Thought you all might be interested in a new essay of mine on whether or not we should teach our students methodological materialism.
From the article:
…without having a priori rules to know if the phenomena you are studying is materialistic or not, and requiring a study of the phenomena to restrict itself to material causes, then there is no difference between this position and philosophical materialism. Philosophical materialism states that every cause is a material cause. Therefore, if you are restricted in your search for causes to materialistic ones, and cannot consider nonmaterial ones, then you have just bridged the gap between methodological materialism and philosophical materialism.