The goal of the Intelligent Design movement is the dismantling of modern science

[rogue06]

...So instead, they try to hijack the reputation built by science to feed their theological needs.

We've seen that here - Lee's said that this is essentially a theological endeavor, but when asked why he just doesn't incorporate some of the scientific method into his theology, he goes silent.

I kind of wonder what Lee has to say (if anything) about post #51

[lee_merrill]

That is exactly what Francis Collins means when he wrote "The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome," and "He can be worshipped in the cathedral or in the laboratory" in The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. And yet Collins will be the first to tell you that he strictly adheres to the scientific method in his work.

Well, that involves a kind of blindness, putting blinkers on so we cannot see God's hand in his handiwork, in the laboratory, actually.

What ID is about is scraping the scientific method ...

Scrapping, did you mean? But no, ID is about tossing out methodological naturalism, not the scientific method per se.

... the supernatural is just a science stopper -- an argument that goes back to Bacon.

But science was not stopped, it was done by Newton and other theists, with a view to God as involved in nature.

To paraphrase Robert Pennock, being that the supernatural is necessarily a mystery to us, not being constrained by natural laws, allowing science to rely upon untestable supernatural powers would make the scientist's task meaningless because it undermines that which allows science to make progress, and "would be as profoundly unsatisfying as the ancient Greek playwright's reliance upon the deus ex machina to extract his hero from a difficult predicament."

But again, forensic science deals with the operation of intelligent agents on a regular basis, without undermining the progress of science at all.

This exclusion of supernatural explanations is due to it being unknowable by any means of scientific inquiry.

But detectable by scientific inquiry, is the point! How else would someone detect a miracle, if not by ruling out natural processes first?

On the other hand, a scientist who, when stumped, invokes a supernatural cause for a phenomenon he or she is investigating is guaranteed that no scientific understanding of the problem will ensue.

Certainly we can give up looking for natural explanations, when we conclude an intelligent agent has been at work. This is not the end of the world, nor the end of science.

So while methodological naturalism prohibits the use of supernatural explanations in science, unlike ontological naturalism (a.k.a., metaphysical or philosophical naturalism), it does not make any claims about the existence or non-existence of God.

Again I refer you to the verses that say the heavens declare the glory of God, and God's nature and power can be seen in what has been made.

And until someone can devise a test for the supernatural the wisest course of action, again as history has revealed, is to continue with the tools at our disposal.

Fulfilled prophecy is one test God proposes for detecting the supernatural:

"Declare and set forth your case;
Indeed, let them consult together.
Who has announced this from of old?
Who has long since declared it?
Is it not I, the LORD?
And there is no other God besides Me,
A righteous God and a Savior;
There is none except Me." (Is 45:21)

And again, if we exhaust our knowledge of natural processes, and we can be fairly confident that we know enough to rule out natural processes as a probable cause, we can conclude an intelligent agent was at work.

Blessings,
Lee

[lee_merrill]

I kind of wonder what Lee has to say (if anything) about post #51

I would reply as I did to the Lurch, "Their goals have been inconsistent, but I wouldn't label them as deceptive. I think they are sincerely seeking to see if a case can be made for a designer."

Blessings,
Lee

[TheLurch]

Scrapping, did you mean? But no, ID is about tossing out methodological naturalism, not the scientific method per se.

And methodological naturalism is central to the scientific method. It is literally about finding natural explanations for natural phenomena.

But science was not stopped, it was done by Newton and other theists, with a view to God as involved in nature.

Point out one instance where Newton attempted to insert non-physical causes into his laws or equations.

But detectable by scientific inquiry, is the point! How else would someone detect a miracle, if not by ruling out natural processes first?

What's that thing about proving a negative? Oh yes, it's impossible to do. Excellent foundation for a method of inquiry.

Certainly we can give up looking for natural explanations, when we conclude an intelligent agent has been at work. This is not the end of the world, nor the end of science.

Again, as science is defined as the search for natural explanations for natural phenomena, it is quite literally the end of science.

[rogue06]

Well, that involves a kind of blindness, putting blinkers on so we cannot see God's hand in his handiwork, in the laboratory, actually.

Do tell. Please explain how Collins writing that "The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome," and "He can be worshipped in the cathedral or in the laboratory" in his The Language of God " involves a kind of blindness, putting blinkers on so we cannot see God's hand in his handiwork, in the laboratory"

ID is about tossing out methodological naturalism, not the scientific method per se.

