of evolution, but as people learn more, the theory gets refined, improved, extended. Scientific theories MUST be capable of constant change. If they are not, they are not science.
If you demand a single, complete, perfect theory that can never be changed, you need to appeal to faith. Science learns, and this concept escapes you.
Flint,
If a claim is about geology, it’s a geological claim. If a claim is about biology, it’s a biological claim. If a claim is about the supernatural, it’s a supernatural claim.
God is a supernatural being, and creating the earth is a supernatural act, so “the YEC God created the earth less than 10,000 years ago” is a supernatural claim. Claiming otherwise strikes me as absurd.
Flint,
Whether a claim is right (or wrong) is a separate question from whether it can be known to be right (or wrong).
Yes. And since it’s about a supernatural agent performing a supernatural act, it is a supernatural claim.
Science is capable of testing some supernatural claims. “Supernatural” is not synonymous with “untestable”.
faded_Glory,
Einstein modeled gravity without a detailed operational definition of mass/energy or exactly how it is creating gravity. A minds action can be modeled and that makes it testable. Minds can create long functional sequences and that is a unsolved problem for current evolutionary mechanisms. As far as biology a minds ability to design complex biological structures is limited at this point.
Flint, to phoodoo:
Not so. YECs believe that
1) their God exists;
2) that he is supernatural (he created nature, after all!);
3) that he created the earth less than 10,000 years ago; and
4) that this can be tested scientifically.
For them, “supernatural” is not identical in meaning to “untestable”, nor is it for most English speakers.
It’s instructive to look at the word itself: “super” means above and beyond, and “natural” means, well, natural. A supernatural being is therefore above and beyond nature.
The YEC God certainly qualifies.
Well, I think we have hit a roadblock here. To me, a supernatural claim cannot be either wrong or right, because this is intrinsically unknowable. To me, supernatural claims are baseless assertions, totally outside the boundaries of science. This is something very different from FALSE beliefs.
I see YEC claims, that their god did or does anything, as resting on the presumption that there is a god in the first place. Unless this can be established, ascribing anything to such a god is meaningless. The claim that any gods exist is a supernatural claim.
A certainly agree with this. Anything above and beyond nature lies outside the competence of science. The “natural” part of the claim is that the earth is young. The “supernatural” part is that goddidit. I don’t find the false part of the claim to be supernatural simply through guilt by association with the supernatural part of a compound claim.
Exactly!
keiths,
I agree
Yeah right, supernatural means there can’t be evidence for it; oh and by the way, can you show me the evidence.
Like I have always said, your side doesn’t want evidence, because when they get it they say, well, its not evidence for the supernatural its evidence for “I don’t know.”
I think “I don’t know” is the most verified theory in all of science.
I’m not convinced that “god” and “supernatural” are concepts formed well enough that we can say they are within or without the realm of science.
We can say that particular assertions are outside the scope of science as we know and understand it, but that goalpost shifts over time. Imagine, for example, trying to explain to Galileo that physical objects can move without traversing the intervening space.
And then likewise all this talk about multiple universes would also be beyond science then right?
A lot of physicists might need to find a new profession though.
It’s not so much the evidence. Before you get to that you need a hypothesis and a mechanism. Without a mechanism – a proposed connection between a phenomenon that explains its cause – you have no way to perform a test of your hypothesis. Regarding miracles, for example; take the Wedding at Cana. Let’s for the moment imagine we have a teleport machine that is able to bring back to our lab a sample of water and a sample of the miracle wine. How could we test for the hypothesis that God (as Jesus) was the agent?
That’s for sure! 🙂 I was struck by mung remarking during some discussion regarding the existence of God and him refuting my suggestion that God is an imaginary concept. “Of course God is real!*”
*Not an exact quote.
Since we do not know how particular people were educated, eg whether they received private religious instruction, I think it is pointless to speculate about individuals.
On the other hand, if it is on topic, then I would be interested in your thoughts on the ideological limitations of the secular, Anglo-Saxon education in the public school systems of such countries. I am using “public school” in the Canadian/American sense, ie a publicly funded school with government-regulated, secular curriculum.
I enjoyed and learned from the paper you linked describing various ontologies of science. I do wonder why more of your posts do not take the informing, dispassionate tone of the author of that paper.
Science is fallible. For a start, that means scientific theories are open to doubt and correction through the scientific process.
But fallibility also applies to the process itself. That fact is missed by people who take the simplified and idealized view that there is one prespecified, unchanging scientific method.
Instead, the scientific methods themselves are subject to review and adjustment by the scientific communities which practice them, often with input from informed philosophers.
Whether or not multiverses are an acceptable component of scientific theorizing is a contemporary example of this process in action.
The key is to focus on the how the process is conducted so as to ensure it contributes to the ongoing success of the scientific enterprise; for example, what norms do successful scientific communities apply to arguments and counter-arguments and in particular how do the various sides weight these standards?
In the case of multiverses, one issue is how to weight ability to empirically confirm the existence of multiverses versus accepting them regardless of that criterion because they are necessary consequences of our best scientific theories, eg eternal inflation.
For another, more down-to-earth example, there is the issue of the role and nature of statistical significance testing in science, eg see here (somewhat technical, especially second
http://conversableeconomist.blogspot.com/2019/03/time-to-abolish-statistical-significance.html
Since the multiverse theory of eternal inflation and the many worlds interpretation of QM apply to different scopes, does that mean that there would be a multiverse for each universe in the QM multiverse, if both theories turned out to be right?
The math proves to be in error, now your turn .
Yes, as I understand it.
