Many critics of Intelligent Design and creationism are methodological naturalists – that is, they believe that supernatural topics are off-limits to science, and that science is inherently unable to pass judgment on religious claims.
Many of these same critics are also accommodationists, meaning they believe that there is no real conflict between science and religion, and that believers should not feel threatened by evolution or any other area of modern science.
Methodological naturalism and accommodationism reinforce each other. By separating science and religion into “non-overlapping magisteria”, to borrow Stephen Jay Gould’s phrase, each side is reassured that its own “turf” is protected from the other. Science classes are off-limits to religious ideas, and the faithful can rest assured that science will not overturn their cherished beliefs.
I think that methodological naturalism and accommodationism are both untenable. Religious claims, such as those regarding young-earth creationism and the efficacy of prayer, can easily be investigated (and falsified) using the methods of science, provided that they make testable predictions.
The magisteria are not separate. They overlap considerably, and in the areas of overlap, science has the formidable advantage of being both rational and empirical, and not faith-based.
Religion is fighting a losing battle. It is giving up ground as science advances.
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I’ll save that and play it back to you at an opportune time. I’m sure that won’t be long coming.
I haven’t “descended into rhetoric” William; I quoted Einstein. Why did I use the quote, William? What did Einstein mean by it? To make things easier, I’ll add that by all accounts at this point, Einstein was wrong and that God most definitely MUST play dice, not just with the world and universe, but with Himself as well.
What’s significant about that William? What’s the quote mean?
Really? It’s well-grounded and about reality? Then you should have no problem supporting that claim.
How much time? Which community of inquirers?
It’s occurred to me, but I dispensed with that Idea along with other naive realisms that depends on circular reasoning. Science produces better and better models for independently reproducible, consensual data. That may or may not have anything to do with “what the world is really like”; in fact, it may be leading us farther and farther away from “what the world is really like”.
From someone just can say this in all seriousness:
that’s rich indeed. Support your own claim!
No, that would be tripe like “The Secret” which appears to have taken you in completely.
BTW, KN, that science holds its models as provisional and subject to future revision or even complete abandonment for a better model is contradictory to the view that scientific models can also be claimed as true descriptions of reality. You can’t have it both ways. Scientific models/theories are either provisional, or they are truth claims about reality.
No, but it can point out that something has evidence for it or not. If it doesn’t, then there is nothing really to discuss except an apparent fiction.
It can easily show that the YEC god model has nothing more to recommend it than the Baal weather model.
Tell that to the judge when there’s DNA evidence.
More to the point, of course it can say if one model is more likely true than the other if by “more likely true” we mean that one model is more effective at making independently reproducible, empirical predictions than another. Which is precisely what is often meant by “more likely true.” Using terms equivocally is rhetoric, not discussion of the issues.
And no one is convicted on ontological grounds, nor are lawsuits about safety lapses much concerned about ontology.
Glen Davidson
More like, scientific models are provisional because they are truth claims about reality. Reality just is what it is, while our models can never exactly mirror reality, hence they must be provisional.
Of course there’s a host of issues involved in the terms used above, but sensibly this is what people mean when they’re making truth claims about reality using science, or the methods of criminal justice. Intersubjective agreement is hardly about absolute truth, but it’s also worthless if it isn’t actually about truth. And it isn’t worthless.
Glen Davidson
This is just plainly erroneous as Asimov pointed out.
Incorrect William. This is the Fallacy of the General Rule in all it’s glory and is exactly what Asimov noted is erroneous in the black and white view that scientific models are either perfect or they’re wrong. Flat earth models are more wrong than spherical models. As our tools become more exacting, our models become a more accurate representation of reality, not worse.
If a scientist claims that the Earth is flat, is that claim not either true or false? There is a difference between a scientist claiming “current scientific data is best supported by a flat earth scenario” and a scientist claiming “the Earth is flat”; just as there is a difference between a scientist claiming “current scientific data is best supported by an old-earth model” and claiming “it is impossible for the Earth to be 6000 years old”.
Saying “current scientific data is best supported by a flat earth scenario” is not making the a truth claim that the earth is flat, but is rather only making a claim about the state of scientific evidence and models.
“The Earth is not about 6000 years old” is a truth claim about reality.
“Current scientific data better supports the 5.6 b.y.o. model than the 6k y.o. model.” is a claim only about the current state of scientific models and data, and is not a reality-claim about the age of the Earth.
See the difference?
Care to parse your claims about “The Secret” in a similar way?