Methodological naturalism (MN) is at the heart of the scientific method. It is the core principle that allowed science to have advanced as far as it has.

And it should be noted that it was Christians who were largely responsible for coming up with MN and implementing it in their investigations. The desire for studying the natural world, which later developed into science, originated out of Christian thinking during the Middle Ages.

For the "natural philosopher"^[1] in the late Middle Ages, MN was a tool to study and explore God’s regular means of creating and sustaining the material world.^[2]

These Christians fully realized that not appealing to God in science is not the same as denying his activity in the world. Not even close. They understood that accepting that science is only equipped to study a subset of reality (that which is accessible to empirical investigation), which is very different from asserting that everything that exists has come about by purely material causes.

For instance, according to the late David Lindberg (a historian of science who focused on the Medieval to early Modern Science and the relationship between religion and science), in his well received Beginnings of Western Science, Saint Albert the Great (a.k.a., Albertus Magnus), the illustrious 13th cent. German Catholic Dominican friar and later bishop (a Doctor of the RCC), proposed distinguishing

"between philosophy and theology on methodological grounds and to find out what philosophy alone, without any help from theology, could demonstrate about reality. Moreover, Albert did nothing to diminish or conceal the "naturalistic" tendencies of the Aristotelian tradition. He acknowledged (with every other medieval thinker) that God is ultimately the cause of everything, but he argued that God customarily works through natural causes and that the natural philosopher's^[1] obligation was to take the latter to their limit"

concluding that

Albert pointed out that God employs natural causes to accomplish his purposes; and the philosopher's task is not to investigate the causes of God's will, but to inquire into the natural causes by which God's will produces its effect. To introduce divine causality into a philosophical discussion … would be a violation of the proper boundaries between philosophy and theology

But science was not stopped, it was done by Newton and other theists, with a view to God as involved in nature.

That folks like Robert Boyle and Newton rejected MN is a recent myth crafted by the IDiots (couldn't resist ) at the Discovery Institute and a hand full of others and it is time to drive a stake through it.

While he believed God could intervene in the natural course of things, Robert Boyle, the father of modern chemistry, conceived the task of natural philosophy^[1] as studying and understanding creation on its own terms, often making it clear where that he thinks that a "natural philosopher's"^[1] job was explaining the phenomena of creation in terms of natural processes. For example, as Boyle puts it in one of his last works, The Christian Virtuoso, which summarized his religious views he declares that "scientists":

"consult Experience both frequently and heedfully; and not content with the Phaenonmena that Nature spontaneously affords them, they are solicitous, when they find it needful, to enlarge their Experience by Tryals purposely devis’d; and ever and anon Reflecting upon it, they are careful to Conform their opinions to it; or, if there be just cause, Reform their Opinions by it."

[*Bolding added by rogue06*]

FWICT Boyle was an avowed Anglican, but he also sought to study and understand natural phenomena without what he called "intermeddling with supernatural mysteries." Therefore, as can be seen several times throughout The Works of the Honorable Robert Boyle that Boyle held that it was mistaken to invoke God or miraculous explanations while seeking to comprehend the operations of natural phenomena on its own terms. For Boyle, this was simply due to the fact that those sort of explanations provide no insight into the physical nature of the phenomena or the principles under which they operated, and that rational and practical engagement with creation was the only means for us to increase our knowledge of it.

As for Newton. Nobody denies that Newton drew inspiration from his faith in the pursuit of his inquiries into nature and often discussed the role of God in nature^[3]. But still, Newton recognized, as he put it,

That religion & Philosophy^[1] are to be preserved distinct. We are not to introduce divine revelations into Philosophy, nor philosophical opinions into religion

In the preface to his opus the Philosophić Naturalis Principia Mathematica ("Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy"), or more commonly, Principia, Newton makes clear that he wants nothing to do with "occult qualities." Inside, one can see that the actual physical inquires contained in the Principia makes little use of God as an explanatory hypothesis, and by the second edition, contained a rebuttal of Leibniz and Huygens that he had appealed to supernatural qualities for explanations.

Given that Newton, among many other accomplishments, is responsible for combining mathematical modeling and experimental observations in a manner still used in the physical sciences, it is no surprise that he also desired to utilize basic methodological naturalism as the appropriate way to study the secondary causes of creation.

For just one example, in a letter to a Richard Bentley, while maintaining his absolute certainty that God was ultimately responsible for gravity, Newton argued that if God chose to produce gravity mechanically, then a mechanical cause should besought.

