Comment on Science, Methodological Naturalism, and Faith by Sean Pitman.

You make statements like;

“..the detection of God’s existence and activity is beyond the realm of what is defined as “science” and beyond what most would define as a “rational” belief (which has led many to conclude that methodologically naturalism rationally leads one to accept philosophical naturalism as well).

I was referencing your argument. Clearly, this isn’t my argument. I believe that God has made His activity detectable on many occasions. The argument that God cannot make Himself detectable, by definition, is not a rational argument for any God worth His salt. It makes God out to be less capable of making Himself rationally known that a pet dog…

Sounds fine but by “most would define as a “rational” belief” and “many to conclude that methodologically naturalism rationally leads one to accept philosophical naturalism as well” you actually mean you and a few fundamentalists, atheist or Christian. I suspect this is because they either have a very woolly idea of what is the domain of science and assume that every logical thought or hypothetical proposition is science irrespective of whether it is magical or not (Christian fundamentalists) or assume that science actually covers everything anyway and there is no such thing as God or the supernatural (atheistic fundamentalists or philosphic naturalists).

No. It’s because you yourself define everything outside of what you call “science” as being irrational. Few people can go with what they themselves consider to be irrational and/or nonsensical. I’m surprised that you can – that you can believe in God and in Jesus for reasons that would appear to be completely irrational to anyone else beyond yourself.

If you read down a little further you will find what most scientists do not think as articulated by Judge Jones;

“Expert testimony reveals that since the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, science has been limited to the search for natural causes to explain natural phenomena…. While supernatural explanations may be important and have merit, they are not part of science.” Methodological naturalism is thus “a self-imposed convention of science.” It is a “ground rule” that “requires scientists to seek explanations in the world around us based upon what we can observe, test, replicate, and verify.”

The problem, of course, is that your own claims to belief in God are, according to you, irrational. The do not have “merit” in the rational sense of the term – according to you.

Also, your position on methodological naturalism is itself non-testable or falsifiable. You position that some future discovery will always be found to support your position is a faith position that simply cannot be put to the test and is based on historical assumptions that are also in error.

You of course would appeal to Popper as a philosopher who articulates his criteria of falsifiability as the demarcating standard of science and who questioned the scientific nature of evolutionary theory at one stage. You may find solace in his views but his demarcation is never independent of natural mechanisms when you actually analyse the repository of knowledge of science.

You and most literal creationists carefully overlook Poppers later statement

“I have changed my mind about the testability and logical status of the theory of natural selection; and I am glad to have an opportunity to make a recantation” (Dialectica 32:344-346).

I never said that the theory of natural selection isn’t based on real science. It is based on real science. I think the scientific evidence is very very clear that natural selection is a real force of nature and that it is responsible for many changes over time – just not beyond very very low levels of functional complexity.

The notion that natural selection is a creative force that can explain novel functionality beyond low levels of functional complexity is not demonstrable or testable or falsifiable. It is just-so story telling that goes against very clear statistical odds that show that it simply cannot work beyond low-levels of functional complexity. And, your theory that “life enzymes” will be discovered in the future to solve this problem isn’t testable either.

And, as you know, Popper never recanted his position on the need for testability for a theory to be classified as “scientific”. Your position on methodological naturalism simply isn’t testable – and neither is your position on the Darwinian mechanism or its support by future discoveries. This argument of yours goes completely against Popper’s definition of a valid science.

You continually ask for evidence but when given for example a list of original research papers relevant to a topic dismiss that as a lazy approach on my part and want a simple quote as if one particular quote can cover a large body of original work. What happened to the idea of consulting the literature of science as a virtuous task. Which is lazy. Asking someone to distil the information and give it to you or actually looking for yourself. Continually asking for explanation as though you have any concern that you have a view that is divergent from most of science is I confess completely disconcerting because I as a teacher of science I naturally assume evidently erroneously that you are genuinely asking for explanation.

I have consulted the literature extensively on the topic at hand. When you simply list off a Pub-Med search and claim that there are 600+ articles discussing my question, that’s completely useless to me. I’m not asking you for a one liner here. I’m asking you for a full argument that you yourself understand and can present in a forum such as this one. Or, at the very least, quote the relevant part of a single paper and explain to me the significance of what you’re quoting relative to the question I’m asking…

You critique me for being inconsistent because I do not believe in magic. I in fact do believe in magic. Any Christian does. But I do not accept it as part of science precisely because I have a limited definition of science that is consistent with the Wiki definition.

I don’t fault you for believing in God. I fault you for claiming that belief in God cannot be based on logical empirically-based reasons. You claim that faith in God and His existence is inherently beyond logical argument or appeal and is therefore beyond any rational appeal to anyone beyond yourself.

“In modern usage, “science” most often refers to a way of pursuing knowledge, not only the knowledge itself. It is also often restricted to those branches of study that seek to explain the phenomena of the material universe.[6] In the 17th and 18th centuries scientists increasingly sought to formulate knowledge in terms of laws of nature such as Newton’s laws of motion. And over the course of the 19th century, the word “science” became increasingly associated with the scientific method itself, as a disciplined way to study the natural world, including physics, chemistry, geology and biology.”