Except that science treats the four and a half billion year model like it is really true.
I realize that one can write that current scientific data better supports the 38 year old model of Angelina Jolie than the 2.7 million years old model of Angelina Jolie, thereby carefully hedging what is claimed and what can be claimed. Maybe Angelina really is 2.7 million years old, and later data will better support that model.
On the other hand, Angelina Jolie is actually 38 years old. That this is a contingent fact I don’t dispute, but then our entire understanding of reality is contingent, so when I speak from within such an understanding there is no real problem with claiming that Angelina is in fact 38 years old. Nor that the solar system is four and a half billion years old and that life evolved.
Glen Davidson
Not for the most part, no; such a claim’s validity would depend on the context and level of detail the scientist was speaking in.
Science is about providing a predictive explanation of some phenomenon. An explanation that the world is flat by a scientist can be true given a level of measurement accuracy. And it will be true as far as the accuracy of predictability at that scale.
That is the reason that Newtonian Mechanics still works as a model of planetary orbits. We know it’s not a perfect representation, but on the scales we use it for – like putting satellites into orbit and dropping rockets on the moon – it works just fine. Is it “wrong” then?
Scientists draw conclusions based on the amassed evidence, research, work, analysis, theories, etc in a given area. For example, no one balks at the scientists who say, “Water boils at 100 degrees”. Again, context is key. Thus, I have no problem with a scientist who says, “it’s impossible for the Earth to be 6000 years old”.
That may well be true given the level of detail we have today, but that was not true of the people who made the claim back in 3000 BC.
No, it doesn’t. Some scientists may treat it that way, but science doesn’t. Not any more than it treated the 100,000 y.o. model as “really true”, or the 1 million y.o. model as “really true”. They are held as provisional models, not “really true” descriptions of reality.
So, whether or not the Earth is flat depends on the context and level of detail the scientist was speaking in? It’s your position, then, that scientists actually create the true nature of things by making contextual claims about them?
Are you sure you haven’t been watching “The Secret”?
Here’s one problem: “True” and “false” are not part of the nature of “reality,” these are judgments made by humans. There is not a “true” age of the earth, there are measurements of the age of the earth and true and false statements regarding such measurements. The statement that the earth is four and a half billion years old, give or take a few millions, is a true statement regarding said measurements, while the statement that the earth is 6000 thousand years old is not a true statement with respect to those (our best) measurements.
Of course science treats the four and a half billion year model as true, because “true” is a judgment about our models, not a judgment of “reality.” “Reality” knows nothing about “truth,” we have to assign truth values to statements and claims. It’s obvious when we’re working with strict logic, we have no choice but to assign values, then work with those to deal with various combinations of truth values.
In science it’s as much true that the earth is four and a half billion years old as that Angelina Jolie is 38 years old. Neither is absolute, but both are legitimate claims about reality as it is known to us. And reality as it is not known to us is mere fiction, in human terms.
Glen Davidson
This is incorrect William. You should actually read the history of trying to determine the age of the Earth sometime. It’s a fascinating story all its own. There was never a 100,000 y.o. model or a 1 million y.o. model. Lord Kelvin was the first to propose a model and it provided a calculation between 20 million and 400 million years. Needless to say, few took his broad range as being very accurate. His model and subsequent models were off because there was information they did not have at the time, but all the models starting from Lord Kelvin’s increased in accuracy to the ones we have today. To then assume that ours are just as “wrong” as Lord Kelvins is fallacious.
ETA: Just to add, the difference between the provisional acceptance of Lord Kelvin’s age of the Earth calculation and today’s calculation has to do with to relative degree of accuracy of each model to the “actual age” of the Earth. Kelvin’s model was off by orders of magnitude given his lack of knowledge of certain physical conditions. Today’s model is off by less than a percent. And yes, therefore many scientists today do indeed treat today’s concluded age of the Earth as “really true” since it’s difference from the standard is negligible at best.
Where did this “create the true nature of things” come from? No, such is not my position.
Once again, a claim about a phenomenon is contextual; given scales of inches over the course of a few miles, the Earth is indeed a flat surface. There is nothing “false” then about concluding the Earth is flat given that level of detail.
No idea what you mean here.
William, I’m curious – do you believe that reality is provisional? I think you stated something to this effect before, but I can’t find it. And I don’t mean that you hold that human understanding is provisional. I mean, do you believe that asphalt could possibly turn into arsenic and sand could one day turn into cotton candy? That light could possibly change such that it traveled at an inch a minute?That either on it’s own or through the actions of some God, the physical nature of reality could possibly change?
