- #71
metacristi
- 265
- 1
Rade said:
Well while I agree that currently we cannot accept that ID is on a par with natural evolution I cannot agree with the hidden assumption that the methodologies used by current science cannot change in non-trivial ways.
The above quotes seems to advocate either the idea that hypothesis God is not a subject for science (as fideists, among others, say) or that such a hypothesis is never a reasonable solution for science so we can always ignore it safely (as some atheists claim; a stance basically indistinguishable, at the practical level, from metaphysical naturalism: there is no transcedental intelligent creator).
But methodological naturalism does not reject the possibility of 'supernatural' and 'supernatural science'. Naturalism is considered merely a fallible assumption of science, we have currently much more reasons to keep it as the first choice methodology in science but without rejecting (underestimating) the possibility to find later evidence for super-naturalism (of course the supernatural needs extraordinary arguments / evidence, anyway much more than what exists currently).
Methodological naturalism fully acknowledges the possibility of important revisions in the future; in other words the possibility of 'miracles', extraordinary evidence pro God, which to basically oblige us to introduce a transcedental God (and the supernatural) inside science (at least provisionally) is never underestimated.
Niall Shanks points well to this fact in his book "God, the Devil, and Darwin - A Critique of Intelligent Design Theory":
"methodological naturalism = Long experience shows that all we seem to bump into in science is nature, and so all causes and effects are, with very high probability, natural, and thus the bio-psycho-social model is most probably adequate for the phenomena under analysis. Extraordinary evidence will be needed to make a case for supernatural spiritual causes in medicine, and hence an extension of the model to the bio-psycho-social-spiritual model. The methodological naturalist is thus skeptical of claims about supernatural causes but also recognizes, since all claims in science are potentially revisable in the light of new evidence, that it is at least conceivable that all that long experience of nature has not told the whole story."
I may agree that probably we will never have a ‘proof’ (involving certitudes or quasi-certitudes) of God but I cannot agree with the conclusion that an important paradigm shift (which to make hypothesis God a provisional part of science) is never possible.
Indeed for example when people all over the world are told by a fire in the sky - pretending to be the omni-all Creator of our universe and of human race - that the usual laws of nature will be changed on Earth for 48 hours, that the Andromeda Galaxy will suddenly disappear forever or that a new race of animals will be created (and things happen exactly) then it's clear that 'God hypothesis' should become the first choice program (the 'normal paradigm' of those days, provisionally accepted) in science.
Naturalism is the first choice methodology of current science because we do not have at the moment sufficient reasons pro supernatural but not because supernatural cannot be a part of science.
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"There must be no barriers for freedom of inquiry. There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors." (J. Robert Oppenheimer)
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