I am completely conventional in accepting this definition of science based on naturalism. I am also completely consistent in that I only accept as scientific hypotheses those that can be tested and explained by natural law or mechanism. Other hypotheses that cannot be tested or do not propose natural cause I accept as real but not part of science.

And, you claim that these other hypotheses simply aren’t what you would call “logical”. You are also inconsistent in your position on methodological naturalism, as I’ve already explained, because you selectively exclude hypotheses of intelligent design (or “intelligent creation” if you prefer) in certain cases, but not in others. You are not consistent in how you think intelligence can be detected or true artefacts identified by scientific methodologies.

You are being completely obscurant in suggesting that I have not responded to your endlessly repeated questions on a granite cube. I have answered in detail several times before with comments about artefacts and big brains. What is objectionable is your use of the term intelligent design without at all recognizing or acknowledging that this is simply rebadged literal creationism and is not by definition part of science. It is not a matter of where the question is leading but you have already blatantly advertised that you think ID is the best hope for creationism as science. But what does wiki say

“Intelligent design (ID) is a form of creationism presented by its proponents as the theory that “certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.” It is a version of the theological argument from design for the existence of God that proponents present as “an evidence-based scientific theory about life’s origins” rather than “a religious-based idea”

Sorry as a scientist any discussion of intelligent design is not in my toolbox. I am happy however from a religious perspective to argue about the relative value of ID compared to YLC or YEC or theistic evolution but even here your position is idiosyncratic in that you seem to embrace ID but uncomfortably shoehorn it all into a YLC fundamentalism that is at odds with most at the DI.

I know you don’t like the term “intelligent design” as it has taken on political meaning for you. Instead, when talking about artefacts like granite cubes and the like, you prefer to use some other term, like “intelligent creation” or the like. Clearly, this is just using a different term to describe the very same thing. Don’t be so obtuse about the obvious question in play. The basic idea is that intelligence was clearly responsible for the granite cube – as you yourself would admit. It matters not what you call this process of discovering a true artefact of intelligent design. The fact of the matter is that such discoveries are clearly within the realm of scientific methodologies.

As for logic and rationality of belief I admit mine lacks a completely logical trail from science to acceptance of Christ as the revelation of God. This has vexed theologians long before me and I am happy to profit from their thought as I have said several times before. In this alogic I believe we are in the same boat. I think it illogical that you should think that you alone should understand vast amounts of human knowledge to a sufficient level to dismiss the practitioners as all wrong and that you alone should understand science, human history and biblical exegesis to arrive at a YLC position as the only reading of a text bearing remarkable similarity to an antecedent sumerian text.

I’m not alone. In fact, my position is right in line with what most Hebrew scholars, to include secular scholars of Hebrew, believe was the author’s actual intent in writing the Genesis account. Consider, for example the thoughts of James Barr (Professor of Hebrew Bible at Vanderbilt University and former Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford University in England) along these lines:

“Probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1-11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that (a) creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience; . . . Or, to put it negatively, the apologetic arguments which suppose the “days” of creation to be long eras of time, the figures of years not to be chronological, and the flood to be a merely local Mesopotamian flood, are not taken seriously by any such professors, as far as I know.”

James Barr, letter to David Watson, 1984.

So, if you want to re-interpret what the author himself was trying to say, fine. However, if you’re going to take what the author was really trying to say seriously, it is quite clear that the Bible is in fact trying to tell us that all life arrived on this planet recently and within a literal week of time.

I appeal to the scriptures and Jesus Himself when he talked about the new birth. Is that logical and scientific? His audience didn’t think so. But of course it is real. Can it be tested as a naturalistic hypothesis? Possibly some part of it by fMRI.

His audience did think so – especially after His Resurrection. The Resurrection, for the disciples of Jesus, was the greatest empirical basis for their faith that they could ever have hoped for. It gave them confidence and courage and fearlessness under extraordinarily difficult times. The same can be said for those of us in modern times who recognize the solid empirical evidence supporting the claims of the Bible.

I prefer the religion of Jesus and Paul to your appeal to some “science” or empiricism as the sole basis of faith.

For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 1Cor 1:18
For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. 1 Cor 1:20
but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, 1 Cor 1:23
Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. 1 Cor 1:25
But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. 1 Cor 2:14
For the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God. For it is written, “He is the one who catches the wise in their craftiness”; 1Cor 3:19

Really doesnt sound to me like Paul was trying to make Christian belief part of the logic of Greek thought. Christianity is always other-worldy. Why do we want to make it derivative of some scientific or empirical process. Something that is “rationally tenable” if you will.

You forget where Paul cites the Resurrection of Jesus as incontrovertible empirical evidence for His claims – without which one’s hope and faith would all be in vain. – 1 Corinthians 15:14

You see, the cross is “foolishness” to those who maintain their own selfish desires – which are natural to them. However, the cross is not foolishness at all for those who recognize the evidence for the Divinity of Jesus and for the beauty of the Gospel message of hope that he presented to the world – a message that is backed up by the weight of empirical evidence to give a rational basis for convincing others as to why they should also have hope for a better life to come.

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