Here’s the heart of the debate between us, William: when you say, “scientific models/theories are either provisional, or they are truth claims about reality,” that sounds to me exactly like someone who says
And I say exactly because I treat a model as just a map of reality. Given that way of thinking about models, I think it’s clearly false that scientific realism is incompatible with the fallibilistic character of scientific inquiry. Those two views are made fully compatible in what’s called “convergent realism“, which holds that (a) a theory is better or worse than its competitors insofar as it is a better approximation of reality, and b) scientific progress consists of asymptotic convergence towards reality. And convergent realism is indeed the view that I hold.
KN,
Scientific realism is compatible with the provisional nature of science. Compatibility, however, doesn’t entail either logical necessity or probability. What is not compatible with the provisional nature of science are assertions of specific truths about reality. Science makes no assertions of truth about reality; it only provides specific kinds of data and models.
Scientific realists can hold that those models are approximations of the true nature of reality, even though science itself makes no such claim. If a scientific realist makes a truth claim about reality, such as “the Earth is flat” or “The Earth is not @6000 years old” it is not a scientific claim.
But neither do scientific theories make any claims about themselves, one way or the other. To say that a scientific theory is an approximate description of reality is, as you rightly say, a philosophical interpretation of the theory — but to say that it is not, but rather only an instrument for generating future predictions, is also a philosophical interpretation of science.
The only way to avoid going beyond science is to say nothing about science at all. (Think of this as a perfectly formal point about the difference between the object-language and the metalanguage.)
keiths:
William:
Mockery seemed like an appropriate response to someone who presumes to tell scientists that they aren’t doing science when they write lengthy, detailed papers that make claims about objective reality.
Do you ever think these things through, William?
You claim:
By your ridiculous criterion, a paper that describes a new species of Amazonian beetle, with details about its morphology, habitat, diet, and behavior, is not a scientific paper at all.
For obvious reasons, scientists will continue to practice science after filing your idea in the crackpot file.
Back on the original topic, another problem with the unholy pairing of methodological naturalism and accommodationism is the following. Science is empirically-based reasoning, and if supernatural entities are off-limits to science, then the absence of supernatural entities is also off-limits to science. That means that according to those who argue for methodological naturalism, atheism is not justified by empirically-based reasoning, unless it’s a different kind of empirically-based reasoning that is for some reason excluded from science.
If atheism isn’t justified by empirically-based reasoning, then It’s either a pure assumption or at best an application of Occam’s Razor. I suspect that most atheist methodological naturalists don’t realize the extent to which their own position undermines their atheism.
On the other hand, if their atheism is a consequence of empirically-based reasoning, then why exclude it from science? What criterion justifies its exclusion?
William,
I’m not sure where you got that idea. I certainly haven’t said anything like it.
keiths:
Robin:
Well, the obvious one would be “created the universe a short time ago”. And since YECs pretty much have to be Biblical literalists to believe something as inane as that, they also have to buy the rest of the Bible, including oddities such as the “bridegroom of blood” story in Exodus 4.
Also, remember that my point in bringing up the YEC God was to show that a supernatural hypothesis could be falsified — and decisively so — by science. That remains true even if you question my use of the phrase “the YEC God” as part of that hypothesis.
Of course not. They think their God is the one true God, so no qualifiers are needed. It’s just plain “God”.
It’s a problem that bedevils theological discussions. The term “God” is so nonspecific that it can refer to zillions of different potential entities. Theists try to take advantage of this in arguments by switching to easier-to-defend versions of God when the going gets tough.
That’s why I find it useful to specify the God I am talking about — including the YEC God.
Not true. They think we can know that God is loving, merciful, just, omnipotent, and omnisicient. They think we can know that he is perfectly good, that he sent his divine son to die for us, and that we know exactly who that person was. They think that we can know, via his infallible word, that he requires baptism and belief from his followers, and so on. Those are a lot of very specific characteristics.
The issue I have as I don’t see this as a characteristic of the entity itself, but rather a characteristic of the action of some entity. In such a situation, showing that the universe was not created a short time ago would merely falsify the claim of said entity’s action and not falsify the entity itself. It’s like saying that “driving yesterday” is a characteristic of humans. If you can show that even one human did not drive yesterday, does that human cease to exist? No, because the “yesterday” in that clause is a characteristic of “driving”, not of “human”.
Fair enough. I still think it’s not a particularly strong argument as I don’t think most theists, particularly YECs, are quite so specific about the nature of their deity. I think you’d find that most would sneer at the idea that your logic disproved their God.