IOW, for Newton God would always be the First Cause regardless of whether or not Newton could grasp its Secondary Cause.

As the biographer and historian of science Richard Westfall, known for his study of Newton, noted in the concluding statement of Construction of Modern Science, Newton was willing to admit that the internal side of nature is mysterious, but simultaneously, he demanded that what we investigate be based upon exact descriptions of phenomena and lead to an exact treatment.

So, what Newton and other scientists of his time did was to assume that the universe made sense because it had a designer, but then used what we would call ordinary material scientific methods to investigate that universe. Neither Newton or Boyle never proposed God as a cause in any of their theories

And yet for all that Newton did fall back and appealed to planetary fine-tuning by God to explain a few problems he couldn't solve. I guess they're irreducibly complex . But much those today who trod this erroneous route, Newton's mysteries were solved by others like Pierre-Simon, the Marquis de Laplace and even Immanuel Kant were able to solve them not long afterwards.

There is a lesson in there for folks like Behe and others at the Discover Institute.

But detectable by scientific inquiry, is the point! How else would someone detect a miracle, if not by ruling out natural processes first?

Way to miss the actual point.

The fact is that it is impossible to rule out the possibility of a miracle. The problem is that science, nor anything else devised by man, can totally eliminate the possibility of a supernatural occurrence. So we do the best we can and set aside miraculous possibilities and look at more ordinary explanations and possibilities because, in effect, it really is all we can do. And doing so has met with remarkable success by any measure.

Again I refer you to the verses that say the heavens declare the glory of God, and God's nature and power can be seen in what has been made.


Fulfilled prophecy is one test God proposes for detecting the supernatural:

"Declare and set forth your case;
Indeed, let them consult together.
Who has announced this from of old?
Who has long since declared it?
Is it not I, the LORD?
And there is no other God besides Me,
A righteous God and a Savior;
There is none except Me." (Is 45:21)

Those are not instructions for determining how something works. That is a First Cause argument.

And again, if we exhaust our knowledge of natural processes, and we can be fairly confident that we know enough to rule out natural processes as a probable cause, we can conclude an intelligent agent was at work.

Just how do we go about exhausting our knowledge of natural processes so that we can rule them out as the cause? Just because we don't know something at the moment does not mean a natural solution won't present itself.

You are presenting nothing more than a God-of-the-gaps argument here. If we don't have an immediate answer then it must be a miracle.

And you wonder why such thinking has been rightfully termed a science stopper.






1. The term "natural philosopher" was what "scientists" were called back then in that they studied "Natural Philosophy." Clearly much of the work of those like Galileo, Boyle, Newton and others of their times looks much like what we would call science today, and yet, much of what they did looks like what we today would call philosophy.

It wasn't until the 1830s that the polymath William Whewell coined the term "scientist." By then it had become increasingly less "philosophy" any way, with the advent of the scientific method with its emphasis upon experimentation and the like.

2. Medieval philosophers such as Duns Scotus, Adelard of Bath, William of Ockham, Thomas Aquinas, Siger of Brabant, Nicole Oresme, Boethius of Dacia and John Buridan all explicitly repudiated supernatural epistemic methods in natural philosophy because they viewed natural philosophy as limited to the study of the "common course of nature" (communis cursus naturae) by appeal to reason and sense experience.

3. While down right pious he wasn't a country mile near to being an orthodox Christian. For one, he secretly practiced "witchcraft" for decades, having an obsession with alchemy, which was viewed as witchcraft. Second he was not Trinitarian and most likely considered Arian in his Christology, seriously subordinating Christ.

[rogue06]

I would reply as I did to the Lurch, "Their goals have been inconsistent, but I wouldn't label them as deceptive. I think they are sincerely seeking to see if a case can be made for a designer."

Blessings,
Lee

This reminds me of part of an exchange in the animated movie Heavy Metal where Hanover Fiste, now possessed by the alien entity Loc-Nar, is about to testify on the behalf guilty-as-sin space captain Lincoln F. Sternn, charged with dozens of serious crimes.

Prosecutor: State your name for the record.

Fiste: I am Hanover Fiste.

Prosecutor: Do you know the defendant?

Fiste: Yes, I know Captain Sternn. He is most kind and generous.

Sternn (whispering to his concerned attorney): I promised him 35,000 zulaks to testify on my behalf.

Fiste: He is a cup overflowing with the cream of human goodness. I have never known him to do anything immoral.

Sternn: See?

Fiste: (who is switching between personalities, henceforth to be known as "Fiste 2"): Unless maybe the Preschooler's Prostitute Ring.

crowd gasp

Fiste: And he has never done anything illegal.