I cannot recall reading Sean C being explicit about believing in both, but I have not gone back to check my memory. Tegmark is explicit about separating them, and in fact separates two possibilities for multiverse diversity under inflation. He also adds one more more general than all of these (which could be used to explain why the multiverses exist at all, but delving into that is likely O/T).
https://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/crazy.html
BruceS,
Great, that’s exactly what we need to keep the indisputable evidence for God at bay, an infinite ensemble of multiverses of eternal multiverses. Love it. Let’s get the press rolling.
Oh, did I say that out loud? Nevermind, nothing to see here
How would anyone know?
The same way that the multiverse was proposed in the first place ,look it up. You got nothing do you, impressive explanation you got there.
Those would be good reads for gpuccio
Yea right. Its the same way we discover God, by math. If the math is wrong, well, that could disprove it.
Bloody nonsense.
Alan Fox,
Mung was partially right: God is a real concept of an imaginary being.
Where was the link to that, please? Sounds fascinating!
The answer to the obvious question about the author is: yes, I know that.
BruceS,
I didn’t see any category for sport science. What the heck?
Here is my problem. We have posters in this very thread who sincerely believe there is an essential supernatural component to everything — that their god is the source of everything from trees to opinions to time itself. And apparently what these people are doing by asserting this universal pervasive supernatural component is, they have completely eliminated the possibility of any “natural” claims. EVERYTHING is supernatural, and science becomes methodological supernaturalism as a result.
I can’t buy this.
Well, maybe you could explain how YOU discovered your god. What was your evidence? At what age did you make this discovery? If you might be wrong, how would you know?
This way?
“Gödel’s ontological proof is a formal argument by the mathematician Kurt Gödel (1906–1978) for the existence of God. The argument is in a line of development that goes back to Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109). St. Anselm’s ontological argument, in its most succinct form, is as follows: “God, by definition, is that for which no greater can be conceived. God exists in the understanding. If God exists in the understanding, we could imagine Him to be greater by existing in reality. Therefore, God must exist.” A more elaborate version was given by Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716); this is the version that Gödel studied and attempted to clarify with his ontological argument.”
If the math is wrong, well, that could disprove it.
If reason and math was your basis for belief in a “ no greater than can be conceived “deity.
I agree, strong emotions are far more understandable and convincing than math and logic. That is the essence and power of a con.
Flint,
Nor should you. What ‘religion’ do ‘these people’ believe & follow who you are implying to?
Abrahamic monotheists traditionally make a distinction between the Creator & created world. Even so, ‘methodological supernaturalism’ (nice to see you attempting to grapple with the terminology, nonetheless) is not accurate here. Try occasionalism.
BruceS,
After Five Eyes came up, I added a viewpoint about them related to science, philosophy, theology/worldview discourse, specifically re: MNism, the main topic of this thread. One person responded volunteering the most basic level of individual affirmation to the question. I assume, given the time that has passed in this thread, that means you’re fully Five Eyes educated, unlike only that person and I here at TSZ?
That’s a large question, enough on-topic, but not to take away from my current other tasks. Public schools may and indeed must teach or make available a curriculum of teaching about divine Creation as a widely held human belief, even if not a universal one. Still the reality of facing a live, monumental choice on a historical belief that 60+% of the world holds today, for each person to face or at least ‘hear about’ on their own & together with others of their choosing, is paramount to protecting ‘western civilisation’ from chaos and anarchy of the kind that woolly naturalistic, neo-Marxist, anti-foundational philosophistry engenders. BruceS is of course free to not take any side in his speech here, or to identify himself with any & all sides, as usual, posturing as philosophical yet leaving out Wisdom.
Here I am reminded of something Neil Postman wrote. Postman himself was a secular (non-religious, i.e. atheist/agnostic) Jew, not too unlike your running mate KN here, BruceS, both of you against me & against classical Abrahamic monotheism, regarding education. Yet he almost idolized Marshall McLuhan, a devout Roman Catholic, and struggled to the end of his life (I was thrice in his audience not many months before he died) to grapple with the 10 Commandments, the history of the Jewish people, and after them Christianity among the nations:
Here was a person highly tuned in to recognizing idolatry in the way people treated media. This seems to be something entirely left out of KN’s TSZ-stained philosophistry.
That’s nice. In short, because this site is darkness in Elizabeth Liddle’s heart, not light shining to the world. It is a kind of duty, rather than pleasure for me at this point.
Do you not acknowledge that people have/use different voices in different settings?!
This place surely brings out the worst in me, as if I were speaking with people trying to throw darkness on the sunshine, and skepticism on the beautiful truths that shine like the light of day upon the hearts of sincerely seeking people, so many of whom I’ve been blessed to meet in different countries around the world. I do not ‘enjoy’ dialoguing with people in this place that had & has a single purpose, one that already has been lost. Yet it still services a higher purpose. Mung’s departure was a big loss, especially with his sarcastic humour.
Try Neils Henrik Gregersen (or perhaps more your analytic style, Charles Taliaferro) on “naturalism”, BruceS, in case he might offer you an on-ramp back from philosophistry & theological numbness. He adds ‘scientific naturalism’ & ‘liberal naturalism’ to the discussion table, far beyond de Vries’ simplistic evangelical mis-apologetics.
To be clear, not saying religion is a con game, was thinking more about the present occupant of the White House.
Oh brother.
Flint,
That’s like saying that every claim is a cosmological claim simply because everything ultimately traces back to the Big Bang. But not every claim is a claim about ultimate origins.
“Water electrolyzes into hydrogen and oxygen” is neither a cosmological claim nor a supernatural one.