I backed away from this because I hadn’t intended to start a war, but I agree with your reading.
Saying “The God that created the universe in seven days does not exist,” may be logically coherent, but it isn’t the way ordinary people talk.
And in idiomatic English, it suggests that the God of the Bible does not exist, Which would only be coherent if you accept the premise that the God of the Bible can only exist if every word of the Bible is literally true.
There are, of course, Biblical literalists who assert it’s all or nothing, but they aren’t the majority of churchgoers.
Robin, petrushka,
As I’ve been saying, there are two issues here.
The first and most important issue relates to the topic of the thread, and the second is tangential.
Let me describe the first issue this way, to avoid any ambiguity:
1. Let’s define class Y as consisting of all potential gods who created the earth several thousand years ago.
2. The evidence shows conclusively that the earth was not created several thousand years ago. That number is off by a factor of about a million.
3. That means that there is no god who a) falls into class Y, and b) also exists.
4. The hypothesis “a god of class Y exists” is a supernatural claim. It involves gods, and gods are supernatural entities.
5. Science falsifies the claim “a god of class Y exists”. Therefore science falsifies a supernatural claim, and the methodological naturalists are wrong to insist that it cannot. What matters is whether a claim is testable, not whether it involves the supernatural.
Are we in agreement up to this point?
We have always been in agreement on the logic. I have never questioned the logic.I don’t understand why you keep harping on the logic, when that is not what I have complained about.
Perhaps if I said, “The planet that orbits the sun once per year does not exist.”
petrushka,
We don’t agree at all on the logic, unless you’ve changed your mind during the thread without mentioning it to the rest of us.
I wrote:
You said:
I disagree completely with your logic, as I explained earlier:
It seems that we are in sharp disagreement over the logic, unless you’ve changed your mind since then.
I certainly changed my interpretation of your statement. Which shouldn’t surprise anyone, since my complaint is that it miscommunicates.
petrushka,
We’re talking about your logic, not your interpretation of my statement.
I definitely disagree with your logic, for the reasons given above.
Since you have claimed that
…then we definitely disagree. Have you changed your mind since then, or do you still believe that “the person breaking into my house and stealing my toothpaste” might exist even if no one is breaking into my house and stealing my toothpaste?
If you want to know the answer, read my subsequent posts. I disagreed with your logic, it’s because I misunderstood you. I’m not the only one.
petrushka,
I’ve read all of your comments, and you’ve never withdrawn your statement about the toothpaste thief:
I think you’re making a logical error. We can say something about the existence of “the alleged person”, and what we can say is this: “The person breaking into my house and stealing my toothpaste” does not exist. There is no such person.
And yes, you are the only one making that error. No one else has disputed the nonexistence of the toothpaste thief.
I think I also misunderstood your argument initially, Keith. That said, like Petrushka, it isn’t your logic I find faulty; it’s that I think the way you are defining the characteristics of a god is not comparable to how conservative theists actually define Him.
WJM said:
keiths said:
Except I didn’t say anything about sceintists and what they should or shouldn’t do. I said “science”, meaning the methodology.
WJM said:
keiths said.
Keiths: Note that you didn’t make any argument to rebut my original point other than by pointing out that scientists have made those claims about reality.
When you rebut my argument about science not making claims about reality only with the point that scientists make claims about reality all the time, the only available on-point inference to be drawn from that rebuttal is that you think that because scientists make claims about reality, then such claims must be scientific in nature.
Ergo, because a scientist has made a claim, thus it is scientific.
Scientists make all sorts of non-scientific claims; just because they make a claim doesn’t mean it is scientific.
Yeah, Behe, Demsbki and Axe make many claims, only some of which are scientific. Their “trick” is to blur the lines between those categories.
To the extent they are scientific, they are wrong, and to the extent they are right, they are not scientific.
Dembski and Behe can do arithmetic, but have trouble with word problems.
Robin,
Unlike petrushka, you haven’t claimed that we can say nothing about the existence of the toothpaste thief. That’s where petrushka’s logic clashes with mine. To me it seems obvious that if no one is breaking into my house and stealing my toothpaste, then “the person breaking into my house and stealing my toothpaste” does not exist.
My main point in this thread has been that science can falsify supernatural hypotheses, as explained here. Methodological naturalism is unnecessary and counterproductive, because science is perfectly capable of dealing with supernatural claims as long as they are testable.
The second, tangential issue is the meaning of the phrase “the YEC God”, and I’ll get to that later today when I have some time.