Fiste 2: Unless you count all the times he sold dope disguised as a nun.

Fiste: He has always been a good, law-abiding citizen ...

Fiste 2: Give me a break!

Fiste: of the Federation ...

Fiste 2: Shut up! SHUT UP!

Fiste: A community-conscious individual.

Fiste 2: Sternn?! He is just a low-down, -- double-dealing, backstabbing, larcenous, perverted worm! Hanging is too good for him! Burning is too good for him! He should be torn into little pieces and buried alive!

Is it really necessary to go down the litany of examples that have been given here of duplicitous deception on the part of the Discovery Institute and those affiliated with it?

[lee_merrill]

And methodological naturalism is central to the scientific method. It is literally about finding natural explanations for natural phenomena.

But not forensic science, which deals in detecting intelligent agents.

Point out one instance where Newton attempted to insert non-physical causes into his laws or equations.

Source: Wikipedia

"Tis inconceivable that inanimate brute matter should (without the mediation of something else which is not material) operate upon & affect other matter [via gravity] without mutual contact."

Leibniz jibed that such an immaterial influence would be a continual miracle...

Source

© Copyright Original Source

And Newton being wrong here would not mean all such conclusions are wrong, as in the origin of life.

What's that thing about proving a negative? Oh yes, it's impossible to do. Excellent foundation for a method of inquiry.

And it's about probability, as in archaeology, as in SETI research.

Blessings,
Lee

[lee_merrill]

Do tell. Please explain how Collins writing that "The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome," and "He can be worshipped in the cathedral or in the laboratory" in his The Language of God " involves a kind of blindness, putting blinkers on so we cannot see God's hand in his handiwork, in the laboratory"

Because methodological naturalism excludes God.

Methodological naturalism (MN) is at the heart of the scientific method.

Not forensic science!

For instance, according to the late David Lindberg (a historian of science who focused on the Medieval to early Modern Science and the relationship between religion and science), in his well received Beginnings of Western Science, Saint Albert the Great (a.k.a., Albertus Magnus), the illustrious 13th cent. German Catholic Dominican friar and later bishop (a Doctor of the RCC), proposed distinguishing

"between philosophy and theology on methodological grounds and to find out what philosophy alone, without any help from theology, could demonstrate about reality. Moreover, Albert did nothing to diminish or conceal the "naturalistic" tendencies of the Aristotelian tradition. He acknowledged (with every other medieval thinker) that God is ultimately the cause of everything, but he argued that God customarily works through natural causes and that the natural philosopher's obligation was to take the latter to their limit"

Well, SETI research investigates intelligent agents.

FWICT Boyle was an avowed Anglican, but he also sought to study and understand natural phenomena without what he called "intermeddling with supernatural mysteries." Therefore, as can be seen several times throughout The Works of the Honorable Robert Boyle that Boyle held that it was mistaken to invoke God or miraculous explanations while seeking to comprehend the operations of natural phenomena on its own terms. For Boyle, this was simply due to the fact that those sort of explanations provide no insight into the physical nature of the phenomena or the principles under which they operated, and that rational and practical engagement with creation was the only means for us to increase our knowledge of it.

Yet by insisting that all explanations must be mechanical, you will miss the evident hand of God, as in the origin of life.

The fact is that it is impossible to rule out the possibility of a miracle. The problem is that science, nor anything else devised by man, can totally eliminate the possibility of a supernatural occurrence.

But I meant the first step in detecting a miracle would be to first rule out natural processes as a probable explanation.

Those are not instructions for determining how something works. That is a First Cause argument.

No, this is God appealing to what he has actually predicted. I would mention here the rebuilding of Babylon, which has actually been attempted several times! "Babylon will not be reinhabited" (Isa. 13:19-20) is a prediction that can actually be tested.

Just how do we go about exhausting our knowledge of natural processes so that we can rule them out as the cause? Just because we don't know something at the moment does not mean a natural solution won't present itself.

When we feel confident we know enough about natural processes to rule them out, as in (again) forensic science.

And you wonder why such thinking has been rightfully termed a science stopper.

Quite the opposite, science has flourished in the Christian era, and in Christian countries, as it has nowhere else.

Blessings,
Lee

[rogue06]

Source: Wikipedia

"Tis inconceivable that inanimate brute matter should (without the mediation of something else which is not material) operate upon & affect other matter [via gravity] without mutual contact."

Leibniz jibed that such an immaterial influence would be a continual miracle...

Source

© Copyright Original Source

Interesting since Leibniz attacked Newton's gravitational models as atheistic. For effectively replacing God with gravity.

[rogue06]

Because methodological naturalism excludes God.

It is neutral toward the existence of God. Sort of like plumbing, electrical engineering, or even playing chess.

And the fact remains that Collins strictly employs materialistic naturalism in his scientific endeavors and yet still says that "The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome," and "He can be worshipped in the cathedral or in the laboratory," and no amount of waving an empty slogan around changes that.

Not forensic science!

And yet wrt forensics, any conclusion they reach still needs to be explained and tested by reference to natural causes and events. All data must be explained via appealing to natural laws and natural process. Miracles are not considered as a possibility.

So what exactly are you going about again?

Well, SETI research investigates intelligent agents.

SETI also continues to look for natural causes for everything they uncover. Even if they don't have a ready explanation, unlike Behe et al. they don't throw up their hands in surrender and declare it must be the result of divine intervention. Instead, they continue searching for a natural solution.

Yet by insisting that all explanations must be mechanical, you will miss the evident hand of God, as in the origin of life.

In that there is absolutely no way to test for miracles we are stuck with what we can do.

In his Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis explains it this way:

Science works by experiments. It watches how things behave. Every scientific statement in the long run, however complicated it looks, really means something like, 'I pointed the telescope to such-and-such a part of the sky at 2:20 a.m. on January 15th and saw so-and-so,' … Do not think I am saying anything against science: I am only saying what its job is … But why anything comes to be there at all, and whether there is anything behind the things science observes—something of a different kind—this is not a scientific question

So we should stop demanding that science do something it was never designed to handle.

Moreover, as I pointed out in a previous post

[N]ot appealing to God in science is not the same as denying his activity in the world. Not even close. They understood that accepting that science is only equipped to study a subset of reality (that which is accessible to empirical investigation), which is very different from asserting that everything that exists has come about by purely material causes.

Finally, Scripture readily reveals that God regularly accomplishes His purposes through means such as natural processes or human activity^[1] In fact, I think that God's sovereignty and rational character provide immeasurable support for believing that creation operates primarily by regular principles that can be discovered through scientific investigation.

And this brings us back to my earlier observation that scientists like Boyle and Newton may have assumed that the universe made sense because it had a designer, but then used what we would call ordinary material scientific methods to investigate that universe.

But I meant the first step in detecting a miracle would be to first rule out natural processes as a probable explanation.

And how do you do that?

History has shown us time and time again that just because we don't have an explanation today doesn't mean we won't have one tomorrow. Again, what you are promoting is nothing more than God-of-the-gaps theology.

When we feel confident we know enough about natural processes to rule them out, as in (again) forensic science.

Again, and just how do we reach that point? Hasn't history already taught us this method has never worked?

Further, your continuing reliance on forensics is not helping you here. It appears that you understand it about as well as you do biology. As I pointed out

any conclusion they reach still needs to be explained and tested by reference to natural causes and events. All data must be explained via appealing to natural laws and natural process. Miracles are not considered as a possibility.

Quite the opposite, science has flourished in the Christian era, and in Christian countries, as it has nowhere else.

Which can and has been directly linked to when early Christian scientists (natural philosophers) adopted the scientific method with methodological naturalism as its core principle.

I agree wholly with the late historian and philosopher of early modern science and a Professor of History, Margaret Osler, when she wrote that

For many of the natural philosophers of the seventeenth century, science and religion -- or better, natural philosophy and theology -- were inseparable, part and parcel of the endeavor to understand our world.

But these same men explicitly repudiated supernatural epistemic methods in their studies because they understood doing so was a wasted endeavor so instead they focused on searching for potential natural explanations.






1. Look at, for instance, Genesis 50:20, where Joseph declares that his brothers' evil actions were used by God to accomplish his divine purposes.

[TheLurch]

But not forensic science, which deals in detecting intelligent agents.

And it's about probability, as in archaeology, as in SETI research.

Look, let's just eliminate two of these, shall we? Archeology and forensic science are based on the extremely well established existence and capabilities of humans. There's no equivalent for a designer, so you're being completely disingenuous by pretending they're similar.

SETI, as we've gone over, is also not equivalent. It is about trying to identify signals for which we have no natural explanation, at which point they will be considered unexplained. Nobody's going to do what the ID crowd wants us to do, and leap to a final conclusion. So again, not equivalent.