William:
No, William, there is another “available on-point inference” to be drawn, which is that scientists are doing science when they write scientific papers full of claims about reality.
By your absurd standards, the beetle paper I mentioned above would not be a scientific paper at all:
The only issue was the meaning of “YEC God.”
My point is that phrases like that miscommunicate. When you are writing for a casual audience, you need to consider not only the strict logical meaning, but also the way the phrase will be read by a general audience.
The problem is the most people do not think of the YEC God as belonging to the class of all gods that created the earth 6000 years ago.
Many, if not most, would think of the YEC god as the god described in the Bible. And The bible is a history, some of which is historically accurate, some of which is parable, some of which is metaphor.
I realize that what you are arguing is that it can’t qualify as a YEC God unless it did YEC. But I have encountered quite a few YEC people who consider the many passages where “one day is like a thousand years” to allow a metaphorical interpretation of the 6000 years. I realize that this creates additional problems.
But your not exist assertion is equivalent to saying the earth is more than 6000 years old, and any other claim is incorrect. That’s really the whole thing. Usually it’s best to stick with simple statements of fact.
Yes, I think your example of the thief is sound. I just don’t see the thief example and the concept of a YEC God as equivalent. The difference to me is that in the thief example, the ONLY characteristic available for assessment is whether the toothpaste was stolen. The thief’s entire existence is predicated upon the event (hence the fact that the character is called “thief”; he or she is defined by the action of stealing); without a crime of theft, there can be no thief.
This does not work for the YEC God however because a YEC God – at least in real-world scenarios – is not limited to having a single characteristic of ONLY creating a world 6000 years ago (or last Thursday or whatever). In other words, a YEC God’s existence is not, at least not to me or to the vast majority of YEC believers, predicated upon a single event; Gods, even YEC Gods, do more than just create worlds.
However, assuming you did in fact encounter a YEC believer who defined his or her God in such a limited fashion, then I agree that by demonstrating the world could not be young, you would in fact disprove the God as well.
While I agree in principle, I just don’t see that many supernatural hypotheses being so narrowly defined.
I look forward to it.
This has actually been part of many people’s belief system, and it probably accounts for a lot of anti-science. If science is right, God does not exist.
But people compartmentalize, and rather than conclude that God does not exist, most people will modify their definition of God.
This is not entirely irrational. I gave the example of the biography that contains factual errors. When errors are found, we do not conclude that the subject of the biography never existed.
In most real cases, logic is fuzzy.
I didn’t say they weren’t “doing science”. I said, if they make truth-claims about reality, those claims are not scientific.
Making a truth claim about reality doesn’t render all the work done by a scientist, nor every aspect of a paper “non-scientific”. It just means that the reality-truth claim is not scientific. It may just be the product of sloppy semantics producing erroneously unqualified assertions, but it promotes the idea that there is a link between scientific realism and science when scientists use phrasings that promotes scientific realism and diminishes the understanding that science is not promoting a concept of reality.
Which goes back to the original point: science doesn’t in any way diminish the concept of a YEC god, because science can only say that it’s most effective current model is that of an old earth. Note the difference between:
1. The Earth ***is*** 4.5 billion years old
and
2. The model of a 4.5 billion year old Earth is currently better at generating independently reproducible data than other models.
Note how the first statement implicitly promotes scientific realism, and the second does not. The first statement leads to such foolish assertions like “it is impossible for the Earth to be 6000 years old” or “only idiots believe in a 6000 year old earth”. The second phrasing – the scientifically accurate one – gives no significant warrant for ridiculing or dismissing those with different views on the age of the Earth.
Scientific claims follow this pattern:
1. X is our best, current scientific model.
2. X may or may not be true.
Truth claims about reality follow this pattern:
1. X is true.
Posing a truth claim as:
1. X is true.
2. X may not be true.
… as if truth claims are “the same as” scientific claims is irrational and misleading.
I agree Petrushka, but I’m giving Keith the benefit of the doubt here. In other words, if someone were to have such a narrowly defined God, one would have to modify that definition (sort of create a new God, if you will) in order to maintain that God’s existence in the face of disqualifying evidence. I think that still falls in line with what Keith is saying.
Mind you, I don’t think we’d actually find any YEC with such a narrowly defined God.
Both are facts.
What you fail to admit is that all facts are provisional, not just scientific facts. We go through accepting facts, and occasionally a fact turns out not to be true or not to give a complete picture.
Accept jury duty and you will understand.