The ID crowd is completely right when they point out there's some things we can't currently ascribe to natural processes. They're not wrong in the sense that design hasn't been ruled out as an explanation. They're comically wrong when they say that these things absolutely must be the product of design. SETI studiously avoids making the equivalent of that third, comically wrong step. Why? Because they want to be doing science.

[cite=Wikipedia]"Tis inconceivable that inanimate brute matter should (without the mediation of something else which is not material) operate upon & affect other matter [via gravity] without mutual contact."

Once again, read what i write. I specifically mentioned laws and formulas.



Beyond that, i just want to emphasize something that Rogue's said: "History has shown us time and time again that just because we don't have an explanation today doesn't mean we won't have one tomorrow."

You keep saying that ID has identified cases where the probabilities of natural causes are so low, it has to be design. (It hasn't, but we can set that aside for now). But all we can do is identify cases where the known natural causes are improbable. We can never know whether there's a currently unknown mechanism that could accomplish it with a reasonable probability. How can you possibly rule that out? (This is why ID is very literally a god-of-the-gaps argument.)

To provide a relevant example, until we discovered catalytic RNAs, the entire RNA world hypothesis, which is now the leading candidate for explaining the origin of life, didn't exist. A single discovery completely changed our understanding, and provided an entirely new mechanism for life's origin. How can you possibly rule out other similar discoveries?

[lee_merrill]

And the fact remains that Collins strictly employs materialistic naturalism in his scientific endeavors and yet still says that "The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome," and "He can be worshipped in the cathedral or in the laboratory," and no amount of waving an empty slogan around changes that.

But I claim he's being inconsistent, and does not worship God in the laboratory.

And yet wrt forensics, any conclusion they reach still needs to be explained and tested by reference to natural causes and events. All data must be explained via appealing to natural laws and natural process. Miracles are not considered as a possibility.

But forensics can be applied to miracles, how else could we determine if God healed a person, except by first eliminating natural causes?

So we should stop demanding that science do something it was never designed to handle.

But it does help in crime cases, the detectives come to gather samples for use by the labs.

[N]ot appealing to God in science is not the same as denying his activity in the world. Not even close. They understood that accepting that science is only equipped to study a subset of reality (that which is accessible to empirical investigation), which is very different from asserting that everything that exists has come about by purely material causes.

But I believe God brought about life, and scientists are coming to acknowledge this, because of their scientific investigations. Re James Tour...

And this brings us back to my earlier observation that scientists like Boyle and Newton may have assumed that the universe made sense because it had a designer, but then used what we would call ordinary material scientific methods to investigate that universe.

Source: Return of the God Hypothesis

Now here is the similar passage from Boyle: “If an Indian or Chinois [Chinese] should have found a Watch cast on shore in some Trunke or Casket of some shipwrackt European vessel; by observing the motions and figure of it, he would quickly conclude that ’twas made by some intelligent & skillfull Being.”29 Clearly, Boyle not only assumed the intelligibility of nature; he also thought that he observed evidence in nature of an intelligent designer. Indeed, Davis goes so far as to call Boyle the father of the modern theory of intelligent design.

© Copyright Original Source

History has shown us time and time again that just because we don't have an explanation today doesn't mean we won't have one tomorrow. Again, what you are promoting is nothing more than God-of-the-gaps theology.

And you are proposing science-of-the-gaps, that science should be invoked to explain the unexplained in every instance.

Again, and just how do we reach that point? Hasn't history already taught us this method has never worked?

When we estimate that natural processes producing a result is immensely improbable. And this method works fine in forensics.

any conclusion they reach still needs to be explained and tested by reference to natural causes and events. All data must be explained via appealing to natural laws and natural process. Miracles are not considered as a possibility.

Well, they estimate the probability of natural causes producing a result. I agree with you there. But then the actions of intelligent agents can be discerned when natural explanations fail.

Which can and has been directly linked to when early Christian scientists (natural philosophers) adopted the scientific method with methodological naturalism as its core principle.

No, the core principle was in tracing the hand of God in nature:

Source: Return of the God hypothesis

Though Boyle rejected appeals to formal causes and discrete and singular divine action to explain the regular motions or concourse of nature, he explicitly invoked the purposive or intelligent activity of God to explain the original construction of the universe, the mechanisms that made regularities possible and especially the diverse creatures of the living world. Indeed, as historian of science Edward Davis has pointed out, Boyle developed several design arguments to explain the origin of animals, the “Fabrick of the Universe,” and the “First Formation of the Universe.”

© Copyright Original Source

Blessings,
Lee

[lee_merrill]

Look, let's just eliminate two of these, shall we? Archeology and forensic science are based on the extremely well established existence and capabilities of humans. There's no equivalent for a designer, so you're being completely disingenuous by pretending they're similar.

But there is an equivalence for a designer. forensics is set up to detect the actions of intelligent agents.

SETI, as we've gone over, is also not equivalent. It is about trying to identify signals for which we have no natural explanation, at which point they will be considered unexplained. Nobody's going to do what the ID crowd wants us to do, and leap to a final conclusion. So again, not equivalent.

I think if a list of prime numbers, or the periodic table, was discovered somehow, they would conclude alien intelligence was at work.

Beyond that, i just want to emphasize something that Rogue's said: "History has shown us time and time again that just because we don't have an explanation today doesn't mean we won't have one tomorrow."

Certainly, but it's about probabilities, and whether we know enough now to make a good estimate.

To provide a relevant example, until we discovered catalytic RNAs, the entire RNA world hypothesis, which is now the leading candidate for explaining the origin of life, didn't exist. A single discovery completely changed our understanding, and provided an entirely new mechanism for life's origin. How can you possibly rule out other similar discoveries?

Because it doesn't begin to touch the vast complexity of even a single cell. Not to mention the origin of the information in the RNA! I believe we know enough now to estimate (as Koonin did) various aspects of the origin of life.

Blessings,
Lee

[shunyadragon]

But there is an equivalence for a designer. forensics is set up to detect the actions of intelligent agents.

Forensics is only set up to detect natural cause and effect relationships of human agents


[/quote] I think if a list of prime numbers, or the periodic table, was discovered somehow, they would conclude alien intelligence was at work. [/quote]

Woh! Woh! paranoia.

Certainly, but it's about probabilities, and whether we know enough now to make a good estimate.

No it is not.

Because it doesn't begin to touch the vast complexity of even a single cell. Not to mention the origin of the information in the RNA! I believe we know enough now to estimate (as Koonin did) various aspects of the origin of life.

Blessings,
Lee

Yes, we know enough to figure out the natural aspects of the origin and evolution of life.

[rogue06]

But I claim he's being inconsistent, and does not worship God in the laboratory.

So, in your mind if you are, say, trying to figure out why your car won't start, if you start checking the battery and the such but aren't considering the possibility that God was responsible, you aren't worshipping God? Is that it? If you can't find your keys and don't figure that God hid them rather than looking in the places you were when you last had them, then you don't worship God.

And as I noted previously:

Scripture readily reveals that God regularly accomplishes His purposes through means such as natural processes or human activity^[1] In fact, I think that God's sovereignty and rational character provide immeasurable support for believing that creation operates primarily by regular principles that can be discovered through scientific investigation.

1. Look at, for instance, Genesis 50:20, where Joseph declares that his brothers' evil actions were used by God to accomplish his divine purposes.

IOW, looking for natural solutions -- the secondary causes -- does not take God out of the equation.

But forensics can be applied to miracles, how else could we determine if God healed a person, except by first eliminating natural causes?

You keep saying that but continue to fail at providing a method in which we could eliminate natural causes.

Again, just because we don't have an answer today does not mean we won't tomorrow. That's what happened to Behe's examples of irreducible complexity. There may not have been answers when he first presented them but since then numerous solutions have appeared. Historically speaking, this is what has happened Every Single Time we have been presented a scientific mystery. We keep examining it until someone eventually has figured it out at least in part.

But what you and the ID(iots) want to do is prevent those future solutions from being sought. You want to shut down inquiry and simply declare "it's a miracle!" and be done with it.

But it does help in crime cases, the detectives come to gather samples for use by the labs.

Please explain how declaring something happened as a result of supernatural intervention has ever helped solve a criminal investigation.

But I believe God brought about life, and scientists are coming to acknowledge this, because of their scientific investigations. Re James Tour...

God is indeed the author of life but that doesn't mean we can't look for the mechanisms and processes that He established in order to do so.

Source: Return of the God Hypothesis

Now here is the similar passage from Boyle: “If an Indian or Chinois [Chinese] should have found a Watch cast on shore in some Trunke or Casket of some shipwrackt European vessel; by observing the motions and figure of it, he would quickly conclude that ’twas made by some intelligent & skillfull Being.”29 Clearly, Boyle not only assumed the intelligibility of nature; he also thought that he observed evidence in nature of an intelligent designer. Indeed, Davis goes so far as to call Boyle the father of the modern theory of intelligent design.

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Wow. Paley's watch. Now there's something original

Of course a watch doesn't reproduce it can't mutate nor is natural selection applicable to it so it really is a miserable analogy. But be that as it may, while Boyle assumed that the universe made sense because it had a designer he still used what we would call ordinary material scientific methods to investigate that universe.

And Boyle repeatedly argued that such investigations should seek to explain the phenomena of creation in terms of natural processes. He sought to study and understand natural phenomena without what he called "intermeddling with supernatural mysteries" declaring that it was mistaken to invoke God or miraculous explanations while seeking to comprehend the operations of natural phenomena.

Boyle was an advocate of the Baconian method of doing science, which is made especially clear in his 1666 letter to Henry Oldenburg where Boyle spells out the "designe" by which he thinks experimental programs in "natural philosophy" should be conducted. This "designe" leaves no room for the miraculous in the investigation but instead focuses upon what today we'd call methodological naturalism as being the key to research

Finally, as I previously pointed out, in one of his last works, The Christian Virtuoso, Boyle made his view clear:

"consult Experience both frequently and heedfully; and not content with the Phaenonmena that Nature spontaneously affords them, they are solicitous, when they find it needful, to enlarge their Experience by Tryals purposely devis’d; and ever and anon Reflecting upon it, they are careful to Conform their opinions to it; or, if there be just cause, Reform their Opinions by it."

We should look for natural explanations and follow the evidence.

And you are proposing science-of-the-gaps, that science should be invoked to explain the unexplained in every instance.

I'm saying that it is impossible, in spite of your claim to the contrary, to eliminate natural causes as a solution so we should continue to search for them. So far this method has a 100% success rate.

As an aside, which I'm sure you'll duly ignore, I'll add this from Kathryn Applegate (who I've mentioned in a previous post):

Perhaps surprisingly, methodological naturalism frees us to envision God not as periodically “intervening” in our world (a word which connotes meddling or tampering), but as faithfully and lovingly preserving, redeeming, and remaking all things in Christ. Methodological naturalism, when practiced by a Christian, presupposes the sovereignty and consistent sustaining work of God

When we estimate that natural processes producing a result is immensely improbable. And this method works fine in forensics.

Utter bilge. Cite me just one instance where forensics eliminated natural causes.

Well, they estimate the probability of natural causes producing a result. I agree with you there. But then the actions of intelligent agents can be discerned when natural explanations fail.

This is mindless claptrap. You cannot eliminate natural causes as a possibility. Behe tried and it blew up in his face. This is evidenced by the indisputable fact that so far every time we sought a natural explanation for something we couldn't at first explain, we have found a natural explanation.

No, the core principle was in tracing the hand of God in nature:

You are conflating First Cause with Second Cause.

While folks like Newton and Boyle acknowledged a creator ultimately responsible for everything, they set that aside when they searched for secondary causes. When they searched for answers to the "how."

As philosopher of science and devout Christian Ronald Osborn has observed in his Death Before the Fall: Biblical Literalism and the Problem of Animal Suffering it was Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle who sought to separate their Christian beliefs from their scientific work because they

...saw that the metaphysical mixing of modern empirical methods with religious teleology resulted not only in bad science but also in a corruption of true faith. God’s transcendence theologically requires a radical distinction between God as Creator and the operations of the universe through secondary causes that can be empirically observed and tested through inductive and deductive methods

Source: Return of the God hypothesis

Though Boyle rejected appeals to formal causes and discrete and singular divine action to explain the regular motions or concourse of nature, he explicitly invoked the purposive or intelligent activity of God to explain the original construction of the universe, the mechanisms that made regularities possible and especially the diverse creatures of the living world. Indeed, as historian of science Edward Davis has pointed out, Boyle developed several design arguments to explain the origin of animals, the “Fabrick of the Universe,” and the “First Formation of the Universe.”

© Copyright Original Source

Blessings,
Lee

The first clause of your quote demonstrates Boyle's commitment to a methodological naturalism approach. While Boyle believed in what we today call Intelligent Design, he still sought natural explanations for the various natural phenomena that he studied.

By abandoning methodological naturalism (and even refusing to look at the scientific as well as theological reasons that early Christian scientists developed this method) in favor of supernatural causation, ID has done nothing less than abandoned the ground rules of science. That this is the case can be no better illustrated by Behe's sad attempt to completely redefine science so that even astrology becomes legitimate science.